Sightstone
These changes are to reduce the excessive amount of early vision teams can acquire with little cost. This should create more opportunities to gank and reward counter play, especially for junglers.

Recipe changed: Ruby Crystal + 475 gold = 950 gold (from 700)
Health increased to 180 from 100
Gold reward for Sightstone wards increased to 25 from 10

-They give the same bonus health, so it creates the same passive gameplay in lane.
-The serve the same purpose, a way for supports to have enough money to buy wards.
-They are roughly the same cost.

But HoG was bad and sightstone is good?

I'm not saying to bring back HoG, but I think that they just reworked the item and gave it a different name.

most of bruisers wouldn't buy sightstone
on the other hand since the passive gold was increased i doubt hog would be so popular

ily HoG <3

i like the new sightstone changes tbh, costs more but now you don't have to save up 700 gold at once as a support

I'm trying to think of a valid analogy here but I apologize if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense due to how late it is and as usual, that means I'm going to use a Magic: The Gathering analogy. :P

Let's say you have a 3/3 creature out on the table compared to a 2/2 creature that gains +2/+2 for every consecutive turn he hasn't attacked and loses them all when he attacks.

On the one hand, the 3/3 creature looks better in every respect - until you are in a situation where you don't or can't attack.

However, in the other case, the 2/2 creature that grows is just continuously better if it's a situation where you don't or can't attack.

This is essentially the core dichotomy of Sightstone versus Heart of Gold - While the Sightstone is tremendously gold efficient, it is only generating gold if you are actively using and aggressively warding on cooldown / base backs.

While Heart of Gold is generating advantage for you no matter what you do, Sightstone forces you to take additional actions to translate to gold efficiency. If you only use Sightstone as a replacement ward for your lane - it's not very gold efficient at all compared to buying 3 or 4 wards for example.

Sorry, that was terrible.

TL;DR - disliked the passive advantage that HoG was giving from taking inaction - while Sightstone doesn't actually generate gold top-lane unless used aggressively to ward more than just the top lane.

Im really for bringing back HoG but really my biggest problem is that now the option for a lower costing HP item thats not giants belt is a kindlegem; usually on my 1st back as shen I have the option of kindlegem into shurelias reverie which I have to build a philosophers stone for, locket of the iron solari which isn't nearly as useful as it sounds, or spirit visage which would be useful if I was mid lane but being top it is only useful vs a handful of heroes.

IMO Riot inadvertantly created the warmog every game meta because HoG was removed and people who want to be offensive and tanky but still deal damage at the time have a choice between a kindlegem or a giants belt. Giants belt can lead into a frozen mallet or a warmogs for people who want to be tanks / tanky DPS. Warmogs being better than frozen mallet other than a small utility margin from the slow people would rather just build warmogs and get 300-500 more HP than buy a frozen mallet. Sure SOME people can buy a rylais but champions that do AD don't have that option and sunfire cape will damage you upon impact on the turret. It also really isn't that good beyond splitpushing although it is good at that.

I won't really say people always buying HoG was better or something although I did like it more

The problem with HoG was that you'd get FB in lane, then buy HoG. Come back with Level, HP, and Gp10 advantage over lane opponent. Snowballed too hard.