In-depth guide to Warding
This guide covers several aspects of warding, including rune wards, general/ aggressive wards, jungle camp blocking wards and dewarding of jungle camps/ general wards.
I hope that you learn something from this guide or improve your knowledge about the warding mechanics.
Feel free to comment with improvements, and rate the guide if you like it :)
Introduction
ATTENTION: As of the latest patch 6.79 (on 21/10/2013) there have been some minor changes to wards. Firstly the duration of both the wards increased by 1 minute, observer wards provide a 50 gold bounty for destroying and sentries now only give vision of 150 units for 12 seconds after they're placed, after that they don't provide any vision. This hasn't changed any of the warding/ dewarding principles, instead has given even more incentive for supports to deward by giving gold in doing so.
Hello, in this guide I will attempt at sharing some decent ward spots on the Dota 2 map in order to give your team an advantage.
Many a time I see people either not placing wards at all, or placing them in locations which give very little vision and utility. So I have covered several aspects of successful warding in this guide; I have included general ward locations, ward spots to see runes, camp blocking wards as well as de-warding those camp wards.
I hope you learn something from this guide, because I know that I did so while practising my warding. If you do enjoy the guide please share it to others who would find it interesting. Thank you very much.
The Dota 2 Map
I will be using this map throughout my guide in order to show the
different areas which the ward covers, as well as making it easier to
pin point the exact location of the ward. Feel free to refer back to the
map if you aren't sure about the location.
The Basics
Common ward locations
These ward locations are commonly used in matches in order to provide
lots of vision of the surrounding area in order to prevent ganks and
avoid facing stronger enemy heroes.
I have only included 10 locations (5 for both dire and radiant) since I feel that these are placed frequently in matches due to the big vision that they give. However wards are situational, so you should only ward places that will be of use to your team, as well as warding a place not in this guide if you need vision in that area.
The most important point is that wards can be used both offensively and defensively, for example if you are about to take Tier 1 tower, it's good to place a ward behind the tower (though out of range of the tower vision) in order to see if any enemy heroes are coming.
I have only included 10 locations (5 for both dire and radiant) since I feel that these are placed frequently in matches due to the big vision that they give. However wards are situational, so you should only ward places that will be of use to your team, as well as warding a place not in this guide if you need vision in that area.
The most important point is that wards can be used both offensively and defensively, for example if you are about to take Tier 1 tower, it's good to place a ward behind the tower (though out of range of the tower vision) in order to see if any enemy heroes are coming.
Now these wards can decide the game for you at the crucial stage of the game; placing a ward in an enemy base, not only gives you vision of how many there are, but also what items they have for the teamfight.
Rune warding
Simply put, these wards give the best vision of the rune spots and their surrounding areas. However they are also common de-warding locations so sometimes it pays to place sentry wards in the locations yourself (see later section De-warding).
Warding the neutral camps
Placing wards in order to block a neutral camp from spawning is not a
common sight in most public games, since most games you don't have a
proper hard supports doing everything to give their carry an advantage.
However this strategy can make a considerable difference to the game's outcome. The games in which you would want to ward the enemy team's jungle are generally those where they have a dedicated jungler who stays in the jungle for most of the early/mid game, or when the enemy team is pulling the medium camp on the safe lane into the creeps (and by doing so denying you both XP and gold). By denying them parts of their own jungle, the jungler is forced to move into a lane, or the team has to invest in sentry wards and attempt to de-ward your wards. Which costs them time, gold and XP.
In most games I would recommend only warding the medium camp on the safe lane so the supports can't stack and pull that camp. However if they do have a item reliant jungler your team can consider placing 2 or 3 wards in the enemy jungle to completely shut down their safe lane.
Bear in mind that each of the camp wards that I show below are my own preference, and you don't have to put them in that exact place to gain similar effects; I have tried to find ward spots that provide the most utility of vision and camp blocking. I have added a blue outline to show the spawn-box of the camp, placing a ward anywhere in that area would prevent the camp from spawning.
However this strategy can make a considerable difference to the game's outcome. The games in which you would want to ward the enemy team's jungle are generally those where they have a dedicated jungler who stays in the jungle for most of the early/mid game, or when the enemy team is pulling the medium camp on the safe lane into the creeps (and by doing so denying you both XP and gold). By denying them parts of their own jungle, the jungler is forced to move into a lane, or the team has to invest in sentry wards and attempt to de-ward your wards. Which costs them time, gold and XP.
In most games I would recommend only warding the medium camp on the safe lane so the supports can't stack and pull that camp. However if they do have a item reliant jungler your team can consider placing 2 or 3 wards in the enemy jungle to completely shut down their safe lane.
Bear in mind that each of the camp wards that I show below are my own preference, and you don't have to put them in that exact place to gain similar effects; I have tried to find ward spots that provide the most utility of vision and camp blocking. I have added a blue outline to show the spawn-box of the camp, placing a ward anywhere in that area would prevent the camp from spawning.
Warding the radiant neutral camps
Warding the dire neutral camps
De-warding
I will try and go over the more useful areas to place sentry wards,
which are the general areas where the opposing team should be placing
the wards.
De-warding is both very situational, and very handy. Generally you don't de-ward unless you need to make sure the enemy doesn't have any vision in that area. A useful indicator that you need to de-ward, is when the enemy team backs off when you're heading towards the safe lane through the jungle, this means that they have a ward in there somewhere, guaranteeing them vision of ganks. It is also clear sometimes that a support has warded an area if you see them approach a spot and then retreat in the opposite direction. Another instance when you might want to de-ward is if you are about to kill Roshan, then de-warding the entrance is key to not letting the other team see you (though they will suspect something is going on).
De-warding is both very situational, and very handy. Generally you don't de-ward unless you need to make sure the enemy doesn't have any vision in that area. A useful indicator that you need to de-ward, is when the enemy team backs off when you're heading towards the safe lane through the jungle, this means that they have a ward in there somewhere, guaranteeing them vision of ganks. It is also clear sometimes that a support has warded an area if you see them approach a spot and then retreat in the opposite direction. Another instance when you might want to de-ward is if you are about to kill Roshan, then de-warding the entrance is key to not letting the other team see you (though they will suspect something is going on).
De-warding radiant neutral camps
De-warding dire neutral camps
Notes
Thank you very much for reading through this guide, if you like it then feel free to comment and rate it, and if you have any improvements, then make a comment and I'll see what I can do about it :)
Credit to Blue Ghost games for the original spawn box plot (http://imgur.com/a/HpCjm#0)!
Shout out to Gaz and CyberDragon for helping me with this guide!
By f334r - Dota 2 Guides - Steam Community
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