Wards Win Games | Beginner/Advanced guide to Wards

Sager Wolfgang·Apr 17, 2015·4 votes·8,330 views

What can Wards do and what are Wards? Wards can do a multitude of things, but some of the biggest ones are: -Knowing when the enemy team is taking objectives. Ex: Dragon or Baron. -Wards can let you know when you’re getting ganked.

  A big issue in League Of Legends is that you can&rsquo;t always see the enemy. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be better if you could see them almost all the time to help save your life from a gank or contest an objective? 

  How can Wards win games?

-Wards can help protect you from ganks so if you don’t die then you can stay on track and because you can keep an eye on objectives you can know when to take baron or dragon to help your team. -By knowing where the enemy is you can plan counter ganks or catch someone out and secure an easy kill.

  Something else you can do with wards are teleport onto them. Say the enemy team is taking dragon and you&#039;re in the top lane. Your team probably needs help, but it will take too long to walk. If there&#039;s a ward there you can teleport to it allowing you to get there nearly instantly. Something else that has been done with this is backdoor. Xpeke did a great job using teleport on a ward so he could win the game. 

  Wards are used to give vision to an area. For example: placing down a Warding totem in a bush will give you vision of the bush so you know if a wild Garen is in the bush even if you aren&rsquo;t there! It will show you everything that is in the warded area. There are different kinds of wards;

-There are Stealth Wards -Vision Wards, and -Warding Totem.

  Stealth Wards and Warding Totem do the same thing, The only difference is the Warding totem lasts for 60 seconds whereas the Stealth Ward lasts 3 minutes and costs 75 Gold. You want to use a Warding totem when you need short term vision and place a Stealth ward for long term vision. Vision Wards give you the same vision as a Stealth ward, but it&rsquo;s visible to the enemy team and will reveal any nearby Stealth wards or Warding Totems to allies. Vision Wards last forever but can be destroyed and cost 100 Gold. You want to use Vision Wards on high priority targets like Baron or Dragon. You might also want to place a vision ward where there is a known ward so your team can have ward control. 

  There are items that can let you place wards like the SightStone or Ruby SightStone. These place down Stealth Wards by consuming charges. You can replenish the charges by going back to base. Supports are the most common roles to buy a sightstone or ruby sightstone because they need to give vision of the bottom half of the jungle. But recently some junglers have been buying them for even more ward control. 

  Now let&#039;s talk about ward placement. There are areas that are high traffic zones or are more frequently used than other routes. By warding those, you give your team an edge. This map shows where to put what kind of ward. You don&rsquo;t need to go out of your way to ward it but if you&rsquo;re in the area it could prove beneficial to ward it. On the map, the green icons represent sight wards/warding totem and the pink icons represent vision wards.

                                                       http://imgur.com/zNDB0kO 
                                                        (Map will also be attached.)

  I hope this guide has shown you how valuable warding can be to help your team and win more games. I created this guide to help everyone in the league community understand the importance of warding and how it&rsquo;s done. If you have any suggestions for other guides or I missed something in this guide feel free to drop a comment!

6 Comments

JimmyTheTacoManApr 17, 20152 votes

R.I.P. S3 warding item 2043 item 2049

GavinRunebladeApr 18, 20152 votes

So i am the lone "no this didnt help" vote, let me explain why and hopefully you can help me, because i need it.

Not sure how to phrase this exactly, but as a new player I was hoping for more explanation and less definition. Most of your guide I could get just from looking at items in the store. What I need, and especially since you said advanced in the title, is strategy.

Let's look at the map. That is nice, sorta, but again, as I am a new player it reads like "place wards anywhere it doesn't matter" which I know is not your intent. I mean, nearly the whole map is covered with ward marks. How am I supposed to know which are more important locations and which less important? A map with fewer points ranked in priority, not by type of ward would be hugely helpful to me.

Or, ideally, multiple maps that show what locations are most important early-mid-and late game, possibly broken by role. Less mush everything into one graphic.

Your advice on baron and the dragons, that was good. I benefitted from that and understood what you were saying. Thank ypu.

But let's say I'm bottom lane and we are near the bend point... The map has 4 ward locations there, which is best under what circumstances? Your guide doesn't help me know that. Now I have reason to suspect the river is more important than the two outer bush points... But that's from my experience with jumglers not from anything you said in the guide or marked on the map. And my experience is limited so how do I know if I'm right?

Or, you say "You might also want to place a vision ward where there is a known ward so your team can have ward control." If wards are stealthed how do we know they are there in the first place? If we know the ward is present how does looking at the ward give us sight control or does following your instruction do something more? Because I can't see any value to warding an enemy ward other than looking at it. Shouldn't we remove the enemy ward to get sight control or am I totally misunderstanding?

The other thing is quantity. Wards cost, and the trinket has a cool down, so we can't just drop them everywhere. How many, how often is good?

We only get one red ward each right? When is too early to drop it? Better to cluster then all from the team in one area or spread them out?

Your guide doesn't help me know these answers.

So, yes it provides a good reminder to people to use wards, but as a guide, well maybe you could beef it up some?

I hope that helped you know where I was coming from and hope you understand why I said it didn't help me.

FoggyPawsApr 18, 20153 votes

{quoted}

So i am the lone "no this didnt help" vote, let me explain why and hopefully you can help me, because i need it.

SNIP

Just to let you know, Vision wards give you vision of their ward. You can then destroy it because you can now see it, and remove their vision.

The item item 3341 and it's upgraded form item 3364 give you vision of invisible items on the map, teemo shrooms, shaco boxes, and most importantly, wards.

You can see them for a few seconds, and break them. Sadly, if someone upgrades their item 3340 into item 3361 they get 2 free wards, generating one per 60 seconds, (max stack 2), while Oracle Lens item 3364 has a 75 second cooldown.

You get true sight from the Oracle Lens, which gives you vision of invisible champions as well :D

As for quantity, if you can buy a Vision Ward early game, and place it in either of the tri-bushes, or if you're mid lane, the junglers blue buff or something, it'll usually be safe for a long time, much longer than a regular Stealth ward, which lasts a few minutes, and doesn't give true sight.

It's almost always worth buying at least ONE Vision Ward per game, everyone on the team should do it at least once, specifically for the early game, late game if you need pinks, you can just upgrade the Warding Totem item 3340 into a Greater Vision Totem item 3362 .

As a support, or some other champions, a common purchase is a Sightstone item 2049 , and it's upgraded form, Ruby Sightstone item 2045 The Sightstone refills at 4 wards every time you touch the summoner platform, and the Ruby one gives 5.

It is important to remember that you can only have 3 stealth wards on the map at any given time, and only ONE Vision Ward, trinket or not

Over time it's far worth the price per ward, but I'm still a fan of buying 3 Stealth Wards and living off of those, and my trinket ward until I hit level 9, in which I upgrade my Trinket item AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

I can not stress this enough, UPGRADE THAT THING It's 250gp to upgrade and it saves so much money over time, you get more vision, your team will thank you.

Another word of advice, keep the entrance to the river warded whenever possible. If you're at mid, pick a side and stay closer to it, you can see the enemy jungler, or others, coming sooner, and you don't have to stay so close to the other side of the river, where you can easily be jumped from the bushes.

Another option for vision is the Scrying Orb item 3342 and it's upgrade the Farsight Orb item 3363 The Scrying Orb gives you a few short seconds of vision in an area a distance away from you. That's all it does, it's great for those who ward by other means and want some facechecking security. (Facechecking being running blind into a bush that could have a wild Garen Garen in it! Or any other enemy champion for that matter!) The cooldown is pretty beefy for what it does, but it is on demand, distanced vision. It's upgrade the Farsight Orb gives you a HUGE radius to get temporary vision of an area, this is great for checking map objectives from 1/3rd of the whole map away. Seriously, for an item it has massive range. Using it also places a Blue Ward that lasts for 1 minute, is NOT invisible, and has 1 HP.