Season 3: Sightstone

Very few items are going to make it through the Season 3 revamp unscathed, and plenty of new choices will present themselves to players of all roles and skill levels. A number of these altered or alien items are worthy of exclusive examination. From now until Season 3 begins, and possibly even after, I'll be reviewing one of these items every day.

Today's item is the brand new Sightstone.

Sightstone: (700g)
100 Health
Passive: UNIQUE - Ward Refresh: Starts with 4 charges and refill each time you return to the shop.
Active: UNIQUE - Ghost Ward: Consumes a charge to place a Sight Ward. You may have a maximum of 2 wards from this item at once.


The strength of this item should be readily apparent to any support player. For 700g you immediately gain 300g in wards and ~250g in Health. Assuming you place these wards continually, it's effectively an 8gp10 item. With its current sell value of 490g it is actually cheaper to buy this item, place two sets of wards, and sell it than to simply buy and place four wards. Even if they nerf the sell value to 50%, a standard for gp10s, it will still be a mere six minutes before enough wards have been placed for the item to break even in value.

Sightstone's ridiculous cost efficiency is going to have interesting ramifications for more than just support players. At higher rankings it's expected that junglers and mid players will also ward in order to track the enemy jungler and warn of impending ganks or roaming opponents. With two access points by mid, warding can be very costly. Yet, with Sightstone the entire burden can be easily shouldered by one of the two players. Even top can make use of this item, as it's not uncommon for enemy junglers to sneak through the fog of war into the lane brush. Unless you have no intention to ward at all Sightstone is going to be an important item for almost every player on the map.

This incredible utility is likely to get the item nerfed. While dropping 700g at once for a Sightstone can be a little difficult for a support, it will be trivial for anyone else. The theoretical power discrepancy between a champion with Sightstone and one with stronger items of similar cost is limited by the lack of vision forgoing wards provides. Unless one's jungler or mid is inept (which, to be fair, is a common condition in lower rankings) the champion who doesn't purchase Sightstone is the one with a disadvantage.

On top of that, Sightstone actually has an upgrade. For an additional 600g (475g for a Ruby Crystal and 125g for the combine cost) you can acquire a Ruby Sightstone, which increases the Health bonus to 300, charges to 5, and number of simultaneous wards to 3. Supports are likely to be the only ones particularly interested in this upgrade, as only they can afford to be so slot-inefficient.

Sightstone doesn't represent the death of wards entirely. You'll still need to pick up wards at the beginning (unless you think you can hold out for a minute or two with no items whatsoever) at the very least. Pink wards will take on a particular significance given the ability of opponents to ward and reward important locations. Late in the game three wards won't be nearly enough to control the map. Still, the amount of gold spent on wards is likely to decrease drastically thanks to this item.

I'm fairly certain that Riot doesn't want the map lit up like a Christmas Tree, and with the nerf to Oracle's there won't be much preventing such a situation. It takes no special foresight to see that Sightstone will be treasured not only by supports, but by laners sick of roaming mids and jungle ganks. Sightstone will be the equivalent to a fast expansion in StarCraft, only without any significant all-in cheeses that might punish the play.

I fully expect that Riot will be forced to impose some limit on the number of Sightstones in the game. Until then, abuse it all you can when Season 3 begins.