So towards Season 4, Riot is making changes especially to these things:
  • Visual Upgrades
  • Baron changes
  • Melee ADC vs Ranged ADC
  • Support & Jungle gold income
  • Stomped champions back to live
  • Balancing

I don't care to read much about things that don't matter my role, because I will know them later on when Riot makes the changes and starts confirming / explaining the reasonings more.

I am however very interested to see how the support changes are going along. I've done some researches and collected red posts and this is what I've come up with (a little sneak peek for S4 support changes)


Support gold income, Warding and role



This is the current situation and issue;
  • Supports are expected to not last hit, thus gaining no income
  • Supports are expected to shoulder most of the gold burden for purchasing wards
  • Supports are expected to roam the map and ward
  • Supports are expected to buy expensive activated items
  • Supports are expected to be effective without gold revenue
  • Supports are often tied to the Marksman carry
  • Supports never get to achieve an endgame fantasy

Vision plays big role and keeping it up often falls on the shoulders of a support. The burden is slightly reduced towards higher tiers and divisions, but then again vision comes more important, so we're not getting anywhere.


What is meant to be done ?

So the main problem is that warding hurts other roles itemization and takes up inventory slot. There are some plans to gain vision and wards without hurting the item builds too much. Supports are tried to make into more offensive and "useful". So the warding system is getting some kind of changes that benefits supports and creates more variables to it, so the "Vision wars" would get removed.

Here are few ideas that are suggested/planned changes;

- First of all; Calirvoyance might be removed and some other summoner spell changes made


- "Ward Cloaking" - Makes Normal wards invisible to oracles, but visible to pink wards.
> "Greater Ward Cloaking" - Makes Pinkies invisibile to oracles, but still visible to other pink wards


- Item: Shroud of Truesight
Acitve Aura: Once activated the item effectively consumes the elixir and grants vision of even cloaked wards. The aura lasts for two minutes, and to re obtain it you have to top it up with an elixir by buying at the fountain for full price.


-Add a unique slot that can only contain special vision items. In this slot, you can buy:

A) A re-usable ward (1 hp, 90 sec cd) [Upgrades into dropping real wards]
B) An item that is basically a mini CV (90 sec cd) [Upgrades into longer range/radius]
C) A scanner that lets you reveal hidden wards (90 sec cd) [Upgrades into shorter cooldown/limited oracles effect]

However, you can only have one of those items.


Also champions are getting some changes;

- Taric is meant to be made more vialable and fit in the teamcomps
- Soraka has the same story, but Riot is afraid to do any changes, because it changes the whole concept of her as a healer.


I'd like to see Taric making comeback. I think he is ok atm, but could be more vialable indeed. Gets poked around a bit too much. Yeah, overall quite interesting changes. I'm waiting to see what they come up with the warding issue especially. I'll be updating this as more comes out ><>