Warding and why you should do it

Warding is the strongest defence you can have to save you from ganks. Wards will give you the ability to spot ganks out before it's too late and will give you the time you need to get to safety or help you buy enough time for your team to back you up. If you watch competitive games you will notice the masses of wards that the teams will use and how they position them in order to save themselves from ganks and defend objectives and buffs.

 

Types of wards

1. Wards
This is a ward that allows you to see enemy movements within 60 feet of where it's placed. It does respect line of sight and can't see through walls. It remains for 3 minutes or until killed. You can only hold two at a time. You can only place three wards at a time. It can be destroyed. These wards only cost 50 gold each.

2. Sentry Wards
Sentry Wards do everything that normal wards do, however, they also allow you to see enemy wards and there is a carry limit of one at a time. They also cost considerably more at 135 gold and can be spotted by other sentry wards.

Where should wards be placed?

Wards are ideally placed all over the jungle so you know exactly where your enemies and where they are headed. Objectives like the Gold Fury and Fire Giant should be well warded and ideally with a sentry ward so that you can remove enemy wards from the area. Have a look at this picture in order to get a good idea of where to place wards to ensure good map coverage (please note that the picture would be in an ideal situation and it is unlikely your warding will look exactly like this). Remember that each player can only have 3 wards out at a time but that's 15 wards across your team if you all ward!

 

Warding doesn’t just save lives...

Warding objectives as I mentioned previously will save games. One easy Fire Giant can win a team a game so you want to be able to know if your opponents are trying to get the Fire Giant and it also will help the support gauge what time they can go in for a steal. With the knowledge of your opponents trying to do objectives you can also force them into a corner, which isn't a nice place to be in. This can result in your team getting objectives like Fire Giant and also possibly taking the win.

But isn’t warding expensive?

Each standard ward is 50 gold, you may only carry two standard wards and one sentry ward at any given time so you will not be spending masses of gold warding. By the middle to late game that gold is really worth it and honestly that 50 gold could and probably will save your life.

Using Sentry Wards

Sentry wards are strong but should really only be used for de-warding at the Gold Fury and Fire Giant. The reason you aren’t likely going to use them as frequently is that you can only carry one at a time and they are 135 gold each which isn’t as affordable as the standard wards which are only 50. Usually only supports will be seen carrying and placing these as it is part of their job description!

Is buying Eye of Providence worth it?

Eye of Providence is an active that will give you wards after a set amount of time. Rank 1 will give you a standard ward every 90 seconds, rank 2 the cooldown is 60 and at rank 3 it can place a sentry ward every 60 seconds. Mathematically it is cheaper to just buy wards as in order for your rank one to pay for itself then you have to ward six times. This will take 9 minutes to do and then 6 minutes to pay off for rank 2. After this it will only take three sentry wards for you to have paid off for rank 3 but overall that's 18 minutes of warding that could be done easier with just buying wards. The other problem being you can only place one ward at a time which simply isn't practical and will mean you will be buying wards as well as using Eye of Providence to ward.

Thanks for reading this short piece on warding. Let me know what you think in the comment section below and if you like it please pass it on! Wards win games!

Karma out!