There exist a plethora of guides in order to lend advice to junglers in order to efficiently terrorize us simple laners. Instead of contributing to the proliferation of guides designed specifically to ruin your laning phase, today we will focus on simple steps you can take in order to alleviate the stress of the enemy Lee Sin using his never ending mobility to insec you out of your tower into the waiting clutches of the enemy.

We will go step by step in order to effectively avoid ganks and quite literally "ward" off threats.

Know Your Environment

1. Top Lane

The first step to protect yourself from ganks is understanding the routes junglers will take to gank you. Summoner's Rift is played differently depending on if you're red side or blue side. You can tell in champion select: if your team has first pick, you are blue side. If your team has second pick, you are red side. Blue side fountain is in the bottom left, Red side fountain is in the top right.

Top lane is a mixed bag as a laner: It's the lane you're most threatened by ganks in the early game, but come mid to later laning phase junglers will typically neglect to gank you unless your opponent has good set-up or damage, and most top laners typically don't.

Blue side is safer than on red side, so you don't need as many wards to keep you safe from potential threats:

For all intents and purposes, this ward will cover most jungle ganks that will be performed on you. The only exception is if you push up especially far onto the enemy tower, in which case, you will likely also need a ward in the tribrush that's below the enemy tower. The only other gank which this ward does not cover is lane ganks where the enemy jungler will move into the brushes when the minion wave is pushed towards you, and then will gank you when you bounce the wave back towards the enemy. These ganks are rare however, and most of the time you do not need to be worried about this route.

On red side top lane, things become more sophisticated:

An easy ward to place is in the tribrush below your tower, which will lend you vision of both enemy invades, and potential ganks on your lane. Bonus points if you use a pink ward, junglers have a tendency to stop and spend their time clearing the ward, which will further disincentivize them from ganking your lane.

Because this brush is further in your lane relative to on blue side, you don't need to place this ward as deep as you would on blue side. This supplementary vision in addition to your tribrush will cover most gank routes, aside from a long range gank from a champion like Nocturne or Twisted Fate.

The only real champions that this ward proves ineffective against are those that are capable of either circumventing vision (Rengar, Twitch, Evelynn) or champions with absurdly long range mobility (Nocturne, Zac). For those, we recommend warding top side camps such as blue or red buff if you're capable of doing so safely. Unfortunately, as with nearly each jungler, if they seriously want to gank you, it's nearly impossible to stop them from doing so. That being said, it would cost an extreme amount of resources, and it's generally not worth it to expend the additional effort in to deter these ganks. It's not worth the return from them, so there's no point in preparing for an non-optimal move on their end.

2. Bottom Lane

Due to typically containing two players in one lane, it's important to stay vigilant in denying ganks in the bottom lane. Junglers are capable of taking more sophisticated routes when ganking bottom lane as opposed to top lane. Realizing this is essential when placing vision to deter ganks. On blue side, vision is generally safer to place, but the number of gank routes is greater. On red side, the vision is more difficult to place and maintain, but there are fewer routes to gank from.

We will begin for blue side:

This is a very typical pink ward location for bottom lane: ideally, the ADC should place this ward, since it's more difficult to clear and basically an essential throughout the laning phase. Therefore, the ADC will not have to replace this pink by purchasing more pink wards in the laning phase. It's not bad for the support to place this ward per say, but since the support has more dispensable gold relative to the ADC, it's better for the support to use their pinks to deny vision in the laning phase.

This is the best spot to place a river ward. On blue side in particular, you can get away with placing a ward in the brush. On red side, do not be greedy with your placement. On red side in particular, it's extremely important you ward deeper than the brush itself, in order to give yourself time to run back to your tower should you detect the enemy jungler. You'll be pushed up further from your tower relative to if you were on blue side, so your ward should be deeper.

On blue side bottom lane, do your best to keep this plant popped if possible in laning phase, particularly if your mid laner is not in a match-up where he is capable of safely keeping the wave near the enemy tower. Enemy mid laners and junglers will use this plant in order to set up dives on you by circumventing vision. Deny them the extra mobility to get behind your tower and boxing you in.

On red side, aside from the prior discussed river ward, there is one more place you should seek to place a ward:

This ward is a bit of a "bonus" ward and will typically require tribrush control. Your river ward should be able to detect ganks coming from top side entrance to said tribrush, but this ward will be easier, safer, and quicker to place relative to a tribrush ward, and will stop junglers from coming from below tribrush to lane gank you. This is still a great ward to have, and will give you information in advanced regarding the movement of the enemy bottom lane. Extremely underrated ward, and combined with your river ward, it allows you to evade almost all ganks targeted at the bottom lane.

3. Middle Lane

Middle lane is a double-edged sword in regards to ganks: it's the shortest lane, so you're consistently closer to your tower than other lanes, even when pushed up. However, due to it literally being the center of the map, you're easier to access than other lanes, and the multiple routes that enemy junglers take make it impossible to cover each route with wards unless you have the assistance of your jungler.

Unfortunate, your jungler will neglect to assist you with warding, even at your behest. Better jungle wins, I guess.

However, there are a lot of tricks you can use to avoid ganks without warding at all, but step 1, without a doubt, is setting up your wards first.

If you have one ward to place anywhere as a mid laner, this is the one. This ward covers you from jungle ganks from the bottom side, gives you information about bottom lane rotations, covers you from typical support roams, covers from invades into your jungle, and can offer some protection over dragon. That's extremely useful.

Honestly, otherwise, there are so many places to ward as a mid laner if we exhausted them, we'd be here forever, but here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Blue side red buff curve bush: covers from invades, gives you information if the enemy jungler is taking a weird path (over dragon pit as Nidalee, Lee sin, etc) in order to get behind and gank you.
• Red side upper river bush: more efficient on red side than blue side, but not a bad ward on either. Covers your raptors and the proximity of the blue side jungle exits relative to red side are closer.
  
  
• Ramp wards: covers enemy jungle exit close to raptors. Useful for telling where the enemy jungler is going.
  
  
• Close bushes: Offensive wards, useful for setting up for ganks from your jungler. I personally don't like these because of how easy they are to clear, but they have their uses.

II. Know Your Enemy

This is a simple trick many players don't even think about when playing the game: how does the enemy jungler want to gank you? Zac will not gank like Lee Sin, Yi will not gank you (if he does) like Nocturne. The way you position in lane must be dictated by the enemy jungler.

Going into practice tool can help you shore up your champion knowledge. Try a few junglers out that you struggle playing against in normals, and try to punish players how they would punish you. How do they gank? Where do they gank? When do they gank? All of these attributes are extremely important to how you should play your lane.

As an example:

Jarvan IV can do a 3 camp clear and be finished and prepared to gank at a little over 2:40. However, a champion like Nocturne can clear even faster, and get done several seconds earlier. While Jarvan's ganks are stronger than Nocturne, playing around what the enemy jungler is doing, and what he wants to do is essential to avoiding ganks.

When is the enemy Karthus hitting 6? Each of these is a thing to keep track of when playing. Each jungler gets stronger at certain thresholds. Recognising these thresholds and when the jungler will hit them will allow you to stay safe from threats throughout the laning phase.

III. Know Yourself

Lane positioning. Lane positioning. Lane positioning. It's so simple but something that lower ranked players routinely fail on that sets them back so far. What dictates where you should position in lane? A few things, and we will run them down in a tierlist style fashion that should give you clues on where you should "lean" in lane.

A+: Your Vision

This one is as simple as it gets: play to the side your vision is on. If the enemy comes from the opposite side, you'll have additional time to react even though you don't see them coming by virtue of your proximity away from them. If you detect an enemy on your ward, you can move away from them in advanced. It's foolproof.

B: Your Enemy Laner's Positioning & Body Language

Let's take this as an example (ward representing an enemy in this context): players will instinctively create additional space between them and the enemy laner by positioning diagonally relative to their enemy. However, intelligent players realize this, and will position opposite relative to their own jungler in order to "push" you towards the side that their jungler is ganking you from. Confused? That's fine, but next time you think that the enemy mid laner is engaging a trade that you know they do not win, be aware that they are likely doing so to set up for their own jungler.

If the enemy mid laner is engaging you in a trade that's one-sided in your favor, it's very likely that he is acting with information that you aren't, so be conscious of the possible movements of the enemy champions

C: Your Jungler

It's a story as old as time: you get ganked, your jungler is on raptors will full HP, you die, he blames you and says he is not obligated to countergank, and you should play safer.

That being said, if the enemy jungler is aggressively clearing your vision, you are unable to replace said vision, you can't freeze the wave to deny ganks, and there's no clear indication on where you should stand in your lane, there's only one place to stand:

The "please help me" position (ward once again, being your jungler). While there's no guarantee your jungler will come assist you when you are under the threat, it's better than nothing.

All of these things together can help you avoid ganks. There's countless of ways a jungler can gank a lane, and the scant resources laners have to avoid them must be harnessed in order to ensure a successful laning phase. If a jungler really wants to gank you, it truthfully does not really matter what you do. The point of this guide is to make you as difficult and inconvenient to gank as possible and using that extreme inconvenience as a deterrent to avoid enemy jungler aggression.