Surviving Matchmaking: Warding Off the Terrible

When my stack and I play “for serious”, I always play support. It’s not that they are necessarily more skilled than I am, though it certainly started that way, it’s more along the lines that I simply understand the role more, and while it may sound like I’m tooting my own horn a little (definitely am), I’ve really grown into a bang-up support player. You have to have a weird mindset when you’re playing a support, one of keeping your team in the game until you reach a point of sheer uselessness.

That’s right, if you do your job as a support, the game will reach a time when your teammates will carry your ass all the way to the ancient. Sounds terribly boring and horrifically thankless, doesn’t it? You betcha. But that’s fine, because if you do your job as a support there’s no reason to ever hear from a single one of those sniveling Anti-Mage first-pickers.

Of course, the easiest way for these one track minded plebs to tell that you're doing an awful job of supporting is by your warding. When I first started supporting, I would place those wards on the rune spots like clockwork (not the hero he doesn’t buy wards because he’s a robot) and leave it at that. It was enough to get my teammates off my back, plus the mid player had some fairly sizeable rune control as a result. Except that one guy, he would tell me every damn time they fell down and would criticize me for not having them up again. I’d have them back already if you’d stop bottle crowing for two seconds. It’s not going to make you stop losing the lane to a Templar Assassin as Batrider; but I digress.

It turns out that rune wards aren’t the end-all of warding locations. Unexpectedly, it seems that most of the game is played well outside the vision of those wards. This is a frustrating truth as I’d really just like to see where my enemies are all the time. I’d rather not get caught with my pants down by a double damage Queen of Pain, and I’m sure the carry you’re supporting would echo that sentiment. So instead we have to settle for warding where that vision would be the most effective in saving (or perhaps taking) lives. An aggressive trilane would benefit tremendously from being able to see behind an enemy’s tower to know when an opposing support is attempting a pull. Your mid would love to be able to see that squishy jungler to get a free kill and cut down on his/her uncontested income.

Red dots are my typical rune warding spots, and blue dots are some aggressive/defensive warding locations that could potentially be of use.  Not a definitive list

As such, there’s no perfect place to place your wards every game and it takes a keen positioning sense to understand what gives you the best chance to win. Like I said earlier, you truly are a means to an end (the end being your farmers are stronger than the opposition's) and you have to be able to sit back and look at the big picture. If your carry needs a long game to maximize his efficiency (Phantom Lancer, Faceless Void), place your wards defensively so that they can see when their death is imminent. If your team is an early bloomer, put your wards in effective dive places (between towers, enemy's jungle) so that your gankers have a better idea of when going for a kill is actually the correct decision.

Would you look at that, I went off on a long rant about ward positioning and I didn’t even talk about the fact that you have to actually buy them. Yea, you. Even if it’s not technically your job, just do it. Stop sulking because the lone support-capable hero Elder Titan got his Hyperstone before he bothered buying a single ward. Suck it up and get ‘em, because they make you and your team’s life easier and can prevent poisonous bickering. When solo-queue midding, I even like to buy a set regardless of the situation in order to make sure my backside is safe, as well as my ne'er-do-well teammates. Who knows, maybe your example will make the supports of your team roused enough to buy a set of their own (or at least give ammunition to validate your all chat complaining).

"Sometimes, I like to put one ward down next to my other ward so I can see when the first one goes down."

"But whenever I try to ward I then forget to replace them after they’ve gone down!" Do I have a surprise for you! Here’s my system for how to ensure you keep your wards up. Careful though, this is in a highly complex numeric form and might be confusing to some readers.

1. Place Wards.
2. Get 150 gold.
3. Buy new set upon completion of 2.
4. Check minimap. If wards are still up, repeat 4. If wards are gone, return to 1.

Rocket surgery. Stick to this plan and you’ll be the best warder that normal matchmaking has ever seen. You can always start buying sentries for counterwarding as well but let’s get the basics down before we go all crazy.

Warding is a necessary step to stop being ‘terrible’ at Dota and start being just ‘not good’. After all, the game is, all joking aside, really hard, and anything that can make the process of getting better a more enjoyable venture is definitely worth it. Trust me, I’ve been ‘not good’ for a while now and can’t see any point in the future that I’ll make it to ‘decent’. Wards help to make sure that everyone is in the right position to win the lane/fight/game, and if you do that, you just might make it through 3 games in a row without a brain aneurysm. No guarantees.