Full disclosure: Part of the reason I’ve been so bad at keeping up this blog is that I’ve actually been working as an analyst and IT consultant for Origen. It makes me a bit sad that I haven’t been producing much content but it’s very cool that it results in cool opportunities like this guest post from an LCS coach! (Edit: To all my newly loyal readers, feel free to follow me @n_t_k_ng, where I will update you on any new bit of analysis or content I’m posting here.)

Introduction

Hello! I’m Titus “LeDuck” Hafner, currently working as the Origen Orihen coach.

I was finally able to find some free time and before I start throwing myself into the preparation for the next week, I decided to write a short article to thank you guys for the amazing support you have given us so far. I will share with you a cool system I devised for both casual and competitive players to use to improve their gameplay!

The Pingwheel

As you know the Pingwheel was introduced quite a while ago and has been a great asset to many players. However there has been an ongoing complaint, which is that there is no ping to indicate that an enemy ward has been placed. So instead of waiting for this feature, why not create it ourselves?

Introducing – The Wardwheel

We have four pings available.

Enemy Missing (Yellow) Danger (Red) On My Way (Green) Assist Me (Blue)

Here we are going to do the first step, which is color association. We associate the color of the YELLOW trinket with the YELLOW ping, the GREEN ward with the GREEN ping and the PINK ward with the RED ping since the colors are rather close to each other. We are also using the BLUE ping for teleport, since there are no other types of wards and teleport is another useful cooldown to track. The key is that with these pings, we are able to track not only the location of wards on the minimap, but also we can use chat to track the timers!

Timers

Every ping on the ward wheel is mentioned in chat, meaning that if you use this system, every ward and teleport is automatically timestamped. Instead of writing a timer in chat or guessing in voice comms, the ward wheel gives a one-button system to keep track of many important cooldowns.

So next time you see an enemy place a ward (or teleport), you use the appropriate ping. With this single action you did three things.

You showed your team (if they know this system) WHERE the enemy placed his ward with the help of the minimap. Your team knows WHICH type of ward he placed (trinket, green, pink). Therefore, you know WHEN the ward will expire and you can set up a play or gank around this information.

Tips and Tricks

If you want to continue using the pingwheel for its actual purpose, use different amount of pings. A single ping means they placed a trinket, 2-3 pings following each other means the enemy is missing. You can assign a new meaning to the pings. Maybe “Assist Me” means a fight just started and you can use this ping to backtrack the fight to time their flashes afterwards. Don’t forget that the trinket stays for two minutes after lvl 9. Try using this system in soloq as well, once you managed to ping wards on reflex it will be a great asset for your team and especially your jungler in teamplay. Pay attention to the enemy inventory. It will be easier to quickly use the appropriate ping, if you know that he is only able to use a certain type of ward. Tell your jungler when certain wards are about to expire, so you can create very efficient gank paths and catch your opponent by surprise. Use the expand chat history hotkey (usually Y / Z ) to look for your timer.

Final Word

Next time you play in ranked with your jungler or team, try using the Wardwheel.

Once everybody starts using it in the laning phase you can heavily improve your gank efficiency, and your jungler can avoid wasting his time in a brush that is warded. From solo queue all the way up to the LCS, being able to consistently track enemy wards is extremely valuable and will help any player improve his or her teamplay and laning phase.

This concludes my short lesson, hopefully this will help you guys to improve as a player / team!

Want to know more about the guy behind the glasses?

Follow @OGLeDuck on twitter.