League of Legends 101 – Warding & Vision

Wards have always been a key element to League of Legends, however it was not until professional players popularized playing around it that it was often used in your own games.

Of course, early on it was only the support buying wards with occasionally a laner buying one. Nevertheless, after the introduction of trinkets, limitation on the number of wards placed and removing normal wards from the shop, playing around vision became even more important. Today we take you through a warding 101 guide from the early game reaching all the way to the later stages of the game.

Early game – Laningphase

Before the laningphase

An important misconception is that placing wards before the minions spawn is a bad thing. That is not entirely true and there are a lot of ways to use vision this early on. The most important one is protecting your side of the map from any level one plays the enemy could make. If you are unable to guard a part of your jungle because someone in your team is late from base grabbing a snack or making a solo play, place a ward to defend the entrance this person is not guarding. You can also use it more aggressively as you can walk with multiple people into the enemy jungle to place a ward and try and spot the enemy jungler. This way you can predict his pathing and anticipate his ganks.

Make sure that whenever you place a ward and someone spots it, they can always clear it with a sweeper. If an enemy sololaner is nearby, he might gain enough experience to level up on the first minion wave. The threshold for this is 6% experience and is gained when there is a maximum of three people nearby the killing of the ward.

Protecting your lane

When entering your lane, you are usually in a one on one or two on two, but this is not a given. The enemy jungler, or yours, will always try to look for a gank to affect the lanes in a positive way for their team. A classical way of denying the enemy jungler to gank you is by placing a ward close to your lane to spot the gank from the enemy jungler. You can also use a ward to gain vision-control of the bushes in the lane to better play out your lane. This is only useful if gain an advantage with the vision in the bush.

Warding duo

Placing a ward to protect your lane is not enough to fully stop a gank. The best way is to team up with your jungler to place wards deeper in the enemy jungle. This way you can spot the enemy jungler his pathing and, like said before, anticipating his ganks to set up counterganks.

Mid-game – Time for Rotations

Objectives

When entering the mid-game usually after 15 minutes or when the laning-phase ends, you look to contest more objectives. Sometimes, you sneak in a dragon or herald before this happens but from now on it is serious business. Both teams take time to set up for the objectives to contest it, so superior vision control is what can give you the edge over your opponent. Therefore, be early and place wards around the objective and defend it. And by saying early, we do mean early.

Wards have an expiration time of somewhat three minutes but control wards last forever. If you start placing the vision down one and a half minute before the objective spawns, you will have the best possible vision since the enemy team will not yet be in position. Next, do not forget to protect your wards as a team. That is usually the biggest mistake people make.

Deep vision

Around the mid-game playing for objectives will most likely result in teamfights. Having that one deep ward could set up the perfect flank teleport for someone in your team. So whenever you are looking to set up vision around an objective, place that one extra deep ward so your teammate with teleport can flank the enemy and win you the teamfight.

Late-game

One ward to rule them all

We talked about how important it is to place down vision to control the map so you can dominate it. In the later stages of the game, wards are cleared quite often and protecting wards can be quite a risk since one death could mean the end of it all. That is why you must move as a team and communicate on how to do it. Motivate your teammates to buy that one control ward as it will have insane value when placed in the right spot. You could spot an enemy out of position or you could even set up a death-bush to catch the enemy off-guard.

It all comes down to how willing you are on placing and protecting good wards. As League of Legends is a team-game, you must rely on your teammates to help you. It is important to motivate your team and to learn all the good warding-spots. There are many tricks in the book and some spots might not yet have been found, so experimenting with wards at times can be good as well. Good luck on the rift fellow summoners.

Also read:

• League of Legends 101: The most important jungle objectives
• The 5 best marksmen to climb in season 11 soloqueue

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Image credit: Riot Games