Should a Carry or Mid player buy wards?
Carry, mid, and core players should communicate with the supports, respect and protect them, help warding, and buy observer and sentry wards when necessary.
The majority of players genuinely doesn’t know the best place to put a ward in a specific situation.
Usually, they utilize the same standard ward spots in every game. Those help, but wards should be planted according to the strategy adopted by the team.
Communicate with your supports
If you keep asking for wards while in a lane, the support will often provide vision on that side of the map.
Your teammate doesn’t know what’s in your mind
If a minute later you decide to leave the lane and farm elsewhere, you will waste his ward and move in an unsafe area.
Talk with your team and explain the plan, or at least where you need vision. Depending on it, the wards must be placed in different locations.
You could gank the enemy jungle, push one of the lanes, or just farm in your side of the map - the supports need to know what’s your goal to determine the optimal ward points.
How you ask for help is also critical
Supporting is one of the most stressing activities in Dota 2, and the community is tired to play with people that keep pinging and spamming in chat: “We need wards”.
If you treat the supports with disrespect, often they will tilt, stop doing their job, and even throw the game. Be friendly and judicious, and if they really don’t care, just stop talking: continuing will trigger some people and cause flame in chat.
Image by @JINX
Help warding
For many supports, placing a ward in an unconventional spot is a real suicide mission. If they lack mobility skills, even warding the rivers can be dangerous, as an enemy passing by it could easily kill them.
Assist and protect. Follow the support and protect him when he is warding in an unsafe area.
Your role doesn’t matter. If you have a hero with great mobility, blink, invisibility, or any other good escape skill, just ask the support to drop the wards, and place them yourself.
When pushing or ganking, you really want some aggressive wards in the enemy jungle, or around the tier 2-3 towers, but that’s hard for most heroes as it requires a long trip with high odds of dying.
Many players will be grateful if you plant the wards - less work and risks for them. Just be careful with your words. I know that this is the second time I am alerting you, but this is Dota. People are used to bad teammates, so they easily get offended and rarely expect respectful players.
Buy the wards
If you are a hero with good farming skills, and require wards in specific areas of the map to do your job, just buy them. Investing 160 gold for two wards will greatly improve your survival chances, create a safer environment for the team, and even give you more opportunities for ganks.
A typical example is Anti-Mage
You are a split-pusher with a great mobility, and honestly 160 gold are nothing for a hero with such an amazing farming speed. Combined with the blink and magic resistance, two wards are more than enough to protect you when pushing the lanes or farming the enemy jungle.
For 80 gold you end up losing hundreds
Vision in the right place, mobility, and map awareness can make many heroes practically immortal. Saving the cost of a ward isn’t worth the risk of getting ganked or scoring a kill yourself.
Buy your own sentries as well
A sentry ward only costs 100 gold, and dewarding an observer ward gives a 100 gold bounty - you are literally losing nothing. Isn’t it better to just deward yourself than keep spamming the chat?
Boost the team’s morale
Honestly, I played many games as a support in the past weeks, and almost never received help when warding.
Supports don’t expect any help, they just do their job because otherwise no one else would do it, and they want to win the game. Stay assured they will be very grateful for any cooperation.
Take some burden off your supports, it will enhance the morale of the entire team and lead to better games.
If you plan to improve your Dota 2 matches, find out also why playing a jungler in 7.07 is such a bad idea.
Header Image: Valve
