Buckle up, because we're about to combine the two most exciting parts of PC gaming news: exponential user growth and graphs! Last Sunday, Steam hit 6.6 million concurrent users. It's an impressive figure, but what's really surprising is how it stacks up against previous totals. Back in January 2012 the service was hitting a high point of 5 million, with them not reaching the 6 million mark until November. That means Steam is currently growing around 300% faster than it was at the start of last year.

So where are those players coming from? To the graph-o-matic!

Source: SteamGraph

Essentially we're seeing massive and steady growth for the (technically) unreleased Dota 2. Less than six months ago the game could beat the then top-dog TF2 in concurrent users, but couldn't surpass the daily peak. Now it's a different story. The latest Steam stats have Dota 2 way ahead with a peak concurrent total of 237,414 players. In second place, still enjoying a post-Christmas boost, is Football Manager 2013 with 78,488 players. Team Fortress 2, meanwhile, has been consistently fluctuating between 45,000 and 75,000 players.

It's a big number, but still one far behind League of Legends, which was pulling a reported 3 million concurrent users as of July last year.

Dota 2 still doesn't account for the majority of Steam's overall user growth, despite the flood of free beta keys it incessantly sends out. And, of course, concurrent users don't give the full picture. We still don't know how many of those are active, or even the collected number of players who log into any particular Steam game over a set period of time.

Even so, it's a great sign of the health of PC gaming. It will be interesting to see how those figures change over the next year, as the console manufacturers creak into life to reveal their upcoming new hardware.

Big news for Dota 2's esports community. ESL have announced a brand new tournament with the largest prize pool outside of Valve's own International. Dota 2 will be the second game to be part of the RaidCall EMS One, a new competition based on the ESL Major Series. The $156,000 prize will be split across four seasons through 2013.

According to the announcement, "The best teams from Europe will compete for an overall prize fund of 156,000 US-Dollar. The entire tournament will be broadcast by ESL TV. Almost every week you will enjoy multiple days with the best matches presented live by our new Dota 2 caster; topped off by four live event finals every year."

The tournament's caster, qualification process and structure are all still unknown, but should be announced on the competition's pre-page soon. While it's EU only for now, ESL project manager Lari Syrota confirmed on Reddit that US and Asian teams are being considered for the future. He also clarified that a team needed only three of five European members to be eligible.

CS:GO was the first game to be announced for the EMS One, and will also split $156,000 across four seasons. That competition will be hosted by casters Joe Miller and Paul 'ReDeYe' Chaloner.

This week in our new competitive gaming column: could PlanetSide 2 be the first competitive shooter to achieve RTS/MOBA-level worldwide success? MLG and Sony think it just might. Plus: Who will secure their spots in Dota 2's The Defense 3 playoffs? This and much more below. gl hf!

PlanetSide 2 + MLG = Profit?
The big news today is that Major League Gaming has partnered with developers Sony Online Entertainment to bring PlanetSide 2 into the eSports spotlight. This is an interesting twist, as nothing on the scale of PlanetSide's continent-spanning warfare, often involving hundreds of soldiers, has been presented in a major, competitive context before now. Shooters in general, actually, tend to struggle in terms of viewership beside the more easily-readable presentation of top-down strategy and MOBA games.

The idea of PlanetSide as an eSport presents a lot of interesting questions. Could we see professional teams with dozens of members, operating under a military command structure? On top of this, MLG has officially announced two games for their Winter 2013 Pro Circuit season: League of Legends and Black Ops 2 (on the 360.) They are being rather mum about the unannounced third game. It seems almost ludicrous that a game with the worldwide popularity of StarCraft could get the boot, but this new partnership with Sony certainly has me wondering if we might be seeing Auraxis in place of Shakuras at the Winter Championship in Dallas this March.

StarCraft 2


IEM Katowice has concluded, with South Korea's First of Incredible Miracle and Dream of Team MVP claiming the first and second spots, respectively. PartinG and Socke secured the 3rd-4th spots. All four of them will get the chance to face off again among the 24 qualified participants at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Germany, starting on March 5. In the GSL, the unsponsored South Korean BBoongBBoong pulled a major Code S upset in group D, defeating StarTale's Squirtle in the winner's match.

Upcoming Events
 
The Iron Squid — Chapter II offline semifinals and finals are set to run this weekend in Paris, France, with a $12,500 top prize. From a bracket practically bursting with fan favorites, only four players remain: MarineKing, Life, NesTea, and DongRaeGu.

Watch it: Ironsquid.tv

Other Stuff
 
I got to sit down for a massive interview with StarCraft II Game Director Dustin Browder last week. Give it a look to find out more about the state of Heart of the Swarm, and what's yet to come.

Day's Funday Monday topic this week: As Terran, you can only build one Factory and one Barracks. Check out some creative Terran air play in the Heart of the Swarm beta.

Axslav has a Rules of Engagement to help you learn how to stay cool and hold the line when you're being attacked from everywhere at once.

League of Legends


Two pro players have been issued lifetime bans for toxic behavior: StunnedandSlayed and Veigodx of Team Solo Mebdi. This effectively disqualified the team from the LCS Qualifiers this weekend.

Upcoming Events
 
Riot's LCS European Qualifiers begin tonight (technically tomorrow) at 1 a.m. PST/4 a.m. EST. For us North Americans, that means some serious caffeine will probably be required to tune in live. There are definitely incentives to do so, however, as we'll get to see the likes of Curse EU and Fnatic compete for five spots in the Season 3 Championships.

Watch it: LeagueofLegends.com

Other Stuff
 

Thresh, the Chain Warden is now available for purchase. He's a support champion with some good tankiness and a focus on positional play.

Dota 2


The active player count in Dota 2 has climbed above three million per month. While still only a fraction of League's numbers, that's pretty impressive for a game that's not even technically released. Team Fnatic has also just announced that their North American team has released four of its five players. According to JoinDota, they hope to build around the remaining member, Johnathan "SMURF" Gorriz.

Upcoming Events
 
The Defense 3 group stage is getting down to the wire. Fnatic.eu has achieved a perfect 7-0 record. The 6-0 Mousesports would need to win their final game in Group A to catch up. Only one team from each group will advance to the playoffs, meaning we'll be seeing a couple of tiebreaker matches. The deadlock will have to be broken between Empire and Dignitas (both 6-1) in Group B. Group C also currently has a tie, as North American Evil Geniuses managed to match Sweden's No Tidehunter in Group C, at 5-2. The winners of these matches will go on to face Mousesports and Fnatic in a double-elimination bracket for the championship.

Watch it: The-Defense.com

Other Stuff
 
The Troll Warlord has just joined the roster of heroes, an Agility monster whose pedigree goes all the way back to the mohawk-sporting troll axe-throwers of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness. His effectiveness up close and at range make him a very flexible carry.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in 2013.

gg!

Got eSports? The competitive gaming scene has grown enormously in the last couple years, with PC titles like StarCraft II, League of Legends, and Dota 2 leading the charge. Many of you have probably already joined in the excitement and insanity, but if you haven't, I want to change your mind.

All I ask is that you take a few minutes to watch our latest video, in which I Zerg rush the main reasons I keep hearing for why people haven't gotten into eSports. Too boring? Too complicated? Can't take it seriously? Prepare to defend the worker lines of your brain against some three-pronged drop harass.

Are hard-as-hell indie games enough to satiate our hunger for a challenge, or should mainstream developers quit trying to appease everyone and start really testing us? In this Face Off from our archives (originally published October 2012), Executive Editor Evan Lahti gives former Senior Editor Josh Augustine a hard time for his willingness to take it easy.

Make your own arguments in the comments—debate team captains: it’s your time to shine.

Evan: Focus testing is the enemy of experimentation and innovation. It widens the audience of a game by watering down the experience. Portal was harder, and better, than Portal 2, which forewent feats like mid-air maneuvering almost completely. Skyrim gave us a detailed wilderness where falling into a freezing lake meant nothing and dragons weren't much more than giant mosquitoes. Remember what dying was like in Diablo and Diablo II? You had to bravely fight back to your corpse to recover your gear with whatever rented junk you could pull together. I miss that brutality, and the feeling of, y’know, actually losing something.

Josh: And Diablo III offers that: in Inferno and Hell difficulty. Either of which can be played with permadeath on. Knock yourself out.

Evan: I’d love to, but Blizzard insists that I can only earn the right to play on a difficulty that can actually kill me by spending hours churning through Children’s Mode, erm, Normal. For every new character.

Josh: So you’re asking to die more? Dying isn't inherently fun or interesting. It’s not the secret sauce of game design. Even if games are a little less hard, it’s only because we’ve grown out of the binary win/lose states of the ’80s and ’90s. Those were motivated by a desire either to get people to put in more coins or to artificially lengthen 8- and 16-bit games that were otherwise short and simple. We’re in an age of gaming diversity and accessibility. More people are playing games; that’s great.

Evan: It’s not about dying more. It’s about wanting game design that uses difficulty creatively. Look at DayZ: you spawn in a 225km2 world with no weapon, no map, and no compass. You have to eat and drink. Everything is trying to kill you, and death is permanent. Almost every weapon has discrete ammo. If I’m good enough, I can read the stars to find my way.

It’s completely brutal, but more than 400,000 people flocked to it in just a couple months. It’s led Arma 2 to the top of the Steam sales charts for almost as long. Why? Because it does something so few modern games do: it respects your ability to figure it out yourself.

Josh: Difficulty’s out there if you want it. Super Meat Boy, Dustforce, Dungeons of Dredmor, Legend of Grimrock, Amnesia, Mount & Blade... all of these games are variously unforgiving. Dark Souls’ PC release is called the “Prepare To Die Edition.” Dota 2 and League of Legends are making judgmental, complex multiplayer games mainstream again. In Tribes: Ascend, I have to make mid-air skillshots at 225km an hour. What more do you want?

Evan: All the games you mentioned are from independent studios. They’re from the fringes. No one in the mainstream is embracing consequence-driven gaming, and as long as that’s the case, I think game design will continue to stagnate. I’m bored of regenerating health and checkpoints. And MMOs, honestly, they’re some of the greatest offenders of this because they were born from a model where players were paying an additional fee. Almost all of their design is based around appeasement. There’s no concept of failure or loss or struggle built into them. Every victory is just an eventuality: if you grind or pay enough, you’ll get what you want.

Josh: Even if what you were saying wasn’t a complete generalization (have you played TERA or Rift or DC Universe Online? They’re all totally tough)—a lot of people relish the social freedom and friendly atmosphere that MMOs provide by not punishing you dramatically just because you aggroed one too many cave goblins, or whatever. Difficulty isn't some one-setting-suits-all concept.

Evan: Challenge counts, and modern games are missing it. Without it, we’re just passively consuming content, going through the motions, acting out a puppet show of animations, particle effects, and sound. Even with immediate access to YouTube walkthroughs the moment a game is released, most developers are still desperately afraid of upsetting players or scaring them away. When I play something like DayZ, I feel feelings. My pulse changes. I regret decisions. I get mad. That’s valuable.

Josh: Well, while you’re getting mad that games don’t make you mad enough, I’ll be having fun.

With League of Legends dominating the MOBA scene (in terms of total players), Dota 2 trying to close the gap, and Heroes of Newerth... still existing, it's been a while since we heard anything about Blizzard's competitor. Renamed Blizzard All-Stars after Valve won the commercial rights to "Dota," things have been quieter on the subject than team chat in solo cue. Last week, however, Eurogamer put down some wards and was able to get some interesting info from StarCraft II production director Chris Sigaty. It seems Blizzard may be planning to release All-Stars stand-alone, with a free-to-play model.

"StarCraft 2 is a box. We intend to do something different with the business model in Blizzard All-Stars," Sigaty told Eurogamer. "Something more closely resembling the other types of games in that genre, the MOBA-style games that are out there today, and being able to sell smaller amounts of things to players, the things they want."

Previously, what was then called Blizzard Dota was announced to release as an in-house mod using the StarCraft II Arcade. Early builds showed a disappointingly small number of heroes compared to the genre leaders. And then it just seemed to vanish. It is, according to Sigaty, being "actively worked on," however.

"We'll go into more details about that in the future but I suspect you will not have to have StarCraft 2 to play ," he said. "We're definitely emphasizing it as its own product in the future."

We'll be watching warily for more Blizzard All-Stars info to spring out of the jungle for a genre gank, so sit tight in your lanes and wait for our signal.

Heya fellow nerd-ballers. Get your hotkeys ready, because you're about to drop into the first edition of What to Watch: The Week in eSports, a new column bringing you the latest news on tournaments, players, personalities, and apocalyptic balance patches for the world's premiere competitive PC games. This week, we highlight the big events to look for in 2013, where to start in building your own game knowledge to gosu levels, and what happens when the worlds of eSports and journalism collide. gl hf.

StarCraft II
 


2013 is about to kick into high gear for Blizzard's star-faring RTS, and the current undisputed king of real-time strategy eSports. With the Heart of the Swarm expansion (which you'll hear some more of my impressions on soon) less than two months away, the competitive scene is set to change in ways that only happen... well, once an expansion. At the same time, the community has been shaken up a bit by an dispute between journalist Rod "Slasher" Breslau and leading North American team Evil Geniuses that begs the question: Does eSports understand journalism?

Upcoming Events:
 
The GSL (Global StarCraft II league) is in the middle of its first season of 2012. For the newcomers, eSports seasons typically aren't a once-a-calendar-year thing: the GSL alone has previously hosted as many as seven full seasons in one year. Organized by South Korea's GOMTV, it is widely considered the very apex of competition in StarCraft II. They have a somewhat Byzantine system of qualifications, but as a rule of thumb, someone who has qualified for a coveted "Code S" slot is an eSports god among men, and the Code S champion (who will be decided on March 28) is usually regarded as one of (if not the) best StarCraft II player in the world.

Watch it: GomTV.net

The seventh season of the Intel Extreme Masters league, sponsored by (you guessed it!) Intel, will be holding its championship in Katowice, Poland starting tonight, and running through the weekend. Some of the major players in attendance will be SK Telecom T1's PartinG of South Korea, who recently left team StarTale. LucifroN and VortiX of Spain, the real-life brothers who wound up facing off at last year's Blizzard World Championship might end up in a rematch. Australian champion mOOnGLaDe, former WarCraft III master Grubby from the Netherlands, Germany's Socke, and Norwegian Team Liquid newcomer, Snute, will also be fighting for the top spot

Watch it: ESL-World.net

Other Stuff:
 
Caster (and fellow Johson County, Kansas escapee) Sean "Day" Plott continues to produce quality StarCraft content every week in his long-running Day Daily series. This week marked the return of the fan favorite Funday Monday segment, in which he imposes a restriction on viewers (such as only being able to build certain units) and commentates replays they send in working under these constraints. Outright madness has been known to ensue.



MLG's new programming schedule includes nightly Monday-Friday content for the SC2 addicts among us. Rules of Engagement with caster/pro Nick "Axslav" Ranish is a fine place to start if you're looking to tighten up your ladder play. Each day of the week has a different theme, from specific tactics to fundamentals. My personal favorite is Wednesdays, which breaks down pro-level "cheesing"- using risky, unorthodox strategies that diverge wildly from the current metagame. This week's developing fundamentals show has some good tips for economy management, and deciding what your units should be doing at any given time.

If you're looking for more Heart of the Swarm action but your favorite streamers are asleep, eating, or have otherwise vanished from public view, MLG has also been running nightly show matches in the expansion beta. Tonight at 2 p.m. PST, Axslav and Total Biscuit will be hosting a King of the Hill event.

League of Legends
 


League of Legends had an exciting and somewhat controversy-heavy 2012, shattering records for eSports viewership and shifting the balance of power from European and North American dominance to Asian primacy. 2013 is set to get rolling, and it's poised to be a very influential year for Riot's MOBA.

Upcoming Events:
 
League will also have a presence at IEM Katowice this weekend, with eight teams competing for a $15,500 top prize. South Korean all-stars Azubu are sending both their teams—Frost and Blaze—to compete with the likes of Europe's SK Gaming and North American staple, Curse. The winning team will also automatically qualify for the IEM World Championship later this year.

Watch it: ESL-World.net

The Riot-sponsored Season 3 Championship Series is also set to kick off on the 25th, with the North American Offline Qualifiers. Curse Gaming EU, Fnatic, and some up-and-comers including Team Acer will compete for a spot in the European championship series. Sixteen teams will enter, but only five will move on.

Read More: The Path to Pro

Other Stuff:
 


The latest patch notes include some more changes to jungling, which has seen a major overhaul since Season 2. Also of note is a change to the way turrets prioritize targets.

MLG's new programming is also showing LoL newbies (or just those looking to learn new champs) some love. Thursdays and Fridays starting next week, League of Legends Champion Training will offer analysis of pro-level gameplay with different champs, with analysts and the players themselves pointing out useful tips and tactics.

Dota 2
 


As 2013 dawns, we're still all asking the question, "So, is the game, like... out yet?" Thankfully, we don't have to ask whether or not there are exciting competitions to watch. While Dota hasn't really reached the volume or publicity of live tournaments of its main competitors, the red-headed step-child of premiere eSports continues to bring us high-stakes online action like The Defense. They also keep sending me beta keys in batches of around a bajillion. So chances are, you know someone who can get you in at this point if you're at all interested.

Upcoming Events:
 
The Defense 3 online tournament is ongoing, with only two teams—Germay's Mousesports and Fnatic EU—remaining undefeated. They lead their respective groups, along with Sweden's No Tidehunter in Group C and a tie between Russian Team Empire and North American Team Dignitas in Group B.

Watch it: The-Defense.com

Other Stuff:
 
Are you bad at Dota 2? Do you want someone to validate your hatred of the totally overpowered, BS heroes your enemies crush you with in solo cue? Using MSPaint? YouTuber Pyrion Flax has you covered. He's put out a general guide to Dota 2 as well as videos for specific heroes (most recently Magnus and Faceless Void.)

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments where you go to get your weekly eSports fix, and we might throw you a shout-out in a future installment.

gg

Someday, Valve will eventually run out of wonderful features to pack into its mega-gaming-hub Steam. Let's hope it's a long way off, because we'll all be busy poring over the user-written manuals, walkthroughs, and tips for our various games in the newly launched Steam Guides section of Steam's Community area.

Anyone can create and submit a guide for the game of their choice by clicking the new Guide tab on a game's Community Hub page. You can pretty up your words with images and embedded YouTube videos as well, and the guides also appear upon Steam's overlay whenever you're running a program. Neat. I can finally whip up my "How to avoid tigers" guide I've been planning for Far Cry 3 quickly and easily.

Head over to the Steam Guides page to take a look at the over 1,000 guides already created.

We love games like Dota 2, League of Legends, and Smite, but the myriad skills needed to master their complex gameplay can scare new players away. That’s why we occasionally pick a key skill and teach you how to master it, using a character that particularly excels at or relies on that skill in-game.

We've activated League of Legends expert and former Senior Editor Josh Augustine to tackle the science (and art) of wards—the consumable items that you drop to illuminate LoL's ever-present fog of war. No one is better at warding the map than the little scout Teemo, who can toss down his own sight-granting mushrooms in addition to ordinary wards.

The skill — Warding
The scariest thing in games like League of Legends and Dota 2 is not knowing where your opponents are. If you can't see them, they have the huge advantage of being able to choose the time and place that they engage your team. Wards are the solution: placing them in key locations throughout the map can give your entire team the ability to not only predict incoming ganks and escape them, but also to monitor enemy movement and pick out the best times to be aggressive.

In LoL, warding the map is usually considered the job of the the support player or jungler, who already spend their time and gold helping their teammates. But anyone can do it and you probably should if your teammates aren't.
The champion — Teemo, The Swift Scout
Teemo has been the most polarizing champion in LoL since we first revealed him in the magazine over three years ago. Equal parts cute, annoying, and griefer, this little bundle of poisonous darts has been used to troll games from the lowest ELOs to the All-Star Pro game before the Season Two world championships in October, where MakNooN played him in a jungle role as a joke. Even LoL's Lead Producer, Travis George, has told me that Teemo's secret passive is a global taunt, because everyone immediately wants to kill him.

But Teemo is more than just controversy, he's a fast, fluffy blur that mixes AP and AD damage and excels at on-hit effects. He also throws stealthed mushrooms—powerful fungi that grant his team vision of the area and slow opponents that trip over them. His skillset makes him a great one-on-one dueler, but he lacks any sort of serious presence in larger teamfights. As such, he's usually played in top lane, where he can (ideally) isolate his lane with mushroom land mines and pressure his opponent.
Objective
Our goal this week is to understand the primary benefits that warding offers to you and your team, how to capitalize on those advantages, and to identify key locations that should be warded to encourage efficient use of the gold you're spending to place them. On top of all that, we'll learn the best places to use Teemo's special brand of mushrooms as wards and defensive traps.
Builds and Items
My friend and dedicated Teemo player Jeff Wycoff once told me that the first thing you need to know about playing AP Teemo is that it's bad. And while that may be true, the second thing you need to know about playing AP Teemo is that it's fun. There's very few things as funny as watching an enemy player limp away from battle, thinking that they've escaped, and then stumble across a mushroom and yell into chat as they slowly bleed to death.

The most successful builds for Teemo will focus on Attack Damage, relying on his quick movement speed and ability to blind his opponents to allow him to go toe-to-toe with most champions. Strong items for AD Teemo include Frozen Mallet Berserker's Greaves, and Blade of the Ruined King.

For this little experiment, however, we're going to build Teemo AP for a few reasons. One, Teemo's shrooms scale off of AP and it's more fun to play with shrooms when they're bursting for big damage. Two, it's funny. Three, it's a very unique playstyle. Some key items to build, depending on your opponents, are Nashor's Tooth, Rabadon's Deathcap, Zhonya's Hourglass, Liandry's Torment, Malady, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, and Sorcerer's Shoes.

AP lets you torture them slowly with poison, all while smiling like the happy anthropomorphic bunny that you are.

For non-Teemos looking to ward for the entire match duration (usually the support champion), an absolutely essential item to buy is the Ruby Sightstone. This is a new Season 3 item that allows you to pay a large one-time cost to place infinite wards that last three minutes each throughout the match, with a maximum of three up at a time. Less-dedicated warders can pick up single-use Sight Wards and Vision Wards—more expensive, pink wards that also reveal hidden units, including other wards.

The tiniest little serial killer
But we're playing Teemo this week, so let's take a quick look at his arsenal. The key skills for his AP build are Toxic Shot, which deals magic damage on every auto-attack and leaves behind a DoT effect, and the Noxious Trap mushrooms I mentioned earlier, which have a whopping 10-minute duration.

Move Quick is a great ability that lets you move faster when not being hit by enemy champions, letting you dive in and out of range for quick pokes on melee champs. And his Q, Blinding Dart, is a great failsafe that helps Teemo hold his own when confrontation can't be avoided. And of course, his Camouflage passive lets him line up some fun ganks by lying in wait next to his shrooms.

The order that you should upgrade these abilities while playing AP Teemo is: R > E > W > Q.

For you visual learners, here's what we want to avoid.
Phase 1: Don't die
It starts easy: you really only have one ward to place at the start of the game. Getting last-hits (which we covered last session) is absolutely crucial early in any game like LoL. The gold and XP you earn will snowball you to future victories, but you can't do it if you're constantly being harassed by roamers ganking your lane. And Teemo is a very tempting target for champions with stuns and leaps.

Place your starting ward into the brush that borders your river entrance. Place it on the edge of the brush closest to the direction gankers will be traveling from to give you most warning. Support champions on bottom lane should place their ward in the same area.



These are the most commonly warded spots in the entire map, and for good reason: this is where 99% of all ganks will come from as long as you maintain the central position of the creep waves. As long as you're in this part of your lane, make sure that this brush remains warded. This is also good to keep in mind when you start looking to clear out the enemy teams wards to allow your teammates to gank your lane—tossing down a Vision Ward to this area will almost certainly let you gobble up one or more enemy wards.

Junglers fearing a level one invade (when the enemy team rushes to attack you in your jungle at the start of the game), can toss a starting ward closer to the jungler's first objective—either red or blue buff—to let you make a tactical retreat.

Support players on bottom may want to put a ward into the opposing team's lane brush to prevent aggressive support champions like Blitzcrank, Nidalee, and Nami from tossing surprise CC onto you. Doing so also lets your AD carry take cheap shots at champs that wander too close inside the brush who think they're safe. Remember, you can throw a ward into the brush without walking into it.

Against certain champions, one well-placed ward in bottom brush can save many lives.

But as a top-lane Teemo, one ward should be enough to tide us over until we hit level six, when we can start placing shrooms. Until then, play it safe and don't push your lane. Stay close to your tower and retreat at the first sign of a gank.

Wall them in
Once you have access to shrooms, it's time to expand your fungi bunker to legendary lengths and toss your tiny, fluffy weight around up top. Your goal is to place mushrooms in such a way that no one can come up to your lane without stepping on at least one of them, giving you time to either escape unscathed or take pot-shots at the slowed champion if you want to take him out.

Key spots to hit for top lane, in order of importance are: (1) the river brush, (2) on the open river next to the brush, (3) the tri-corner brush just above there, (4) the corner of your lane's river entrance that is closest to your tower, and (5) near Baron and blue buff. You shouldn't need to ward the brush that runs along the top of your lane at this stage, but you can if your opponent is dipping into it often.




Traditional wards have a much wider range of sight than Teemo's mushrooms. If you're not Teemo, consider ward placement near spots number 1, 3, or the middle location of the 5s (blue circles), depending on the direction ganks are usually coming from. Similar placement works on bottom lane.

It's a fair criticism to say that we've been incredibly selfish with our Teemo shrooms and wards so far. And, early on, that's kind of okay. It's not safe for support champions to roam outside their lane to place wards during the first few levels, and Teemo needs all the help he can get. Teemo isn't quite a top-tier champion, and he really needs to get off to a good start to be of real use to his team. Embrace the selfishness that swaddles our fluffy Teemo in an impenetrable barrier of exploding mushrooms, at least for now.

Next page: The later phases of ward placement, key locations for them, master tweaks, and your homework for the week.

An unwarded mid lane will quickly turn into a bloodbath.
Phase 2: Protect mid
Once you've bought a couple core items and feel comfortable leaving your lane for a bit (and your partner is prepared to solo if you're support), you'll want to adopt some altruism and spread the wards around. Bottom should always have wards coming out from the support player, who should have bought the Ruby Sightstone for an endless supply of wards. But your mid-lane buddy is spending all off their gold on snowballing into the carry of your dreams. Placing your wards around their lane helps them doubly: it saves them money and their life by preventing ganks.

As blue team (the one that starts on the bottom of the map), there are four primaryu spots I love to place shrooms at on the north side of mid lane, pictured below. If you're playing support and just planting a ward, I'd go with the central brush clump.



The placement is pretty similar on the south side of the lane, but (if I'm on blue team) I place them a little more aggressively to allow mid to push the tower without leaving themselves vulnerable to the side path. For red team Teemos, just reverse which side you're more aggressive on.


Phase 3: Set the trap
Alright, by now you've done a good job warding through early and mid game. You've avoided ganks, saved your mid's life a couple times, and earned enough gold to snatch up some hefty AP stats. Your shrooms are ready to evolve from alarm systems to heavy health bar drains. In the later stages of the match, wards and shrooms should be used to set up traps for your team to ambush enemies.

Ward locations at this stage tend to shift away from lane entrances and go deeper into the jungles now that your champs are strong enough to survive expeditions into enemy territory. Assuming you're not being pushed back into your base, key spots to grab are the wraith brush, the red buff brush, blue buff brush, and, of course, good ol' Baron.





Doing all of these wards is probably overkill, but as you play, you'll start to get the hang of which ones are needed at that particular moment depending on the flow of battle. You'll usually want have at least three of them up whenever possible to help track enemy movement. All of these camps are key tactical objectives that will make the difference come teamfight time, and you need to be aware of when they're being fought for so that you can interrupt them if needed, or steal them if possible.

Ideally, the warded vision will allow you to spot isolated enemy champions and engage on them before they have a chance to regroup with their allies. At worst, it will allow you to proceed on your normal plan with confidence, thanks to knowing exactly where the enemy team is at any given time.

The wall hop
Keep in mind that many spots can be warded safely from over a wall, such as dropping a ward into the Baron chamber from the red team's jungle, or hitting the tri-brush from inside that same deadly boss chamber to check the jungle. Wall-hopping wards can be a huge advantage during standoffs, giving your ranged champions the line-of-sight they need to hurl death at opponents who can't even see it coming. Base walls are another great spot for ward vaulting—particularly useful when one team is pinned inside their base by super minions.




Just one step more...
Teemo's shrooms become more flexible at this stage in the game as well. Now you have the option to either ignore the vision perk and use them to push creep waves or focus on setting traps for ambushing enemy players. The former is straight forward, but the latter requires watching player movement throughout the game to identify walking routes that the enemy frequents. It's what we'll be working on for this guide because it's a great way to train your mind to spot the frequently traveled routes and gain a sixth sense about ward placement.

You must always be aware of the status of all three lanes and how that will affect what routes the players will use to travel. If top lane is pushed all the way to their inhibitor, shrooms by your top lane river entrance will likely be wasted.

Some of my favorite trap lanes are enemy team wraith camp brush to my team's wolf brush, mid-lane river to baron, and the crossroads at enemy blue buff. You don't have to hit all of the spots at once with these—see where lanes are fighting and make your best guess at which paths are the most likely to be traversed soon. This is definitely a skill you'll develop over time.


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You should see that in most areas, and especially Blue crossroads, we're hedging our bets by placing the shrooms in places where multiple paths intersect, and spacing them out far enough that the DoT will wear off right as they run into the next one if they continue moving forward. This ensures maximum damage, and the enemy will usually have to return to base if they hit even three of them.
Master tweaks
1. At first, you will only be able to think of a few "must have" ward spots. But as you begin to play more and focus on placing shrooms in right locations, you'll start to find yourself analyzing the geometry pecularities of the map that lead champions through specific locations much more often than others. Placing a ward half an inch to the right can actually make a huge difference.

For example, champions walk through the jungle river entrance near mid lane all the time, and the game will always pick the most efficient route for the champion to travel. So you can look at the terrain sticking out and draw a mental line connecting the two path entrances to see where they will walk. That route is the perfect place to throw a few mushrooms. You can also use this to calculate what line-of-sight the champion will have and place your wards in tiny nooks that are less likely to be revealed by invisibility-seeing buffs.

Below I've drawn the efficient route the path-finding will run the player on who clicks towards bottom lane river from mid lane, highlight in orange where your ward grants line-of-sight on them.



2. There will come a time when you'll prefer to use your immense knowledge of where people walk on the map to ensure that players don't step on your mushrooms. They last 10 minutes and serve as excellent vision wards, but only while they're undisturbed.

Especially as an AD Teemo, whose shrooms do very little damage, the little guys are more useful as vision-granting wards than land mines. You'll need to walk a thin line of placing them near heavy traffic areas while placing them in odd nooks and crannies where they won't get stepped on and exploded before their time runs out.

Here are a few example locations you can use to ward the river with shrooms, granting line of sight on all the primary routes while maintaining a very low chance the enemy will step on the mushrooms.



3. Being aware of key objectives opening up, or when and where your team is going to push next will allow you to place mushrooms in the battlefield before the fight happens. Talking to your teammates is absolutely essential, but it's also important to note if the enemy team seems to prefer to congregate or teamfight in a certain part of the map. For example, if you notice that the mid often runs to gank bottom lane, make sure you put shrooms in the river near bottom lane. That will ensure that the shrooms are where the fight will happen, even if you can't be there.

4. This one is very situational and the payoff is debatable, but placing wards in spots that let your teammates hop terrain can save their lives. Champs like Katarina and Lee Sin can leap to friendly targets, including wards you place. It's rarely worth placing them beforehand, but it's good to keep in mind when choosing the specific location for your ward in an area.

Every time a Lee Sin hops to a ward, a Kayle gets its wings.

5. I focused solely on the LoL map in this guide, but once you understand the core ideas, you can apply them to the maps in Dota 2, Heroes of Newerth, Smite, and the rest. One other important element to remember in Dota 2 is that it's terain is 3D and height matters. On top of that, trees can be destroyed to cut makeshift paths through seemingly impassable terrain. Still, placing wards near lane entrances and prime objectives is always a safe bet, and a good place to start as you master the travel paths of other maps.
Your homework
Good luck out there this week, adorable Teemos! As always, you can download and play League of Legends for free. Teemo is one of the cheaper champions, and you can pick him up for $4.50 or 1350 IP if you don't already own the cutest killer with a blowdart gun. Once you've mastered wards with Teemo, taking care of ward duties on any other champion will be easy.

Five goals to aim for as you learn to ward with Teemo:
1. Avoid three ganks before hitting level six thanks to your wards.
2. Receive a "thank you" from a teammate who benefits from your wards.
3. Place more than 50 wards/mushrooms in a single game.
4. Escape an enemy chasing you in the enemy jungle by leading them over at least two mushrooms.
5. Draw a smiley face with wards.

Reclusive Valve boss and mighty beardsman Gabe Newell spoke with The Verge in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show today, sharing precious additional details on the studio's Steam Box hardware project. Among other topics, Newell discussed his interest for biometric control setups, the "giant sadness" of Windows 8, and the changes to Valve's game design structure. Oh, and Half-Life 3. (Just kidding about that last part, but we saw you jump a little in your chair.)

Newell said Steam Box's team explored ideas surrounding both motion-control and biometric controls, ultimately leaning towards the latter after tangling with "super boring stuff" involving latency and precision. "Maybe the motion stuff is just failure of imagination on our part, but we’re a lot more excited about biometrics as an input method," he said. "Your hands, your wrist muscles, and your fingers are actually your highest bandwidth, so to try and talk to a game with your arms is essentially saying, 'Oh, we’re gonna stop using ethernet and go back to 300 baud dial-up.'"

When asked about Steam Box's supported features, Newell stated the Linux-based hardware allows Netflix streaming, Internet browsing, and networking across multiple TVs.

"The Steam Box will also be a server," Newell said. "Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that’s serving up eight simultaneous game calls. So, you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We’re used to having one monitor, or two monitors—now we’re saying lets expand that a little bit."

Photo from The Verge — click for source

As for the wide-ranging Steam storefront itself, Newell hoped Valve will continually distance itself from inclusive alternatives such as Apple or Microsoft's digital shops by soon giving gamers the power to create custom listings to share with everyone else.

"Our view is that, in the same way users are critical in a multiplayer experience, we should figure out how we can help users find people that are going to make their game experiences better," he said. "Some people will create team stores, some people will create Sony stores, and some people will create stores with only games that they think meet their quality bar. Somebody is going to create a store that says, 'These are the worst games on Steam.' So, that’s an example of where our thinking is leading us right now."

Newell also revisited his great displeasure of Windows 8, calling the operating system a "giant sadness" and a detriment to the PC industry.

"It just hurts everybody in the PC business," he said. "Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC and buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales. It’s like, 'Holy cow, that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like, 'Oh my God...' I find unusable."

Check out the rest of the interview on The Verge for Newell's thoughts on Valve's "theory of fun," user-made content, and the level of control over Steam Box's design.