League-of-legends – Why Pro Junglers often buy SightStone

Jungle used to be my main. Basically, everything depends on what your intensions are. Doran blade as the very first jungling item is viable only with a few junglers, since with doran blade you dont have such a jungle sustain and when farming longer you get to low on your hp. Doran blade increases your early level damage output significantly, so I choose doran blade when I want to gank very early.

Example - my jungle pantheon: I run pantheon with doran blade, 9-21-0 masteries and flat ad marks and quints. On level one I take spear and clear out wovles and blue. My spear on lvl one has 105 dmg thanks to the setup. After blue I am level 2, I take the leap stun and I go for either to mid/side lane or I choose to counter-gank. I usually risk and take exhaust/smite as my summoner spells. With this setup I have scored first blood in 90% of all cases.

Taking doran blade later on in jungle means that your farm / ganks werent too successful, but again you want to increase your early game damage output.

Lee sin: I start with armor/pots item combination. I have cleared jungle, tried ganking bot lane, but I havent been successful. I tp back and probably buy boots. I clear jungle, maybe I get one successful gank. My progress seems quite slow. I would probably finish my lantern and then buy fast doran blade or two just to increase my damage/sustain/hp at the moment.

Three very important jungling things

• you have to estimate the game progress well to decide which items to buy
• doran blade gives your bruiser jungler 3 stats you actually want: lifesteal, damage, health
• if you do not start with boots (which is quite common), get boots as soon as possible, that will highly increase your jungle presence (in a sense of ganks)

Overall, I believe it's a bad idea. Some things to consider:

• A Sightstone costs a lot of money up front. In fact, you can't buy it at the start of the game, unlike a ward or 2. That means you will be without any wards for several minutes at least, when you are most vulnerable to ganks, and a death because of that will cost you much more gold than you saved. Also, if you leave the lane early to complete the Sightstone, you may miss cs because your opponent is still in lane and could push the wave into your tower while you buy.

• You forfeit AP/mana items in favor of a little survivability. You may not have enough damage to win trades, in which case a couple more hit points won't matter. Getting zoned out for a few minutes or outright killed because you can't deal enough trade damage will again cost you much more gold than you save.

• Do you really need 2 perma-wards? That means you push hard all the time and/or you prefer champions that are slow and lack non-ultimate escapes. Consider whether 1 ward per 3 minutes could be enough. Ward 1 side of the river and position yourself closer to that ward rather than the middle of the lane. That way, you have enough vision in either direction to run away from ganks.

In conclusion, smarter play and map awareness will dramatically reduce your need for wards. I do not believe a Sightstone is a viable item choice for carries, AP or AD.