User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Lee Sin, the Blind Monk/@comment-1920550-20150515073104/@comment-1330314-20150828010922

That's sort of the point. You're absolutely right that blindness is a massive impairment in League, and not being able to turn it off would make that weakness all the more important. However, I also think that's the perfect excuse to buff the shit out of Lee Sin everywhere else: I supercharged his base stats and abilities, to the point where he'd be ridiculously overpowered if he had normal vision range. I also reduced the cooldowns on his basic abilities, so that he'd be much more at leisure to throw out abilities to seek his targets, or shield himself.

The other tradeoff this brings is that it would make Lee Sin's interaction with vision truly unique: he may be blind, but his "combat sense" would make him a terrifying counterjungler (he'd be able to see you clearing camps) and invader, as well as a great objective stealer, all of which he already is now. It would also allow him to attach sight to his abilities that would otherwise be OP, and overall he'd contribute his own kind of detection, particularly in the jungle, though he'd also depend more on warding, both on his own part and from his team, to do well (it also means he'd practically hyperscale with his own team's coordination, and absolutely dominate in regions with heavy vision control).