Riot introduced new pings in the prepatch for season 13, though you might be wondering if they have been released yet, as they are rarely used. Not counting the enemy ward ping, you can usually count on one hand the amount of times they are seen in a game. Are the new pings a bust?
Pings are the main tool that Riot uses to let players quickly communicate intentions with one another since the game doesn’t have an in-game voice chat. Using only the original 5 pings, the amount of information and intentions you can communicate is vast.
But as a sidenote, if you are looking for players to play with voice chat, the Z League App may help you find them.
So the question is, do the new pings add new communication possibilities that the old pings didn’t? To find out, we’ll go through them each of them separately:
Push
Push is useful to indicate that you need help to push a wave or to indicate to the Jungler that they can take the wave. It can also be used to indicate that you should push for a recall or dive. Though this could conceivably also be done using Assist Me, it reduces the ambiguity. Unlike the original pings, the push ping icon is hard to understand, it does not intuitively communicate its intention and looks a bit weird.
Bait
The Bait is perhaps the most used ping outside of the enemy ward ping, but for the wrong reasons.
In reality it is a very specific purpose ping, but it can be a useful one, as the On My Way ping or pinging on an opponent directly is ambiguous and relies on game knowledge on both sides. Bait gives very clear intentions to the receiver, although in a situation that is not that common. It’s also an intuitive icon so it’s easy to intuitively understand.
Hold
Not sure anyone has ever seen Hold since it is also a very niche ping. One good use case is when you want to hold a choke point, to ping Hold in it. It is useful in clearly communicating intentions in a teamfight or setup, but it’s certainly high level. If you want to hold a turret or objective, you can just use the assist ping.
All-in
All-in seems very niche, people do use it sometimes, but it seems that the On My Way ping or just directly pining on opponents serves the same purpose. We have yet to find a specific purpose for this ping which you wouldn’t be able to achieve with regular pings instead. The distinction between an all-in and a non-all-in fight may be a bit too high level for solo queue or a ping.
New vision pings
Riot introduced a bunch of new ward pings in the pre-season, but outside of the enemy ward, which everyone at this point already uses, you rarely see the other ones. The reason the enemy ward one is already so heavily used is due to its heavy incentive – you get gold if you are the first to ping a ward and you get a marker on its location for the duration it is up.
Vision Cleared
Vision cleared is quite useful, but incredibly specific. Indicating an area in which you have already swept so someone doesn’t have to, or that they can posture around that area without being seen. Very useful for assassins like LeBlanc or to set up flanks.
Ward Here
Ward here is very useful as it leaves behind a marker in the spot where you pinged. This is obviously helpful to indicate where you need vision or even asking for a teleport ward.
Both of these vision pings are more useful the higher you get in level, as higher level players know what to do with information about vision.
The New Pings Are Mostly Good
All of the new pings have their uses outside of All-In. What the non-vision pings do is mainly reduce ambiguity, making ping intentions very clear. The vision pings are generally useful tools for communicating information about vision. Many of these pings will be used more in the future, it just takes time to get used to new tools without incentives, especially if you’ve used the same ones for years.
Key Takeaways from the New Ping System
- New pings are underutilized
- Many of the new pings are very specialized additions in comparison to the old pings
- Most of the pings are useful and should be used, especially the vision pings
- It will most likely take time before the player base gets used to them
