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Oct 24, 2013

Season 4 Ward Changes in Preseason, Pink Wards Nerfed!

15 comments

As every season comes with radical new changes, Season 4 will be no different, and the first of the changes to hit the scene is going to involve the way wards work, and will start in the preseason. Check out the full scoop by Xelnath below!

TLDR; Pink wards are getting nerfed, new "trinkets" will be available that affect sight and map control

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Hey all,
Xelnath here, stepping in for Xypherous. Let's talk about our approach to vision in preseason. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get right into it:
In terms of our overarching goal: we want to add more gameplay with vision and how vision control works for everyone in this new season. We think the best way to do that is by diversifying responsibility. Looking at Season 3, standard competitive support play involved buying minimal items in order to spend the majority of a player's income on wards and vision control. More gold = more wards. If a team's support was unable to fulfill that role, or fell behind their opponent, the entire team suffered.
With a new season comes a new approach to vision: vision will be a team focus rather than an individual one. Here we're introducing a number of changes to wards and the vision system that give all members of a team the responsibility and opportunity to participate:
  • 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
Let's get down to some specifics:

Ward Functionality Changes

  • 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
In the current live environment, pink wards are clearly better than green wards in every respect other than cost. This frequently leads to games in which the only end-game approach to warding was spamming as many Vision Wards as a player could afford – in turn forcing opponents to pick up pink wards to counter enemy pinks. What should be an interesting strategic decision became a flat arms race.
With the new setup, the choices become more nuanced: Vision Wards still detect and reveal enemy wards, but, because they're always visible, must now be actively defended. Vision Wards will no longer both deny and grant vision unless your team has control of that area.

Player Ward Limits

  • 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
We've decided to introduce ward limits as a way to cap the maximum amount of individual team member can contribute to the overall vision game. We're going to watch this one closely as limiting the number of wards per player can have dramatic consequences on overall map vision, especially during the end-game. Three and one felt like the right numbers, but we're open to feedback.

Trinkets

Trinkets are a completely new item type coming for preseason. Here's how they work:
  • A new Trinket Slot has been added to your inventory
  • The Trinket Slot can only hold trinkets
  • Trinkets are free and can be swapped out at the shop at any time
  • Trinkets upgrade at Level 10, gaining either increased power or a lower cooldown
Trinkets are free and have their own dedicated slot, so all team members can contribute to vision control without sacrificing other areas of development.
The Three Trinkets
Sweeper: Reveals and disables nearby invisible units (including Wards) for a short time. Currently, this does not reveal invisible champions. Long cooldown and is pbae.
  • 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
We'd like to give players more unique options for interacting with vision. Each trinket replicates one of the essential basic vision mechanics and has an appropriate cooldown. We expect that teams will want a mix of vision options available to them in order to counter their opponents' potential vision choices.
We're excited about the trinket system because it allows us to introduce a new way for everyone to participate in the vision game in ways that still offer specialization and customization. We're launching with a set of three trinkets because we wanted the simplest and clearest system possible, but we're open to expanding the system beyond the original three if it seems worthwhile.

Summary

The short rundown is that one of our main goals for this season is to make vision both more dynamic and less taxing on single players. Our hope is that these options make participating in the vision system more strategically varied for entire teams.
-Xypherous & Xelnath


What do you think of the new system? Will it make some champions broken? Comment below!





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15 comments:

  1. wow stealth junglers are gonna be real happy, I guess the trinkets are there for balance, hope they do the job

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  2. sounds great, relieves the pressure on supports. no need to spend so much money on wards. I love it

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  3. I’love it!

    Though, the free clairvoyance seems weird. A lot of the progamers get decided by baron dance-offs, If to people on ur team have CV while the rest can still spam wards over a wall etc. Is that not too much vision over one specific targeted area?
    Anyway I believe riot wont overlook that and gonna make this system really fun to play.

    Btw.: FEEL THE WRATH OF OP JUNGLE EVE!!!!!!

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  4. Can the enemy see which trinket you are using?

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  5. Trinkets are a completely new item type coming for preseason. Here's how they work:

    A new Trinket Slot has been added to your inventory
    The Trinket Slot can only hold trinkets
    Trinkets are free and can be swapped out at the shop at any time
    Trinkets upgrade at Level 10, gaining either increased power or a lower cooldown
    I posted a similar concept around having a dedicated slot for wards on every player in which only wards may be placed in that slot with a max of 5 (to be tweaked) to be held and only one time. That way players would always have a slot in which they could utilize for vision purposes rather then running out of room for items or wards depending on the point of the game.


    That concept, I posted it to the offical forums.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm hesitant to this change. i feel like it's going to be a while after this new patch roles in before low to mid elo carries and the like will finally submit to actually buying wards. it's hard enough as a support to convince my team that I should be the sole person getting wards on my team. though I am excited about the trinkets and that Pink's are no longer going to be stealthed. should add some interesting gameplay

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  7. I'm hesitant to this change. i feel like it's going to be a while after
    this new patch rolls in before low to mid elo carries will
    finally submit to actually buying wards. it's hard enough as a support
    to convince my team that I shouldn't be the sole person getting wards on my
    team. though I am excited about the trinkets and that Pink's are no
    longer going to be stealthed. should add some interesting gameplay

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  8. Welp that's enough league for me for season 4 I'll see you guys when S5 hits.

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  9. its more of pink ward buff, think about it, no longer visible yes but permanent now, you can use them to setup some traps, for exemple like everyone goes in a bush and place a pink next to it to bait them to come destroy it and get trapped, also you can put the pink ward in a bush and it will still be invisible if you dont come in the bush etc.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Why Is it every-time, "omg there is change I'm scared!" And then when it actually happens it's not nearly a big deal as people make it out to be.

    ReplyDelete
  11. (strandedon)thewrongbeachOctober 26, 2013

    SO PERFECT!
    This will increase the commitment of players to ward around and not leave all the job to the support!!
    Personally I always ward for strategical porpuses not just to "help out". Wards are key point

    ReplyDelete
  12. disqus_81WCm7FZx3October 27, 2013

    Am I the only one that thinks that ashe should get a new skill since you can have her E with a trinket named lens?

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  13. Turquoise BlazeOctober 29, 2013

    Also think about lanes with teemo, twitch, kha'zix, wukong, shaco, and of course eve, no longer will pinks be able to spot them out as easily and they can now be destroyed more easily.

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  14. TBH everyone on the team should be pinking but the ADC

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  15. Now my favorite champ becomes even more powerful, Evelynn for the win!

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