Leading the Blind: Playing with Vision Changes in 5.23

Every offseason there are a few changes that can be counted on. You can expect to see Masteries overhauled, an attempt to retool or fix Ohmwrecker, and changes to the way we play the vision game. This preseason is no exception with a number of major changes happening: the removal of Stealth Wards, addition of Rift Herald, and the introduction of new Sightstone upgrades should lead to a much more interesting vision game for Supports and teams.

The Death of the Stealth Ward

One of the largest changes was the removal of cheap, safe vision by removing Stealth Wards from the shop. Now all Stealth Wards are only given by items with the Warding passive or by Trinkets. This is going to have an effect on players that immediately sold their Totem out of the laning phase for a Lens, as they're not going to have access to a invisible source of vision anymore. In PBE play, I often saw solo laners retaining their Totems throughout the game, while the Support and Jungler, who can use their Sightstones or Tracker's Knife for vision, picked up Lenses. 

The removal of Stealth Wards also means that you need to be a lot more careful when it comes to placing down your vision in lane - losing a Trinket ward after the enemy places a Vision Ward in the river can be crippling, as you don't have a way to replace it until you regain the advantage in lane. This means placing your ward in "safe" spots, which are out of the true sight of the common and safe Vision Ward locations.

Examples of "safe" Stealth Ward locations in the bottom lane.

It becomes a real balance between efficiency and safety. Placing wards in these "safe" locations means that you're often not getting the range of vision you would with a normal ward placement but you're also not risking going completely blind in lane. These locations have the added benefit of not commonly being searched by Sweeping Lens, though this of course will change over time as players adapt to safer ward strategies. 

The loss of the Stealth Ward is also encourages play that abuses the fog of war and brush outside of the bottom lane. With a shift to Trinket based vision, it's really expensive to ward the top lane brush and over every wall in the middle lane. This should play to the advantage of poke champions and all-in assassins who will gain from the loss of reaction time. Jayce, Nidalee, and Lux will be able to make some interesting plays in the middle lane that will be reminiscent of Season 3. Likewise, this will hurt Heimerdinger and Yorick, who rely on wards in brush to stop their minions from losing aggro on targets that flee into them.

The Rise of the Vision Ward

The Vision Ward should end up replacing the Stealth Ward in a number of situations. With the reduction of the gold cost from 150 to 75, it should encourage you to engage in more aggressive plays with Vision Wards. Using them as a cheap Sweeping Lens replacement and then placing another Vision Ward where you want permanent true sight is a perfectly viable strategy that costs just as much as an old Vision Ward would.

Aggressive Vision Ward play should extend to lane, as losing a Vision Ward in tri-brush is a lot less crippling after the cost reduction. The purpose of Vision Wards changes in a post Stealth Ward environment to being a source of cheap, temporary vision. While you're still limited to the 1 Vision Ward, I'd be surprised if we didn't see Vision Wards being placed in areas that were once considered too costly.

The Rift Herald, Jungler Vision, and You

Good Stealth Ward placement will allow you to keep an eye on the Herald with a single ward while dodging common clearing tactics.

The addition of the Rift Herald as an additional objective in the early game will stretch your team's already burdened vision. In general, early game vision is focused around three goals: warding lanes for safety, warding deep for information, and warding objectives. The Herald means that if you are going to ward deep for information, you're going to need to be proactive about controlling the Scuttle Crabs so that you have vision on the whole river.

For Junglers, the addition of the Tracker's Knife means that Junglers that would normally not buy Sightstone have access to an additional source of vision. Note that Sightstone and Tracker's share a unique passive (Warding) meaning that you cannot have both. This means that characters that generally went with the Sightstone will still normally go sightstone, but heavy invading Junglers will have the ability to place wards deep despite Stealth Wards being removed.

A More (Slot) Efficient Sightstone

Finally, the thing that everyone had been waiting for occurred! Sightstone found itself three new upgrade paths. It offers Supports a slot efficient means of putting combat stats on their Sightstones. Junglers too can benefit from the slot efficiency, especially now that Machete is not considered a gold item, so they can build into the Eyestone upgrade for combat stats.

 

The "Eyestones" replace the active of the third tier of support item if you choose to build it. This isn't so bad with Face of the Mountain (especially with its change removing the damage and 1% heal) and Frost Queen's Claim (which inherited the Spooky Ghosts active from Twin Wraiths), but Talisman users will probably be less enthused to give up the Shurelyia's active that is so powerful.

Supports will remain the kings of vision on their team with the more slot efficient Sightstone, but with the reduction in wards granted by both levels of Sightstone encourage more thoughtful placement of wards. This is especially true if your team is behind and you're doing a Baron/Dragon Dance late, as you can ill afford getting all four of your wards being killed off by the enemy's Lenses or cheap Vision Wards. 

The new Season always brings out new ways to play the vision game and this Preseason is no exception. It will be interesting to see how teams, both in solo queue and at the professional level, adapt to this more reserved style of warding that doesn't allow 15 Stealth Wards on the map at a time.