If you are the Support, Greater Stealth Totem is STILL not a replacement for a Sightstone

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Just played a game where we had no vision practically anywhere. I asked our Soraka if she could build

It is not a support's job to ward. A support is not obligated to build a sightstone

While it is "good" for a support to buy a sightstone they are not required. There are 4 more members on your team that should have been warding, including YOU.

The new Greater Stealth Totem gives you 1 ward per minute, up to a maximum of 2 wards at a time. While this is convenient and will probably see a good deal of exposure, if you are the support, it is NOT as good as 3 wards every time you recall, allowing you to make your trinket Oracle's Lens or Greater Vision Trinket.

A greater stealth totem is not a replacement for the wards that you and the other four members of your team should have also been buying. It is an entire's team job to provide vision, not the support.

And before you say "Im an adc, I need to save my gold so I can afford to build damage" allow me to retort with "I'm a support, I don't have a lot of gold and right now in this lane I need more mana, armor, mr, so that I can actually be able to support YOU, so I will use this trinket and this green ward to give vision and in return you are going to buy a green ward or two and help with this vision problem too"

I can think of plenty of times as a support when I would not buy a sightstone because at the moment my lane needs me to have mana so I can keep healing or maybe I need more armor so I can tank that vayne who is poking our asses down, and then ask my jungler why he didnt drop one of those wards on our river bush (he should have bought) after that gank he gave us a minute ago.

See where I'm going with all this?

Let me pull from my experience as both support and jungler...

Of all my games, I rarely if ever see people upgrade their green trinket. That's 250 gold. Yet they want the one person on the entire team without a good amount of gold income to spend 800 gold on 150 health and 3 wards every recall. Yes, it's nice, and theoretically a support can recall multiple times to light up the minimap like the Space Needle on New Year's Eve. But here's some math:

Nobody buys a ward or upgrades their trinket + support buys sightstone = approximately 8 wards max from a single recall

or

Everybody upgrades their trinket + support doesn't buy sightstone = 10 wards max, plus support is more durable (seriously, let them buy a chalice or something. 150 health is what, one spell and/or autoattack mid-game?)

Now, you're complaining about supports not buying sightstone, so I'm allowed to complain about teammates not upgrading their trinket. But let's consider other possibilities.

Everybody upgrades their trinket + support gets sightstone + support switches to sweeper lens = 11 wards before recall + minor vision denial

But let's get a little deeper, shall we?

Everybody upgrades their trinket + support gets sightstone + jungler gets sightstone = 16 wards max, or less (12-14) if support/jungler gets sweeper lens for moderate vision denial

Everybody upgrades their trinket + support gets sightstone + everybody (except support) buys at least one ward per recall (seriously, it's like three minions. One fourth of a longsword will not lead to #LCSBIGPLAYS) = 17 wards, or 20 if the jungler also get a sightstone

I don't know if you're getting my point yet, but the sightstone should not be mandatory, but an optional possible strategy for the entire team when it comes to vision. There's many ways to go about vision and vision denial, but you should NOT be harping on the support if the entire team's vision is suffering. If the people who actually get to farm and cs can't spend 250 gold to have viable vision plus the occasional ward/pink, then you should be able to see why I consider it a bit audacious to ask the 0 cs support to spend 800 gold when he/she can be buying some defenses/mana so they don't get blown up.

For example, let's look at bot lane. A support typically rushes sightstone and switches to sweeper lens, while the adc almost never upgrades that trinket. That's four wards and one vision denial. Taking that into account, where do you ward in bot lane? Tribush, river, maybe the two bushes (or save two wards when the first two run out). That's FOUR PLACES TO WARD, which is covered by sightstone + adc trinket. But you know what? If both laners upgrade their trinket, that's FOUR WARDS and 500 team gold spent, AND the support can grab a little defense with the profit. You sacrifice a bit of vision denial with that strategy, but sometimes the team needs to sacrifice something for the support rather than take without giving.

My word isn't law, nor should it be taken too seriously, but it's just a little food for thought. People thrust the warding role onto the support, when it can easily be equally shared between the entire team. And no, I don't buy that it's the support's job (as in, part of the role alongside the team's warding), I find it to be an excuse for people to hoard gold. Yes, I've played adc/top/mid before and I've almost always had a little pocket money enough to buy a ward or even upgrade my trinket, so don't even try. Yes, there are exceptions and you can't always buy a ward, but it's always good. A ward is ALWAYS good.

And of course, you get junglers like me who hit tab, see who didn't upgrade their trinket or buy a ward, and then proceed to camp that lane.

Don't tell me how to live my life.

When I play support I place a minimum of 30 wards throughout the entirety of a game. I've played hundreds of ranked and normals combined as support and very rarely see the other team's support not purchase a sightstone. That being said, I used to rush SS but now to due to slower jungle ramp up I usually don't buy SS until 2nd or 3rd back and instead will buy items that will greater benefit my lane early on (along with a few greens).

Also, I read Deustheproducer's first two sentences and came to the conclusion he's a moron or a troll. Probably the former, however.

No offense but this just sounds like bronze to me

Support is supposed to be the primary player warding. Definition of support is to help the other players do their jobs more effectively. Getting a sightstone, allows you to free up the trinket space for an oracle lens, especially if the other team is playing with summoners that can lay invisible traps and wards.

Usually by mid-game and I don't see our team w/ a sightstone - I pick one up regardless of my position.

Figures both people I saw in this thread saying Sightstone isn't worth it are silver.

In a more constructive fashion. If you are a Support, yes, buy a Sightstone, unless you're like, a kill lane who has been snowballing out of control and is getting their team a crazy amount of kills.

Vision is vastly undervalued. While a Sighstone doesn't provide the best stats for fighting, that isn't what it's for, at all. It provides vision control, a full charged sighstone's wards value is 350G PER back, I alone put 3 wards in different spots in the lane as soon as I get it.

The trinket upgrade isn't available until lvl 9, at which point you will have either been ganked to hell because you lacked vision control, or have spent gold for 4-5 wards while you waited for the trinket upgrade to become available.

Also, getting the trinket denies you getting the red one, which puts you in disadvantage.

In short, the trinket is great for almost all the roles, but there's a reason why Supports have that stone handy, and being fair, if you can only get it until lvl 9, you're doing something wrong.