League of Legends Guide: 10 Tips to Improve Your Warding

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League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games. /

If you’re struggling knowing when, where, and with what to ward, our League of Legends guide on warding will help bring up your vision score!

Warding is one of the most fundamentally misunderstood concepts in League of Legends. Players in lower elos often do it poorly or (worse) don’t do it at all. Some of that is due to laziness, but most of it is due to lack of fundamental knowledge of how to properly ward, which is what prompted this latest League of Legends guide.

Today, I will explain some of the very fundamentals of warding. While I’m certainly not an expert, nor a support main, I will give some easy tips that can help you at least improve your warding.

Before we start, though, one quick note about vision score. While it’s not worth getting into an argument with teammates about their poor vision scores (just like it’s not worth getting on them about their KDA) you should know that in professional play the average vision score per minute for solo laners and ADCs is about 1 vision score per minute, 1.5 is the average for junglers, and supports tend to be a bit over 2. If your vision score is close to that in your solo queue games, congratulations, but if it isn’t this League of Legends guide can help improve your warding.

1. Realize That It’s Your Job to Ward

I realize this is a bit of a “no duh” tip, but it’s important to start a League of Legends guide on warding with this basic concept. You, person reading this article, need to ward in every single game. Whether that’s warding your lane to avoid ganks, warding the enemy jungle to track the jungler, warding late game objectives like Baron or Elder Dragon to make sure the enemy team isn’t sneaking it, warding is everyone’s job.

Every time you have the max charges on your yellow ward, you should be looking to drop one of them. Whether it’s just warding the pixel brush on either side of mid lane or one of the lane brushes in top or bottom, putting down some vision is better than the actual nothing you are doing by having unused wards in your inventory.

2. Buy Control Wards

Another “duh” tip, but the number of times I see myself on my alternate account (where I’m trying to learn mid lane) having the most control wards bought is baffling. You should always be looking to buy control wards, but especially having them during the mid and late game is crucial.

At that time, you’re going to have fewer item slots after your boots and first completed item are locked in. Instead of buying a Ruby Crystal or Amplifying Tome to get a few stats, buy a couple of control wards to place around a key objective. If you have potions, consider selling them and getting a control ward instead. In both cases, the ward that helps you defend an objective or keep your teammates from dying is far more valuable than that extra 150 health or 20 AP.

3. Make Sure You Have the Right Trinket

There are countless times I see the game end at 30 or 40 minutes and one team has all yellow wards. If you want to improve your vision score easily, make sure you are switching your yellow wards as soon as possible to the correct trinket. Below is a (very general) League of Legends guide to which trinket you want based on your role and champion type.

Top lane: yellow ward
Jungler: sweeper (unless you’re playing something like Lee Sin)
Mid laner (mage): blue ward
Mid laner (assassin): sweeper
Mid laner (fighter): yellow ward
ADC: blue ward
Support: sweeper

By the end of the game, your team should (hopefully) have at least two sweepers, one yellow ward, and one blue ward on its members. If your team is lacking at least one of these trinkets, you should pick that one up, even if it is not ideal for your role/champion.

4. Get Deep Vision Early if You Can

Most people will ward their lane brush and that’s it. However, it’s far more valuable to get wards down in the enemy jungle so you and your own jungler can keep tabs on them.

Knowing where the enemy jungler is, and more importantly, where he isn’t, is as or more valuable than just warding around your lane. If you see the enemy jungler on a camp or pathing between camps, you know if they’re on your side of the map. If you see camps up, you know the enemy jungler will likely be pathing from the other side of the jungle towards the camps and if you don’t see camps up, you know the enemy jungler was just there and to be cautious.

5. Move Your Control Wards

This is a corollary to the “buy more control wards” section of this League of Legends guide, but those control wards do no good if you’re just putting them down and leaving them for the whole game. Your aim should be to always have an extra control ward to move it near the next big objective that will be taking place.

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