League of Legends Designer Shares Details on Removing Sightstone

With the Sighstone item being removed from League of Legends, Riot Games addressed several players' concerns about item effects and other questions.

It was announced a few days ago that the Sightstone item would be removed from the store, but players will still be able to use its warding power. The active effect is being moved to the fully-upgraded versions of the support items, but that does mean that those items will lose their current effects.

However, the active effect of Face of the Mountain will not be coming back as a new item, at least not the in the way that it exists now. Riot Meddler addressed that point in others in a recent Gameplay Thoughts post where the designer listed several important Sightstone-related points to take note of.

• Overall power level of supports after this change isn't intended to change. If this ends up being a noticeable buff or nerf to the position as a whole we'll adjust things.
• Goal is that Sightstones should still become available around the same time in lane. Amount of gold needed to complete the quest has been reduced as a result to keep that timing.
• We'll be moving the Frost Queen's and Talisman actives onto new items, with a goal of finding costs and build paths so that they're accessible to both supports and non supports.
• We'll be considering something like Face of the Mountain's active for a new item, though aren't as certain about that one. Certainly possible there's a need for a single target (ish) protective item like that that Knight's Vow, Mikael's, Locket don't meet. Purchase rate of FotM has also historically been quite low (versus Eye of Targon), and use of the active lower again. We're less sure that it makes sense to port the active over just like Frost Queen's/Talisman as a result.
• Active item CDR on an item might come back at some point. It's a decent concept for an item certainly, in terms of what sort of play it enables and the item choices it creates. Would almost certainly need to be paired with a cap on active item CDR though. The lack of an active item CDR cap's an oversight, given until 7.22 there weren't any other sources, and it's leading to issues balancing items.
• The support items won't give the Sightstone active on Twisted Treeline. For now at least they'll continue to have their old rewards on TT instead.

The absence of the support item will first be seen on the PBE before the changes go live, so check it out there to see what you think about it being removed from League.