Although frequently overlooked by beginners, warding is a crucial aspect to winning games. The main purpose of warding is to provide vision, which in turn gives you important information such as rune spawns and enemy movement. We’ll cover three things:

Basic information about warding. Obtaining useful vision. Common ward spots.

Note that the focus of this article is to cover warding for the purpose of obtaining vision. Although important, this article does not cover warding to block camps or counter-warding.

Basics

When someone refers to warding, they often mean buying and using an observer ward to provide vision somewhere on the map.

Observer Wards

An observer ward provides vision in a 1600 radius circle around the point that it is placed. This vision is ground vision, meaning that the vision that the ward provides is blocked by trees and does not reveal higher-level terrain.

Observer wards are consumable items that you can purchase at the main shop for 150 gold. Each set of observer wards comes with two charges (so you can place two wards). The shop initially has only one set of observer wards in stock. The shop will have a maximum of two sets in stock. Each set takes six minutes to restock.

To use an observer ward, select the ward then click on the ground where you would like to place your ward. You can transfer individual observer ward charges by selecting the ward and clicking on an allied hero.

Vision

Vision is extremely important, as it gives you the information you need to make better decisions. Without using spells or items, you gain vision from three sources: allied towers, allied creeps, and allied heroes. Towers and creeps give you limited useful vision because you can’t directly control what vision they provide. Heroes can provide very useful vision. However, using your hero as a scout can be dangerous and inefficient.

This problem is dealt with by using relevant spells and items to obtain vision. As you can guess, observer wards are one of the best tools for the job.

Useful Vision

Not all wards are created equal. At the start of the game, warding your jungle is not nearly as useful as warding the top rune. As the game goes on, this gets reversed; warding your jungle becomes more useful than warding the top rune. When warding, you want to make sure that your wards provide useful information to your team.

So, what is considered useful information? That depends on a variety of factors, including hero composition, the game time, and whether you are winning or losing. However, the information you’re interested in obtaining will almost always be one of two things:

Enemy hero positioning.

Valuable map resources (runes and Roshan).

The latter is fairly straightforward. There are a variety of situations where knowing your opponent’s positioning is useful, including:

Spotting incoming ganks.

Knowing when and where your opponent is farming.

Seeing your opponent’s positioning before a team fight.

Knowing if your opponent is looking to take or avoid a fight.

Determining Useful Vision

It’s easy to understand what kind of vision is useful. However, it takes experience to be able to identify where you should be warding during an actual game.

As mentioned, what is considered useful depends on factors including hero composition, game time, and whether you are winning or losing. Many of these factors are often related. There are three factors that we want to pay particular attention to: the game status, your team’s intent, and your opponent’s intent.

Game status doesn’t have a precise definition. Loosely, it’s the concrete strengths and weaknesses of each team at a point in time. This includes aspects such as towers taken, item progression, and relative levels. It doesn’t include factors such as where heroes are currently positioned.

A team’s intent is (or should be) the team’s best course of action to win the game. This could be one or more of many things: farming lanes, farming the jungle, avoiding ganks, ganking, pushing, taking Roshan, taking a team fight, etc. A team’s intent is often influenced by the game status. A team that has taken all outer towers is likely interested in taking Roshan and then pushing their opponent’s base. A team that is losing is often interested in finding farm while also avoiding ganks and unfavorable engagements.

As you start thinking about game status and team intent, it becomes more apparent where you need to gain vision. If your team wants to farm the jungle, get vision of the jungle entrances. If either team is looking to take Roshan, get vision of entrances to the Roshan pit. If the opposing team is looking to gank or fight, get vision of paths that they will likely walk through.

Examples

At the beginning of the game, both teams are aiming to win their lanes by farming the lanes and obtaining kills where possible. As a result, you’ll usually already have vision of the opposing team. When you don’t, you want to know where a missing hero is going. Runes are important during this phase of the game, as they can decide which lanes are won or lost. Roshan is pretty unimportant, as teams are very unlikely to be doing Roshan this early. Taking all of these into account, we see that we don’t need wards to help us find our opponents. Instead, we want wards that spot runes. Ideally, our wards should also cover common paths that a hero might take to gank another lane.

There is a lot more hero movement as the laning phase ends. Teams become more interested in ganking lanes, helping out in early skirmishes, and possibly pushing tier 1 towers. They’ll be moving or missing more often. Some carries are strong enough at this point to start finding farm in the jungle. Runes are less important because teams are often more grouped up, but they can still be useful. Teams are slightly more likely to be able to do Roshan at this point. Again, this helps us determine what kind of vision is important—we want vision that spots heroes and their movement. This allows us to determine where our opponents want to apply pressure and where their defenses are weaker. To apply pressure, our opponents have to cross the river (often into our jungle). Accordingly, we want vision of jungle and river entrances. Heroes also often group up at towers, both for offense and defense. This means that you’ll want a lane ward that spots the area near your opponent’s tower. (Most of the time you’ll want a ward covering mid lane. You’ll want to cover your safe lane if your opponent is being aggressive. Likewise, get vision of your opponent’s safe lane if you’re being aggressive.)

The reasoning in these examples is something that any player can do! It just requires evaluating what is going on in the game.

A Few Tips

Here are a few more tips to improve your warding.

Tailor your wards to where you think your opponent will hide. If your opponent has a Pudge, get vision of where you think he will hook from.

Warding should occur often. Get in the habit of buying wards whenever they are in stock. Aim to have at least two wards on the map at all times.

If you are placing wards to protect an area, place your wards such that they cover the entrances to that area. This is especially true when you want to make your jungle safe to farm. Your ward should spot your opponents as they are approaching you, not when they’re already on top of you!

to that area. This is especially true when you want to make your jungle safe to farm. Your ward should spot your opponents as they are approaching you, not when they’re already on top of you! Your wards should often define (imaginary) territory where your team feels safe or spot out your opponents where they feel safe. As the game progresses and towers fall, you should feel that some areas of the map are safe, some are neutral, and some are dangerous. This is flipped for your opponent; regions where you feel safe are often dangerous for them and vice versa. Your wards should cover these areas so that you know when your opponent enters your safe region or leaves their safe region. If you’re losing, focus on warding the border that defines your safe territory. If you’re winning, focus on warding the border that defines your opponent’s safe territory.

Common Ward Spots

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of warding. Let’s look at some common ward spots. These are the basic spots that every player should learn, although there are several common spots not included here. Remember than any ward is a good ward if it gets you the vision you need.

Rune Wards

These wards give you vision of the rune spawns.

This ward also reveals the Roshan pit and a Radiant jungle entrance.

Reveals Roshan pit.

Reveals Roshan pit. Note that this spot can be warded from where Furion is standing.

Reveals an entrance into the Radiant jungle.

Also shows the Radiant ancients.

Reveals an entrance into the Dire jungle.

Lane Wards

These are wards that give you more vision in a lane. These particular wards are placed to give vision around towers as well.

Gives vision of the Dire bottom tier 1 tower.

Gives vision behind the Radiant bottom tier 1 tower.

Gives vision of the Dire middle tier 1 tower.

Gives vision of the Radiant middle tier 1 tower.

Gives vision of the Radiant top tier 1 tower.

Gives vision behind the Dire top tier 1 tower.

Jungle Wards

These wards help you catch people walking through the jungle.

This ward spot is called the magic bush. It stops the Radiant hard and easy camps from spawning.

Base Wards

These sneaky wards give you vision as you try to push into your opponent’s tier 3 towers. They can all be placed from outside of the base.

Shows the Radiant bottom and middle tier 3 towers.

Shows the Radiant top and middle tier 3 towers.

Shows the Dire top and middle tier 3 towers.

Shows the Dire bottom and middle tier 3 towers.

Additional Ward Spots

You can find many more ward spots by searching online and watching other players’ games. This guide does a great job at compiling many (but not all) useful ward spots.