New Ward Concept - Intruder Wards

Barkley·6/22/2017, 9:11:44 PM·3 votes·337 views

As a jungler, I'm often faced with counter jungling strategies. While normal wards will help me defend against it by myself, the game lacks any sort of mechanic to alert my team to what's going on, aside from typing in chat "Hey I'm getting counter jungled, can you guys help me out?" or spam pinging the jungler when he walks over a ward.

And we all know how well chatting to your team works in this game.

So my idea is to implement a third ward type, an "Alert Ward" or "Intruder Ward" or something of the sort. Basically you'd buy it at the shop, it'd cost the same as a control ward or maybe even slightly more or less, I don't know I'm not a developer, and this ward would basically allow you to create a trip wire from one point to another (within a fixed maximum distance obviously) and if any enemy champion wanders over your trip wire, the entire team gets a global mini-map ping.

The ward itself grants no vision AT ALL until it is triggered, and lasts a fixed amount of time (one minute?). Perhaps upon triggering, it could give the global minimap ping and transform into one of those blue trinket wards. one shot and its dead, but at least it lets you know who's nearby. Perhaps the ward just flat out never grants any vision at all - I dont know, I'm not a developer. The community can discuss this.

This gives junglers a way to announce to their entire team that someone is entering their jungle that shouldn't be.

OR it gives advantaged top laners an opportunity to booby trap the enemy jungle and set up for an aggressive invade. OR it notifies your whole team that someone's snooping around the baron pit. It could give a lot of strategic options, but mostly I thought of it as a way to announce to my team mates "Hey, I'm getting counter jungled. Here he is. He's right here. Help me!"

6 Comments

DrugsForRobots6/23/2017, 8:58:45 PM2 votes

Riot had this almost exactly and called it the 'Mandrake Ward'. They decided they didn't like it apparently.

I repackaged and tweaked it and called it the 'Snitch Ward' (along with a Sentry, Observer, Beacon, and Beholder), with the intent that these would replace all of our current wards. But then CertainlyT said, "Wards that are unique and special are lame."

I think he was missing the point: Wards that telegraph how they work to opponent's can be played around - they become more interactive - while also being overt about how they control a given space or territory. Some people may see Wards like this as 'gimmicky' but then, people thought the same thing about Plants and Riot doubled down on them and it worked out for the better.

mr Boombastic7876/23/2017, 6:08:18 PM1 votes

Sounds nice though in my opinion I think instead of giving it a blue ward afterwards it should just give a effect to the one who walks in it so you can only see him. Of course it would still ping. Then it wouldn't counter ganks and flanks completely but still be very useful.