League-of-legends – Sightstone or combined support item

league-of-legends

There are several Sightstone-type items in the game:

  • Sightstone (regular, no special properties)
  • Ruby Sightstone (Holds 1 extra charge, reduces active item cooldown by 20%)
  • Eye of the Equinox (Allows executing minions and sharing their gold value with nearest teammate)
  • Eye of the Oasis (Grants extra health regen + gold when nearby enemy minions die)
  • Eye of the Watchers (Grants extra gold when using attacks/spells on enemy champions)

In what situations is each of these items strong? In what scenarios should I avoid buying them?

Best Answer

It depends on what your full build will look like. Essentially Ruby Sightstone and the three Eyes are bad full items, they give you some HP plus the extra ward, but they aren't that good. That is valid for all three Eye items (Supp Items at the latest stage, combined with a sightstone).

They however provide something extremely useful, an item slot. Should you go for the Frost Queen's Claim, Talisman of Ascension or Face of the Mountain (The non-warding counterparts of the Eyes), you would get useful item actives, with the drawbackbeing that your Sightstone would take an extra spot (And in the end you could only upgrade it to Ruby Sightstone).

Essentially whether your go for Ruby Sightstone or an Eye item depends on whether or not you're going to use the actives of Frost Queen/Talisman/FoTM. If you are going to use them, you're unable to purchase the eyes. If you're not going to use them, the eyes provide better overall stats.

Now as per which of the Support items you're going for, that depends a lot. If you're thinking about late game, the Talisman allows you to get move speed for your team, while the Frost Queen gives you 2 ghosts who locate enemy champions (and slow them); The Face of the Mountain provides a shield that scales with your Max HP to an ally.

Essentially, if you think about the late game, you would pick the Talisman if your team needs movement speed to engage/disengage. You would pick the Frostqueen if you need vision or need to catch the enemy team unprepared. If you're planning on being massively tanky, the Face of the Mountain would help you save your teammates/yourself.

However if you think about the early game, it depends on what you'll do in the lane phase. Ancient Coin heals you by being enemy minion deaths, while giving you gold for it. Spellthief's Edge is useful if you'll be poking a lot (you gain gold from hitting with spells/auto attacks). Targon's brace heals you and the closest ally when you kill a minion (and have a stack), while giving both of you the kill gold.


In Sum:

You go for Ruby Sightstone (as a last HP item) if you purchase Frost Queen/Talisman/FoTM. If you don't go for either of those 3 legendary tier items, then you should go for the Eye of the basic item you purchased, in which case you should see what brings you the most advantages early on.