@Riot, Ruby Sightstone needing an upgrade?

VioShine·May 27, 2014·3 votes·509 views

After watching quite a bit of LCS and playing tons of support games, I have noticed that the additional 1 ward and 250 health on the Ruby Sightstone just isn't enticing enough to warrant a purchase for the additional 800 gold.

Granted, based on the base components compared to benefits:

Ruby Sightstone cost, minus Sightstone: 800
1 Ward: ~100 (one has to account for the fact that you could possibly get more than a single usage out of it).
250 Health: at 2.67 gold per health (based on ruby crystal), this is around 667.5.

Granted the difference is only 32 gold or so, but that extra ward, given the new limitation of 3 green and 1 pink per player, has there been any discussion in house (or maybe this will spurn an out of house discussion) about possibly upgrading Ruby Sightstone?

9 Comments

WolfeurMay 28, 20142 votes

I agree, I never take ruby until I got all my stuff. Ruby is only efficient with Braum, whose Q scale on health and because Braum is a full tank. Maybe Ruby could increase your ward limit by one. You could place 4 wards simultaneously.

VioShineMay 28, 20141 votes

An extra green ward placement would definitely make the item worth it, and keeps it in a territory as a rush item, but that idea would go against what Riot sought to change with the 3 green and 1 pink rule change at the beginning of S4. That's no knock against it though! I would definitely seek to upgrade to Ruby Sightstone in the mid game rather than never in this case.

Since it's just a brainstorm, what if the 5 stacks were merely a "power" indicator? So the regular Sightstone can place 4 green wards total, with each ward placement costing 1 "energy" from the sightstone.

However, the Ruby Sightstone can place up to greens AND pinks, with a pink ward placement costing 3 or 4 "energy". This allows the support to be the most flexible with their warding and allows them to still be the vision king on the map. Most of all, this idea still falls into the current strategy of support typically going oracle lens once they get their Sightstone.

Thoughts?

PolaritieMay 28, 20142 votes

Would require new tech on items to select cast mode.

The easiest option is probably to make it more expensive and add stats.

Alternatively, have it recharge a stack every minute or so.

VioShineMay 29, 20141 votes

That's a great idea also. I always hated backing just to get the stacks back.

Another suggestion: It ONLY places pinks as long as you have 3 green wards placed. Encourages you to keep your wards up.

WolfeurMay 29, 20142 votes

I thought of that but actually it wouldn't be a good idea. If you want to place a pink, and suddently one of your green wards disappears, you would place a green instead of a pink. And in the case that you want to place a pink where you are and a green on the other side, would you like to go, place your green and then go back to place your pink, considering no other green has been destroyed.

But what would be really nice is to offer other upgrade of the sightstone: sapphire sightstone, which gives mana (or mana regen), mercury sightstone with tenacity, and the ruby gives 10% CDR besides the health. That kind of things...

VioShineMay 30, 20141 votes

So the emphasis would be on utility rather than giving aggression oriented stats? So it would be:

Ruby SS - 10% CDR, +400 Health
Sapphire SS - mana, mana regen, 10-20% CDR?
Mercury SS - Tenacity, Health regen perhaps?

Something like that?

WolfeurMay 31, 20141 votes

Yes, there are many possibilities. I think the real reason no one buy ruby is that they absolutely don't care about the health (and let's not fool ourselves, the extra ward is almost never used). If we had other sightstones, more suitable for the champion we use, this would be far more interesting. A mercury SS when you play against morgana or leona and you still want to buy mobility shoes, sapphire SS when you play Blitzcrank or a spamming support (Sona, Lulu,...) This is a great opportunity to offer a better itemization to supports, because only support (and some junglers) buy a sightstone.