Heroes of Newerth

Wards are quite possibly the most cost effective items in the whole of Heroes of Newerth. A well placed Ward of Sight can save multiple allies lives, and cost roaming enemies theirs, and all for as low as 200 gold every 6 minutes.

The Tools

Ward of Sight
Wards of Sight have a Sight Range of 1600, day or night, are invisible, and last 6 minutes. They can not reveal invisible units. This is your basic, and most useful Ward. Because of that there is a limit of 2 sets that the shop will have in stock at one time, and a restocking time of 2 minutes for each set. A good team will try to always have at least two of these up.

Ward of Revelation
Wards of Revelation have a sight range of 200, are invisible, last 3 minutes, and reveal invisibly heroes, items, and wards in an 800 radius. The main use of these is to counter an enemies ward placement. Players will often place these along with a Ward of Sight near the runes, to kill any enemy wards in place there and help keep control of the runes. Because of their unlimited in-stock quantity, these can be used to watch narrow paths that enemies may be using a lot in trying to gank you. They have half the lifetime of Ward of Sight though, so they are twice as expensive to maintain.

Buying Wards

Always buy wards. From the very start of the game to the very end, someone on each team should always be buying wards. It sounds expensive, but it's really the best way to win a game. When they are constantly bought and well placed it can almost seem like your team is map hacking. It's only 34 gold per minute to maintain, and it doesn't have to always be the same person buying them. With a collective gold per minute of at least 700 there is no excuse for a team to not buy wards. I say "team" because there are heroes who require less farm to be effective, so those heroes should be buying them before the others, although there aren't any huge problems with other heroes buying wards themselves.

The "Ward Bitches"

While every team should have wards all the time, not every hero should buy them. Some heroes, like carries, require a lot of expensive items to be effective. This section is not about them, and will not list them in an effort to keep players from thinking that they shouldn't buy wards because they are on whatever imaginary list there would be of heroes that "can't" buy wards. They can, but the following are some of the most common heroes to buy massive amounts of wards during the game, sometimes without any help from the other heroes.



Aside from those heroes, in the early stages of the game heroes classed as "gankers" often buy wards. They will be roaming a lot in the first fifteen minutes of the game or so, and as such will be in a great position to place the wards while traveling between lanes.

Placing the Wards

The only real "bad" places to put wards would be one with such restricted vision as to almost not reveal anything except the Ward of Sight itself, or a location where the enemy team has True Sight of (such as next to an enemy tower). That being said, there are some places that can be more effective than others. When they are more effective is entirely up to the situation a team finds themselves in, but we can group these locations into three very general, non-map specific categories.

The Obvious Places

The most obvious places to put wards are around the runes. They give vision of the rune itself, and a normally well traveled lane. These are very effective spots to ward, especially in the early stages of the game, but are very obvious. These spots normally are surrounded in more ward aggression than other places on the map, which is to say there will normally be a Ward of Revelation around so that enemy wards can be destroyed. Because of that, it can be difficult to maintain, and sometimes will not be worth Warding. A Ward of Sight is worth very little if destroyed.

Slightly less obvious are Jungle Wards. These are wards placed in either the enemy jungle or your own with the intent of either disabling spawns, or protecting an allied jungler. The most obvious of these are placed in the creep camp the enemy team would use to pull. It doesn't always have to be used to disable the spawn however. Sometimes it is better used, for one example, to watch the camp so that a strong double disable lane can gank a carry/babysit lane when they are separated and one is away from the tower.

The Situational Places

Wards classified as situational are typically in locations that will only be useful for the next minute or two, and will not be maintained for any longer amount of time. Because of this, they are less likely to be countered by Wards of Revelation. Just because they are not in a place that will be maintained though, does not mean they make for weak ward placement. Quite to the contrary, actually a ward placed behind a defended enemy tower, or dropped in lane as an enemy is pushing towards you can allow your initiators to know the exact moment they would be most effective. Having this kind of intelligence in a full team battle can aid greatly in a genocide in your favor, which definitely moves your team into a more dominant position. The basic rule for these is that if you feel you would like to see an area that enemies are, or more often will be in, you should place a ward in a position with line of sight to that area so that you can see whatever it is you wanted to.

Places People Might Not Think Of

Sometimes, when nothing seems to be working, you have to reach deep into a bag of tricks and pull out something your enemy may not have thought of. In these (rare) situations you can use a Ward of Revelation to see a few tight choke points on the map that may help you inch your way to map dominance, or at least away from being dominated. Wards of Revelation have a very small sight radius though, so they would be best used in the jungle where there are choke points that these wards could see enemy movement through well. They don't last as long as Wards of Sight either, and so are twice as expensive to maintain, but in desperate times it can help give you some breathing room until you can buy more Wards of Sight, or can help keep your carry safe from ganks from the jungle as he farms a little more.

Countering Enemy Wards

Buying and placing your wards though, is only half of the Ward War for Map Domination. It's not like you just have a default advantage buy buying wards of your own, the enemy team most likely has them too. If you can't counter their wards you may very well find yourself constantly surrounded by hostile crowds of heroes, so it would be in the best interest of your heroes health and continued success that you find and destroy enemy wards through the game.

Knowing Where Enemy Wards Are Placed

If you find yourself running towards a well timed gank only to have the enemies run back just in time to avoid their gruesome deaths, chances are good that you were spotted. It may not necessarily have been by a ward, but if you ran across one of the obvious ward positions it would be safer to bet that it was. This isn't the only way to know when you're being seen by an enemy ward. Sometimes you can tell where enemy wards are based on where you are when you suddenly get attacked by three or more enemies at once, or get hit by a long range projectile like Valkyrie's Javelin of Light, or Devourer's Guttling Hook. Being able to tell when you have been seen by an enemy ward is a skill acquired with time and practice, so the only way to really learn is to take a guess and begin a seek and destroy mission occasionally. Practice makes perfect, and eventually anyone can gain an almost sixth sense for when they've been spotted.

Destroying Enemy Wards

There are several ways to deal with wards, the most common being Wards of Revelation. These work very well when you know almost exactly where the enemy wards are at, generally in the obvious places around the runes or disabling your spawns. These don't work so well when you don't know exactly, or almost exactly where the Ward of Sight will be, and can become very expensive when you find yourself using two or three just to destroy one enemy ward. In the situations where you are searching for a Ward of Sight the better tools are the Bound Eye and the even better Puzzlebox. A level 3 Puzzlebox spawns a Puzzlebox Champion who has True Sight, and a Puzzlebox Wizard who has a ranged attack. Together they spell almost certain death for any ward foolish enough to have been placed in their path. Because the Puzzlebox can be used over and over without having to re-purchase it, and cannot be lost like a Bound Eye, it is easily the most powerful anti-ward weapon at any teams disposal. If there are two item-independent heroes on your team, one should buy wards, while the other buys a Puzzlebox. Those two heroes then become very valuable allies and combined will greatly increase a teams ability to control the entire map.

Map Specific Advice and Ward Locations

The following pages contain more map specific advice, along with screenshots of several ward positions you may find useful. These are not the only good locations to place Wards of Sight, and are only shown as an example of what can be useful. Wards of Sight effectiveness is determined by the situation you find yourself in, and most of these positions can be absolutely useless in the wrong situations.