Complete Information: Warding and Diving

Diving is by far one of the most exciting moments of any League of Legends game, regardless of which side you're on. When you're the diver, your blood gets pumping as you take turret shots making a move to snowball your lane in the riskiest way possible, while the person getting dived is flailing around trying to survive any way he can. Often times this play is the turning point of a lane, and whomever is able to get the kill takes an imposing lead.

Warding can be a big part of whether these dives are successful or not. A good defensive ward by the defender can let him know when a second or third person is lining up to take him out and allow him to flee or gird his loins in preparation for the battle. But this advantage is not isolated to the defender, as good warding on the part of the aggressor and his team can prevent him from being hit by the dreaded countergank under turret. As such, a dive can be won by the vision battle that's going on across the map.

When is it Appropriate to Dive?

Let's start this by asking when is it appropriate to dive in the first place. Well the first thing anyone considering diving has to think about is whether they're winning trades or not. If you're losing out every trade you make in lane, you're rarely going to be in the position to dive, but if you're barely scraping by and are only at their turret due to your pushing pressure or harassment, going in for a dive is probably a losing proposition. You want to be winning trades decisively or have a reliable disengage if you're deciding to dive. This is why champions like Elise, Fizz, Kassadin, and Vladimir are able to make aggressive dives even when slightly behind, as their disengage allows them a get out of jail free card if the fight turns away from their favor or if the turret has them dead in sights after the dive. 

The second question a person needs to make is whether the champion he's facing is a difficult one to dive. These champions generally come in three flavors:

1. Evasive: Characters that are incredibly evasive are a pain to dive into. This evasion can be either invisibility (Akali), repeated leaps/blinks (Nidalee/Kassadin), invulnerability (Lissandra/Fizz/Vladimir), something more champion specific (Jax's Counterstrike and Zed's Shadows), or just being Lee Sin (because let's give a character an escape, shield, survivability, and sustain. In one move). When you're not assured to land all your abilities on a person you are diving, or their ability makes it impossible for you to target them, dives become a suicidal proposition. Evasive characters are also the most likely to be able to flee from the dive without even engaging you, so while they're not as dangerous to the survival of the attacker, they lead to failed dives the most often.

2. Survivable: Similarly, characters that are incredibly survivable are usually unwise targets for dives. Volibear is probably the most infamous of these, with his passive (Chosen of the Storm) resulting in multiple people diving and then screaming in frustration as he heals back up to half-health even as you are blowing all your abilities on him. Other characters that have massive durability steroids, such as Jax's Grandmaster's Might and Singed's Insanity Potion are also bulwarks against dives. Similarly, the revive passives of Anivia and Aatrox and Zilean's Chronoshift fit in this vein, as they make dives to finish them far too prolonged and risk the aggressor dying to the second wind of the defender.

3. Burst/CC Heavy: Finally, characters that have high amounts of crowd control are not great targets for dives, especially when that CC comes with the threat of damage behind it. Diving Cho'Gath when he has Rupture and Feral Scream up often leads to the diver ending up as a snack for Cho. Dives on Lissandra end similarly, with the target shut down by Frozen Tomb and Ring of Frost. The danger here is that the CC-heavy champ will be able to easily kite the aggressor, and then turn after the turret has whittled away at their health. 

Assuming these first two conditions (winning trades and being able to deal with the champion under their own turret) are met, the target needs to be whittled down to an maneagable amount of health. This will change depending on the champion you're playing. For someone like Cho'Gath, you're going to want them within Rupture/Scream/Feast range, while Zed just needs to wait for his ult to be up and can go in with the enemy still at 100 percent. But the final condition is knowing that the Jungler or some other meddling kid isn't about to show up and ruin your day. And that's where vision comes in.

 

Warding to Dive and to Avoid Dives

For the purposes of this article, let's assume you're playing with the standard solo-queue team, meaning no one else is warding. You aren't able to rely on being granted vision by your teammates to see where the Jungler is, so where are the best places for you to ward in order to avoid getting hit by a crucial countergank? Or to avoid a 5v1 all in gank under your own turret? In the following section, maps will be brought up. Red will indicate wards for the aggressor and blue will indicate wards for the defender, while green indicates standard lane ward locations.

Top Lane

Top lane is usually the lane that's found most wanting for wards, with most Top Laners being satisfied with a single ward, located somewhere in the river or in tri-bush if you're on purple-side. As such, the top Jungle is often the one with the least information, which allows the Jungler their run of the area. Purple side has a much easier time avoiding dives, as the same ward in tri-bush that prevents ganks will often provide enough information to prevent multiple man dives too.

However, on Blue side it is possible for a Jungler to sneak into their Jungle without crossing one of their standardly placed wards, especially if the Blue side player cheaped out and only placed a ward up in Purple's tri-bush or the river brush. In that case placing a ward either at the entrance of the upper jungle or in their own tri-bush is necessary to avoid being doven on. The latter only provides vision for that specific scenario but is much safer to place and is close enough to avoid losing much farm while you go to set it down. 

However, when warding to dive in the top lane, there are two major areas to ward: the lane and the Jungle. Both sides would like to get a ward on the lane entrance for the Jungle, as it gives you enough time to bail if the enemy Jungler is running up the lane to rescue his Top Laner. While a ward in the brush near their inner turrets might provide similar vision, it also reveals that you placed a ward there and doesn't provide a glance into the Jungle, where the Jungler can just run alongside the lane and come out near the turret.

Both sides would also like a ward near the buff camps in their opponent's jungle. This is because a ward properly placed on the corner will give you vision of all three major pathways through the Purple side Jungle, and will warn you if they're coming up the inside track on the Blue side Jungle. They also provide your team with the most potential vision for their dives across the map, as they keep the Jungler in sight when he's on his way towards the smaller camps.

This is a lot of vision for one person to be responsible for, and with the new ward changes coming up (where there will be a limit of four active wards per player), it will be impossible for a player to ward all these locations, no matter what side he was on. However, proper warding in the river and Jungle entrances will at least give you enough comfort to avoid a 2v1, whether you are diving or being dove. 

Middle Lane

In this case, the sides are mirrored, so we'll be looking at it solely through the lens of the Blue player diving and the Purple player defending. The biggest advantage that the defender has in the middle lane is that it is much shorter in comparison to other lanes, meaning that it is both easier to flee from and the Jungler will probably have a quicker response time to the middle lane. The biggest disadvantage is that the rival squad's Jungler can come from both sides and is able to dip from the dive much quicker. That means that the defender needs to ward both sides of his lane, and would preferably ward both the entrances.

However, if you've been stuck on your tower for the last five minutes while Lux has been throwing Singularities at you, that's probably not possible, so the best place for the wards after that are the patches of brush on either side: the short brush near wraiths and the long contoured brush beside wolves. The former is needed to prevent both someone from coming behind and someone (such as Zac) from jumping over the wraith camp wall. The latter is required to prevent that as well as their Jungler lying in wait to prey upon yours, who is coming to help. If on Purple side, a ward near your red buff can also prevent the Top Laner from sneaking around and starting a 3v1 dive.

When warding to dive in the middle lane, it's important to note that it is really hard to get out in time if the enemy Jungler runs up the short lane, especially if he has some sort of long-distance ganking tool like Elastic Slingshot or Paranoia. Therefore, while having a ward revealing the area between the enemy's two outer middle turrets is nice, it isn't as helpful as it would be in either of the long lanes. Deep Jungle wards are similarly nice but not as effective, as dives need to be over quickly in the middle lane or you risk your prey escaping. However, shallow wards placed near their blue buff and wraith camp give the diver the knowledge that his immediate dive is safe.

Bottom Lane

Bottom lane usually has the most ward coverage as the Support has been slaving away over a hot Sightstone for much of the match. However, that doesn't mean that the wards that a Support normally places are the most efficient ones when planning to dive. The wards placed in river and both tri-bushes are helpful for both sides, but bottom lane dives tend to be protracted events as there are two targets to burst down under their own turret. When defending from potential dives, protecting the flank is mandatory in order to give yourself an easy escape away from the dive. On Purple side, this means warding the river entrance near blue buff as well as the tri-bush that stands beside your bottom primary turret. While on Blue side, a ward in tri-bush and near red buff should be sufficient. The other main ward place is somewhere along the bottom lane wall to serve as a look out for the lane gank.

When on the offensive, things get a bit more difficult, as the only wards that will adequately protect you on your protracted dive are those that are either incredibly deep or ones that serve little purpose outside the defense of the dive. On either side, a ward in the brush between bottom's primary and secondary towers gives early detection of a Jungler or Mid Laner coming to his bottom lane's rescue, but serves very little purpose in granting vision outside that. Wards placed near buff camps are preferable in the vision they give you, but a Support risks being picked off by placing them that deep alone. The very best wards are those that tell you if the person is in that part of the Jungle in the first place, but again these wards are deep and either risk the Support being picked off or take away from the AD Carry's farming time. (Something that tends to make said Carries fairly cranky.)

 

When to Ward to Dive

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Like I stated in the portion about Bottom Lane, warding, despite its innocuous nature is an interactive act. You're giving your opponents time to farm, relax, and possibly ward themselves, as well as giving them a chance to act on your poor position relative to the rest of your team (especially if your ward is deep in hostile territory). As such, knowing when to ward is just as important as knowing where. In reality, knowing whether it's safe to ward or not is dependent on whether you have vision on the opposing team's Jungler or not. If you can reasonably believe the Jungler is across the map, either by seeing an empty Jungle camp or having spotted him with one of your team's wards (or even Clairvoyance), it's generally a safe time to ward deep. If you're in a side lane, you might also want to keep an eye out for the opposing team's Mid Laner, who has the potential to collapse on you, but it's not as necessary especially if your own Mid Laner is occupying their attention. 

In the bottom lane, another issue comes to the fore, which is the prevalence of Vision Wards. This isn't as big of an issue as being caught out, but putting the effort in to throw down a deep ward only to have it cleaned up immediately by the other team's Support is an incredibly frustrating experience. You have two immediate options on how to deal with this: either throwing down your own Vision Ward deep or wait for the other Support to run out of them.

Throwing your own Vision Ward deep is the safer and easier path, but it does have its disadvantages. The first disadvantage is that your Vision Ward is probably not going to be clearing out an opposing ward unless you have had a Sight Ward taken out in that location. And while it prevents you from being hurt by an existing Vision Ward in that location, it does nothing to protect itself from the next one that the Support is going to throw down. Vision Wards are expensive, and throwing one down that doesn't deny vision and that you cannot protect might mean its simply a 125 gold Clairvoyance. Combine this with the upcoming problem that Vision Wards will not be invisible themselves, meaning that anyone and their cousin can clear them regardless of whether or not they've invested in counter-warding, and it becomes clear that throwing down a Vision Ward is not an ideal solution. 

However, waiting for the other Support to run out of wards is forcing you to play to the other side's pace, and if you've already taken enough of a lead that you are considering diving, that's a victory for them. This is goes double if they have a fragile hypercarry such as Kog'Maw or Vayne who they're attempting to simply protect until the late game as not only are you letting them stabilize but letting them slowly catch-up. There is another option however, which takes a bit more planning than simply running deep into their Jungle and throwing down a pink.

By consistently denying vision in lane, you can try to pin the Support to their tower, threatening to murder them if they even think about wandering into their own Jungle or near Dragon to ward. Obviously, this works a little bit better against Supports like Sona and Zyra who tend to pop immediately after being attacked. Thresh, Alistar, or Leona will just ignore that type of threat. If that's the case, try get your Jungler to swing bot for an easy pick-off, as while those three are durable, they're probably not going to be able to withstand three people's concentrated attacks. 

Finally, in any lane, if your lane opponent has decided to back off and return to base, that is the perfect time to ward. Any engagement against the Jungler is probably going to be one-on-one, which you are almost assuredly going to win or be able to flee from (unless the Jungler is Lee Sin because seriously, let's give a character an escape, gap closer, burst, and execute. In the same move.), and you can possibly loot a few Jungle camps along the way if you aren't harried by the enemy team.

However, before you go off to ward, push the lane into the enemy's tower. Not only do you add a bit of damage to the tower that is eventually going to add up, dead minions are minions your enemy can't profit from. Ultimately, by pushing up hard, you deny them vision of what you're doing. Are you in their Jungle, are you going to gank, or are you actually just going back to base yourself? They don't know, and that's where you want them.

League is a game of information, and the more complete information you have, the more likely you are to make the right decisions, which in turn win you the game. That's why warding is so prominent and important in all levels of play, because even the simplest wards placed at Baron and Dragon in the late game can give your side the edge when it comes to positioning and ambushing. These wards to dive, which seem kind of superfluous at glance, aren't necessary when playing, but give you more information on whether you can win a dive and can be as crucial as knowing the cooldown on the other person's Barrier or knowing how to layer your crowd control.

The more people who participate in this vision battle, warding deep to give your team comprehensive coverage, the more information you as a team gain, and the more "risky" plays you can make, as a dive on Sona isn't risky if you know four enemies are top. 

 

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