Jungling - I don't understand when to ward!

DoctMagnus·9/26/2017, 4:12:23 AM·2 votes·600 views

With the ranked season quickly coming to its end, I've decided to embark on the tedious climb to Gold. One of the biggest problems I always facing during a normal or ranked game is when specifically to ward as a jungler. I understand the jist of where to ward, whether it's a neutral, defensive, or an aggressive deep ward, but I don't know how to coordinate clearing, ganking, and warding at the same time.

**I ask you fellow junglers **

At what time is appropriate for me to ward? (Neutral, defensive, aggressive)
At what point should I pick up a sweeper trinket, if at all?
Do you think it would be a good idea to go for a trackers knife, or am I losing out on potential utility and damage?
How do you guys manage to do all three at the same time efficiently?

Thanks for helping trash like me guys! [poppy-wink]

5 Comments

Talon129/26/2017, 4:17:50 AM2 votes

From points 1-4

More often than not, the first wards of the game for a jungler are for safety reasons, such as when trying to clear red buff, they ward the bushes to avoid being surprised, and ward the bushes of the lanes they gank so they know if the enemy jungle is coming to counter gank. After the first back, grabbing a control ward if you can is always good, using it to either get vision over the river, to help out a laner/nullify wards when you gank or help get early drag on champs like warwick. You should try to keep a control ward to the outermost strech of a bush when warding, as this makes it A) harder to hit, as most people tend to try stand on the edge of the bush to kill control wards. B) it provides the largest vision arc of all the possibilities. C) its counted as an object, so you get the added bonus of messing around with a person who tries to walk into the bush, as they get in the bush then stuck on that ward, so they cant get vision of it, but due top the ward being your own, you have vision of the bush and can easily auto path around. As a bonus though, you can actually make a solid wall with teammates in some bushes using vision wards, which trap an enemy, its funny, sadly though you can also trap yourself, but its a lot harder to do to yourself, because again you have auto pathing, they need to be placed around you by the team to trap you, you cant just walk into it.
The sweeper trinket is best on champs who enjoy ganking often, as it allows you to slip past wards into the lane, though this only works if you don't stop to attack the wards, as this will reveal you, though if you simply walk past the wards, you will remain undetected unless someone is looking on the screen (not minimap) at the bush, as when you use the sweeper on the wards, it appears on the minimap as if nothing has happened, allowing you to just waltz on by.
Trackers knife is pretty much a nunu/lee thing, though it is very useful as a substitution to the warding trinket if you get a sweeper, plus the other smites are more in favour of duelists than tanks, so taking extra wards can't hurt very much, the only benefit of blue smite is the slow, which a cc packing tank only uses as a niche extra, while red just helps duelists last longer in fights, so trackers knife is best suited on those cc heavy/invading champs rather than the fight seeking ones. A plus side of tracks though is you wont accidentally smite the enemy jungler when having a smite fight for drag. AKA, trackers is just a healthy option for people who don't need the cc or durability of the other smites, and also wish to take the sweeper trinket. Trackers can also be couples with the warding trinket though, this allows you to keep a large majority of the map warded at all times, allowing you to help keep vision over top, mid and objectives, helping prevent allied lanes safe from enemy ganks. A lot of enemy junglers struggle to survive when all the lanes and objectives are warded well, helping prevent non-intentional feeding of enemies as they struggle to gangbang. As such, the added vision of the trackers knife can prove invaluable to you and your team. As well as the smite remaining unmodified (as previously stated, easier to smite grab for drag and stuff), you are able to save smites solely for the jungle, increasing clear speed and availability, as you won't be smiting enemies during your gank bot lane, you can right up go and kill drag.
Base it on the situation and practice, striking up some conversation with the enemy jungle usually relaxes them a little and sometimes they even help out.

PopcornBunni9/26/2017, 4:20:45 AM1 votes

Don't most junglers take item 3711 at higher levels? That would probably help a lot to keep wards up all the time. Gank-to-camps seems to net better value for the team than the fighting power of the colored smites, and lets you keep your smite for important uses, like against buffs or drakes.

Erockandroll9/26/2017, 4:25:38 AM1 votes

Here is my humble opinion on warding as the Jungler.

For starters, Always take trackers knife. My philosophy behind this is that you want to use smite for increasing your clear speed. And in doing so, smite won't be available for use against champions. (thus, not making use of chilling or challenging smite) Go a build you sweeping lens once you have trackers. You will want this, to help clear wards and prepare you for future ganks.

As for where and how to ward, that will take practice. In the earlier stages of the game, I tend to help out granting vision in order to prevent my opponents from ganking. (Because they tend to forget to ward themselves.) In this case, I would focus on the top side of the map, as your support should have the bot side covered. (Especially get vision of the rift herald)

Hope this helps. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]