Fog of War and Vision Control

Fog of War and Vision Control

In League of Legends, you must make decisions with incomplete information. This is because you cannot see everything that is happening on the map due to something called the “fog of war”

The fog of war is shown on the minimap as a darkened area, as shown to the left. It conceals enemy movement and you want to be careful not to wander through it unless you have company or if you have a good understanding of where your opponents are.

Likewise, your team can use the fog of war to hide your movements and strike your enemies from the shadows.

You and all of your allied champions and structures provide vision for your whole team. If you can see it, so can your teammates.

Outside of these sources of vision, you also have the ability to create more vision using items called “wards”.

At the beginning of the match, every player in the game has access to a free item, called the Warding Totem, which is also known as the “yellow ward”.

Use the yellow ward to protect yourself by alerting your team of enemy movement. In the image below, the ward placed in the bush spots an enemy Vi that is moving around top lane.

If the ward was not there, you or your teammates who were near the top side of the map may have been blindsided and killed.

The vision control here allows your team the opportunity to retreat or set up a counter trap to kill the Vi.

These wards will last a limited amount of time and will eventually expire, so be sure to keep an eye on its time remaining.

You’ll know how much time is left on a ward by clicking on it or seeing the white bar (seen in the image above), which ticks down as time passed. If the time runs out, it’ll disappear.

Take note that the ward also has a green health bar comprised of three blocks. This is a good time to let you know that wards can be destroyed by the enemy team. Each block on the green bar represents an auto-attack hit, so it would take three hits to kill the Warding Totem.

There are different types of wards in League of Legends (we’ll cover them in this article). This type of ward stays invisible unless it is revealed by the enemy team by a Control Ward or Red Trinket.

Control wards take four hits to be destroyed but are visible to everyone. Within a certain radius, control wards block the vision of enemy wards and reveal where they are.

You can strategically use control wards to deny enemy vision from an important area on the map or to clear a ward that you know had been placed.

The other major method of clearing wards is the Oracle Lens, also known as the red trinket. The red trinket allows a player to walk around and expose enemy wards around them (shown in the image below).

Clearing enemy wards throughout a match is incredibly important as it denies their ability to track your teams movements and also allows you to find gaps in their defenses to attack.

It’s important that everyone contributes to this cause and it’s normal for every team to eventually have 1-2 red trinkets dedicated to seeking and destroying enemy wards.

The last type of ward is the Farsight Alteration, also known as the blue trinket. Blue trinket allows a player to place a ward at a much further distance, and it will remain there until it is destroyed.

The downside is that it is visible to the enemy team and dies in one hit – because of this, this is the most situational ward and is mostly only used by the most vulnerable member of your team or a champion that relies on very long range attacks.

It’s a common mistake for newer players to forget about fighting for vision control (even experienced players forget to prioritize it). Remember that the more information you have, the better decisions you’ll make. Make a conscious effort to do your part in placing wards and denying your enemies of vision and eventually it’ll be second nature.