Upon the arrival of the fourth anniversary in Arena of Valor, a new feature known as the vision stones has been added to the arena. The vision stone emerges at the walls of the high ground when the outermost midlane turret is destroyed. Upon contact, the vision stones will fly to the center of your jungle and provide the vision of your jungle camps and bushes. They cannot be destroyed by enemies and expire after a short period of time. However, they will respawn a short while later beyond your high ground walls and you can enable them again.
Purpose and related Macro Concepts
The purpose of the vision wards is to allow more chances at comebacks for the losing team. A basic macro concept in Arena of Valor is that when you lose your first midlane turret, you allow better access for the enemy team into both the red and blue side of your jungle. And as better access is allowed for the enemy team into your jungle, they will do all that is in their power to prevent your team from getting fed and making sure that they get fed- that is to steal all of your jungle camps (Check our Jungler matchup guide). As the jungle role is the main carry role in Arena of Valor, your jungler getting fed is a major win condition for your team, if the enemy team constantly steals your jungle camps you will lose the win condition that is your jungler being fed, this creates a domino effect where your jungler will try and leech gold from sidelaners, causing your sidelaners to develop unhealthily and not get fed as well, ultimately leading to an easy win for the enemy team. When your team’s jungler tries to fight for his/her jungle camps, they are usually ambushed by enemies hiding in jungle brushes, preventing them from even having the courage to go out and take their unattended jungle camps when the enemy decides to leave your jungler alone for a bit, making it virtually impossible for your jungler to comeback. Check out our list of top 5 Jungler!
Reason why Vision Stores are introduced
As many high elo players know this macro concept, the team who takes down the first mid turret pushes their lead onwards by stealing their enemy’s jungle camps, causing the aforementioned “easy win” to take place. When a team knows how to push their early game lead into a win, games become exceedingly one-sided and unfun to play. Thus the introduction of the vision stone.
The vision stone allows your team to see if the enemy team is hiding in your jungle or if they have already taken your jungle camps, allowing your team and your jungler to make smarter decisions such as knowing when the enemy finally stops invading your jungle and finally allows your jungler to have a chance of farming and prevents easy engages and ambushes by the enemy team. It allows the losing team to gain more knowledge than the winning team, thus equalizing the power disparity between the two, therefore allowing more back-and-forth games to ensue, making the game more enjoyable and competitive in general.
When to use the Vision Stones in Arena of Valor
Many new players choose to activate the vision stone once it spawns, however that may not be the best choice of action. There is often a misconception that because the earlier you use it, the earlier it respawns and thus allowing you to maximize the amount of uses of the vision stone. The key to using vision stones is not in the frequency, but it is in the timing, thus the inquiry question “When to use vision stones”. Here is a simple guide :
1. To check on the buffs
Your Blue or Red buff has just spawned on the map and you want to see if it has been stolen or not. If not, you want you or your ally to receive it.
2. To venture beyond the high grounded towers
You and or your team feel like you are decently fed and have the ability to venture further outwards instead of being trapped underneath your high ground towers. Options include wanting to split push, wanting to take/ check on the Dark Slayer or Abyssal Dragon. As these actions require geological advancement of your team, these activities are easily disrupted by enemies hiding in your jungle who are ready to ambush you at any moment as they hide within the geological terrain of the arena.
3. To determine the course of action of the enemy
You and your team realise that they have no longer been pressuring your lanes and suspect that they may be taking large game-winning objectives such as the Enraged Abyssal Dragon and the Dark Slayer. When they stop pressuring your lanes, it only means one of two things- they gave up on pressuring your lanes and are waiting for you to grow cocky and overextend such that they will gain a chance of catching your team off guard and performing team wipe, or they are taking large game-winning objectives as mentioned earlier. By gaining vision of both of your jungles through the vision stones, you can determine which action they have taken by looking at their presence in your jungle. If they are there, they are trying to ambush you, if not they are most likely taking those objectives.
Although vision stones respawn, you must not waste them as vision is one of the most valuable things in a moba game. Vision allows better knowledge on how to play the match and how to handle the situation and should not be wasted.
Playing around the Vision Stones in Arena of Valor
In a MOBA game such as Arena of Valor, you win some games and you lose some games. You won’t always be on the losing side of the match and you may be the person the enemy team is trying to scout out of their jungle. Therefore it is essential to learn how to play around enemy vision stones.
Understanding the situation of the match
First, acknowledge that you are at a disadvantage when you are on their turf as they can see you in their jungle but you cannot. I have mentioned many examples of the winning team trying to ambush the losing team’s jungler many times in this article, however, the opposite may occur as well. Losing team members wait till their buff respawns and camp the buff in hopes that the enemy team comes to try and take it as 4 of losing team members pounce out and shut down the jungle thief. With the provision of the vision stone, the chances of this happening are increased as the team with the vision stone is at a better-defined vision advantage than the invader.
So what if you still want to invade and pull out your lead? In order to reduce the risk of invading, you could always have a teammate to watch your back and keep you out of trouble. Supports are preferred for the role of covering for their teammate as their skillset is built around getting their allies out of trouble, be it through anti-crowd control from Chaugnar, an area of effect crowd control to lock away your enemies by Baldum or a Zip to suck you out of harm’s way and roll you to safety.
Using one player as the bait
An even more aggressive method would be to use yourself as bait by chagrin in headfirst while your team patiently waits behind. As the enemy team hastily uses all their abilities on you to try and burst you down, they effectively put cooldown on all of their abilities and allow brief moments of vulnerability where your team can charge in guns blazing and annihilate them. You may be bursted down in the process of being bait but it will be all worth it once you see the 5 death timers on the enemy team and your team happily hacking away at enemy towers.
Do note that both these methods require a good amount of communication, be it with your support or with your team and is best executed when you are playing with friends as strangers on the internet may not be as in–sync or be on the same page as you. Do not blame strangers when you fail to pull this off as it is a miscommunication between both sides which is equal fault for both sides.
If you happen to lack communication with your teammates the only way you can try and invade is through pinging to gather at the enemy jungle. Provided that doesn’t work you can try invading when an ally is nearby- perhaps clearing sidelane waves- and pray that they come to give you a hand when you get in a sticky situation. If you are not sure about composing a good and balanced team, you should definitely check our in-depth guide.
Final note
With the addition of Vision Stones to Arena of Valor, the skill capacity of the game increases once again. It truly helps beginner MOBA players understand the value of vision rather than only seeing the value in gold and kills. The arena will likely be more competitive and back-and-forth so carry the knowledge on how to use them and the knowledge they provide to your advantage to conquer your games.
For more Mobile Gaming news and updates, join our WhatsApp group, Telegram Group, or Discord server. Also, follow us on Google News, Instagram, and Twitter for quick updates.
