Boards›Live Gameplay Balance

Riot, I know you mean well, but let's talk about wards

Gufumpsie·3/19/2014, 12:12:22 AM·4 votes·990 views

I have never made a discussion here before so please tell me if i have made a mistake in my placement of this thread.

I would like to talk about how I feel about the ward changes from season 4. I understand I am no the only one that exists on this earth and i will try not to make this purely a complaint but also a presentation of legitimate problems and possible solutions.

Wards are important for a person to successfully play a complete game of League of Legends. We all hopefully know that vision of baron is always vital along with dragon and wards for vision of movement from the enemy team. Supports used to be the bearer of the wards and I am not sure about other supports but i would always buy wards for my team and was fairly good at it. The changes brought from the Season 4 patch seamed like a good idea, supports need gold income to make up the lack of income from not being able to farm. You also made the game so all team members have to participate in the ward game, while it encourages team work it is, from my point of view, too optimistic. I play support for a large majority of my games and was always fine with wards, infinite wards for 1 person to buy is better than 3 wards or a sightstone for 1 person to buy. No one is going to buy wards. I have been playing through season 4 hoping someone would buy wards, but it is always myself the support. The support is still buying the wards only now there are only 3 wards available to the support. I realize that this is supposed to force people to buy wards for the lack of the support ward machine, but time and time again, game after game, I alone buy wards and the rest of the team relies on the warding totem alone. Granted the support did have less income and did have less items because of the high cost of the support items like Randuin's Omen. And supports are sometimes abused because they are not willing to charge into the enemy jungle just to ward. This is simply why support is a hard role (ha ha ha I know) it might seem ridiculous to some people but the ability to activate your items in unison with your abilities and teammates actions on top of risking your neck for members while still staying ahead in gold. If you try to make support easier it will simply make other lanes and positions harder. they now have to deal with something they normally wouldn't deal with, and their game-play is suffering because of it. The normally complete ward coverage disappears and pushing your lane or securing your buffs becomes a burden as you lose more buffs and are ganked more easily. The bruisers, mages, assassins, tanks, and marksmen already have a full plate of doing or taking enough damage to protect each other efficiently. No one buys sightstone because there are better items to get to help the team do what they do best, which is winning. supports support, they don't need to do damage because they support, help others to help themselves. A vital piece of the team has now faded and the team suffers. There is no longer a support but and AP monger who actually needs buffs or a troll assassin support because the new gold income keeps them up in items making actual support characters useless as a support. Now all you need is a stun or slow and bam, you have a new support character like support Yorick or support Kha'zix.

All in all I simply ask for some type of change in the amount of wards. I realize it is easier said than done and I appreciate the effort you guys go through to bring us quality entertainment. You have a full plate I am sure, I am just asking for you to consider this.

8 Comments

Shibiko3/19/2014, 5:41:24 AM2 votes

Why not tell you team to upgrade their free ward o it last as long as a sight ward. if they each have one ward like that, and you as the support have a sight stone plus your scanner, you team will have 7 wards, although its not a crazy amount, 7 wards. As a support, instead of raging out when people don't ward, tell them hey I need your free ward to go here. Focus on better ward placement rather than ward quantity. placing wards at key jungle entrances saves lives. Also do suggestions, hey Top laner, your doing great, i think if you got another ward and place at location X, you'll dominate your lane. Sounds pretty tempting to get a ward now right?

Read a book on how to influence people, and then apply it to the game. Watch as you get noticeably more wins. If you don't believe, try it, I dare you. Each game is based on how the team can collaborate together. Also, play to have fun, because if your not having fun, your missing the point of a game. We lock ourselves that we're suppose to win every game, and that's not how riot designed the game. If you always won a game, it wouldn't be challenging, so play to improve, play to have fun. If someone is spazing out, just chuckle inside and continue playing, its just a game.

Now this a random food for thought, you don't have to think on the lines im about to share. When I play a game and lose, the first person I blame is myself. What actions did I cause that lead my team to fail, what could I have done to help a lane win, did I properly build to face my opponents. By any chance, did something I say anger another player? Was I playing on crappy internet, did I ward? Then after I blame myself, I then blame myself again, because really, I am the only thing I can 100% control in game and I need to improve. This time when I blame myself I think, did I not motivate my team enough, did i not call out jungle buff timers, did I not gank enough, was I focusing the right people? After I finish blaming myself and making a list of where to improve, then call it a day. I don't believe there is nothing else to blame. Some one can feed 20 kills, what didn't I do efficiently to convince that player not to feed? If you hit a point, where you truly felt that you couldn't do any better, and you were hitting your marks, you still don't blame anyone else except yourself, bad time to queue.

I'm more into changing your mindset to a positive outlook. If your first looking to yourself for the reason why the game when bad, you then not playing the blame game, which, only leads to negative actions, and more Loses.

Note: If you see that auto lock jungle Soraka summoner 11 , you can only blame yourself for not queue dodging and saying yourself from wasting time. So if your in game, stay with that Soraka until you kill blue, or they tell you to gtfo from the blue. Watch that player in the jungle, and at a moments notice leave lane to save them when the invading Shaco sets traps for her. You make a difference in the game. It just depends on how bad you want the W, neglecting/raging at people doesn't create W.

Note: I'm not trying to flare at anyone, I just want to share knowledge.

Toasterfied3/19/2014, 12:42:58 AM1 votes

Just giving each character 3 wards to place as they please would solve all this. Maybe be able to buy wards that show invisible or show wards would be a nice extra though.

Tougou Mimori3/19/2014, 2:41:26 AM1 votes

It's worse when I have to buy Sightstone as the Marksman because my support's like "YO EVERYONE SHOULD WARD LOL I WANNA FINISH MY DAETHCAP" and doesn't buy a Sightstone after I repeatedly explain my reasoning. No one else wards and the support only buys one ward every 5 backs.

The solution is to make Sightstone a way better item. There's really no problem with non-supports buying it because no one wants to ward anyway and it deprives them of a slot for their oh-so-precious damage item, and as such, only people who really want to ward will get it.

Pyrrasu3/19/2014, 3:11:53 PM1 votes

It's not just about forcing supports to have more money, but also limiting the number of wards that can be on the map. With the removal of Oracles it's now harder to remove wards. If each person could place 5 wards instead of 3, the map would always be lit up.

I also find it frustrating to be the only one warding (especially if the support refuses to buy Sightstone) but increasing the ward limit would have serious effects on higher levels of play.

Gufumpsie3/19/2014, 11:01:22 PM1 votes

I see all what you are saying and i understand better based on your reasoning. It makes the game more challenging as i recall 1 game where i had an entire game lit up by my wards. I thank you for your responses and see that i will have to coordinate with my team better and avoid those Soraka junglers. I also talked to a few of my friends about it and 1 in particular who was in gold 1 last season said that people other than the support begin to ward in higher ranks. So I suppose it's a lower level thing or perhaps a blind que thing. Regardless I thank you guys for your time and input.

Hullabaloo9073/23/2014, 1:46:55 AM1 votes

I think there is a good possibility that you are just playing with bad supports. The warding changes were made both to make warding a more tactical decision and to reinforce the idea that everyone should participate in vision. In reality, it is harder for a support to ward now, because is season three i could just spam my sightstone every where. Now i have to consider the three places i most like vision.
As for other roles warding, that has always been important to them too. This just makes it easier for other roles to ward like they should have been all along. If your support doesnt buy a sightstone, they are not a support. It frustrates support mains more than anyone when someone takes the support role and doesnt play the support role.