so ive been thinking for a while about the sight stone and i heard a tiny bit of comments about it, one guy hating and others liking it so ive been thinking about how people think about buying it vs getting wards. so far here is my thought process about it right nows on supports...

Though it is a bit expensive it does do one thing and thats save money on wards, though you will buy 3 wards at the beginin and that but i think this item is going to be bought now instead of going back to buy wards and really, its mostly cause its cost efficient, (time vs cost will be after this), anyways i really wanna hear how people think about this item vs just buying wards, the one thing i do know is that the trade off for having this is you won't have FULL coverage of you lane vs buying wards (then again, you could buy a ward or two for that)

so here is a time if someone bought 2 wards for their lane every 3 minutes (typical time for ward to last) vs buying a sightstone once they went back at the 3 minute mark

Time Cost for ward Cost for Sightstone
3:00 | 150G | 700G
6:00 | 300G | 700G
9:00 | 450G | 700G
12:00 | 600G | 700G
15:00 | 750G | 700G
18:00 | 900G | 700G

so all in all, i think the sightstone will be effective for the early game laneing phase and can be sold once the phase is over for regular wards, though i must ask, whats your opinions on the item?

I don't like the fact that you can only place a certain number of wards at a time. I understand they don't want people to be able to spam wards for free but I see it as more of a hindrance than a help. As someone who mains support and tries to buy about 4 or 5 wards every time that I go back in order to allow for optimal vision of the map, this item just doesn't cut it.
It takes up a whole slot for just two (or three with the upgraded item) wards (in the sense that you can only have two or three up at one time). Whereas buying regular wards allows me to have up to five in one slot. If I decide that I want more than two wards up at once I need to use up another slot in order to have more wards that can be placed at one time. I like the idea that it will save me money but it takes up room in my inventory in an inefficient way.

So, I either don't buy the item and then I don't get the benefit of saving money, which was the idea behind the item in the first place. Or, I just buy the item and don't buy any other wards, which does not allow for the kind of vision of the map that I desire. Or, I can use up two slots in my inventory strictly for warding and miss out on other important items and their stats.

My suggestion would be that you should be allowed to place ALL of the wards that this item gives you at once. When you go back and your stacks refill, if you place a new ward while you still have four on the map, then the one that you placed first will disappear. The item could either be made more expensive or after you buy the item you could still need to buy wards but they could be purchased at a reduced price.

Either way, for someone who loves to ward the entire map as much as possible, this item just does not cut it. I appreciate the thought behind it, but I don't see it doing what it was made for in an efficient manner.

hm, i see, though i like to think of this as an early laning phase item more over then keep it all game.

2 wards are kinda all you ever need for laneing phase at time, though sometimes third for aggressive reasons, but also, once you get out of the laneing you can sell it. its not the Go to item for wards but more over just, keep it safe, i would just say buy it if you wanna keep a long laneing phase or buy wards if its gonna be short or thats

Plus you CAN sell the sightstone and replace it with wards, so you can have the best of both worlds

Sightstone is cost-effective.
Having one doesn't mean you'll never need to buy wards again.

If you could say upgrade the 2nd sightstone into another item, I could see it being more liked. As olivethegreat said, you end up using 2 slots for wards, where as before you could devote 1 item slot to the item.

If the 2nd sightstone could be upgraded to another version of say the aegis of the legion, you could have the best of both worlds. No longer would it feel like the sightstone is taking up precious space, but the item is also highly desirable.

I don't think this would be much of an issue. This item kind of replaces the Heart of Gold that every support would get in the game. Instead of having to accumulate gold via HoG and use that to spend on wards, you would just get this item and be more or less set for laning phase. The item even gives health like HoG did...

As far as taking up extra slots in the inventory, this is a moot point for supports. Supports rarely if ever built a full 6 item inventory until very late game. At that point, this item might not be needed so much and you can just go with the standard 5 items and buy regular wards for the sixth inventory slot. This item is not intended to be used to ward the entire map, unless you actually had a team that got like one each, so that your whole team could place down 10-15 wards at any given time...

TL;DR the item rocks, and you can always buy wards in addition when you go back to refill the ward stacks

There are plus sides to there being a limit on how many wards you can put down.

1. Let's face it, having 2 wards out is all you need mid game to ensure safety. Then you can place wards one in front of the other.

2. You save a lot more money then you'd make with HoG. In the first 30 minutes of a game I use over 20-30 wards.

3. Deny gold to oracle buyers. Make the oracles just a waste of money. Before he kills it place enough wards to make it disappear.

IMO the problem is that anyone can buy the sightstone. They should make it a talent from the utility tree deep enough and chained to something (gold) that most classes won't use. That way, support get their "ward" item which other non utility mastery spec'ed champs cannot. You would start with it (I'd say 1 ward at T1) then you could upgrade it to get it to what it is now (2 wards out) then having the 2nd upgrade for 3 wards out and maybe adding a 3rd upgrade for maybe 4 wards out or better stats.

EDIT:
T1: 1 ward out max, storage 2
T2: 2 wards out max, storage 3-4
T3: 3 wards out max, storage 4-6
T4: 3-4 wards out max, storage same as T3 but better stats