Let's talk about wards

[rewarding]

Hello hello, as you may already know, I play support on a regular basis, and I feel that people are starting to catch up with the knowledge of common warding spots and when, why, and how to ward. So I'm here to reinforce that knowledge and give you guys a few tips and tricks to elevate your Dota games.

#1 Always sentry before your obs. Smoke before you obs.

This is very important. You don't want the other team to see where you've placed your observer ward. Sentries for dewarding are necessary since their advantage in that particular area goes away when the obs go down. So that SB that charges you out of nowhere can no longer charge you upon immediate vision. Etc, etc.

Another thing to remember is to place your obs in a location away from your sentry location because most likely, the enemy support will come with sentries, and if you've placed an obs near your sentry, it will go down too.

#2 Always carry obs when you are pushing. Especially when you are pushing high ground.

So observer wards aren't only meant for seeing the river. Oftentimes, you want vision behind the enemy tower, so you can see how they are positioned. That mag with a blink dagger sitting 800 units away ready for the 5 man RP - if one of your teammates have dagger & radiance, he can blink into that area, cancel the dagger, and from there, your team has the initiation advantage.

The initiation advantage is especially important when your team is preparing to rax. Placing an obs in the enemy base gives a world of difference in how you execute the raxing phase. When you don't have vision of the high ground, it is a wise idea to only let your carry hit the tower while the rest of your team spread out behind him out of sight.

#3 Situational warding

There are times where you become aware of specific item timings that the enemy team will reach. For example, it is a common timing for mid to have a bottle coming in their courier around 3 mins. I don't recommend that one places a ward behind the mid tower for that sort of play, but let's say that the AM is going for his battlefury which is around 14-16 mins if his farm is decent. Having an obs in the middle of Sentinel's forest, or inversely the Scourge forest, you will be able to see the courier flying in. Sniping that courier delays AM's other item timings by A LOT, since battlefury accelerates farm. Or, placing obs near the secret shop such as the mountain south of Sentinel's secret shop or right beside the shop keeper on the scourge side, you can delay that morphling or medusa from getting that very important skadi.

#4 Roshan

There are many different variations on how to obs Rosh, and these locations are situational based on timing, heroes, and players. That ursa is gonna get vlads around the 8-9 min mark, and he knows that if he goes straight the rosh pit, the other team will know already. So, he waits until he gets like lothars or dagger and tries to enter the rosh pit in clever ways. Therefore, there is no one correct location for obsing rosh, and sometimes, it's not that necessary. One of the few times you want vision in that area, is that a teamfight is brewing, and you want to see how they position themselves. Otherwise, having an obs near the rosh pit where players will hide and bait a play is a lot more useful.

#5 Sometimes, it is unnecessary to deward

There are obs locations that are absolute shit-tier locations; they are near useless, but the common phenomenon is that when you show up on the minimap in that obs range, the enemy team will probably respond and try to gank you. If you have prior knowledge that that obs exists whether through having your own obs placed there prior or by a good read, you can bait a play and have the teamfight to your advantage.


Anyway, I hope you guys will take this knowledge and use it in your Dota games.

LONG LIVE ICEFROG