Vision Score LoL Guide

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The vision score is a stat that determines your contribution towards providing vision for your team and denying it to the enemy. This score largely depends on your role, as some tend to have very high scores due to the way they are expected to act throughout the game.

How Does the Vision Score Work?

It is an estimated number, as we don’t have any statement made by Riot or any info inside the game about it, but through trial and error, we found out that you get around one point per minute of ward lifetime provided+ one point per minute of ward lifetime denied.

Now, this is just surface-level information, since we all know there are more than two ways of getting your vision score up. However, knowing this will help you understand why your vision score is as low as a Lee Sin main that exclusively gets his dopamine hits from kicking the enemy ADC into your 5/0 Darius that simply wants to practice some diplomacy with them. Noxian diplomacy.

Other Ways to Get Your Vision Score Up

There are quite a few vision mechanics that contribute to your overall vision score as well; usually contributing around 0.1 to 0.5 points, and revealing unseen enemy champions or epic monsters contributes 0.5 to 1 additional point. 

This can be achieved in a few ways:

•  Scryer’s Bloom (the puffy vision plant that reveals everything in a cone when broken) 
• The scuttler ward (the little puddle of vision and movement speed the scuttler leaves behind after you disturb his morning walk) 
• everything tied to a champion’s kit: hawk shot, heightened senses, the vision of empire, and much more.

A hawk shot that reveals the whole enemy team trying to sneak in a baron kill will give you a much higher score than a heightened senses activation that reveals the local frogs in the river bush.

Modifiers

• Staleness is a debuff that affects wards that haven’t seen attractive units in a while (enemy champions, neutral epic monsters, enemy wards), radically decreasing its point value. It starts at sixty seconds of no activity, and after sixty more seconds, its value drops to half.
• Redundancy is a debuff that applies when the allied ward is left close to another allied ward while covering almost the same area, when an allied ward is positioned near allied minions or towers. Its point value lowers by 25% for every redundant factor around it, up to a maximum of three (-75% point value). Minions do not count as a redundancy if the ward is in a bush.
• Safety refers to how close a ward is to your base. The debuff takes effect when a ward is laid around the area of your buff camps, and the debuff gets stronger the closer the ward is to your base walls (up to 50% point reduction). I think there’s more to this, but we don’t have any confirmed info. Wards close to your base walls are mandatory when your team is losing while the only somewhat safe territory is your base. 
• Pointlessness refers to a ward placed inside your base or right next to your tower. Those wards provide zero value to your vision score.
• Baseline refers to a ward that is destroyed shortly after being placed. If this happens, the ward will still give points like it survived twenty seconds.

How to Not be a Nuisance to Your Team When Providing Vision

One of the most important things I see low Elo players doing is ward well known, but very inefficient spots, that provide little to no benefit to their survival. Below I have marked very common warding spots that are worse than you think(marked with a blue X).

 The reason why these spots are worse than you might think is that they give you very low reaction time. Let’s think about it for a second:

Let’s assume that you are the mid laner playing blue side, in this case, and you ward the long bushes right at the entrance to the river. In this case, you will see the jungle if he wants to gank from that side, but you will see him too late to be able to retreat in case you are past the middle of the map.

That, and it provides an unsafe space to play around. You should never have to rely on vision only when both of your wards are on the map, as it’s nearly impossible to keep two wards up at the same time without a huge downtime in between these few minutes of mediocre vision on both sides.

What you should do (reference the image above) is ward the marked spots (Yellow is used for blue-side wards, the grey is used for the red-side wards, and the two small bushes on both sides of the river are a good warding spot for both sides of the map).

For example, warding the jungle entrance of the red side on the mid lane ensures vision early enough to make it safe for you to play right next to the river entrance. If the jungle wants to gank from the warded side, you will see him early enough to be able to run to safety.

If, however, he ganks from the side that isn’t warded, you are on the other side of the lane so he needs to waste movement abilities, or not even get to you before you are safe under the tower.

Control Wards

Control wards are purchasable, consumable wards that do not have a duration. You can only destroy them by hitting them with four basic attacks. While they are on the ground, they provide vision as well as vision denial, disabling any wards in the vicinity that does not control wards as well.

Farsight Alteration

This is an upgrade you can get at level 9. It transforms your normal ward into a one HP ward that can be placed from very far away and provides a burst of vision when placed, getting reduced to a speck of vision after a few seconds.

The carry usually buys this type of ward, as it’s good for them to scout ahead and make sure danger isn’t near, since they are the ones that die faster than anyone else.

Sweeper Lens

Sweeper lenses are an upgrade to regular wards you unlock at level nine. It reveals and disables wards and traps, making them destroyable. It also scans enemies and highlights them in red. This works over walls as well. This is the main tool of the support player.

Since the support already has an item that provides regular wards, it’s pointless to hold even more of them, since there’s a limit to how many regular wards you can have placed on the map at one time. It’s also good to have more than one person carry sweeper lenses with them when the enemy has a Teemo or anyone that gets a big advantage through trapping an area.

How High Should Your Vision Score Be?

Top lane

Your vision score won’t be very high due to the following reasons: Top sees very little activity from junglers, especially in lower brackets, since drakes are a much more recognized win condition that doesn’t need further input to grant a sizeable advantage.

That means your wards are best used to avoid ganks or help your mid laner/jungler since you won’t move a lot from your lane. Later in the game, you will need to ward off your surroundings while split pushing so you don’t get collapsed. However, good map awareness can be enough to tell you if people want to pay you a visit or not.

Jungle

Unless you are the Lee Sin main mentioned beforehand, your vision should always be on par with the support player’s score. That’s because the jungler is always moving on the map.

You can always ward deep in the enemy jungle without much input from the enemy unless you are seen and they coordinate an attack on you, which is rare in a solo queue game. You are also going to ward around objectives, so if they get contested, or you contest them, one ward can bump your score by quite a lot.

Mid-lane

Your vision should be higher than your top laner, but usually not as high as your jungler. The mid laner is supposed to roam around the map, so you also have many chances to get a good deep ward or ward for someone else.

However, you cannot forget that kills do not compensate for lost experience from minions, so don’t excessively roam, or you might end up with five kills and break even with the enemy at the end of the laning phase.

Carry

The carry can get away with a lower vision score because they have a player that acts as their pocket vision and vision denial tool. But you cannot forget buying the farsight alteration ward at level nine since you don’t want to get surprised by the enemy assassin when walking to collect a wave of minions.

Support

You must always have the highest vision score. You are the one person who carries three wards always available for use, a sweeper and, usually, two control wards to top it all off. That means you should be the one to deny and provide the most vision out of all your teammates.

If you ever feel like it, you can even buy Vigilant Wardstone. That item increases your ward capacity by one (four active wards and two active control wards) and carries up to three control wards.

That, coupled with a very impressive 12% stat boost to your bonus AD, bonus HP, AP, and ability haste means you get both decent stats and additional vision control. Supports are just as expected to roam as mid laners when possible, so make sure you help out your top or mid with a good ward here and there.

Remember, vision is one of the most crucial mechanics in this game. Having a constant flow of information about enemy actions means more efficient decisions on your end. I always like to compare visionless League of Legends to chess without seeing the enemy board.

It’s hard, and you rely on chance when making a decision. You never know when the insignificant pawn will capture your queen and lose you the game.

“Those who know don’t predict, those that predict do not know”- Lao Tzu

Vision Score LoL Guide: FAQs