A Solution to the Problem of Stealth Ganks

Eradrial··5 votes·1,071 views

EDIT - added a tl;dr. EDIT - I also linked to this on r/leagueoflegends, you can see the reddit discussion here. EDIT - Provided a comparison for the size of the area.

Everybody just loves dealing with stealth junglers, with the usual options tending to be "never push lane", "protect your pink", or "have a bad time". But sometimes such measures simply aren't feasible or acceptable. Whether it's that your lane matchup puts you at a distinct disadvantage when you can't push, that there are too many possible entrances demanding a pink ward (i.e. blue side bot lane and purple top lane), or that the current reality of your lane ensures that you cannot protect your pink ward, failure to adhere to the standard procedure tends to reward you with the sudden loss of your flash or your life.

So how do we ensure that there's a way to protect ourselves when the usual safeguards just won't cut it? Simple, we provide a way for perceptive players to catch wind of the fact that someone's skulking about in their area, and we do it by using our usual tool for preventing ganks.

What we do is implement a system that functions similar to the existing mechanic for detecting a nearby stealthed Rengar, but far more limited. We give stealth wards a small area around themselves (radius of maybe 350 units or so (the size of a Lux E) ) where a hidden champion will prompt an exclamation mark (and nothing more) to appear above the ward. No more Eve sitting undetected in that lane brush you can't possibly keep pinked, no more Twitch casually stealthing in without a care for any standard wards that might give him away, no more bullshit in cases where you simply don't have the privilege to detect your incoming demise.

But hey, doesn't this detract from the value of pink wards? Answer: Not really. Pink wards are still by far the most effective way of detecting and seeing stealthed champions (superior range, far easier to notice detected champions, exact knowledge of the stealthed champion's location, and vision of the stealthed champion on the minimap so that your mates can potentially warn you if you didn't happen to notice yourself). The new functionality of your trusty friend the stealth ward only gives you that heads up if you happen to notice the brief, easily overlooked warning it gives you, and can still be circumvented by any gankers preferred safety buddy, proper communication of ward locations. All this change does is provide a limited measure of safety to the perceptive few with no other choice.

So what are people's opinions of this addition? See any obvious flaws or unfair treatment of stealth champions now having a reason to consider intelligent gank vectors? Feel free to drop any tweaks or suggestions that come to mind, or to correct me on why the current stealth gank situation is actually in a healthy state.

TL;DR - Add a feature where stealthed champs walking close to enemy wards display an exclamation mark above it for the enemy team to see.

Cheers.

9 Comments

Jesus is Savior2 votes

Only if it appears above the stealthed champ too, so I know I'm spotted.

Otherwise what's the point of stealth? I may as well play a different champion.

DrugsForRobots1 votes

Can you confirm whether or not Evelynn has some sort of sound enemies can hear when she's near? Like, they can't hear her footfalls or 'night whispers' if she's near, right? (Rengar's ulti gives off a very distinct sound that his nearby prey can hear before they even see the ! icon, for example.)

SKT T1 Fukker1 votes

This can and most likely will seriously fuck up Teemo in lane. While many people will love that, I've been using him and other stealth champs to carry myself out of bronze. Pls no rito, I need to be silver again.

Eradrial2 votes

Teemo would be affected far less than you think. Players don't generally have excess wards during laning phase to toss out in search of Teemo, and any wards that they did use in this way are wards that aren't protecting them from jungler ganks. Addionally, the radius of detection would be small enough that you'd be fine as long as you payed attention to where your opponent was placing wards and chose positions less likely to be warded.

If the new ward functionality causes issues regardless of this, then an additional feature could be added where, after a certain amount of time sitting in position, you would receive a warning as well to indicate that you'd been detected by something. The delay would be something like 10-15 seconds, or however long it would take to make it inefficient for stealth champions to abuse it as a means of cheesing out general ward locations. Scratch this particular idea, the more I think of it the more problems I see.

NichtHurz1 votes

It would still heavily limit the outplay potential for any character with stealth in his kit. You not getting away while stealthed because a normal ward shows the direction you're going seems to be pretty unfair. Not that stealth is unproblematic as a mechanic, you could as well just delete all stealth champs if they're not given a chance to use their stealth properly because some random ward they run by signals you're escaping or engaging in a certain direction. Especially someone like Shaco would become unplayable with such change.

There need to be better options to deal with stealth in the lategame, when people become unable to purchase pinks and the only thing you have is that freaking oracle alteration.

Voidrey1 votes

so if stealthed champs get near enemy wards, their still invisible, but an exclamation mark appears above them, or an exclamation mark appears above the ward?

Eradrial1 votes

{quoted}

"... prompt an exclamation mark (and nothing more) to appear above the ward."

Voidrey1 votes

ok got it, I was reading the TL:DR

DrugsForRobots1 votes

Upvoted for talking about making stealth more fair.

You said:

We provide a way for perceptive players to catch wind of the fact that someone's skulking about in their area.

But your solution wasn't implementing some kind of audio / visual clues - tell-tale signs - for the stealthed champions while they're stealthed. Very disappointed. :(

Your idea works, but wouldn't it be much cooler / more fun to see the subtle tell-tale sign of a Twitch or Shaco sneaking up on you? Yeah, it'd be a lot of work giving each instance of stealth some unique tell-tale sign, but be honest, don't Shaco, Eve, Twitch, Teemo, and all the rest deserve some love by now?

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