Riot employees Xelnath and Xypherous reached out to the Reddit community to explain how the new ward system is going to work in Season 4.
The overarching goal is that Riot wants to spice up how vision will work in the future through more gameplay options. In the current META, the support starts/buys minimal items to spend the majority of gold gained on wards. Riot wants to change wards from a primarily support purchase to a team wide endeavor. The fact that pink wards will no longer be invisiable blows my mind.
These are three ways that Riot plans on adding more team wide ward play:
- Ward functionality has been changed. Vision wards (pink wards) are no longer invisible. This makes their placement and protection more strategic in game
- Each player has a personal ward limit. If you place more wards on the map than allowed by this limit, your older wards will be removed (like the current Sightstone mechanics)
- All players gain trinkets. These are new items that do one of three things on an appropriate cooldown: place a ward for free, detect existing wards, or scan a distant point
- Wards will be changing in this way:
- Sight Wards (green wards) have been tentatively renamed to ‘Stealth Wards'
- Vision Wards (pink wards) are now permanent unless destroyed, visible to the enemy team and have 5 hit points
- Vision Wards now cost less gold
- Each player can now only place up to three Stealth Wards on the map. Placing extra Stealth Wards removes the oldest Stealth Ward. This includes wards from sources such as Sightstone, Wriggle's Lantern and trinkets
- Each players can now only place one Vision Ward (pink) on the map at a time
On top of all this, all players will receive a trinket slot. This trinket slot can be filled with one of three different types of trinkets – each doing something different. This trinket can be swapped out for the other trinkets when you’re on the pedestal. Once you’re level 10, the trinkets upgrade into better versions.
The three trinkets are as follows:
Sweeper: Reveals and disables nearby invisible units (including Wards) for a short time
- The Sweeper Trinket is useful for denying enemy vision by revealing their nearby wards
Totem: Places a Stealth Ward that lasts for 1 or 2 minutes depending on level
- The Totem Trinket acts like the current Wriggle's Lantern active. Stealth Wards grant full vision of a location for a brief time
Lens: Reveals a nearby area of the map for a brief time
- The Lens Trinket operates like a mini Clairvoyance, revealing areas in the fog of war so teams can scout brush and other areas of the map from a position of relative safety
The vision war will soon be fought on a completely different front. Through the new ward system and trinkets, different players will have different ways to apply themselves to the good fight. No longer will the support be the primary ward dealer; it is truly a team wide struggle now. At first look, I have to say I like that and the new direction this take matches. I’m always for more team play aspects and this is certainly one of them.
Sure, all of this will be tested and subject to change, but as of now this is how vision in League of Legends is looking to shape up.
[reddit]
