The new monsters (Brambleback and the Blue Sentinel) don't have the old buff indicators around them (the blue and red rings) so it doesn't make much sense to keep the old ones. In the new VU their "life force" seems to be the blue and red orbs inside each monster and maybe this could somehow be used to show when a player has a buff.
I actually like this change. Making the visual on the monster different from the visual on the champion is a step towards clarity...um, mostly because when I was new I thought the Lizard Elder did true damage because it had the red circle under it.
We'll be creating new ones later in the process :)
I agree, I was thinking the same exact thing. I would think it would be pretty cool if it was like an orb that circled them or you had a sort of tint to your champ. If I may elaborate more on the orbs, what if they were the orbs of that color and there were four of them and to give a more mystically enchanting way, you could have the orbs go in a random pattern around your champ as if they were trapped in that area. When the buff wears off, what if they went in a sort of spiral up and dissipated or when they transfer to another champ, they sort of rush and spiral towards that target. Just some thoughts. Feel free to elaborate more or make your own sort of way that the champ communicates with buffs with a more artistic view.
I would really like to see a buff transfer animation too something like a colored version of the one used by monster health packs(I guess I can call it that). So you can tell who just got a buff kill and maybe even the transfer from player to player.
I posted the same thing on pbe community, it just makes sense to update the buff rings.
would 
q buff icon be changed?
