Feedback on 3.14 patch: Sightstones, Trinkets, Evelynn, Support Items, Spell Vamp, and SoGK
Feedback for Riot regarding the 3.14 Patch:
As an avid jungler and supporter, I'm of course loving a lot of the gold income changes in the 3.14 patch. However, I think there are some issues that you might need to think about:
1..Why would one bother to upgrade one's sightstone to a ruby sightstone, when a regular sightstone is able to drop off 3 wards now? I suggest changing it so that a regular sightstone only comes out of the shop with 2 charges. Then a ruby sightstone can change to having the current 5 charges.
2..I'm not seeing the purpose of the oracle's trinket after level 9. Why bother using that to destroy wards and mushrooms when you can plop down a trinket vision ward instead that persists and accomplishes basically the same thing?
3..Evelynn is pretty overpowered right now. Previously, there had always been the "Evelynn tax" in the extra gold you have to spend on vision wards. Now, the situation is much more difficult, because those vision wards are so easily and cheaply destroyed. Either Evelynn needs to be reworked so that her invisibility becomes a short range stealth active (like Twitch) -- defensible by placing regular wards farther out to see her before she stealths and closes in -- or the wards will need to be tweaked somehow to allow people to counter Evelynn in the early game.
4..Regarding the new support items, the Talisman af Ascension and Face of the Mountain are terrific. However, I'm disappointed by the Frost Queen's Claim. I tried it several times on a Zyra support who I was building up for damage and I found that it just didn't do anything particularly well. I found that using the item designed for more passive supports, the Talisman of Ascension, was actually better. Yes, it doesn't have AP, but it's 20% CDR, better mana regen, and more consistent gold generation was actually better on my damage mage. In effect, I used it like a poor man's Athene's Unholy Grail -- until I finished my build and sold it for an actual Athene's Unholy Grail.
5..Can you put the Spirit of the Golem King back to 500 health? For a "tank" item, it had already seemed like it had so little health with no armor or magic resistance. I understand if that means that it has to cost another 200 gold or something.
6..Can you take a look at spell vamp items? Now that the Will of the Ancients has dropped to 50 AP and no longer provides the spell vamp aura, it seems so wimpy. Meanwhile the Hextech Gunblade isn't great for pure mages. It would be nice to have some quality spell vamp items that mages can choose from.
7..The new system is great for generating gold for supports, and I have had a great time building a full damage Zyra from the support position. Kudos on that mission accomplished. However, I think all of the new emphasis on ability power for "pure supports" has dimished the idea of the pure support. What if someone wants to play a character who focuses on strong heals and crowd control and doesn't want to worry about damage at all? I think you need to look at items like Zeke's Herald and Locket of the Iron Solari where someone can be playing an individulaly weak character who in a team can become very powerful. I suggest introducing more items with crowd control or counters to crowd control on them. Now that supports can earn a lot more gold, make the items have better basic stats. For example, I have always wanted to build the Ohmwrecker for its unique active, but its basic stats were always so weak, I could never justify building it.