It’s not likely that we’ll implement the solution of building a slot specifically for control wards. We’ve talked about a slot for consumables, both to help with particular roles that end up low on inventory at some point in the game, and to ensure that more players can still play the vision game when they have six items. This is a much more complex issue than folks might assume.

The first issue is that we’re not sure that running out of slots is a bad thing. It’s important that late game is meaningfully different from other phases of the game. Currently, one of the most significant differences is that the map starts to darken. While it can be frustrating to hold off on an item, or have to make difficult decisions about where to use a trinket, those choices can also be meaningful and increase the feeling that stakes are high as games go late.

A second issue is that this a consumable slot is a bit of a band-aid solution. We’re not very happy with a vision system that is attached to the item system. It requires significant amounts of gold, and for most players, it gets strongly position bound. I’d personally be much more excited to start fixing the fundamental problems of the vision system rather than making small improvements to what we have. We’ve been making small iterative improvements to vision for a long time, and I believe we’ve hit the limit of what the system can offer without larger structural changes.