The stigma of warding

Lost R··3 votes·493 views

It's been about a year and a half since we had the trinkets introduced, but for some people, it seems like its purchase is simply compulsory and don't actually use them. Obviously the most purchased one is warding totem, which gives you a free semi-ward every two minutes, which then turns into a better ward at level 9, and if you lay down 250 gold, you get a free full ward every minute FOREVER. It is extremely gold efficient, and with proper timing and diligent warding, with the GST alone you can hit the ward cap very easily.

So why don't people do it more often? Instead they harrass the support to ward more often, even if they're overcapping on wards. To put this into perspective, last game I played, I laid down 25 wards total. Four of those were bought wards; the rest were from the GST ALONE and yeah, for most of the game I was overcapped. The enemy's Leona, on the other hand, had a Sightstone and laid down 50 wards total, and I'm pretty sure 48 of those were just from the Sightstone. If I was overcapped with just the GST, I can't imagine how many wards she destroyed by laying down extra ones. Both of us outwarded the rest of our teams combined, and according to Leona's numbers, twice over for her. No one else laid down even 10 wards.

Like I said I only spent 250 gold to upgrade to what's basically half of a sightstone, and it provided enough wards to overcap for the whole game post level 9, so why don't more people do it? Don't complain about the lack of wards when the support is overcapping. The lack of a sightstone doesn't mean they aren't warding, and the cap would still be three wards regardless. Three wards won't cover the whole map. Other people have to chip in, too.

11 Comments

Rismonaught1 votes

Who shouldn't be buying a sightstone?

Wickedfates1 votes

(depending on your elo YMMV) the thing is.... warding has increased an amazing amt.... before the complaint was no one else would ward besides the support.... now there are 5-10 wards being put out by most team members, and often at least one other teammember (jg) is putting out 10-20....

i think warding has come a long way even if there is more to go, and overcap just means you are moving your vision around which isnt always a bad thing (facechecking bushes can be)

pushing pink wards are my big thing right now.... pinks can last an entire game if the opposite team isnt on it, which happens a lot, and a few pinks out on the map on top of other vision is amazing

Mandang01 votes

How long did the game last that 25 wards placed had you overcapped? I find it very hard to believe that Leona placed twice as many wards as the cap (1 per minute).

The reason GST is a weak substitute for sightstone is that you don't have access to it until level 9. It also denies your team a sweeper.

Lost R1 votes

It lasted about 50 minutes, and slowly but surely we were taking gold/kill/tower advantage since the 12 minute mark, around the time their first turret was destroyed. It also meant less required map coverage for us. Before level 9, anyways, how much map coverage do you need? Pre-9 is still the laning phase, and bot lane accounts for (counting the areas between the two towers, the river between the lane and dragon, the tribushes and some distance behind them) less than an eighth of the map. One or two wards usually do the trick (one for the jungler, one for the lane bushes for the support).

Actually, I find that a support (especially the mages) should NOT be the sweeper. Their low attack speed and lack of any real offense or defense makes them extremely vulnerable while smashing wards (especially vision wards!), and if you're already a high priority target (read: if you're the only one with any durability and crowd control), then the enemy team will trip over themselves to come at you. And they have, even burning more flashes, exhausts, ignites and ults than I can count on one hand to do so. It's not like your allies help during those attacks, either. While smashing a vision ward, the fed Pantheon on our team just danced around the fight as I got ganged up on in a 3v1 as support Taric. It took them half a minute to finally bring me down (mostly ADs and the support, what do you expect?), even though Pantheon was just over a flash distance away, doing nothing else but watching. Together we could have destroyed them, but the mentality is that the support helps you, not the other way around, and I ended up dying for no reason.

Mandang01 votes

Well, the ward cap you speak of is 3 wards on the map at a time, which is 1 ward per minute for sightstone and GST wards (3 minute duration). So, it looks like the Leona in your game is close to the cap, while you're at about half of the cap. Bot lane should have the lane, dragon, and tribush warded during laning phase. This is impossible to pull off with 2 non-upgraded trinkets, as those wards only last 60 seconds, on a 120 second cooldown.

Also, it's not really a question of who should be the sweeper as much as who can be the sweeper. You can't complain about other teammates not warding enough and simultaneously suggest that they run the sweeper. Support is a great candidate for sweeper, simply because they can also ward while doing so via sightstone.

Lost R1 votes

One sweeper is usually enough for a team. The jungler (depending on attack speed) is usually a fine enough candidate (or semi-sweeper) because of the razorbeak buff, plus they're roaming around the map the most. Most players tend to put their wards in pretty fixed locations (myself included), so if you know where to look first, they're pretty easy to find.

In the laning phase, it's going to be pretty apparent when the enemy team is going to dragon, and level 2 ganks are very rare events. Save for exceptional circumstances, most junglers begin their rounds at level 4-5 at the earliest, as I discovered all the way back in Season 3. That's when I switch my attention to the river and surrounding territories. I also keep an eye out for where the jungler is on the map. If they're at top lane or dead, then I don't need to immediately ward the river or tribush unless mid is also missing and I sense they're approaching. Teleports and movement ults like Sion, Twisted Fate, Pantheon and Shen are also exceptional circumstances and there's nothing you can do to stop them, only realize when they're happening and try to escape or, if escape isn't possible, then try to give them a black eye.

Mandang01 votes

Look, at the end of the day, you can't control what your teammates will do, but only what you do. If their Leona is placing 50 wards, you only place half of that, and your team wants more wards, you should probably place more wards. It's 800 gold you give up for sightstone (less when you consider the value of the sweeper you get) - if that 800 gold you spent elsewhere isn't getting you an extra kill or preventing an extra death, it's almost certainly doing less than the wards from sightstone would've.

You're not wrong that more people should upgrade their trinkets, but you're probably still gonna have to play with players who don't, so if you want to help your team with vision, you should do what that Leona did, and take the matter in your own hands.

Lost R1 votes

My build priority is to ALWAYS upgrade my support item first; money is an increasingly fleeting commodity as the support, and on top of that, you need to increase your own utility to be of any use to the team. Then, if I'm a mage, I push mana regen and cooldown reduction, and if I'm a tank, I push armor/magic resist and health.

Leona wasn't in an enviable position - one I am dreadfully familiar with - and this goes back to... well, a lot of points I've made for the greater half of a year now. One, as the support she was the only tank and person with any real crowd control on her team; the rest of her team was composed of Nidalee, Master Yi, Twisted Fate and Lucian, and of those four, three of them have absolute zero crowd control (and even Twisted Fate just had a single target stun) and about as much durability as wet paper-mâché. She rushed a Sightstone almost immediately, then made Face of the Mountain and Boots of Mobility. This is generally what I call a glass hook build, though she used the Mountain instead of the Talisman, which is THE glass hook build (focus entirely on grabs to the exclusion of everything else). She didn't build even one defensive item until the minute 22 mark, and that was to rebuild her boots into Mercury Treads as by that point we were demolishing their entire team with plenty of crowd control. An actual tank item wasn't completed until 33 minutes in, 7 minutes after their first inhibitor was destroyed. Honestly, with how overspecialized they were, wards should have been the last thing on her mind, and she should have focused more on building tank and cooldown reduction items, and what members of her team wasn't sweeping should have picked up the ward slack, too. She was juggling too many jobs while her allies were focused on too few, and as a result, she couldn't do even her primary job correctly and their team was obliterated without much fanfare.

Syndrarella1 votes

[deleted]

Lost R3 votes

I always upgrade my trinket, regardless of my role. It's especially useful if I'm the ADC, as I'm an extremely aggressive lane pusher, even as a support, and my efforts net me the ire of the entire enemy team and their respective armaments.

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