Wards are easy for me. I can cover that pretty well. I won't cover stuff like ward positions, because they're usually self-evident, but the more complex aspects of warding.
One, you need wards at all points of the game. Just a ruby sightstone as support isn't enough unless your team contributes as well. So always have a slot open for more wards as a support.
Two, use the wards wisely, and use the right one for the right job. I've seen some pretty stupid wards get put down, particularly in the first few minutes of a game. Not that the position was necessarily a bad one, but you have to realize when a ward is worth putting down. An early pink is smart if you want sight control, but you need to know if your jungler plans on early ganks to justify it, and that the enemy can't counter pink it. You want vision, but you want to deny enemy vision. Every ward down both gives you vision, but also informs the enemy on where you have vision if they already have vision. They can usually guess where you have vision as well based on how long you're gone from lane, and which direction you walk in, even if they don't have vision. Because of this, wildly warding without anticipating enemy actions can result in your team falling behind overall in gold by 100 each ward (the cost of the ward + the reward for destroying it). If you lose 2 greens to a pink, you've already given 85 gold advantage to the enemy (cost of the wards + reward for destruction - cost of pink), excluding the benefits of denied vision. Stagger your wards and try to get by with less when possible. Nothing makes me happier as a support when the enemy support puts all their wards down too soon. Then I can just pink a strategic location and make a giant hole in their coverage, or just tell people to wait 3 minutes until the wards run out and they start running blind.
Three, know when wasting wards is smart. I don't mean wasting it like making a penis on the screen with green wards, but basically warding out every conceivable position of entrance to an area. Usually, you do this to secure major objectives like baron and dragon, or when you're doing an aggressive invade with no knowledge of enemy positions. You place the wards in every bush before you enter them to avoid a face check, and to possibly get sight of somebody before they see you and allow a pick to occur. Those are pretty much the only times you do it, and the sightstones are perfect for this. Those wards are more disposable than regular wards, as they are a permanent investment. Basically, by the end of the game, if you haven't placed upwards of 20 wards with a ruby sightstone, you haven't gotten it's full worth (1500 gold total value of ruby sightstone, which is 20*75). So feel free to use them for sweeping the enemy jungle safely.
Lastly, be original with the wards. Not all wards need to be in specific locations, and you often will be counterwarded specifically to counter the most commonly used ward locations. While you should use those spots when you can, because they're usually cost effective ward spots as they cover multiple entrances, you should have back up ward places in mind. As an example, I was playing a game where the enemy was pink warding our tri every time, and their jungler was ganking from behind us everytime. Since I couldn't ward tri, and mid refused to ward his entrance to bot jungle, I had to get creative. So I basically took a guess as to the most likely route the enemy jungle would take (aka, the shortest one). So I warded just out of tri's ranges, but just short of seeing past the red bush. That way, I would get vision of the enemy jungle if they came through mid safely, and beat a hasty retreat when he started coming. It worked like a charm, and we managed to organize a counter gank off of it when they tried to dive us.
Tl;dr, treat it like a chess game. How in chess you use pieces to control the board by threatening squares, you use wards to control the map by revealing enemy action, and sometimes denying the enemy info on your own actions.
Enemy action is much less effective when you can plan against it. Games in league are almost always settled by effective ambushes and picks. Very rarely does a game end because of a head-on collision between teams. Somebody always gets the upper hand through an ambush. It may not be the final teamfight, and it may not be with first blood, but the defining moment is almost always brought about by either a lack or an abundance of ward coverage.
And don't feel bad if it doesn't come easily. It took me a couple accounts and a couple years before I was comfortable with warding.
Edit: almost forgot, wards can also be hella good bait or distractions if the enemy has an oracles. Some players will follow the ward trail into an easy gank, and sometimes you can distract them by repeatedly placing a ward in a location so they think you want vision, so they pounce on it for the gold and vision deny while, unbeknownst to them, your team is taking baron. They think they just made a quick 120 gold from a desperate support, but when they see the purple ring appear around you, they realize they've been duped. And it's humiliating as hell.
Last edited by Oracle; Jul 26, 2013 at 09:44 AM.