Ending the sightstone tax for supports

SolidariGee··3 votes·817 views

I think one of the biggest reasons support is so underplayed is because of what I call "the delay of agency".

Because supports have slower gold generation and have to sink 800g for a sightstone as early as possible, they lack the ability to get power spikes at the right times.

Now, as a support main I am not a fan of the idea of giving supports the same amount of gold as other roles and giving sightstones for free as I've seen suggested elsewhere.

Rather, I want to propose a more elegant solution that won't result in Rengar support dominating the meta.

I think that masteries could be a solution for the sightstone tax and create meaningful and interesting choices for supports without changing how vision works too drastically.

My suggesting is that in each mastery tree there should be a keystone mastery for supports that gives supports access to special trinkets and also a (slightly weaker) bonus related to damage, utility or defense (depending on the tree). I think this tree-specific bonus should be weaker to disincentivize other roles from taking this tree.

For example, in the cunning tree, the 'support' keystone mastery might be something like (obviously play testing would be needed):

Windcaller's blessing - whenever you target an ally with a shield or a heal or apply hard CC to an enemy you restore [level adjusted value] health and mana. In addition, you gain access to support trinkets.

Example 'support' trinkets could be (obviously play testing would be needed):

Eye of the oracle - starts as the yellow trinket, but can be upgraded into an "oracle's sightstone" at level 3. When you use the upgraded form, it activates a sweeping lens effect where you place the ward, allowing for counter warding. The upgraded form otherwise functions as a sightstone.

Eye of the farseer - starts as a yellow trinket, but can be upgraded into a "farseer's sightstone" at level 3. When you use the upgraded form, it is like a blue trinket, except it stores 3 charges like a sightstone, allowing for safer, but less reliable, warding.

Eye of the augur - starts as a yellow trinket, but can be upgraded into an "augur's eye" at level 3. When you use the upgraded form, it is a sightstone with a maximum of two charges, but the charges refresh on a cooldown AND when you 'back', allowing for more consistent warding without having to worry about backing as often. However, it does not give the advantages of sweeping or the safety of long distant wards.

Thoughts? I think this would be a decent way to allow supports to not be delayed in their builds without breaking the game in terms of vision. The payoff would be a slightly weaker capstone.

16 Comments

love god4 votes

Sorry to be blunt, but it would be terrible to enforce that certain roles take certain masteries.

SolidariGee

Not constructive. Explain why. They'd have a pick of three masteries (one in each tree) for this benefit. At the moment there are only three capstone masteries that are ever chosen for supports in competitive play anyway - so that wouldn't change.

love god1 votes

{quoted}

Not constructive. Explain why. They'd have a pick of three masteries (one in each tree) for this benefit. At the moment there are only three capstone masteries that are ever chosen for supports in competitive play anyway - so that wouldn't change.

One large problem with this is the fact that it would go against one of Riot's biggest things to avoid; enforcing the meta. They have tried hard in the past to not do so, and I can only imagine the community outrage at the fact that supports are being forced to take certain Keystones. ~~Also, if you are going to talk about masteries, use the right vocab. It is a keystone, not a capstone. ~~

In addition to this, it would severely limit new players who aren't even high enough level to unlock keystones. Imagine this: You are playing draft/blind normals and for whatever reason your support is level 17. Your team no longer has access to the items necessary for a team to do well because they can't take the designated masteries, despite it being essential to a role.

Finally, making supports take certain keystones would limit the diversity of the support playstyle, and other roles that might want to use those keystones. For example: Courage of the Colossus is a great pick on any tanky or CC oriented support champion. It also is a very good choice for toplane/jungle champions who can utilize this mastery greatly. (See Kled Chogath Darius Malphite Maokai Nautilus Pantheon Poppy Riven Volibear Zac Sion Shyvana Shen Sejuani RekSai Rammus Hecarim Gragas etc.) What happens is this; CotC becomes a 'support' keystone, thus making it balanced around supports. This will ultimately skew the power of CotC on other champs either in a negative or positive way, making it either obsolete for anyone but support characters, or just insanely broken with tons of QQ posts calling for it to be gutted. Overall, making designated support masteries is unhealthy game design that would be impossible to balance and would limit diversity.

Is that constructive, or do you need more?

SolidariGee1 votes

This is good. Perhaps we can just make it so that in draft the support role automatically gets access to these advanced trinkets, keeping in mind Riot had said they're thinking about getting rid of blind pick.

Or actually, just let supports upgrade the trinket (earlier) to a sightstone and at level 9 (normal upgrade time), let them upgrade to ruby sightstone (but no health buff in either case, just more ward charges).

DrugsForRobots2 votes

Here's the problem I see with this:

It doesn't actually address the problems of vision, which are many, as the vision situation in League is a mess currently. You say yourself that you don't want to change the vision system too drastically, but that's exactly what League needs. The entire game is suffering because Riot can't get vision right.

The current vision system is one defined by hard counters with gameplay focused exclusively around the interaction between a couple of items, rather than between wards and players, to quote another observer.

Invisible wards themselves are very low interaction and have next to no innate counterplay. The only counterplay those wards have is being briefly visible before they turn invisible. Things like old Vision Ward, the Control Ward, and the Farsight Ward have slightly more or equivalent counterplay, since they're visible and destructible, but you can't really outplay these objects because almost always they'll have seen you first.

And that's part of the problem. Stealth is a huge part of the game, but the vision system we have in place doesn't truly allow for stealth gameplay.

(When I'm talking about stealth and invisibility in Leauge, I mean stealth as covert, careful action and movement, and invisibility as not being seen. Riot has confused themselves and their players when they say 'stealth' when what they really mean is invisibility, and this confusion has led to the neglect of this core piece of their game.)

In order for a game to truly be considered a stealth game, players need to have information on what moves to make, so as to take the careful, covert action necessary to avoid detection. Currently, there is no way to be stealthy because you have next to no way of knowing where the enemy has vision (unless they're foolish enough to let you seem them warding, or you pass over one of the rare visible wards in the game.)

Every stealth game worth its salt communicates to the player how visible they are, whether or not they've been discovered or detected, which way the guard will move. Wards don't do this. Hell, half of the 'stealth' champions don't do this either. Rengar is the only champion to have an audio cue, detection radius, and icon indicating that he's near. Wards don't do those kinds of things.

We wouldn't need to have Red Trinket if all Wards had some sort of innate clue or tell-tale sign that gave them away. Riot even could've pushed the 'camouflage' (which is really invisibility based on proximity) onto the Wards themselves. What would we need SS for if wards were available for free, because they were no guarantee of preventing ganks - because they could (they demand) that the opponent outplay them.

Wards that offer unique instances and ways of getting sight, ways that had their own rules that smart capable players would exploit to create an opening in the enemy vision setup are what League really needs. Wards that act as insurance and are cheap because they're no guarantee of safety rather than a 800 gold tax (taxes being mandatory.)

TL;DR:

Make Wards and Trinkets free, but do unique different things that enemies can avoid / outplay. Unique instances of sight, vision, detection, etc. (Not every wards needs to grant sight in a circular AoE...)

Dark Nephthys1 votes

OR we could just give sightstone some gold over time (Assuming it's possible for it to have it and not count as a "Gold income" item)

SolidariGee1 votes

That still results in a delay of power and power spikes are important in the early game (I suspect this is why people don't like playing supports even when there are mage-support options like Zyra and Annie). Riot recently said they wanted to address the lack of support players, so I figure this might be a good solution.

Gravy Traín1 votes

But you completely missed the problem. Most people aren't thinking something as long and thought out as, "Oh I dislike playing support because my power spike is slightly delayed by buying wards so I do not level or get items as quickly." They usually are not wanting to play supports because they think, "I don't want to sit there and rely on my teammates to do work for me." Sightstone is NOT the problem, it never really was. The problem is supports feel like they don't impact the game too often, causing boredom. This is why Riot is trying to make supports more impactful(which can lead to bad things because then people start building full damage on supports and outdamaging ACTUAL MAGES).

Gravy Traín1 votes

I think that your mastery part was a good idea, but I disagree with the new ward idea. Like you were saying you were scared would happen, the new ward you named is just a superior ward to the other wards, so ALL roles would take it, not just supports.

SolidariGee1 votes

They would have to give up a superior capstone mastery, but I guess that isn't that much of a trade off? Then again, is it so bad that other roles would take up more warding? Wasn't that the intention behind making the 3 wards/character limit? I recall Riot saying they wanted warding to be a team responsibility.

Gravy Traín1 votes

The whole point of this post was for SUPPORTS, and now you are just recommending that we combine the two current kinds of wards so that the current wards become obsolete and might as well be removed, which has nothing to do with supports.

SolidariGee1 votes

What? The current wards aren't obsolete, supports just have better ones. They are still limited in how many they can place (three wards, even better wards, can't replace warding being a team effort.

Also, I brought up other roles because you brought them up and I needed to rebutt your contention. That is, I brought up other roles to explain why other roles would not take the support mastery - and even if they did, it wouldn't be that bad.

Gravy Traín2 votes

I'm not saying current sightstone, I'm saying YOUR wards would make the current wards obsolete, where everyone would just take them. I also said I liked your keystone thing, I'm pointing out that you added these new wards to your post that are ridiculously better than any current wards and made them SEPERATE from the rest of the idea. You need to combine the 2 pieces together so that it isn't just everyone gets 1 ward type and the original lenses and stealth wards go obsolete.

SolidariGee1 votes

I mean, I'd be ok with people fighting over having better wards and making people recognize that vision is an important thing in the game. Maybe we can just make wards better all around and make it not a support specific role.

VeterenMantis1 votes

have you stopped and considered maybe, just maybe supports are not intended to be combatants?

SolidariGee1 votes

Yes? But Riot has stated they want to make it possible (although different) and my proposal also allows supports to follow non-combatant build paths as well. I think, though, the reason they want this to be the case is because not enough people are playing support, but that's just speculation. I suspect if more people were playing supports that lacked "agency" (I think I'm stealing this from a Riot post, but can't remember, so I'll use quotes just in case), they wouldn't feel a need to make supports more effective in fights.

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