A Solution to Sightstone Variants, lack of Summoner Spells, and improved Support Itemization

This thread comes to you in five parts (tl;dr at bottom):

1. Background
2. The Idea (broadly)
3. Considerations
4. Concrete Suggestions (will edit in yours)
5. tl;dr

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#Background

So there's been a lot of talk lately about increasing options for Sightstone; personally I think there's a larger egg to crack in terms of how players interact with vision as a whole. One common thread I see in these threads (heh, unintentional I swear) is general frustration with the lack of slot-efficiency in SS. There have been suggestions for moving SS to the trinket slot, or creating an entirely new slot for SS/wards, or incorporating SS into support itemization. I think one option that hasn't been explored as much, and is sort of a two-birds-one-stone situation, is creating more useful opportunities for items to interact with summoner spells, specifically for vision.

Riot has been clearing up some summoner spells lately (rip revive. oh the irony), and CV remains one that is hardly ever taken. It is my understanding that Riot intentionally keeps it underpowered because having strong access to vision in the early game is pretty powerful. On the other hand, I think it's existence is a sign that Riot isn't averse to having vision and summoner spells interact. Furthermore, I think Riot is looking to increase options in terms of summoner spells outside of the select few that are taken nearly every game.

Switching gears, though the smite changes and itemization have done some good things, and some things that still have room to develop (cough poachers cough), but overall I think it opens some really interesting doors to how itemization and summoner spells can interact. Having more powerful versions of Smite tied to itemization allows the spell to become more powerful as the game progresses (and not just in a per-lvl-scaling sort of way a lot of summoners have). Theoretically, it's okay for Chilling Smite to deal damage to champions and slow because the jungler doesn't have access to that during lvl 1 cheese invades and such.

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#The Idea

By now you probably can tell where I'm going with this (perhaps you already knew from the title). Basically I think there's potential for a vision-related summoner spell to be tied to itemization (most likely support itemization) in order to allow the spell to become more powerful (and customizable) as the game progresses.

In my mind this is a change directed at supports, since:

1. They're generally a major factor in vision control of the game
2. They have a class of items directed specifically at them, similar to junglers
3. They have a bit more freedom in their summoner spell choice (Junglers need smite, Top/Mid/ADC generally want a spell that offers some other combat effectiveness or non-vision utility, be it TP, Ignite, Heal, Barrier, Ghost, etc.)
4. This could reduce a support’s reliance on SS, where the role is already starved on gold, allowing the support to buy additional utility for their team.

So I'll pretty much be talking about this in terms of supports, though it could be interesting (if non-abusive) to see this taken in other roles (I imagine, though, if it's tied to support itemization, itemization itself would need to change a bit or the spell would be really powerful in order to justify both the gold cost of items and the loss of a summoner spell). In terms of how it interacts with support itemization, there is conveniently already a three-tier system in support itemization, much like the system for jungler itemization, so there could be various flavors of enchantments at the tiers of support items to customize the way their summoner spell functions, and I think there is CLG levels of potential to develop this into something really cool (dreaming big here, it could be a focus of a preseason change, like this season’s jungle)

This change is two fold (obviously); the summoner spell and the various enchantments, so I am framing the following sections with this in mind

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#Considerations

Summoner Spell:

• The summoner spell needs to have some lvl 1 effectiveness, since supports are giving up (typically) Exhaust or Ignite for this (Exhaust being a very important spell for a team, especially if no other role is taking it).
• I think there is a legitimate question as to whether the spell should be forced on support players, though; Junglers basically had no choice in taking smite, and the changes were a buff to that, where Supports have more flexibility they would be giving up. An option is to make a designated “Support Ignite” or “Support Exhaust”, but I think you also have to sacrifice the targeted reliability of these summoner spells if this is also meant to provide some vision utility.
• Speaking of targeted reliability, summoner spells are meant to be reliable, which is an important consideration in designing a spell
• I also feel like it’s pretty uninteresting to have the spell as a glorified ward-dropper, so I think it’s important that the spell serves some other function as well, or handles vision in an interesting way. I think there’s also potential to add interesting utility to wards, though

Enchantments

• Since the change to the summoner spell is built into existing itemization, and the change could reduce a support’s reliance on SS, so the support effectively gains 800g that they no longer need to spend on SS, depending on how the summoner spell functions and if it can effectively serve as a replacement for SS.

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#Concrete Suggestions

There are three four basic flavors of summoner spells I can think of (or two three with a variation on one), I will list ideas for their respective enchantments beneath them.

#1. Glorified Ward Dropper: Basically a rechargeable ward, maybe holds charges as well; pretty uninteresting, but the enchantments could be cool. This also probably has the most potential as a SS replacement. I’m not quite sure how to make the base summoner spell more interesting/useful, but some of the suggestions for enchantments could work their way back into the base spell:

• Enchantments:
• CC/Debuff wards: wards have an AoE effect that can CC/debuff nearby targets, most likely slows or something soft. This gives some combat effectiveness to the summoner spell
• Damage wards: similar to above, have some AoE damage effect, like sunfire burn or explosion upon destruction (or some other method of triggering, maybe the support clicking on the ward).
• Increase maximum ward count/ward duration/charge count/drop range/vision range/health on wards/cooldown reduction on the spell: these could be tier 2 enchantments, since they’re pretty basic. Nothing more to say, really
• From Bharhash: Pinging when spotting an enemy, increases on passive gold based on active wards and/or placement of wards (deep wards are worth more)
• Wards give true sight for a few seconds, allowing them to function as a sweeper

#2, Pets! I think this is the more interesting idea, and could satisfy a few lingering desires among the community/Riot. I have two versions of this idea; one which probably better serves as a SS replacement, and the other (I will list it as #3 just for clarity) I think is just cooler. The first idea is to have a pet that you send out to a target area, like Poro toss or Elise’s Volatile Spiderling or Maokai’s sapling toss, to provide vision, basically functioning like a ward. Basically this is bridging the gap between the ward dropper and the next idea

• Enchantments:
• Probably the same enchantments for the ward dropper apply to this, though because the spell isn’t just a ward drop, there could be some single-target interactions, as far as CC/debuff/damage, like Poro toss had in the Poro King gamemode.

#3 Pets pt 2: This is by far my favorite idea; to have a permanent pet (similar to Tibbers, but, you know, permanent) you can control using the summoner spell key. Of course there would be a range limit (“leash”) and the pet would return to you if you leave that range (don’t abandon your pet). Enchantments could be “Tricks” that your pet learns. Perhaps most importantly, this opens up the opportunity to buy skins/chromas for your pet (Rito. Money. Take. Plz). Pets/skins could be things like Poros, Scuttlecrab, Saplings, Spiderlings, Voidlings, things native to the respective regions of the support items (ie. Poros for Frost Queen) or common pets like dogs/cats/birds, etc. I think the pets should be untargetable, for the reliability of it being a summoner spell, or if the pet takes enough damage, it returns to the owner for a cooldown.

• Enchantments:
• Of course, some of the aforementioned enchantments can apply
• In order to make this more of a SS replacement, the spell could store charges of wards and the pet can drop them when a charge is available. You would control the pet normally when you don’t have a ward charge, but when you have one, the pet will also place a ward at target location. This is probably a Tier 2 enchantment
• I think it’s easier to add CC/damage effects to this iteration, since the pet can target specific champions. The pet could have a basic attack to give it lvl 1 effectiveness.
• If the pet is targetable, you can also increase their health/stats through enchantments
• The pet could offer aura buffs/debuffs to your team/enemy

#4 Vision denial: I think this is something that isn't explored as often, but can be very interesting in terms of gameplay. I'm not just talking about a sweeper either; this could include effects like Grave's smokescreen or Nocturne's Paranoia. Obviously this would have a long cooldown, but it could fill a similar role to other summoner spells in that it gives you an edge in a fight. Additionally, having a vision denial spell could fill the role of a sweeper, which allows a support to get yellow trinket as a replacement for sightstone. As far as a concrete iteration, have a spell that functions like the first half of Nocturne's Paranoia and deny's the enemy team's vision for a few seconds; this spell would also give the support oracle's in the duration, so they can use it similar to a sweeper.

• Enchantments
• One possible Enchantment I think would be interesting is to give other methods of sweeping wards, like being able to deal more damage to wards or even just auto-break them when you're in a given radius of them during the spell's active (this might be OP).
• One difficulty in this is that you don't get upgraded yellow trinket until lvl 9; a solution is to have an enchantment circumvent this requirement, so that when you get your T2 support item, you have access to upgraded yellow trinket (or perhaps an improved version, with an extra charge, for example)

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#tl;dr

Create a new summoner spell (targeted at supports) that interacts with support itemization (like smite interacts with jungler itemization) that focuses on vision, reducing a support’s reliance on sightstone/sweeper (and granting access to upgraded trinkets earlier to bridge the gap) while also increasing the ways a support can support their team.

Tune into the “Concrete Suggestions” section for, well, concrete suggestions on how this could be implemented: #1 for the more practical/bland, #3 for the more interesting one imo (Pets!), #2 for something in between the other two (unintentional I swear), #4 for a suggestion for vision denial, which takes the place of sweeper instead and gives supports access to upgraded yellow trinkets.

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Let me know what you think, comment with other suggestions as well, and thanks for reading!