DOTA 2 - A guide to Warding the Runes

Greetings! One interesting aspect of Dota is the runes that spawn with an interval of two minutes at the river’s northern and southern intersections. These runes grant the hero who activates them special skills such as being able to turn invisible or deal double damage depending on what type of rune spawns. One fortunate rune is able to give a team what it needs to turn a game around. As such, it is of utmost importance to ensure that your team has vision on these ward spots so as to either enable this comeback for you or prevent disaster from striking should the enemy grab one instead. In this guide, some of the more common warding locations which grant you vision over the rune spawns will be presented.

The Northen Cliffs

The most obvious places to ward in Dota are the cliffs present near the runes. Indeed, even the game design suggests these as effective locations for wards, as can be seen by the markings showcasing an eye on some of them. The first two placements are shown here, at the northern side of the river.

Both of these wards give you vision of the rune. Notice the marking on the western cliff, indicating that this is a good spot for wards. However, the eastern one is more common, simply because not only does it grant you vision of the rune, it also allows you to see if an enemy is jungling at the medium camp nearby, letting you set some easy kills up should you have a ganking team. Therefore, if you believe that the enemy team has placed a ward on the northern cliffs and wish to de-ward it, it is recommended that you place the sentry at the eastern cliff.

The Southern Cliffs

Whereas there are only two cliffs on which wards grant vision of the rune in the top half of the map, the south have as many as three cliffs, although they are relatively close to one another. This picture shows suggestions for placing your wards near the bottom rune, indicated here by red circles.

Compared to the northern parts of the map, where one cliff tends to be used the majority of the time, these three are all used relatively often. The reason why might be due to them all giving similar vision. The main differences here are that the easternmost cliff, with the markings on it, gives vision on the medium jungle camp directly south of it, whereas the westernmost cliff do not give as much vision around Roshan’s pit, but instead more near the Radiant’s Middle lane. The middle spot is a bit of a compromise, not giving any vision on the medium camp in favour of roughly the same vision near the pit as the easternmost one while also granting more vision westward.

While both teams often tend to place their wards on the same cliff in the northern part of the map, there are some preferences regarding the southern cliffs. Since the Dire will most likely be the ones who wish to make incursions to the Radiant jungle, they will use the western spot more often than the Radiant, who favour the two other spots, as vision over Roshan’s pit tends to be more important than vision over the own team’s jungle and Middle lane. With this, we are done with the cliffs granting vision of the rune spawns, and move on to some other useful warding locations which one could use instead of them.

Upper Middle Lane

The middle lane is almost always a lane filled with action, where every single creep matters if you wish to achieve a decisive victory. Therefore, should the enemy team’s mid hero get a favourable rune which your team’s mid lacks any knowledge of, it is a recipe for disaster, which may ultimately result in your team’s defeat. Here are two standard spots where you can ward the top rune while also having some vision near the middle lane.

There are a couple of differences depending on the placement of the ward here. The eastern one provides more vision near the middle lane on the Dire side of the map, while it also lets you know if an enemy has walked into the trees near the Dire’s Middle tower. However, the western ward, while giving nothing of that, instead grants vision of the Radiant’s Ancient camp. Due to this, the western ward is a bit more popular, as the Dire can use it to catch someone off-guard while farming ancients, whereas the Radiant can use it to avoid such ganks as well as keeping their middle lane somewhat safer, as it lets you spot rotations coming from top earlier. The exception to this is if your enemy smokes or goes from the intersection between the three eastern camps in the Dire jungle. In the first case, neither ward does more good than the other, since the enemy is invisible, but in the second, the eastern ward will alert you earlier than the western one.

Alternative Bottom locations

There are a couple of other places in the bottom lane where one can ward to see some other parts of the map while still retaining vision of the rune’s spawning location. This section will showcase two of those.

This ward, while barely granting vision of the rune, is used more for the other vision it gives. Notice that the ward allows your team to see a large portion of the jungle near the Radiant’s Bottom tower. This is beneficial for both teams, as it allows the Radiant to see rotations coming to their bottom lane while the creep wave is at their tower while letting Dire offlaners see if the enemy supports are moving in to try and pick them off. Therefore, this ward is used relatively often by both teams. However, since you can only buy 2 observer wards at the start and are then, should you so wish, able to split the stack and give one of them to your offlaner while keeping the other yourself, the offlaner will most likely use their ward to block the enemy’s pull camp, leaving his team without vision on the bottom rune in favour of getting more experience since the enemy cannot pull.

This location is perhaps not the most common one to ward. However, it remains very useful. It allows you to get an indication if the Dire mid hero is either rotating towards bot or going for the run very early on, making it much easier for you and your team to react to it. In addition, it also allows for vision near the trees to the southeast of the Dire’s middle tower, making it easier to chase enemy heroes that try to flee or juke through them. This spot is used mostly by the Radiant, since they are more likely to attempt said chase.

The goal of this guide was to provide the reader with some knowledge of where one can ward to get vision over the runes and what other uses wards at these locations may have. While there are a plethora of other useful places to ward for either vision of blocking enemy camps, those will be shown in another guide. Thanks for reading, and farewell!

Oscar Svensson