Can we have green wards back?

Shaddai·Dec 22, 2015·166 votes·4,514 views

I think there's been enough experimentation with new vision, and while I like the new trinkets and all, the lack of green wards when it comes to mid game and later is pretty heinous. It punishes good players that try to control vision and doesn't really affect the bad ones that never bought them to begin with. It doesn't help that yellow trinket is a shadow of its former self.

Top and Mid are also terrible now because you can't even ward efficiently for ganks. You can drop ONE pink (Whose idea was this?) and it's visible to the jungler who is now going to kill it, cost you 75 gold, then stick around anyway. Sure, combine it with yellow trinket, but those wards don't last for shit, so they are pretty pointless at certain points in the game.

At the very least, we should have greens back with a limit of 1-2 per person. It's just stupid not having them in the game anymore.

56 Comments

PROJECT KatarìnaDec 22, 201539 votes

Im a simple man when i see "bring back green wards" i upvote.

DeathBurstDec 22, 201510 votes

The reasons for removing green wards were good. It was a way to snowball game, where the winning team could afford more wards than the losing team, and win even more thanks to that.

Also, yellow trinket is currently buffed on the PBE. -30s recharge time at level 18. It's noticeably better.

Cloud273Dec 22, 201511 votes

{quoted}

The reasons for removing green wards were good. It was a way to snowball game, where the winning team could afford more wards than the losing team, and win even more thanks to that.

Also, yellow trinket is currently buffed on the PBE. -30s recharge time at level 18. It's noticeably better.

How is this different than other types of wards? I could say the exact same thing about vision (pink) wards. If the enemy team is ahead, they're going to have more vision. So how do we fix this problem without removing wards?

DeathBurstDec 22, 201517 votes

It's easy to remove pink wards and each player can only have one. It's not easy to remove green wards, you need to guess it's here + have an Oracle source, and each player can have 3. So the problem is much more important with green than with pink.

Occams RaiserDec 22, 20153 votes

nice comeback. he didn't think it through

DeathBurstDec 22, 20153 votes

I feel sarcasm.

Occams RaiserDec 23, 20152 votes

no it was honest.

DeathBurstDec 23, 20152 votes

Oh... Thanks, I suppose.

WhatAGeiniusDec 23, 20155 votes

That's a bad argument because in the previous season the losing team could still just buy a yellow trinket and have 100% uptime on their wards, just like the winning team. Buying more green wards does very little because you can still only have 3 out at once.

The real reason they did it is just because they wanted less vision in the game in general.

DeathBurstDec 23, 20152 votes

You can't buy yellow trinket before level 9. If you get an early kill level 4 or 5, you can buy 1 or 2 green wards and put them deep in their jungle, and use that to get YET another early kill. That's what the guys at higher ELO where doing. And at lower ELO, they just didn't bought ward ever, so nothing has changed for them.

Now you can't do that, NOW the situation is really symmetrical for both teams, not before. And you can't do with pink wards what you were doing with green before. Since they are visible, it's very easy to remove them and deny that deep vision to the winning team. Before you needed a red trinket and a good instinct, and that meant even less wards for you since you had no yellow trinket.

AnruiDec 23, 20152 votes

Not to mention the winning team just all gets red trinkets and sweeps out your vision since they don't have to rely on yellow trinkets as much. The game has far less vision snowball currently. However, in the lower levels of play (like Silver for me) it punishes players like me who tend to invest in vision. I still buy pinks but it just doesn't feel the same as a jungler or top laner. Just can't seem to get the same vision coverage as I used to.

DeathBurstDec 23, 20152 votes

yeah, it's the "middle ELO" effect I was mentioning in another comment. But I wonder what fraction of players are actually affected. I'd like to have some internal data from Riot :p

LadyRenlyDec 23, 20153 votes

{quoted}

The reasons for removing green wards were good. It was a way to snowball game, where the winning team could afford more wards than the losing team, and win even more thanks to that.

Also, yellow trinket is currently buffed on the PBE. -30s recharge time at level 18. It's noticeably better.

Losing teams can also buy greens to prevent them from losing even harder

DeathBurstDec 27, 20151 votes

Well, they can, but the winning team will just sweep them with their red trinkets. This is still true, but before, they would also put their own green wards instead, and losing team was screwed. No, with blue/pink wards, losing team is not as screwed, because it's easy to see/destroy them.

Shiyo KozukiDec 24, 20151 votes

This is completely wrong. The way wards right now benefit the team ahead as you need wards the MOST when you're behind thus need to play more defensively and stay safe, but with how wards are you need to protect them because blue trinket/purples are the only reliable wards but they aren't invisible and will constantly get killed. If you're behind you can't really fight the enemy or contest the wards so the team behind will almost never have vision while the team ahead constantly has vision which creates a snowball effect.

DeathBurstDec 27, 20151 votes

But if you are behind, you shouldn't try to fight, because you will lose, since you are behind. You should stay under your turret and wait and farm until you catch-up.

What you describe is still true today. But it was EVEN WORSE before, with green wards. Today, the losing team has no vision, it's true, but they didn't have vision before either! And before, the winning team had much more vision, whereas now, it's easier for the losing team to remove winning team's vision.

Occams RaiserDec 22, 20157 votes

statistically no one was really using them for most divisions and Riot doesn't want them in higher divs.

DeathBurstDec 22, 20152 votes

I don't know why you get downvoted, this is actually a very relevant answer...

It's true that in lower ELO very few people were using them.
It's true that the arguments given by Riot in order to justify removing them are especially true at higher ELO.

The only objection I can see is: is there a noticeable "middle ELO" where the situation is sensibly worse than before.

A Miss FortuneDec 22, 20155 votes

Being an ADC main I really hate the removal of green wards. ADCs rely so much on vision to stay safe and to be able to farm, without green wards all we have is a pink ward and the blue ward to try to light up the map and protect ourselves from assassins. Most of the time without my support following me the entire game I just have to wait under turret to farm or hope that my team decides to set up wards around the area I am farming in.

Green ward removal in general has decreased my enjoyment of the game and my winrate has noticeably decreased and while obviously a lot of big changes have happened during preseason I feel like the changing of wards has had the biggest negative impact on my winrate as I adapted to abusing vision and really enjoyed it as well.

NommyPancakeDec 23, 20151 votes

I can agree with you.

With the removal of green wards, it's like indirect nerf to some champions.

You can't place ward as much as before, you have to be extra careful when playing immobile ones.

As a Singed main, I found that the new trinket system hurts me a lot. I used to upgrade my trinket once I hit lv 9. Then I will ward their jungle to safely proxy.

From my experience The old trinket system is better because I can place more wards at lv 9. If that's not enough, green wards.

Now I often found myself runs out of ward very often, literally no wards to place in their jungle when I wanted to proxy.

P0IS0N IVYDec 23, 20154 votes

Support main here and this was literally the worst change I've seen so far. Riot likes to claim they don't like to force people down certain build paths and yet I feel like they are trying to force supports towards getting sightstone first. No thanks. I'd rather buy green wards and work on other things until midgame.

Not to mention that I can't sufficiently ward bot lane ever now. I get to choose between being vulnerable to ganks from the jungle or from the lane. Pick your poison.

MrWasjigDec 23, 20154 votes

I wouldn't mind the removal of greens so much if the new trinkets weren't utter trash. But they are. Blue WAS good but then Riot nerfed it because it was being used so much. But that's because it was the only good warding trinket left in the game. And now it's just (and I mean, JUST) above trash tier.

Yellow trinket is far, far weaker than it was. The sweepers are....kind of okay but still worse than they were. But that doesn't matter because there aren't any fucking wards to sweep in the first place because, the other trinkets are trash and there aren't green wards anymore!

"But don't worry guys because now we have ward rubble! The single most useful change ever implemented in League of Legends, ever! You can give us money now" -Rito 2015

CalabokDec 22, 20153 votes

"I" isn't in the word "team"

Gnart Even CloseDec 22, 20154 votes

{quoted}

"I" isn't in the word "team"

but it is in "Darius"

~The Dunk Prophecies

DeathBurstDec 22, 20154 votes

Well, something must be lost in translation, because it is not in "Draven". Impossible.

UtilityPunkDec 23, 20152 votes

It's a silent 'I'. Draven's awesome because he lets everyone spell his name the way it sounds. He does this because he always thought Lam's name was spelt wrong. His given name was Draiven. ~Head Canon

KryogenDec 23, 20153 votes

Bring back greens or give us 2 pinks please. This is.. borderline game-breaking for me... I get paradigm shift's but this is brutal! Not just as a support but for when I adc - true story, it was actually me - I was that one adc in bronze who actually bought greens on my backs when I could.

The trinkets just don't last long enough imo to warrant the deletion of green wards!

RyvakuDec 22, 20152 votes

Pinks are 75g though..

Occams RaiserDec 22, 20154 votes

did they change the limit on pinks

UB3R 1337 H4XDec 22, 20156 votes

But you can only keep one on the map.

KieferrDec 22, 20152 votes

Sucks for jungle mains too. Now we HAVE to buy the shitty tracker knife to get wards in combination with a sweeper. Like, how can u expect us to keep vision control with 1 pink if we don't get trackers?

10TicklerDec 23, 20152 votes

Gonna upvote, but also give another idea.

Make Sightstone-like options for Mid and Toplaners that are Viable. More HP+Armor+ 2 wards each back. Mana+Mana Regen+10%CDR + 2 Wards each Back

Gnart Even CloseDec 22, 20151 votes

I just want yellow trinket to be as strong as the old upgraded yellow trinket. they should buff sightstone and tracker's knife too imo to have the wards refill over time and instantly when you back. i think the excuse to not have that was to force some supports to back because they otherwise wouldn't, but that's just silly. supports need items just as much as anyone else, especially the tank and mage ones. then i think the other trinkets would be balanced and we could actually have decent vision. i don't like having to pay for vision, and Riot said that vision in a consumable state is bad because it helps encourage snowballing or something like that.

DeathBurstDec 22, 20151 votes

From memory, the old Red Post you mention was about how Sightstone not recharging with time was a conscious decision, because it's usually the only way to force Support going back to base, and this was needed to create opportunities for the opposing team (especially for the losing side).

Your point about Support needing item is not false, but they get much less gold than other classes, so they need to back less often, and their kits are designed to be effective even without items, so it's less a problem if they sit on a large pile of cash

Moreover, if really as a support you feel forced to get back to base to get item, you shouldn't need a recharging Sightstone, since you recharge it already when you do back. You're saying at the same time "I don't want to have to back" and "You don't need to force me to back, I already do it." It's not consistent.

Gnart Even CloseDec 27, 20151 votes

{quoted}

From memory, the old Red Post you mention was about how Sightstone not recharging with time was a conscious decision, because it's usually the only way to force Support going back to base, and this was needed to create opportunities for the opposing team (especially for the losing side).

Your point about Support needing item is not false, but they get much less gold than other classes, so they need to back less often, and their kits are designed to be effective even without items, so it's less a problem if they sit on a large pile of cash

Moreover, if really as a support you feel forced to get back to base to get item, you shouldn't need a recharging Sightstone, since you recharge it already when you do back. You're saying at the same time "I don't want to have to back" and "You don't need to force me to back, I already do it." It's not consistent.

i was consistent though. i specifically said i disagreed with their excuse and thought it was silly, i was just bringing it up so that everyone could better understand Riot's reasoning

DeathBurstDec 28, 20151 votes

Then if you think their excuse is silly, and you already back, WHY do you want a Sightstone that recharges automatically over time ("they should buff sightstone and tracker's knife too imo to have the wards refill over time")? Indeed, I made a logical leap saying that you want that because you don't want to back, you didn't say it explicitly, but that's because I can see no other reason.

Either you are already backing for something else, you don't need the auto-recharge, so you shouldn't care about that. Or you are backing only for recharging your sightstone, you would need the auto-recharge, but Riot "excuse" isn't silly.

Whatever way you turn it, there is something that doesn't fit.

Gnart Even CloseDec 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Then if you think their excuse is silly, and you already back, WHY do you want a Sightstone that recharges automatically over time ("they should buff sightstone and tracker's knife too imo to have the wards refill over time")? Indeed, I made a logical leap saying that you want that because you don't want to back, you didn't say it explicitly, but that's because I can see no other reason.

Either you are already backing for something else, you don't need the auto-recharge, so you shouldn't care about that. Or you are backing only for recharging your sightstone, you would need the auto-recharge, but Riot "excuse" isn't silly.

Whatever way you turn it, there is something that doesn't fit.

their excuse is silly. people already back, because they have to get items at some point. however, you don't necessarily want to back constantly as you might miss on gold from relic shield, spellthief's edge, ancient coin. you need to back periodically, but you shouldn't have to back more than other roles if you want to help with vision. if you keep vision up around bot lane, you run out of the wards really quickly especially since adc's generally don't help. if you want to ward the enemy jungle, you probably want one ward around each buff. now you can't ward your own jungle or help your laners with vision. why should you pay for something that is normally free when it isn't even as good as the free version? it simply doesn't make sense to me, and i don't know why you think that this is inconsistent or illogical. you're basically trying to trap me for no reason.

DeathBurstDec 29, 20151 votes

Well I'm not trying to trap you, but I personally don't have to back more often than my ADC. It's generally the opposite, and if I didn't have to back to reload my sightstone at all, I would really back far less often than other lanes. Tbh, I don't try to ward deep in enemy jungle so maybe I'm using less wards, but still...

May I recommend using a pink ward in one of the safer location?

Gnart Even CloseDec 30, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Well I'm not trying to trap you, but I personally don't have to back more often than my ADC. It's generally the opposite, and if I didn't have to back to reload my sightstone at all, I would really back far less often than other lanes. Tbh, I don't try to ward deep in enemy jungle so maybe I'm using less wards, but still...

May I recommend using a pink ward in one of the safer location?

yeah i don't buy enough pink wards. a lot of supports back with their adc so that neither is left alone. when one of the laners is gone, that is prime time for a gank, even a tower dive one. for junglers, i think deep wards are very important, especially near the enemy buffs or near raptors so you can keep track of their jungler for your teammates or to invade them. having the wards refresh would be nice, even if it was slower than yellow trinket.

NekusenDec 23, 20151 votes

i hope not, they were a forced gold dump. i'd rather have them fix trinkets (as they will in this patch), or add some vision summoner spell

Hotlin3 FlingDec 24, 20151 votes

They removed the vision ss. It was called clairvoyance. It was basically a blue trinket on a lower cool down

QsarioDec 23, 20151 votes

I think things would be fine if sightstone upgrades would just recharge over time without having to back constantly.

I7A6X2v2Dec 23, 20151 votes

item 3361

LF AnnieDec 23, 20151 votes

lack of green wards is way more punishing when behind than when ahead, ahead you can use for picks, but behind you have to rely on fairly minimalist wards to deal with a game that has fundamentally changed because the amount of gold in the game at most points is higher.

TotN TitanDec 23, 20151 votes

Vision shouldn't be about how many wards you can spam. It should be about having them in the places you need them to set up objective play. They should be used to help secure dragons, secure barons, set up for jungle invades, or scout for enemy roamers on the side of the map. If you're an ADC and you use your blue trinket up ahead in the lane to stay safe, place a 75 gold pink ward closer to you. You should be watching your mini map anyway and someone destroying your ward gives you all the knowledge of where they are that you need to make an intelligent decision about getting to a safer place.

Also, your towers are still your friends. Use them intelligently. You shouldn't be pushing very far past your furthest tower to begin with. If you have only Inhibitor turrets up, you shouldn't be pushing your farm out to the river. You're just asking for death. Wards shouldn't be a crutch you use for bad in-game decisions. They should be used more strategically.

And all this crying about the ward rubble is a bit disappointing. When I see that there are 3 ward rubble in the tri-brush on the top side, I see that as a sign that I need to be careful what kind of pathing I use to gank top. Obviously, that opponent is very serious about his warding and wants to keep himself safe. It's a good, useful tool to tell what kind of good decisions you can make based off of how your opponent is playing. Plus, when I get my sweeper rolling, I know the danger spots to where I should be sweeping to make sure I can make an effective play. Predictable opponents can be complacent opponents and make for some easy plays if you let the situations (and the clues) reveal themselves.

S H A Y C 0Dec 23, 20151 votes

Why bring them back...its not like anybody is going to ward anyway...[zombie-nunu-bummed]

Singing LarkDec 23, 20151 votes

I hate how as the jungler, if I don't take green smite, I have to rely on my team to ward properly with the already underwhelming yellow trinket if I want a sweeper. And if I don't get a sweeper, I still have to rely on the crappy yellow trinket for vision. So many times I go and shop and feel really helpless from my absolute lack of control over vision because I decided to take blue/red smite on Shyv.

I'm almost tempted to build a sightstone just so I can have better vision control, but 800 gold is a pretty big investment in terms of delaying items for a jungler.

LoL Ergo UrgotDec 23, 20151 votes

These new ward changes hurt the immobile champs who don't have reliable ways to escape ganks (ergo dependent on wards) while champs with escapes don't have to worry as much. All I play are immobile champions and lanning is a lot more stressful.

Shroom JunkieDec 23, 20151 votes

Wards were stupid in the first place. Even pros have said they're one of the most OP things in the game. Why even have the fog? I get a few here and there but come on, when the entire map is warded why even have a fog? Its basically for those little places like unwarded bushes so people can abuse it and cancel an AA or a dodge a Kalista AA.

ShaddaiJan 3, 20161 votes

So, it would seem a lot of silver players responded in favor of no wards, while gold/plat and higher responded against it. Interesting how that worked out.