Big changes to wards in League of Legends Season 4

With the League of Legends Season 3 now done and dusted, it's time to look forward to the next season, where as usual, Riot is planning big changes to vast swathes of the game in order to improve balance, competitiveness and up the ante on potential strategies. It's going to be discussing each of these big changes in depth over the next month or so and the first one to be addressed is wards.

Perhaps the most minor change, is that sight wards (the green ones) are now set to be called stealth wards. For the most part they stay the same as they were before, but it's their relationship with the much more useful vision wards, that make things interesting. Those pink wards are now permanently placed and have five hit points instead of three. This might sound a bit overpowered, but consider the fact that they are no longer invisible. That means placement will have to be much more clever in order to use them to their full potential and they'll need defending too. You can't just put them down and forget they exist.

Due to wards and the denying of map vision becoming an increasingly important part of the game too, Riot is looking to reduce the support functions of individual champions and make map control more of a team effort. That's why one of the first changes will be to limit everyone's stealth ward placements to three. On top of that, those now-visible vision wards will be limited to one per champion. That means for massive map coverage, you'll need a concerted team effort of ward placement.

No more superwarding for you Teemo. Source PCGamer

However, to prevent this from effecting end-game champion power drains by forcing them to carry around vision items, Riot is introducing a new item slot for a new item type, known as “trinkets.” These trinkets have varied functions, but all are related to vision and they can be purchased and swapped out freely during a game. They also upgrade for reduced cooldowns or increased power once you hit level 10.

The three trinket types are as follows:

• Sweeper: This reveals and disables nearby wards – though not enemy champions – for a short time. It's essentially a temporary Oracle's Elixer.
• Totem: working like a Wriggle's Lantern, it lets you drop a single stealth ward for one or two minutes depending on what level you are.
• Lens: working like a mini-Clairvoyance, Lens reveals a small area of the fog of war anywhere on the map, including brushes.

These changes are all designed to make vision a team aim, not just one for support. This, combined with new items for gold creation and utility augmentation, should also make the support class more interesting to play and create new play styles for the whole team.

For more information, check the rundown on the official forums.

KitGuru Says: As someone who switches between jungle and support when I play, I'm all for these changes. It'll be nice to know that map vision is not just your responsibility if you end up as support.

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