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% of warding support is responsible for?

Spiffy McBang·8/5/2016, 10:52:27 PM·2 votes·382 views

This is obviously a noob question, but I just played my first provisional game and it occurred to me. I main support, and once I get my Sightstone/related item I drop wards wherever seems reasonable until the end of the game. On the couple of occasions the game has gone long and I've had thousands of gold (so I could theoretically grab a stronger item), I keep the Sightstone item (Eye of the Watchers in my case) because warding is part of my job. I think that's correct, though I love my AP on Sona and will gladly take an excuse to get more.

I had a game earlier where someone kept complaining we had no vision. He was correct, but I was doing what I could to keep things warded. We either had very few other wards or the other team did very well clearing them, I'm not sure which. Thus my question is, is there some kind of consensus on how many people (or which roles) should keep the initial warding item and which ones (if any) should switch to a sweeper? At lower elos, should teams lean one way or the other? I would think lower rank players should go more for wards than sweepers because you're more likely to play against people who either forget to ward or won't sweep for yours, but I've only played about a dozen games since returning and that's nothing more than a guess.

5 Comments

Woodakoodashooda8/6/2016, 3:00:31 AM2 votes

This is actually an interesting question because I was curious about the warding trends in game. Going off what I've seen in the past between allies and opponents, a typical support will have placed as few as 1/4 wards for their team and as many as 1/2 wards for the team.

I suppose it depends on the player's support style. While warding is key to the support role, it is only one facet of the position. Some players prioritize other support functions over others. Early gold acquisition for a stronger bottom lane is one route commonly seen. Another is providing additional damage to the lane to make for an oppressive lane; however, this strategy often leaves the bottom lane exposed to ganks as less gold is invested in warding and an aggressive lane will often attract the attention of the enemy jungle.

A defensive support will likely invest more into wards to maintain lane safety while conserving resources to assist the carry in last hitting during laning or to save them from death whenever possible and, if not possible, use their skills to save themselves and avoid providing the enemy with an additional kill.

In answer to your question, however. Most times, the support will probably place an average of 1/3 of the team's overall wards.

Angry Monster8/5/2016, 10:56:12 PM1 votes

ADC should have blu or yello Support red jungle red or yellow (tracker knife is an option) AS a jungle main i keep my yellow MID sweeper Top opposite of jungler, unless split pushing then should have yellow no matter what

All should have a pink ward down, most "forget" to after the 15 min mark.

Dynikus8/5/2016, 11:04:48 PM1 votes

As a support, you should always get sight stone and sweeper for vision control, but it's the entire team's responsibility to ward. If the enemy team has someone like rengar or teemo, I'll generally grab a red as well. But otherwise depending on my role and what I'm doing, I'll keep yellow or upgrade to blue and place pinks as long as I have an open item spot.

zlumpy8/6/2016, 3:24:32 AM1 votes

Hopefully other people on your team are buying and placing a few pink wards. So few people seem to buy a pink and I never understand why.

Athenes Lulu8/6/2016, 4:16:49 AM1 votes

Somewhere around the 40%~50% mark is pretty good. Of course you will have to ward slightly more than your teammates do because sightstone is obviously much more spammable than trinkets, but not too much to misled your teammates into thinking they'll never have to ward.

Usually you want to switch to sweepers the moment you buy a sightstone, or in some cases both entering mid game AND after buying a sightstone, because keeping both totem and sightstone is redundant. In other words, being able to do 2 very effective jobs is more worth than getting 1.5x of the same item.

In lower divisions, it's not as important, but warding out for yourself is still worth the investment. Higher up, obviously, lighting up the map as much as possible is just as valuable.

This is more of opinion, but keeping at this range is a good practice.