[14.9] Rakan - The Ultimate Guide to The Charmer. (2024)

Why warding is important

1. Having control over the map ensures your teammates safety.
2. It gives them freedom to move around without getting surprised in a bush that fed Annie was hiding in.
3. It gives you and your teammates the ability to know when it's safe to push that lane in without worrying about getting ganked.
4. You have more control over objectives like Drake, Rift Herald, and Baron.
5. You can punish an enemy for over extending without being surprised by their team who may have been nearby.
6. Knowing where the enemy is means you can do objectives on the other side of the map safely without them contesting.

Types of Wards

Stealth Ward: Consume a charge to place an invisible Stealth Ward which reveals the surrounding area for 90-120 seconds depending on the average level of all champions.

Store one charge every 240-120 seconds depending on the average level of all champions, up to 2 maximum charges.

A player may only have 3 Stealth Wards on the map at one time. At level 9 this can be upgraded into Farsight Alteration.

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Control Ward: Places ward that reveals the surrounding area. This device will disable and reveal nearby wards and Camouflaged units will also be revealed.

Limited to one Control Ward on the map per player.

Can only carry 2 Control Wards in inventory.

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Farsight Alteration: Places a visible ward with 1 Health from 4000 units away and reveals the surrounding area for 2 seconds (148 - 99 second cooldown depending on the average level of all champions). Wards placed by the Farsight Alteration trinket last until killed and do not count towards your Stealth Ward limit.

The Farsight Alteration trinket cannot be purchased before level 9.

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Oracle Lens: Sweeps a 750 unit area around your champion for 10 seconds, warning against hostile units, revealing invisible traps and revealing and disabling invisible wards. (90 - 60 second cooldown based on the average level of all champions).

Visual Map & Legend Key for Warding Locations

The below picture is a general guideline on my personal warding preferences. And yes, the picture is outdated and doesn't show alcoves because I couldn't find a picture of a map that has it yet. But the locations are still the same.

Legend

Dark Red Star = Prime Control Ward Locations.
Red Star = Important Ward Zones, use Control Ward or Stealth Ward here, make sure you always have vision control while an objective is up!
Yellow Star = Prime Stealth Ward Locations.

Vision Score

NOTE: This information is a combination of lol wiki & Riot Staff posts from lol forums. The source for both is found here and here.

In short, Vision Score = (1 point per minute of ward lifetime provided) + (1 point per minute of ward lifetime denied).

This number comes from three main sources

Ward Lifetime Provided: Each minute of ward lifetime grants up to 1 point, depending on how effective the ward is.

Ward Lifetime Denied: Scoring a ward takedown (earned gold from a ward's death) grants 1 point for every minute of lifetime remaining on the ward (permanent wards are assumed to have 1.5 minutes of lifetime remaining).

Vision Mechanics: Various vision-providing mechanics have a baseline score on-use (usually 0.1 to 0.5), and can also give bonus scores if revealing unseen champions or epic monsters (usually 0.1 to 1.0). This includes Scryer's Bloom, trinket activation, ward placement, Rift Scuttler, and all champion's abilities that grant Sight and True Sight.

Example: A Hawkshot that reveals a full Baron attempt will give much more than a Heightened Senses that reveals nothing (which will still give some score).

Ward Lifetime Provided Modifiers

An allied ward's point generation can be reduced under certain infractions. The reduction is applied to the score generated within the duration of the infraction, and stacks multiplicatively (e.g. -50% for 6s nets -0.05 points).

Staleness

A ward that hasn't seen any interesting units (enemy champions, wards, and epic monsters) in a while will gradually go down in point value, starting at -0% at 60 seconds of staleness and worsening to -50% at 120 seconds of staleness.

Redundancy

While a ward is near other friendly sources of vision (allied wards, structures, and lane minions), its point value will be reduced, starting at -25% for 1 redundancy and worsening up to -75% for 3+ redundancies. Lane minions don't count as redundant if the ward is in brush.

Safety

A ward that's very close to your base can give less score, starting from -0% score around your buff camps and worsening to about -50% score at your base walls.

Pointlessness

A ward that's very close to a friendly structure or inside your own base will have a -100% modifier to its point value.

Baseline

If a ward is quickly killed by enemies, it will still give lifetime score as if it survived a minimum of 20 seconds (0.33 points).

Warding Tips and Tricks

1. You can place a ward while using recall.
2. You can ward over walls and obstacles. If you can place the ward more than halfway into a wall or obstacle, it will appear on the other side.
3. Don't always ward in a bush, most players will assume a bush is warded and use a Control Ward or Oracle Lens and kill your ward. Try placing wards in unsuspecting places that still give you vision over an area. Ex. Placing a Stealth Ward in the river, or a path that leads to objectives, but is not directly in or near a bush, still giving you vision of a targeted area with less risk of being destroyed.
4. Farsight Alteration is a powerful trinket that can be cast with great distance to give you vision in areas that may be too dangerous to walk into.
5. If you have multiple Control Wards in your inventory and the one you have placed is being killed, you can deny the enemy gold and vision score by placing another Control Ward before the first one dies.
6. Wards yield gold and experience if you kill them.