There needs to be some sort of comeback mechanics pertaining to vision

darkdill·11/28/2018, 6:18:03 AM·14 votes·19,296 views

One thing that often isn't thought of is that when a team gets ahead, they don't just get more gold, experience, items, etc., but also get much more vision control. We've all had those games where the enemy team gets ahead, and suddenly your attempts to ward become suicidal because you'll frequently get ambushed. Every single brush becomes a potential deathtrap, and this leads to farming becoming dangerous, which further exacerbates issues. You could always go with the blue trinket, but that's not nearly as good as placing regular wards since you won't have vision on the targeted area for long.

Unfortunately, while Riot has been tuning comebacks in terms of gold and experience, they haven't done anything that might pertain to vision comebacks. Intel is arguably far more valuable than power, but those who are on the losing side tend to continue losing out in that regard. And before you say "comeback gold means more red wards", that's stunted by how you can't carry more than 2, and can't have more than one in play at a time.

Coming up with mechanics that allow for "comeback vision" is tricky, but one thing I can at least think of is the following:

When you die, your trinket's cooldown is reduced by a percentage. This percentage is much lower if you were on a killing streak, and higher if you weren't doing well.

While this might sound like a "feed more to get more vision" approach, remember that you'd still have that 3 ward limit, and that intentionally feeding the enemy just to get more wards is a surefire way to get you permabanned. The idea of the mechanic is for your trinket to cycle its cooldown faster if you're dying a lot. It's not a perfect system, but it'd be a starting point.

In any case, I'd really like for there to be comeback mechanics that pertain to vision control. It's really demoralizing when your enemy gets ahead, thoroughly wards your jungle, and then you can't even try to clear them out without being ganked.

30 Comments

RisenFromTheAsh11/30/2018, 6:06:02 AM14 votes

I think a good idea would be to spawn a vision plant at around 15 mins and every 5 mins right inbetween the tier two turrets, the base and the jungles. Just in front of the base gates, approximately. So two on each side, that way you can sweep your jungle at least a couple times late game without getting jumped.

FoamingStuff12/6/2018, 8:24:46 PM4 votes

I'd like to suggest a different approach, playing support for way too long, I've had some issues with the current vision system. I cannot speak for any elo higher than plat 1.

First off all, vision is available for the winning botlane faster than for the losing one (broadly speaking anyway). That means that if your mid or jungler is incapable to help or capitalize as efficiently as the enemy or that if your bot is losing, you not only lose control of those lanes, as an added bonus the enemy support will be able to light your jungle up like a christmas tree at sometimes less than minute 11 already, with very little chance for your team to counter the vision other than placing a lot of defensive pink wards (further reducing your ability to contest objectives or to contest for more aggressive vision control). Early sweepers can be nice, but without a "quest sightstone" in your team, it's not usually (though I understand it CAN be) a very good idea.

So what happens is that you snowball vision instantly from that point already. It's a lot easier to maintain vision control if you already have it before the enemy can even think about stopping it.

This creates additional pressure to your, likely already losing, lanes, and further helps snowball the game in a very one-sided direction.

Added to that, at least earlier last season, was the dominance of lethality builds and items, specifically Duskblade (that reveals wards and enables team to remove them) In the above scenario it is more than likely your lane(s) is (are) losing, with the enemy having Duskblade makes it even harder for the team who is behind to get meaningful vision control back. This usually results in the mentioned bush ambushes. For this reason I've always found Duskblade a very problematic item. While I have no issue with its idea (you can sneak up to people unnoticed, bypassing wards and hopefully kill them), I do not think that it should be needed for it to allow to remove wards completely.

So to break it down, my problems with vision are already a lot earlier than you guys are discussing.

  1. Sightstone mechanic creates early pressure for already winning teams.
  2. Duskblade, while now less prevalent than before, again creates more pressure for winning teams.

Reducing the amount of pink wards you can carry does not help the situation all that much, while I do appreciate the idea.

Onwards to my next point.

Sweeper.

Sweeper is simply too good. There, I said it. If your team is not completely unable to rightclick revealed wards, 1 sweeper can allow a full clear of the entire jungle you're currently in. Especially if your jungler (or someone else) also goes sweeper, there's literally no way a losing team can "counter-vision" in any way.

I'm not a game designer (for a good reason), so other than the obvious Nerf this and Fix that (remove the whole quest item thing for sightstone - the point was to allow "supports to compare to one another" or something like that..... it's missed its point completely, IMO + reduce sweeper duration so that two bushes AT MOST can be cleared), but these are definitely my two cents on what contributes to the problem. I'm not saying it's the SOURCE of all the perceived vision issues, but in my experience, they definitely contribute.

bobyboucher12/3/2018, 3:26:20 PM4 votes

Just a question.... how many team members swap to blue trinket in the situation that is being described? Ther is already a way to safely ward when you are behind and you know the enemy team might be around but how many people actually use it / swap to blue trinket in that situation? When you are behind it is becasue for one reason or the other the enemy team did something better than you, I don't believe they should be punished for that however the team that is behind shoudl need to take risks to farm or be more conservative and use the blue ward to scout out before going out to potentially dangerous territory.

Comebacks should be more about outplaying, taking advantage of an enemy overstay , or trying to drag the game out more than trying to take away the advantage the other team has from beating you earlier on. If you want to go out and ward but there is a potential that the enemy team is around either don't , go out in a group, or use the ranged blue ward first!

oortoomeebreesuu12/1/2018, 8:22:13 PM2 votes

The "Comeback" mechanic, IN THEORY, for vision, is that you have fewer places to worry about warding at all. For example, when your mid turret is taken first, you no longer have to "worry" about warding river. It's theirs now, and you aren't getting that back easily. Now, your biggest worry is warding your jungle entrances, and not too far at that. A control ward at red and wolf spots a lot, and is very risky for the enemy team to remove, and the reward for doing so is very low (that's quick and low risk for you to replace).

People often have this erroneous idea to "check" for things that they already know are true (Jungler might be camping my lane, let me go ward ri-of course he's right here). The more elite approach is to assume you are correct, and to wait for that information to change before implementing a new tactic. It's why pro players are so flexible at tracking enemy junglers. A ward on a raptor camp shows you when he is at raptor camp... and when he is NOT at raptor camp. Combined with a ward at Krug and one scuttle crab, you can safely say where the jungler is on almost the ENTIRE map - for the next SEVERAL minutes, since champions can only move so fast, and he has to be going to get his gold eventually.

Why I say that this is all "in theory" is because, in practice, this is nearly impossible for a solo queue team to accomplish. Previously, one person would go light up half the map for you with sightstone, for free, every two minutes. Now, you have to be actively fighting for your control wards, and if you are ever at a point where you can not do that, you are now LOSING, or depending on which champ got fed, have already lost. That's simply a product of the times, and some champion's kits being indomitable compared to their predecessors. Given no other context, I wholly agree with the removal of trackers and sighstone. But for the average players, they do not have enough coordination to prevent champions like Kayn, Graves or Lee from single handedly running the game if your jungler is not up to snuff (or auto filled omegalul)

ThrowsTheBird12/4/2018, 11:10:47 AM2 votes

If you make a "come-back mechanic" to combat every aspect of the enemy team having a lead then there won't be a point in gaining a lead.

Yes, a team that is winning has more control over the map and rightfully so. They focused objectives, took turrets (otherwise they wouldn't be in your jungle) so you have to play more careful and use blue trinkets AND COMMON SENSE to slowly make your way back into the game.

This game is already too casual: death timers are so short you can literally die and not lose a single farm, you get exp even when you are dead, catch up xp is morbidly overtuned, now the bounty system is showering gold on the team which is behind....just don't dumb down this game any more, it is overly casual as it is in my opinion.

Just look at the amount of shutdown gold....being just slightly ahead you are liable to give away 500-1000 gold....that's literally 2-3 kills to an opponent who did bad, but you get punished for doing good?

Gilgayu12/8/2018, 2:40:58 AM1 votes

Right now vision basically tells you how one sided the game is.

When you are really, really behind, you can't even have wards beyond river without risking your life to place it.

(It's kinda funny everytime LCS teams compete for vision in a bush and eventually a fight broke out, and both team gains like 200gold from just control wards...)

Edit : It would be cool if the winning team's ward's cd is longer (like how the new bounty works, you can have a bounty by just outfarming your opponent), this way the losing team can poll mega mind flanks and turn the game. I mean, isn't winning a losing game the beauty of League? This will also make games longer, since it allows teamfights to be more considered and impactful

nfzeta1/10/2019, 9:29:01 PM1 votes

I also think vision needs a comeback mechanic but here is my version.

Basically since an item like Poacher's Dirk existed that means the game can tell your jg apart from enemy jungle. In that case how about we let clearing wards in your jungle decrease the CD of your trinket. This is something akin to presence of mind with ults but for vision. This means if you have a sweepers it comes back quicker when clearing your own jungle and if you use pink wards to clear it could lower the CD of your blue or yellow trinket. This also means you still have to take the risk but the reward for said risk is higher.

One other similar option would be for spotted champions in your jg using wards can similarly reduce the CD of your trinkets.

Both of these options could also be time gated so that it wouldn't be abused in pro play early game, though I honestly wouldn't mind such early game tactics.

ModKnightsKemplar11/29/2018, 11:19:12 PM1 votes

Approved!

Pianoasis2/4/2019, 8:08:09 AM1 votes

I'm thinking like a long range vision denial trinket would be nice

HarbingerGrape11/30/2018, 3:09:36 AM1 votes

Give Blue trinket a time lock instead of a level lock and i think that will fix most problems with the vision issue or alternatively let champions with a finished quest support item and red trinket be able to but blue trinket procs for saver vision and give them a shorter CD like pots with timewarp tonic and only let them carry 2

Cdore11/30/2018, 4:21:50 AM1 votes

I propose either the return of clairvoyance, adding clairvoyance to the SpellBook list, or a rune that gives some kind of vision argumentation.

Unfortunately, I doubt Riot will listen to us. They have been nerfing vision for a reason. They don't like games being safe, as they like to call it. They want risk and games to be action packed for their esport scene.

Profirix11/30/2018, 8:36:32 PM1 votes

I will agree that vision is severely hampered for losing teams because of the increased risk of pushing out from base to ward, but not necessarily with your strategy for fixing vision. I would be ok with the losing team occasionally getting a free 'clairvoyance' to ping their jungle so they can avoid getting caught. It isn't enough for everyone to switch to farsight trinket because the cooldown is long and you need to be able to place sight wards and clear enemy vision.

xDogMeatx12/5/2018, 12:43:11 PM1 votes

Riot could do a vision comeback if a champ has a trinket vision emits a pulse and reveals for a few secs where they are at sonar styled radar. it doesnt show you who it exactly it is but you know where they are at. (you can only buy when below enemy team gold threshold)