Patoy talks about Season 4 vision changes

With Season 4 approaching, we are all aware that changes to our beloved Summoner's Rift are inevitable. This was confirmed today when Riot announced details regarding the vision changes for the upcoming season. We decided to sit down with Team Dignitas Support player Jordan 'Patoy' Blackburn to talk about these changes as they have a very big impact on the Support role.

The first change is that of ward functionality. From now on, sight wards (green) will be the only invisible wards, as vision wards (pink) are now always visible and require active protection in order to keep them alive. In return, the vision wards are now less expensive and, unless destroyed, do not run out.

"I heavily dislike this change, as pink ward's usefulness was already increasing due to mid lane and junglers buying them a lot more as we see in the European and Korean metas", Patoy said. He continues, "Pink wards being permanent, but not being stealthed, is, in my opinion, a pointless change that will not accomplish anything other than funny pink ward battles that wont reward anything."

 

The second change comes from ward limits, as all players can now only put three stealth wards (read: sight/green wards) and one vision ward on the map at the same time. This limits warding being controlled by just one player in the team and forces all teammates to contribute to vision.

Unlike with the ward functionality change, Patoy was positive about this update: "I am in favor of this, changing regular green wards to function like sightstone wards is a good idea, just as long as the gold value for killing a ward remains similar. Having a cap on wards would put more thought into ward placement for when objectives come up. Often times you would see roughly fifteen wards all around the same area for baron, which is nice for the team with that vision, but I dislike most things that don't require much thought and spamming one million wards is one of them."

 

The last change introduces Trinkets, a new item type that each player on a team has. We have trinkets to reveal nearby invisible enemy units, Trinkets that can be used to place wards and a third type that can reveal an area of the map for a short time (which we strongly feel should be called 'mini Clairvoyance').

"Players gaining a trinket and can choose to use it either as a area-of-effect ward reveal, an extra ward similar to Wriggle's, and a Clairvoyance, is the best thing ever." Patoy said straight away.

"This is something I am in favor of as it will add a new depth of play in season 4. The ward sweeping trinket is a nice ability and could be a huge threat in real games, as long as Oracle's Elixir is nerfed. The totem trinket for an extra ward is self explanatory and could catch people off guard with an extra unexpected ward." He then continued pointing out how the mini clairvoyance Trinket puts the summoner skill back onto the map, a welcome change for Patoy: "Clairvoyance, the thought of the summoner spell is a great concept, but nobody ever took it because they would lose lane easily, adding this summoner spell to this new trinket slot is a great idea and much like with the rest of the changes, will change the way the game is playing and I love the idea of it."

 

So there you have it, some big changes which will have both good and bad impacts on the game according to Team Dignitas player Patoy. Only time will tell how these changes will work out, but it sure is looking interesting.