DotA Focus: Wards and Vision 2/2

There are two type of wards in-game:

A) Observer Wards

• 200g
• Limited stock, shop can hold maximum of 2
• Stock has a 6 minute cooldown
• Lasts for 6 minutes
• Two charges per purchase. When planted, it grants large radius of vision.

B) Sentry wards

• 200g
• Unlimited stock
• Lasts for 3 minutes
• Two charges per purchase
• When planted, gives players ability to detect invisible units around the ward

Let me begin by saying that there are two types of warding: offensive warding, and defensive warding. Now, no one really officially labeled this but it's just how I refer to it.

Offensive warding is most useful when a team is fighting for map control, or already owns it. It could happen when a team has lost map control, but that's very rare. Most of offensive warding takes place on the opponent's side of river. The goal is to provide vision to seek an opportune moment to gank.

Obviously, players feel more secure while on their side of river, and they often jungle if the lane is pushed too far or straight up too dangerous to lane for whatever reason(getting owned in lane or ganked in lane).

Here are some locations for offensive warding if you are playing scourge.
This one shows ancient creep spawn, the rune spawn, and partial vision of mid which is nice.


This one is also really nice. This is near the bottom rune, and with this you can see the glimpse rune to the bottom, and partially see the creep spawn to the left near mid tower. The platform there is actually a pretty important passage.

You should be careful if you are going to ward here. It's kind of tricky. If you mis-plant it even by a bit, it won't grant vision to the left. The method I use is simple, see those little bumps? I see them as "knuckles" of a fist. I place it between second and third knuckles.

Here's another one, this one is a very aggressive, sweet spot though.



Defensive warding happens the most when a team has lost the map control. The main goal of defensive warding is to prevent ganks from happening. They mainly focus on having vision to paths where a ganks may come from.

Here's an example of a defensive ward if you are scourge. With this location, you can see the bottom rune spawn, and see what kind of dangers are coming from that path.



Wards locations are very simple once you know them. Really, one team's offensive location is the other team's defensive location. Like this one.


Here are the mid ramp ward location I talked about in the first part of this entry.





Remember!!
The definition of the warding types are not dictated by the location, but rather the purpose it serves.

(In all honesty, I labeled it for sake of labeling. You don't need to know these terms I use. But just understand how it all applies and why it's important.)

You can go on finding about your own unique allocation of wards for offensive or defensive purposes. Few things to consider when warding:

• DotA is a 3D RTS game, meaning high grounds can give you better field of vision.
• If you plant wards near neutral creep camps, they will not spawn until ward is expired or killed.

When you notice that the enemy team is warding. You can start countering their wards. Buy sentry wards and simply plant where the ward may be(or if you already know, more power to you). You could even buy necronomicon(a.k.a “book”) if your hero is fitting enough. Book 3 will provide a summoned unit that has sentry vision.

Of course, you don't have to counter-ward. But be reasonable why. If you believe you can outplay the enemy, that's fine. You can evaluate your enemy on your own terms and decide what to do.

You can also use the fact that they're warding to your advantage. You know that they're warding, and that gives a sense of security to enemy because they see you. And you can play around with that idea. You show them only what you want to show, and use fog of war to gank succesfully. Achieving this can frustrate the opponent team even more, making them play worse.

We are all human, guys. So use that human nature to your advantage.
It's part of what makes DotA a great game.

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Man, it's such a ***** writing this on open document then transferring it here. It doesn't save any of spacing at all. I have to manually space them out again. Maybe I should just start writing and drafting all these here.


As always, all and any comments are welcome.

P.S - eff you kyle for saying this game is dead. YOU ARE DEAD!!