USA USA USA USA USA USA USA
oh come on what's with this dj? we should be celebrating the winners not listening to this
USA USA USA USA USA USA USA
oh come on what's with this dj? we should be celebrating the winners not listening to this
Last game was a bit of a letdown, felt like CDEC was tilting. But game 3 is going to be remembered.
Also amazing how much the skill raises after every TI it's insane.
Getting tired of watching teams win the upper bracket only to lose at the finals. Wish Valve implemented true double elimination for the finals like they did in TI1, but it leads to format issues as it'd be a Bo10 with 5 winner's advantage.
It's just tha with Navi TI1 they had winner's advantage but won without needing it (I think?), but then lost TI2-3 when they could have used it. And now CDEC is in the same boat.
Oh, well fun games nevertheless.
TI1 Navi won from upper bracket
TI2 IG won from lower bracket
TI3 Alliance won from upper bracket
TI4 Newbee won from upper bracket
TI5 EG wins from lower bracket
To me it just seems like the better team wins. CDEC got outdrafted. The only game eg lost was testing how their leshrac is and getting cheesed by brood.
Also it's probably a preference thing. Do you want to have less fatigue due to less games, or more games to get you going.
They also had pick advantage CDEC(choosing firstpick/side).
Really good video, it's actually stuff I never bothered to learn but I really should.
It's good but irrelevant for most pub play since you know…your average pubster won't think about that angle. Still pretty good, especially if you're playing junglers/ancient clearers.
Another way of preventing that from happening would be defensive wards in general. For example, if i was playing radiant, i would put a ward either in my jungle/entrance to spot out any supports coming in with a ward (cause why else would they be sneaking in?). There would be so many times where i would see a support just pausing long enough and that's where you know they were planting a ward there.
Also here's to your daily dose of screw techies. Its like...playing an extreme form of minesweeping while watching your gold leak away in sentries all over the map.
I think it's pretty good for pub play especially because most don't care enough.
I've been using some of the spots in this video and had great success with them, especially when the enemy team decides to have 1 jungler.
It also helps that I've been doing a lot of support BH(dude is so op right now level 3 track gold is ridiculous). Pretty much all games with an enemy jungler were hard stomps for me(I win mid for my mid and cripple jungle, then we just proceed to out eco them with track gold). Also my dewarding has been way more successful. The game actually becomes so easy with enemies have a black map.
Pretty simple way to play but insanely effective. Ez +250 streak.
Ah yes, bounty is fantastic for that kind of play. He's so good as of now too, shuriken + track got buffed so hard. Now i want to play him till he gets nerfed next patch.
How do you play him if your team needs teamfight supports? Or do you just steamroll them with dosh
Ah yes, bounty is fantastic for that kind of play. He's so good as of now too, shuriken + track got buffed so hard. Now i want to play him till he gets nerfed next patch.
How do you play him if your team needs teamfight supports? Or do you just steamroll them with dosh
The way I play him is that by the time the enemy wants to team fight they really can't cause they're behind by too much and we destroy them and even if they get a few kills we're always coming out on top because track gold.
I just make sure to do my best that my mid and carry can snowball.
But my general gameplan is, check items of enemy mid -> now I know how many waves he at least needs to get his bottle -> kill courier.
Then gank mid as often as I can. I've won like 2 games straight off of that because people just start flaming each other. People are stupid when they see the enemy mid die 4 times in under 10 minutes moral is down for everyone. I buy all wards/sentries(but I try to be smart about it to not wreck my own economy).
And I always tell my team that we can rosh when I think we can once I have med.
I generally go for arcane -> mek/medaillon/urn/glimmer -> blink/solarcrest -> greaves. It also really helps because people generally like to fight not only in this meta but that's just pub dota. Pretty much items that help my cores to stay alive.
Of course I adjust sometimes the really protect their mid so I just gank another lane. BH is just a space creating monster. And the reason why I think that guide was really good is because the only hard time you'll have is when you run into sentries. But the placement has been generally pretty obvious and that's in 4.5 bracket. People just don't give a shit and support can't go into a deward war against me cause that wrecks their economy so much that even if I die through sentries I'm just not worth that much and because they have no items they die too easily against my cores.
Only games I lost were pretty much games were my team trolled super hard, like really shitty line ups or courier feed kind of stuff.
But even the shitty lineup games were super close. Those we just lost because people were really stupid and fed at their hero peaks. And the enemy just survived long enough to hit their own peaks and outlategame us.
Bounty is way too good. I don't think it's right that I as a roaming bounty can have 500+ gpm consistently. That's just ridiculous.
Also helps that he fits me. I have shit mechanics, I'm really bad in 1on1 lane situations. Well as roaming bounty you don't really need to lane problem solved xD.
Sounds like I should be playing BH this patch.
Only I usually end up building him with the old phase>drums>deso>basher>blink build (i.e. solo burst melee ganker build), but his squishness + lack of reliable escape just makes him terrible in that role compared to other dedicated gankers. BH's windwalk is just lackluster for actually escaping or harass plays (assuming enemy knows how to use detection). And his QWE kit doesn't give him as much solo kill potential compared to say nyx or pudge, but it's still okay.
And I have trust issues with teammates. I usually can't trust my teammates to be leading or follow my lead, usually they end up standing around doing nothing or ignoring whoever's leading. Maybe around 60% of my games are like that? So it's very rare for me to try anything that isn't a hero who can be independent.
Tried the tranquil + soul ring build with him, but that was a couple of patches ago, didn't really work to be honest.
To be honest I only gave him like ~5 games even though he got hugely buffed with that int growth, and Q damage. Though for shuriken to have 1200 range you need an hostile unit within 400 range and it is really annoying compared to his old 625 range. I liked the changes to be honest, but for some reason had no motivation to play him. Int buff is really nice though as he's rarely low on mana now if you get 1 cheap mana regen item (bottle, medal/urn) and you no longer need drums.
I'll give him a few gos in ranked to see how it goes. I have tons of experience with him as a dedicated ganker so it should be relatively easy. But support is not my strong suit. Hmm, I'll see.
Might just play him ganker style anyway.
You should try trusting in your mates more. Everyone has a few really shitty games but it evens out and I think I was guilty of this as well but it's really easy to underestimate what people can do.
Especially when you make the game easy for them. I mean I dropped to 3.7 when I started to get into supporting now I'm 4.6 playing pure p5 support. Well although it's hard to be p5 as bounty you get too much gold xD.
I kind of like how Blitz put it(he might have stolen it from someone else). The only constant in all the games is you. Sure you may lose like 30% of the games because people are stupid and make it unwinnable, but then 30% of the time you might get carried and the other 40% the games is totally on you alone.
Well, just had 1 stomp game where the other team was ridiculously bad, so I can't really count that gmae as any indication. Did ask the team if they wanted rotations and we got some counter ganks off. Then it just became a stomp.
Urn is so epic on him though. With the int buff to him you can just use the urn as your cheap str+regen statstick because you don't really need int anymore, and he doesn't really need agi, not even in full carry mode because of his W (usually dmg is built, but he's a lousy carry anyway). Oh and I buy wand on everyone that's not a farming hard carry, so there's that too. Get Urn + Wand + some spare mangoes and you never have to return to your base. So urn basically does nearly every thing drums did before for him. Sure the ms/dmg were nice, but I mainly got it for more hp and mana and urn just offers most of that for cheaper now.
Too bad I'm a ganking type of player and I usually play 2/3. Ended up going mango>PMS>Wand>boots>Urn>Phase>Blink>Deso. My intent was to try some other items, but I just didn't want to.
! Minor gripes about his suckiness as a ganker.
The buffs to him are quite nice, dunno why I don't enjoy playing him that much. Probably just wishing he was a better ganker, but hey, then nyx or pudge would be out of a job. Or maybe it's cause he's just too squishy for you to help much in teamfights besides the track/shuriken spam. It's not easy to be able to contribute to a fight using his W/E skills, and though my experience with him is enough that I can use it efficiently in teamfights (dodge detection, pickoff weak positioning, etc), I dunno, he's just not fun from a ganker's prespective?
! BH's main weakness I find is his lack of reliable disengage. Windwalk is virtually useless against competent players, and his hp leaves lots to be desired, plus you usually don't build hp items on him. Besides tranqui,bkb and linken's as situational picks, you usually either go support with glimmer/solar, which don't offer a lot of effective health, but at least you'll probably be backline in most fights, or you go the "stack attack for W" build which has a tendency to make you squishy (minus bkb) and either way he's just rather lacking for ganking.
! Compared to say nyx who has two stuns to get out bad situations, or pudge who's completely built around ganking. Both have better hp and mobility options (well pudge, maybe not in the mobile department).
Ah well, support life isn't for me. Maybe someday in a bh game that isn't going so well I'll try pos 4. I mean the way you guys are playing him like a walking melee ulti support a la tidehunter is interesting, but I just don't want to play that way, or am too used to ganker bh.
Yea sounds like bounty isn't your type of hero. He's basicallly scouting-and-dosh the hero and giving team knowledge of how to manoeuvre around bad teamplay. Too bad he doesn't have more stun/slow/damage but he's broken enough as of now. Anyway thanks darth for your bounty tips, will try him out!
Oh yea and get your immortals while they're tradable now. Still want to get hold of the faceless rex courier…
BH actually is a servicable ganker, just not as good the other dedicated ones. But deso+crit +WW + shuriken is not to be underestimated. BH has a much easier time in a losing game. I'd compare him to pudge, but honestly pudge is so bad it isn't worth comparing him to anyone. Nyx will always be better in the pure ganker role, but BH at least is mostly melee burst which has advantages over magic burst most of the time, and BH can switch to support if shit goes bad, though nyx can do that too.
Just it seems lately people are playing him in a pos 4 teamfight melee support thing, and just I can't bring myself to play him that way. I track, rotate, help my team in fights, but actually buying glimmer and solar is just… I don't want to. Both of them don't offer anything for you, while stuff like urn actually do while still helping your team. Main gripe is he doesn't need the glimmer for himself even vs lots of magic dmg and solar/medal always had the problem that u had to break WW to use it. Mek, urn, arcane and stuf at least don't feel like items exclusively for your teammates.
Also kinda salty that his W is basically useless for a source of damage and mostly gotten for the slow. Dagon build does more damage than deso build and it made me super annoyed.
TLDR: I play a good pos 2/3 BH, but just can't be bothered with pos 4/5.
Dumbass game. I'm so glad I stopped playing it. That game is not meant to be played if you have anything other than a 5 man squad at all times.
dank memes
I have 800 hours of purely solo games under my belt, yet I consider myself casual dota player with 50% win rate and I like to random heroes for variety. Its true that playing solo puts you to disadvantage I don't take that so seriously…sometimes you might lose 10 games in row and sometimes you win 10 games a row.
Btw what is up with lag and stuttering lately? Game is almost unplayable on hectic team fights at sometimes.
There is no disadvantage playing solo. The enemy team is pretty much the same as your team overall. You're not matching up against 5 man stacks vs solo in solo ranked. Solo queue is all about mentality. There is no "teammates are holding me back" or any of that shit.
Enemy team is as good/dumb as your team overall. Like I already said only constant in all the games is you.
And I admit is really hard to not get frustrated but dunno I'm probably broken from solo queuing but on the other hand I just laugh now if shit hits the fan.
I think I've become a way better team player after learning to deal with the frustrations that come from factors out of your control in solo queue.
And you just learn to recognize to maximize your own control.
As for lag haven't encountered any my problem recently is the client just closing after browsing through tabs(armory/shop/etc) not sure what's up with that.
I guess transitioning pains to reborn.
There is a disadvantage when you expect teamwork and it didn't happen. Like you would reasonably expect teammates to help you in a fight when they are nearby, or help you push after winning a fight. But nope, didn't happen. Instead they go farm or afk at tower or something. I'm not talking about getting caught out where it's better to lose 1 hero than the whole team, I'm talking about winnable fights.
It just enforces the solo carry/ganker mentality upon players, because you can't trust your teammates half the time. Maybe you could tell if the players are good from how they play in the laning phase, but it's not likely you can watch them often unless you're playing pos4/5. It's most of the reason why I mostly play pos 2/3, and on occassion 1.
And I reached the point where I often rage if people random in ranked. What the hell? There's 110 heroes, you're not BurNing or Fear or something. I'd be amazed if you could play like 15 of those heroes decently.
They tell me "but muh 200 gold or I dunno who to pick" and I'm like "I'd rather start with 0 gold than have a hero that they can't play". Apparently a difference of 200 gold can make your hero that your stuck with for the entire game irrelevant.
Would be less salty if it happened on the other team more than mine, but it doesn't seem to. Plus when it does happen to the other team the game just feels so easy it's unsatisfying.
And I get annoyed if people attempt to run against heroes they have no chance of escaping from, instead of turning around fighting, and hoping to get at least a 1 for 1 trade.
By the way, DeathAsthma, what are the heroes you are most familiar with?
For me: In order of skill
! Main:
Nyx (all pos 2-5, mostly pos 2 ganker)
BH (pos 2 ganker variant)
Pudka
QoP
! Pretty Decent:
Anti-mage
Invoker
Sven
Troll Warlord (before 6.81)
Tinker (4-4-0-1)
Balanar
Lord of Avernus
Slardar
Timber
Semi-Decent: Windrunner
OD
Zeus
Clockwerk Goblin
Spectre
Skeleton King
Crystal Maiden
Rubick
Furion
Chaos Knight
PotM
Lanaya
Tusk
Know how their spells work and their theoritcal roles:
Most carries, gankers and lane supports (pos 2-4)
! Can't play for shit: Chen
Elder titan
Every other hero
I just don't like Reborn because the main menu looks insanely like a mobile app, has so much wasted space and it is not ordered by importance. The friend list and lobby/matchmaking are usually hidden by default, and take up very little room despite being the most used features. Instead we get large borders, advertising space for a custom game that you likely won't be playing, space for a fking tutorial that you won't be playing and space for your own profile that you probably don't care about. Friend feed, maybe. Sale advertising can be excused for business reasons.
Seriously bad UI, compared to source 1.
That's not a disadvantage that's you having stupid expectations. Solo ranked is solo ranked.
Disadvantages don't exist in a vacuum it's always in context to something else. And in solo ranked everyone plays overall with the same conditions as everyone else. Or if you really think there is a disadvantage well I guess everyone plays with that disadvantage. Mind you that in solo queue I rather play with 4 other random people than with 2 man stacks mixed in.
And hey it's not like I don't get it, I was there at one time getting super frustrated with my team always and I was a rager too. But it really comes down only to you in solo queue. Of course there are unwinnable games but there are also games where you get carried hard. It's about making the difference in the rest of the games. As for your salt sorry but it's pretty much you. There is really no "this happens to me more often than everyone else" that's bullocks.
Like I said it's all about mentality.
It's recognizing what games you couldn't have won and recognizing in which games your play could have made the difference and it's about really looking at the whole game. People are so eager to blame 1 misplay for a loss, it's too easy. They never look at hey if I made this rotation before and then transitioned into jungle and then if I haven't shown myself here, etc I would be like 1 item ahead and this crucial team fight would have went super differently.
A big part about dota is pretty much learning how to lose. Once you get that down you're just more happy and improving gets way less stressful.
As for most familiar hard question, the more I play I feel like the more I see how much I actually don't really get some heroes I play really well. Like I used to love TB and during his prime I was like 22W-4L and then after his nerfs I just didn't understand the hero anymore. And now a higher skilled friend showed me mid terrorblade and I'm just like wtf that's actually really decent.
I think it's way easier to talk about what I feel like I'm decent at. Which is warding, reading the map, knowing when to take rosh, farming patters, positioning, being a positive influence on my team.
I'm weak at laning, efficient support rotations(stacking, ganking), mechanics. I'm only soso at zoning, coming back from behind, being aware of hero peaks. And still even the things I'm decent at I could improve if I really put in more effort.
Oh, right I should stop posting when I'm half asleep. Realised my whole post was more about salt than actual arguing about disadvantages. Yeah, can't really expect coordination from random solo players, still it shouldn't be unreasonable for you to expect decent competency from them. But both sides should theortically be playing with that disadvantage so yeah, my point was moot.
There is really no "this happens to me more often than everyone else" that's bullocks.
It's fully luck based, so yes it can happen. And to be honest that's the reason for my salt. It's entirely possible for bad roll streaks, it's a common thing in statistics. You'd need an incredibly large sample of games to be near 50-50 (like say 10 000+). Too many bad games where I'm the top contributor and the team doesn't even basic map awareness or follow basic instructions like don't go into the jungle to farm when we have no map control. If I got a nearly equal amount of games where I was being carried or something like a team that can communicate I'd be fine but nope it didn't happen.
And I definitely see more people random in ranked on my team than the other. It happened, don't care about 5v4 probablity or whatever, it DID happen.
I don't usually blame my team for a few misplays but if they constantly misplay and there's 2-3 players doing it then it gets pretty hard not to be demoralised. If I have to repeatedly tell them to stay at high ground when we're losing and not farm in the jungle or lanes and they still don't listen and repeatedly die then yeah…
And yeah, I do try to improve myself but if you constantly end up with the kind of team that you cannot even trust to contribute when you rotate to counter-gank or trust them to have decent farm it becomes pretty hard to do anything other than go the independent hero mentality.
Well, to be honest I don't care about MMR, it's just a meaningless e-peen number, I just want nearly equal teams and people who actually try to win and have some damn basic common sense. (i.e. not random and think 200gold>hero you cant play) But I've long accepted it's just a shithouse and no better than unranked. Heck in unranked I see more players that try or play better. I just mostly stick with unranked now. And my mentality for ranked these days is to not care about winning that much. Try to win and not knock myself out doing it. Coordinate with the team, and if that fails badly, just fool around because the game is probably unsavagable at that point (no point wasting your mind on rage). Dagon and blink are marvellous for that. Good thing I can play pos 1-4 decently and don't mind doing so, so I can usually fufill badly needed roles. Really suck at pos 5 (generally) and pos 4 junglers, though. At least with this mentality it is easier to try to improve.
Well at least I finally found a reason to build solar crest! Built it against a super fed Ursa and carried my team to victory via stacking HH + solar disarm/evasion abuse. He got more fed than me but he didn't build bkb/abyssall somehow, and the rest of the teams were suprisingly equal in shittiness so once ursa was out of the equation it became easy. It was unranked though.
By the way, what region do you play in?
I play EUW, EUE and Russia for shortest queue times.
As for it's pure luck thing I can only say it's bullshit, and pretty much anyone that understands what improving is will tell you the same.
It's like people new to Poker saying it's all card luck. Which just factually isn't true. And in dota you can have even more control over your play than in poker.
It's always the same arguments I win lane, I'm 20-0 while my team feeds etc etc. But I guarantee you if you look at your last 30 games you will find at most like 4 games where you went 20-0 and still lost. The 26 other games will most likely have you getting carried a few times, you being the reason that you lost and some you being the reason that you won. It's all about being consistent and beating the odds.
It's all about how the other people should have played to make the game easier for you. But dunno it's not like you have to believe me and I also understand that not everyone really enjoys to improve. Actually your whole post reflects the mentality of someone that doesn't really care about improving.
I think Blitz video pretty much sums up everything I feel about it the best
Hmm, can't try playing with you, Australia is a bit far from there. I'm used to 200ms ping, but 400ms isn't really playable.
And yeah, don't really seriously care about improving, there's no real motivation to do it, and bad games hurt too much. I try to improve when I do play, but no way I am going out of my way to actually seriously improving like it's a job.
Fully luck comment was on what teammates you get, not the entire outcome of the game. Yes, statistically you shouldn't get bad teammates consistently but well it happened. It was certainly more the other team.
Even if you improve yourself, you only make up 20% of your team. I'm not saying it's all luck, but luck makes up a large component of the game. Even if you manage to game your way around the luck, 20% is just too low to be worth it. And ofc it's the structure of dota, so no point in changing it. And even if you improve, then what? It's not like I'm planning to go pro and all you get is a 4 digit number. It's not the kind of game I enjoy improving on.
I've played Yu-Gi-Oh for years, I know how to game my way around luck, but sometimes you get bad hands, and there's very little you can do.
Now if only Valve could hurry up and fix their custom games issues.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Oh, by the way, do you listen any music when you play?
I listen to podcast sometimes when I play but I usually make sure to have the effect sounds loud enough. Dota sound design is pretty amazing you can get a lot out of the sounds gameplay wise.
Also yeah I don't think anyone that isn't a pro is playing the game like a job. People just enjoy it differently. Personally I just love how there are so many things to learn about the game. It doesn't get boring. Sometimes I take breaks 1-2 months but I always come back to it.
I also like the competition and strategy. I'm not really competitive in real life but it's really nice to have it for dota. It's almost like an outlet.
Also dunno man the stuff you're saying is just wrong :D this 20% stuff is like wtf. It's like factually wrong given that we have lots of players that are consistent high mmr. Main reason is your play nothing else. No bad teammates no nothing. It's just your play.
You can have a way higher influence on the game than 20%, mind you it's harder on some heroes than others but still. There is like a high 5k-6k carry wisp player out there so there is that. It's all about your play. Luck plays way less of a role in dota compared to most games, especially any card games.
That's why I also said it's a mentality thing. I stopped playing to see that number rise like a long time ago. It's just pretty much just for fun. So I don't go into custom games and practice mechanics, pretty much why mechanics are shit. But I have fun thinking about the game and learning new stuff. So that's pretty much how I improve. I mean I'm currently 4,6 but I'm sure I'll go 4,2 or lower(like when I started playing support lawl) soon once I decide that I want to play something else and I don't really care. It's just for me personally to see if I've gotten better or not. Unranked is pretty much the same system(since you have hidden mmr there) anyway just without feedback. Quality of matches for me has been pretty much the same between the two just with unranked I can't really tell if my play overall has gotten better.
But I guess at the end of the day people want to believe what they want to believe.
–--------------------
On a different note people should probably avoid playing ranked in reborn. The player pool isn't large enough and uneven matchup happen way more often there even for me.
Well, tell me when you say, dive for ganks and the other team do 1-3 tps, but when it happens to you, there are no tps, how does it feel? And when you tp to help, your teammate just runs even though his skills are free and he has a reasonable amount amount of health? And then the fight ends with the other team mostly on <10% hp?
Meh, shouldn't have used the 20% figure on the 2nd sentence. Maybe I should have said that you only make up 20% of your team's potential, not that you can only influence 20% of the game. Being forced into outnumbered suitations constantly is pretty demoralizing.
I find ganking fun, I just play that. I heard BH was OP, but well wasn't expecting pos 4 support build.
Anyway, my luck's been better lately at least.
Well, tell me when you say, dive for ganks and the other team do 1-3 tps, but when it happens to you, there are no tps, how does it feel? And when you tp to help, your teammate just runs even though his skills are free and he has a reasonable amount amount of health? And then the fight ends with the other team mostly on <10% hp?
Meh, shouldn't have used the 20% figure on the 2nd sentence. Maybe I should have said that you only make up 20% of your team's potential, not that you can only influence 20% of the game. Being forced into outnumbered suitations constantly is pretty demoralizing.
I find ganking fun, I just play that. I heard BH was OP, but well wasn't expecting pos 4 support build.
Anyway, my luck's been better lately at least.
When I dive for ganks and 1-3 tp and I die it's a 100% on me. The thing is this is super easy to outplay at lower brackets. Nobody checks inventory in lower brackets. It's not even a hard thing to do(as in execution) to constantly try to check everyone inventory on the map. But it gives you such a large edge when you know what you're up against. That means usually when I go for a gank I'm like 80-90%* sure if it will work or at least that I won't feed. Sometimes I even just bait tps. And call it a win. I bring 1-2 people to waste time.
The same holds true for when my team doesn't tp. I check my teammate's items as well so I know as a support who is the guy that can make the most happen in the game. How much more space my carry needs etc. But it also tells me if people can tp. If I see they can't I just go jungle and farm or try to take a different objective.
Like the games you lose despite you playing like a god are such a small minority and even those you just lost cause the other team was better. Luck is such a minor factor when I see my 5k friend going 44-2 from 3k to 4k there is really not much to argue.
*this is one of my weak points though I'm such a defensive and mechanically weak player that I don't trust myself to win 1on1 a lot that's why such plays are very bound to what other players do. People that are better than me in this regard just know way better with what they can get away with or you don't give a fuck and yolo so much that at some point they get just super good at it.
I dunno what I'm talking about at this point anymore. So I'm bowing out of the "random luck/how much you can influence the game by yourself" discussion. Mainly started that because I did consistently mostly get bad games for about a 2 month period. But it was a while ago and things are different now.
By the way, how's the pos 4 bounty hunter going? I think I'll try him a bit more in ranked, it's nice ot be able to switch to pos 4 if his game doesnt go so well.
And one other question, what were you favourite Warcraft 3 maps and/or which ones are you hoping to see get recreated?
Mine in no particular order:
! Videogame RPG
Bleach vs One Piece
Fate/Another
One piece Castle Defence
Fight of Characters (Korean)
FoCRus (aka Fight of Characters Russian)
Vampirism
Tree tag
Sunken City
Jurassic Park Survival
Ninja Duels
Life of a Peasant
~Random Chinese RPGs
~Random Korean maps
~Random Russian maps
~Random Final Fantasy maps
~Random Zombie maps
~Random minigame maps
~Shit ton of TD maps
~Probably played nearly every map that wasn't dota. Was never into DotA 1. Only started DotA 2 because the warcraft 3 server I used died out (thanks DotA 2, and half of the players doubled up as LoD players so there was that).
I'm considering copying a few myself. Talked to a few modders about what they have to say and it's pretty interesting.
Haven't played ranked since my last streak anymore.
I want someone to mod in mafia.
Footmen would be cool too. But most of all I just want a competent Tower Defense. Green TD has been like in alpha since reborn was released and that map sucks in its current state.
Welp, I picked furion/lycan to counter techies and it didn't end as well as I hoped. Actually the techies didn't have any impact, we lost for other reasons. And I forgot how shit i am at jungling
On the other hand, I'm contributing tons using pos 3 offlane BH with cheap Wand + Urn + any boots. It's really OP and I've been able to save for a blink dagger easily most games.
Actually nothing really counters a good techies. Maybe the best attempt at it I saw was in comp dota a super high life high armor lineup that was played to team perfection. Which just doesn't really happen in pubs.
When a good techies is in the game you jsut don't understand dota anymore. Nothing makes sense. Your map efficiency just drops by merely doubting yourself.
Can I be here? I can walk there? Nope !!! I hate that hero so much.
Played a bit more ranked but my streak has definitely stopped (maintaining 4.5 for now). People have actually been so smart and good. It's actually insane how well people trick me, baiting me with courier. Like who in the world puts a sentry down in the first 3 minutes right before their mid t3 and waits there for me(pj salt :D). Also way too many spirit breaker pickers holy fuck….
Bounty life is rough when you get shut down early. When you get track lvl 1 only at 17 minutes y_y tears....
Well, furion/lycan have minions to waste, and can buy necrobook, and maybe gem. It works well enough early game if you can micro the minions through shift walking to all the common mine locations. Remote can be dealt with if you have gem/necro3 and sacrifice your normal minions or even necros over them. I generally find gem to bethe best option if you can escape/kite. It's not hard to guess where techies has been for the last 10minutes. Although the issue is in any small section of a map there's at least 3+ points that techies can mine, so it gets hard to figure out where it is reliably. Land mines can be triggered via minion scouting, but remote is just get annoying and it becomes a gold drain if you go the sentry route.
Hey, it's not perfect, or even very good, but it's acceptable to me.
Unfortunately I suck at any jungler that isn't BF anti-mage and he's not a jungler.
The reason why furion and lycan(and same with chen who is actually the best out of the 3 since his creeps don't necessarily die instant to mines) aren't really good counters is that techies pretty much negates their main strength of pushing.
A techies doesn't really care that much about a few mines popping to summons. Cause to him it's a trade off if it's done early. He loses a few mines and you lose the creeps you need to farm efficiently. A good techies will care about levels and after that about farm.
He isn't reliant on that random kill of someone walking into mines early. He can get by with suicide + smart infight mines or just by creating space around his safelane. Also when you know lots of summons walk around you stack your mines differently.
But the real difference is although you definitely lower early game efficiency for techies a little with summons you don't really counter his peak.
Whereas he counters your peak. Lycan and Prophet who love split pushing just won't be able to do it early enough. So you're stuck with a lycan and prophet who at that point don't really contribute at lot to teamfights and can't safely solo push.
It's a "counter" where no thought is put in, it's like the Viper is a counter to TA statement which completely ignores that TA can do just fine in lane and even if he for some reason really gets outplayed he can go fall back on ancients. And then in the midgame you have a Viper and the other team has a TA who can solo rosh, somewhat safely solo push, flashfarm and just in general do way more things than a Viper. So in that way Viper is a pretty bad TA counter, like how Lycan and Furion are bad techies counters.
But then in lower pubs there are probably so many techies that are just plain bad and are stupid and get super thrown off by their mines being disarmed and just don't know what to do, because they're bad so there is that I guess xD.
Like I had to tell my friend watching him, dude!! stacking 5 mines at the start of the game is fucking useless nobody even has that much HP. 3 mines if you're against super tanky people will do the job.
But if the techies is good I think the best way to deal with him is being a support that has enough range to demine. That way you accept that someone might die when farming but nobody will die while pushing to mines since you can control all the pushes.
I think I'm done with this patch. 6.84 was probably one of the best patches I played on or maybe it's just because 83 in comparison was just awful. But the game is getting boring for me now. It seems like some kind of balance patch should hit this week but from the sounds of it, it might just be number tweaking.
Which might be enough I think. Maybe we'll see some fresh heroes.
Well I mainly stick to custom games now. It's much more stable than it used to be. Still needs some work but it's at least playable for the most part now.
I have some slight hate going on with how my favourite heroes keep getting nerfed because of the meta every single patch so I barely play normal anymore. And no I did not have them as my fav purely because they were FotM, they were heroes I enjoyed in patches way before pros started using them.
Mainly Nyx getting overall nerfed way back when he was a good support, and then further nerfed due to tinker's dagon eblade abuse. Sure, neither actually were targeted specifically at ganker Nyx, but that just makes it worse imo. And then pros discovering Yroll's 1v1 fighting potential… At least Anti-Mage has been relatively untouched but I don't find Chinese farming strategies to be fun to play often.
And then I get annoyed at people calling me FotM trash for picking BH (or Troll before). When everyone is picking your favourite hereso you just lose the will to play them. It is tedious to see them that often, and I don't even care about the counterpicks.
Didn't like 6.83 either. Seeing Troll/Sniper wasn't too bad, especially seeing bad players spamming them and failing hard, but the comeback mechanics costed way too many games. 6.84 is not too bad in comparision I guess, though storm spirit/lesh isn't that much better. Sniper/troll had serious mobility problems. Troll much less so, but he was kite-able to an extent. Storm and Lesh are silly to try kiting with. At least reworked mechanics are better.
My favourite patch was back when Skeleton King had his 20% lifesteal active. Bad players would cast it and seal the passive, but decent players would easily use it as a 20% hp instant kill nuke combined with Q's burn. Completely broken spell as it was too effective compared to your standard 300damage 140mana nuke, and it only costs 20 mana.
6.83 made me want to kill myself playing support. That patch was not fun for supports.
I will not lie there are a lot of line ups where storm just gets too frustratingly good. I think he's in a good place overall though.
But the meta favors him + I think Bloodstone suicide is maybe a bit too good. Unless you're behind playing cocky on Storm is just way too rewarding for almost no risk because of the suicide. I mean it's not super hard to get a best case scenario out of it where you farm deep into enemy territory and waste a smoke gank attempt on you.
But dunno maybe just keep it as it is and see how other heroes that will get buffed affect him.
On my needs to be nerf list are le balanced horseman, slayers lina, bounty hunter, techies, I want to say bloodseeker but that's just to serve my pubs he seems ok to be honest. Not sure about buffs most of the heroes I currently enjoy for fun are in a pretty good place like earthshaker, rubick, wd, etc.
Ignoring heroes though, fuck glimmercape and solarcrest.
6.83 wasn't fun for semi-carry/gankers either. Your impact practically meant nothing in the end.
6.84 though. Fuck glimmer too. Though Solar I am not sure about since the 30% miss component doesn't seem to help me much, so it just feels like an expensive desolator.
And as a BH nerf seems inevitable, just wish there was some way to nerf his teamfight ability while maintaining his solo gank potential, but doubt that's going to happen. Well whatever, there's still pudge/nyx but they use magic damage for the most part, so maybe Tusk….
Tusk is such a pain in ass hero to deal as support, his ult can one shot most supports and he has tons of ways to reach them and it gets really bad when Tusk gets Silver Edge, only way seem to be really paranoid and be always under sentry wards effect or gem is often mandatory after 20 minute mark.
CK's get out of control so easily it can snowball really hard.
Silver/shadow blade has a rather short duration. Its use in ganking is fairly limited unless you had a vision advantage. It's pretty easy to predict where he is if you have basic map awareness and good chokepoints obs warded.
As for his ulti, it kinda sucks if he has medallion/solar, since his W doesn't have much of stun window to use it. Just stick with an ally with a disable.
If he's going sb+deso without medallion, then you can try some naked armor items.
HH or ghost might help if you can afford them, though I doubt it'd help much vs invis. They are very good vs snowball intitation though.
Easiest way if you are a support is just to trade yourself for him, they way you talk about it, he's at least a pos 3 so it'll always be a good trade.
I am not sure where you are getting the "tons of way to reach them" from? If you are talking about farming ability he's under average. Q can't really clear an entire creep wave, so unless you are talking about battlefury or something?
I wouldn't advise gem unless you know your team can hold onto it. It doesn't sound like your matches go well enough to use it if shit gets bad by 20 mins.
There is a reason BH is the better ganker. From what I know Tusk is mostly valued for his Q/W/E supportive plays and being a decent Str hero.
Tusk is a pain. My easy way to deal with him is playing a support that just farm faster than him. The goal is to stay on par or get ahead in items once you get 1 or 2 support items you can manage to stay alive. My favorite is Lina(I usually hit euls before he gets even close to shadowblade). Once you get the edge he usually crumbles since pubs are way to chaotic for him to be used to his maximum efficiency. At least that's my experience.
I just don't know what's up with ganking Tusk.
Despite his 350% crit, cheap as hell mana cost nukes Q/W which look extremely good on paper, I find little interest in playing him over BH, Nyx or Pudge in the dedicated ganking role.
CK's get out of control so easily it can snowball really hard.
Also, what did you refer to with "CK's"? If you mean Chaos Knight, I haven't seen that guy in ages. Honestly have no idea how he sits lately, but his flash farm is terrible, and his ultimate despite buffs is still somewhat lackluster. 100%/200% dmg I/O is excellent, and his W is especially dangerous. The stats are good, maybe it's just his lack of farm holding him back. Give it around 2-3 more buffs and he'll prob be the next FotM given his recent buffs. Still it says a lot when that hero's default build is to skip R and go 4-4-0-0.
Once you get the edge he usually crumbles since pubs are way to chaotic for him to be used to his maximum efficiency. At least that's my experience.
I do not see his W/E used the way it is used in Pro games, that's for sure.
Also moving the WR conversation here since my inbox is getting filled ._.
I'll try buying some throwaway DPS items earlier and leveling W. What did you suggest to spend the 150 mantle gold on instead for offlane WR? Just wards for junglers? What do I do in the case that there's no jungler?
Offlane wards is almost always worth it you can block pull camps or just play more aggressive because you know when the enemy is rotating.
http://www.dota2.com/685
Also patch just hit yey. All popular heroes got hit. Especially storm lmao. Going to be so awkward now to readjust.
Wow, most of my liked heroes got minor good buffs AND most of my disliked heroes got nerfed! Wow, this is easily amongst my most liked patches.
Quick thoughts:
LoA: 50% redirection is huge!
BH nerf was almost nothing for solo ganking potential. The vision hit is quite terrible for teamfights, the lesser gold isn't that much.
Nyx: Duration buff is epic at lower levels, but doesn't really increase your overall burst damage. Aghs upgrade buff is meh since you get it for semi-supporting roles.
CK: Still meh
Enchantess: …........ really?.... Not that I know of any good orbs on her but still.....
Invoker: Hrmm 4.0 int growth, I wonder if that'll turn into the PL 4.2 agi thing? probably not. At least we'll see him more now. Also 8 levels of spells with aghs! Yay!
Lich: Sac is BS now...
Luna: Looks fun, doesn't affect her late game too much though.
OD: Meh, doesn't look good enough to be worth picking him still... aghs still mostly useless without refresher....
PA: More dagger luck abuse!
Pudka: That rot, hrmm...
Slardar: Hmm phasing Q, I wonder. Seems to be a bit strong during chases.
SKK: Ehh, 7 damage won't help that much. Nice to see aghs now at least affects allies during ur reinc.
Spectre: Slightly easier farm! That dispersion nerf is going to hit hard.
spacecow: gg no more 17% = 100%
Storm: lel manacost
techies: lel mines nerf
HH can be disassembled! Finally!
Cheaper Radiance and BF!
Also, Windrunner didn't get hit for some reason.
I only know with lots of annoying heroes being toned down and TA being untouched is that my TA games will probably be easiest for a while. Things like her minus armor, trap vision, fast deso timing , ability to farm ancients are all the more potent in the face of the med/crest rosh nerf, various hero vision nerfs and ancient buffs.
Also lmao my last Lina game before the patch 14/2/22. My Lina game right after the patch 15/17/6.
Thanks Icefrog!!
Nah just kidding. 1 game I went easy 4 the other game I went mid and got destroyed by a tinker so no real correlation.
Dam, my invoker is much worse than I thought. Haven't practiced him in ages. Lost 4 games and won 1, and the won one was carried. In fairness I had some pretty flamey bad teammates but still made too many mistakes on him.
Don't think the int growth buff helps THAT much. It certainly improves his mid laning, but 0.8 atk per hero level is kinda mehhh, at least during the laning phase. Maybe if it was a flat bonus to base atk instead. Aghs giving +1 level to all skills is very nice, but the issue is he needs way too much to be effective still. At least wand, phase and one of 4 ~2000 utility items (drums, eul, blink or force) and then aghs/ocatrine. And you probably also want to rush midas for the exp advantage.
Tried a bit of WR and certainly rushing some cheap dps items (wand>aqulia, phase, force, aghs) helped loads. In fairness though it was against shitty sniper and BH who are squishy as fk, and I'm pretty sure those players were worse than those of the WR games I lost, so I'll need a few more games.
Either the BH players I met suck, or the vision nerf is hurting heavily.
Dunno how TA fairs these days. I like her concept and design, but she kinda lacks in mobility and rushing a dagger on her doesn't help much with her DPS. I don't practice her, but I've played against her a fair bit and know most of the trap chokepoint locations. Wish I could play her better but her range just keeps screwing with me. As far as I know she seems to be in a good spot, just lacking in mobility or high burst without item investment. Though with the semi-recent blink dagger changes… you can just Q> tanks a few hits> blink out.
It is pretty amusing to see bad players fail vs shadowmeld without detection, it basically becomes a get out of a jail free card.
As for siege creep change it is screwing with some old habits badly. And the consumable ally click change hurts habits badly too.
TA is boss only reason why she hasn't been that insane was because of other meta heroes like le balanced horseman. You snowball so out of control with her and it's not particularly hard.
She is also a rather easy mid to play, I suck super hard mid(well relatively at my bracket) but I still do okay with her.
Like you learn how to stack ancients from mid lane and you hit your deso at ~14 minutes, you immediately do solo rosh, have a tp to counter gank ready and you just control game because once you get blink you 1-2 two shot supports every fight is than 5v4 or 5v3.
But the best thing about her is she hard to gank with most supports. You just waste time don't even try to do a solo sup rotation. Add to that you can pressure towers solo, you can flash farm(which srsly is so important to give you a chance if you ever fall behind to come back). Heck you don't even need supports or buy wards to take over enemy jungle just have smart trap placement.
Really her only problem is she falls off but it really isn't a problem considering that you snowball so hard a lot of times you just end games at 26-30 min.
Also even if you don't go deso first when you hit your blink timing you still 2-3 shot most supports with meld refraction.
And mobility hasn't been a problem since the change of refraction stopping dmg so blink doesn't go on cooldown.
Edit: Lmao Nyx you have double Vendetta at 16. Saving that money on the dagon upgrades.
Double Vendetta was always a thing at 16, you just had to time it at the exact end duration, I suppose now u get 10 more seconds. That said, it won't do shit for saving dagon. Those who buy dagon will continue to do so. The rest who see him as a melee lion support who counters some int heroes will not care about dagon in the slightest.
I am just super salty that his Q lost the free targeting due to his pro support play, and even saltier that the tinker nerf hit him indirectly.
Invoker is too tiring to practice, gave up.
Tried some varied WR builds. As you said, even phase + basil + wand doesn't seem to be enough dps if you rush a blink. Had some trouble with a pugna that had arcane + aghs.
Maelstorm is epic though. 2700 gold but procs way more than crystalis. Really good cheap dps item if u can afford the slot
Force is pretty ok if you don't need the blink since the + 10 int is nice for dmg. Works well vs BH/Sniper and shit mobility heroes.
Deadalus/MKB, ehhh 5500 luxury so it's not very likely you're going to get it early
Aghs is good ish but at 4200 it's a bit dear for the DPS it gives, that said the naked point or staff is pretty easy to obtain if ur scraped for cash.
Haven't meet any good junglers or mids that rotate often, so warding hasn't been of much help.
Her last hit is decent so at least u can contest even without the mantle.
How can you say that you now have a pretty much guaranteed 2x500. Like what the fuck, the double Vendetta before was as much of a thing as triple/quadruple bashes way too unreliable to pull off consistently without getting punished. Now you can time it very easily and very consistently.
You don't need to upgrade your dagon to the later levels(Like I'm almost sure I can probably do with just dagon lvl 2 for most of the game).
Like that's 3750 or 2500 gold you can use early because you won't lack the damage to solo enemies no matter what. That's like a glimmer, mek, crest etc.
Or in some cases really close to an aghs which is godly for defending high ground.
This owns. If people can figure out how lane nyx she's going to be a really strong pick.
Also I'm pretty sure you misread Spectre dispersion that's a really strong buff. I think Spectre might actually be picked semi regularly instead of niche pick in competitive now I mean she was even fine in 6.84 to be honest.
Dispersion now reflects damage before reductions(so basically it reflects the dmg as if spectre had 0 armor 0 magic resist) and returns it as the same damage type. Like how do you even stay in a teamfight as a 1-4 armor support in that situation while your carry right clicks her? Like it wasn't even hard enough to stay alive when she hits her radiance.
Like an example eating level 3 laguna aghs ends up being 187 aoe pure dmg which for a support is not nothing.
u have a 10 sec window now, before it was 1 sec, but it still requires you to have gone invis ~40-50 secs before. You can call it a 2.55 (2.55 now) secs window if you do it during Q stun. It's still really situational both ways. I said it was a thing, not that you could consistently pull it off. Maybe I should have said it "existed"? Anyway yes 12 sec way better than ~2 secs, but it's still bad as given u need to set it up 40 secs beforehand.
Dagon, ehh. dagon 1 + eblade is cheaper and better dmg, but the issue is with dagon is u often need to up it to be able to burst. Even though 1250g for 75 final damage is crap as hell, u need that 75 dmg to secure to kill.
If you're going support nyx in the first place, then you don't need dagon. Just stuff like blink, arcane, urn, aghs, mek, even glimmer/solar will do. Though 1 value dagon is still pretty good for support killing. 300 instant damage is not to be underestimated.
As for spectre, I was basing it off medusa's mana shield mechanics. Thought it would mean less effective hp, never mind.
I actually hate all the nyxes that do that etherblade build. You invest like soooooo much gold in burst and your power doesn't really grow for quite some time(like there is a very good chance that you're like the same for like 10 minutes before you get that gold together for your ethereal).
The reason why you don't go that build is that the CD reduction on dagon upgrade is way too valuable, the added dmg/range is a nice bonus and just smoothes out your game add to that getting the gold for a recipe is way easier than getting the gold for eaglesong. Like it becomes way too hard to play in the mid to late game phase unless you're far ahead. Like compared to that, that extra bit of dmg is negligible you don't really need that.
Ether blade though is fine as like a 5th-6th item as luxury.
Like the only time I would consider ether as a 3rd item is against void in the case that my win condition becomes keep 1 person alive during chrono.
The cooldown reduction doesn't really do much till level 4/5 though. 25 cd is too long for any teamfights. Even 20/15 is pushing it in a good teamfight.
Eblade is very much near impossible to rush unless you have a few silly players feeding you constantly.
Nyx's entire concept is to be a burst ganker, though it is inefficient as hell. Hence why it's usually preferred to play him as half support half ganker, or even full support. But well if you don't want to support much and prefer the ganking playstyle then there's not much reason to build anything besides eblade/veil/dagon. I usually end up playing him about 33% support, or full support if I trust my team.
Usually I go:
circlet
tango
mango
gg branch
Wand
Arcane
Null
Dagon
Dagon 2/3 if poor,blink if rich
Dagon 2-5
eblade
bloodstone
refresher
travels
Mind you this was before the aghs patch, well before the bloodstone and refresher changes. Probably works less now, I haven't played him in a while.
Also insert some random situational items