This is an honest question. I feel less and less obligated to buy a sightstone when I play AP supports like Vel'koz, Annie, or Brand. A sweeping trinket is sufficient as long as other members of your team are utilizing their free wards for 250g.
redniwediS5 votesSightstone still puts more wards on the field than the trinket, and it allows you to take a ward removal trinket at the same time.
InSingedWeTrust1 votesSightstone still puts more wards on the field than the trinket, and it allows you to take a ward removal trinket at the same time.
As long as you have at least 2 sweepers and 2-3 warding trinkets I really don't see the point of a sightstone anymore. Even the scrying orb puts down a free 60s ward now.
redniwediS3 votes2-3 warding trinkets are fine, but when the enemy is also removing your wards you occasionally need a high amount of vision in a particular area (setting up for dragon or baron). This either requires everyone to use their trinkets (which requires them to all be off cooldown), someone to save inventory space for actual wards, or have a sightstone ready.
If your team is good about using their trinkets, and the enemy is bad at clearing wards you don't really need a sightstone, but this will hardly be the norm in solo queue.
xLegendary Troll1 votesFree ward jumps whenever.
Linna Excel1 votesTrinkets were meant for non-supports where supports can go pink. Supports (and junglers maybe) still need to get a sightstone, I hate to admit. At least get one by the time mid-game starts when you need to see movement.
Sire Hippington1 votesA sightstone still brings grate benefit, not only does it allow to place more wards than the trinket does with alot more freedome(after placeing your two drinkedwards, you need quite some time till they get ready again, sightstone got more charges and fully refills ever back), it also allows you to get other trinkets. You could go for a pink trinked, so you don't have to keep inventary free for pinkwards, you could get a advantage in vision wars vy getting a oraclelense, or you can get free vision for emergency cases with a blue trinked, all beeing extremly valuable compared to the cost of a sightstone
bloodwhitewolf1 voteswrote a lot... so i am going to head each paragraph with a summery also big thing here, if you are high gold, and above and do not partake in tournaments that arrange you based on rank, and mainly solo que go read something else this doesn't apply to you, well most of it anyways. because there is an elo gap where sight stone losses games and this goes into little detail on that and explains when sight stone becomes useful (mid to high gold+)
it also gives reasoning why in lower elo's ss is useless based of your team or enemy teams lack of warding
i started with a little math rant
i must say, climbing through the ranks, the enemy team generally sucks at cleaning wards and both teams suck at upgrading trinket in silver, but in bronze it's blasphemy to not upgrade your trinket to yellow or sight stone and red... that being said bronze normally has a problem with placing said wards where low silver has a problem spending 250g and high silver has a problem with letting sight advantage matter... i mean people will place wards but then will tunnel vision, as for low gold most of the time they only ever use there sweepers on drag and baron, in high silver low gold they seem to be smart enough to use the sweeper to counter invisibles and stuff but they normally still have a bad time sweeping, and the reason why silver gets discouraged is because 90 % of bushes swept are ward-less. also as for supports i totally agree on not buying a hp item that is over expensive in order to get a few wards which u can buy by itself and upgrade later, an no the reason isn't just it takes up a slot or it wastes early game gold... yes that's all part of it but.... it's simply not a good buy... 150 hp... that's all a sight stone gets you... so fuck all of you that say oh buy it for the sustain... i can get that much sustain from 400 gold and the ruby... 400 hp congratz something beat by a giants belt and a ruby crystal..... that being said u have 200 gold remaining and your already 130 hp more and have enough for more items like a health pendant or some wards while u wait for level 9....
now that simple math is shown time for a little more math and a point of slight frustration if u want just read the first sentence.... and the last no matter how well known that fact is people just can't grasp what that means for a support
now at what times do u need to put more then 2 wards out at a time before a min goes by (which if your support pager allows it's really only 48 seconds a recharge). sticking with your team you'll notice when they don't ward (even if they have yellow trinkets themselves) they always jump on the support to do so, if i have sight stone... i can never have gold when i go back i'm like hey guys were in enemy jungle i need to go replace the wards in my sight stone because i'm the only one warding wait for me to get back to engage just poke, but when i have trinket. i just stay and ward to my heart's content and if they complain i'm like "i have 3-4 wards on the map i'm sorry the game doesn't allow me to have more", "you left to go off and didn't place a ward along the way so u got caught", "no one else was even with you, you can not blame me for that" normally two of those responses apply and is enough for the team because, they know i'm giving them as much sight as possible and they know them getting caught is there own fault so they can no longer blame me for there incompetence, with a sight stone however it's not even 2 sets of wards before i have to back... besides the points in the game where i'm constantly placing 4th wards because our team is always on the move sight stone just isn't equipped to handle such use...
personally plus opinion then a fact that's controversial and ends with a fact that we can all agree on
that being said, i almost never buy a sight stone in solo queue, when i'm with the right friends however it's a good buy if only for the ability to use sweeper, and even then i've shown the math behind it all and most of my friends even in higher elo will admit that so long as my wards are good enough to see where enemies place there's and if the enemy support isn't running sweeper then it is perfectly fine to not get a sight stone because when you do against a team that doesn't, they have the lane advantage. now wither you agree with me or not on that fact math doesn't lie... so lets do the math... part of it was explained above where basically your paying double it's usefulness for the ability to place less wards then you need per back. because i completely disagree with people that say sight stone gives u enough wards before you have to back.... that's never true in my case not even when i'm with the group of friends that ward and not even in the lcs, proof of that is they make there junglers get the item as well, why? because that way the support isn't the only one warding... now this being stated having 2 sight stones in 1 game that's 2 people wasting 400 gold early game, mid to late game the waste of gold wouldn't matter but early game every stat counts... 150 hp for 800 gold just doesn't cut it, avoiding combat until u get better items because you have sight to do so..... dumb play style, but i can tell you right now that if you engage with that sight stone your starting off that engage with a disadvantage because you either don't have enough ap or tank-ability to actually survive it in a mirror lane... that being said and proven in all situations via lol calculator, your building of sight stone means your confident enough that your lane has an advantage over your opponents or your not going to fight them because u just set yourself further behind in hope of future profits (in short it's a lot of pro players problem with tear of the goddess over chalice) yes tear gives u late game but the early game is sacrificed unless u have some sort of use for mana (blitz or ryze or kass or singed etc)
support for sight stone.............
now though most of what i say bashes sight stone.... i'm not against the item... it has it's situations.... but that's just it... it's situation not the only option....
1 tanky support over ap, despite there being better items to buy, i can see the point of having the hp item's usefulness make the item more valuable because u have the armor and magic resist from you runes i mean there are some rune pages that have 0 armor and mr... then there are my tank ones that have 22-38 armor and mr (half flat half scaling) that completely allows my build to be a bunch of hp and have that hp be useful over having base armor and mr but this goes into play style and crafting which is all viable in picking builds, and is my biggest reason why sight stone has it's use, and why sight stone is definitely not the only option
2 and this is a big one, invisibles like vayne and akali on the enemy team, in this case having ss so u can either get a pink from trinket against akali or a upgraded red against vayne.... you can't beat the advantage that gets you so yes sight stone is a good counter buy so u can have the oracles
3 when your winning lane, best way is too keep enemy sight off the lane. but you have to be winning first for this to be viable trust me counter picked enemy still leaves room for outplay, you must have started winning this lane to feel it's usefulness in lower elo (however late game you might want to ell sight stone and upgrade your yellow trinket for a 6th item or even to finish a core item that is shy 3-500 or so gold and i won't stress this enough, low gold and below is around the elo i'm talking about)
4 high elo play where you are going to play passive in lane and clear there vision so ganks become possible (trusting your jungler a lot here not just to gank but to also have a red trinket)
5 when you simply trust your team enough... there's a huge difference between solo que and team que i don't care if it's ranked or norms... we all know communication can easily cut back on the number of wards needed in a game, "junglers top? i'll wait a 30 after he leaves to place the ward just keep an eye on mid" so many times like that saves wards from being basically useless
one thing that i forgot to say.... if your above level 9 i don't care what role you are it's 250 gold to have game changing items.... you can afford 250 (only exceptions are finishing an item with just enough or getting bf or needlessly) but when that happens you SHOULD back and grab one asap (before level 11) half the map's bushes can be covered with i 14 wards...
and for those high elo scoffing at me, i just want to point out, all I've said is counter play... every last word aside from dealing with teammates that complain at the support but what i'm saying is you make a smurf and u go into bronze, the reason u call it hell is because your unwillingness to work with the team your given not there unwillingness to get better at the game