DOTA 2: Thanks volvo

[BlackMoomba]

How I feel whenever we have any niche carry introduced into the game... Can't wait til Mortred and Nyx Assassin.

The difference between people who can micro scarabs and can't makes or breaks that hero. Can't wait for crit machine either

[Gredival]

^ Those videos were pretty awesome.

I'm a little over a month into playing Dota (1), and I'm enamored by the depth of the game.

I'm still having trouble with map awareness, but seeing as how I had a 5-week hiatus due to an overseas trip, I'm not all that bad.

I need to find a couple heroes to stick with. I've only played 4-5 games online against people, all with Spiritbreaker (who I practiced a bit with). I think I'm going to pick up Void.

Obligatory don't learn the game as a carry first, you need to practice other skills before you have the awareness and polish to carry. If you don't have good map awareness, good LH skills, and a good sense of how and when to rotate you won't carry effectively.

[Vandole]

Yeah... Don't play carries first. you have much more room for error as a support because if a team doesnt win the first thing they do is blame the carry. You will lose more than you win by a long shot.

[Gredival]

Carries are defined by their ability to scale. They are only effective if they have something to scale though, i.e. they have to farm a shitton. Conversely nukers and supports don't have abilities that scale, but that means they will always be able to make a set amount of impact. It's just that the efficacy wanes the longer the game goes on.

The best supports are the ones whose abilities stay effective at the end even if they don't do lots of damage (Tidehunter's Ravage, Venomancer Poison Ring/Nova, Enigma's Black Hole, Rhasta/Lion Hex, Invoker EMP, Silencer Global Silence, Omniknight Repel/Guardian Angel). That frees up farm for the carry without hurting the team fight potential.

[Tyr]

Carries are defined by their ability to scale. They are only effective if they have something to scale though, i.e. they have to farm a shitton. Conversely nukers and supports don't have abilities that scale, but that means they will always be able to make a set amount of impact. It's just that the efficacy wanes the longer the game goes on.

The best supports are the ones whose abilities stay effective at the end even if they don't do lots of damage (Tidehunter's Ravage, Venomancer Poison Ring/Nova, Enigma's Black Hole, Rhasta/Lion Hex, Invoker EMP, Silencer Global Silence, Omniknight Repel/Guardian Angel). That frees up farm for the carry without hurting the team fight potential.

With all due respect to both you and Vandole, I played pretty well my last couple of games with Void. You guys are right, but I practiced a lot v. AI to get LHing down and read up on the guides. My only problem is my lack of experience (which translates to map awareness--dead on there).

Man, my first bnet game, I got thrown by a friend into an RD, and I got stuck with a hero I've never played with (Azgalor). I got raped in map-awareness 101...

And actually, my last two games with Void, it's really been my team sucking. I did pretty well, though by the end they were just way too powerful (I was 19, everyone else on my team was below 16, and the opponents were all 18+).

If you guys ever want to take a step back and play Dota1, I'd love to play a game to get pointers and learn.

[Vandole]

yes, but you dont know the matchups... the second you get a group of people against you that have half a brain you're fucked.

[Gredival]

With all due respect to both you and Vandole, I played pretty well my last couple of games with Void. You guys are right, but I practiced a lot v. AI to get LHing down and read up on the guides. My only problem is my lack of experience (which translates to map awareness--dead on there).

Okay for reference, I yell at Vandole all the time because I will act first without pinging, typing, or using voice chat. Why? Because this game is about taking opportunities that come to you. Even a second of hesitation can cost you the game because it can mean the difference between the team spreading out too far for an AoE ult, it can mean the difference between the enemy seeing you and using their BKB, etc. I got better by playing with friends who were competitive league players, and looking back I don't understand how they had the patience for me. But every time I fucked up, they called me out on it and told me what to do. So my default mode is to act first and make the right play based on what I understand the situation to be, and expect the same of my teammates. It is absolutely retarded totry coordinate each and every move, because you can't do that in high level play. If you watch pros when they scrim, they don't do it either. The team has enough map awareness and game IQ to know what to do.

The reason I say not to play a carry fundamentally revolves around this. Your job as a carry is to get kills and farm. If you play too aggressive, you lose all your gold and feed the other team. If you play too passive, you won't get all the kills you need and you will be weak and unable to do your job. It's not just about knowing your hero, it's about knowing all the heroes so you know what will happen in response to your actions. If you dive that tower, do they have a snare or a slow or a stun? How long can your hero take tower damage, is it enough to kill? Have you developed a good innate understanding of armor to know how much damage you actually have to do to kill them accounting for reduction? You can practice last hitting all you want with AI, but against players they will adapt with items and skills to harass you. What do you do when they rotate an Obsidian down there whose sole job is to Imprison you constantly so you physically can't last hit? Or a heavy harass orb walker like Huskar and Viper?

You need to have enough experience to be able to make the right play, and quite frankly I'll bet money that you need a lot more time invested before you are at that stage. You have to know when you dive past a tower or when to back off. I've played DotA (WC3 DotA to HoN, then to Dota 2) for over ten years and my instincts and awareness are far from perfect. I actually generally don't play carries. The carry is NOT the most important role on a team nor is it the hardest; but it is the easiest to screw up.

Also that awareness is extremely role specific. Most pros specialize in a certain role so that they understand the intricacies of their jobs. However you should only have one carry, and maybe another semi-carry. So what happens when you can only play carries but someone else on your team picks some retarded hard carry like Clinkz? The metagame disfavors turtling hard carries. And that's the problem with Void, specifically. You need so much farm that against a good team that knows to end it early, you shouldn't win. He's a top tier carry, but the games in which he can be utilized correctly are pretty rare.

The best players are usually not recognized as carry specialists (Maelk's Furion, Puppey's Chen, Dendi's Pudge, DeMoN's and LightOfHeaven's Beastmaster). Even the players that specialize in carrying usually roll with semi-carries because they need heroes that have high impact early for pushing (MiSeRy- and XBOCT both favor Mirana).

[Tyr]

da truff

Yea, you make good points. There are a ton of basic mechanics that take me a while to calculate, for example, I don't quite know my way around armor (as in, how much "Amplify Damage" really translates to in terms of decreasing an opponents EHP). And I'm still incrementally moving forward with a variety of basic stages: map awareness, warding, opponents/countering heroes, and the like. I sometimes find it difficult to quickly check my opponents' builds, and am way too novice to be able to off-the-bat recognize what items they're going after if it isn't obvious. Playing against the AI has helped a ton though in terms of knowing recipes/items/efficiency of items.

Maelk's Furion scares the bejesus out of me.

I'll switch out of Void, though it's been insanely fun. Much before I tried SB and Void, I tried Windrunner. Twas fun, and I was getting the hang of her complexity (sorta). But I think I'll put her aside till I get significantly better.

There are a couple heroes that I liked, any suggestions for an immediate transition? I'll put them in order of my own preference:

1) Silencer -- I like him a lot. Played with him a handful of times when I -random'd into him v. AI -- I've only half-read one guide on him though and haven't seen any strong replays of him.
2) Rasta -- My first go in the game was with sniper, but then for a handful of games I played Rasta. It was difficult at times with retarded AI though to get them to focus on one enemy. Though it was extremely fun to have 3 disables (shackles/voodoo/eul's)
3) Earthshaker/Sand King
4) Dark Seer -- I have never played him, but he looks insane. How much skill does his ulti require to land effectively?
5) Kunkka
6) Obsidian Destroyer
7) Venomancer
8) Drow
9) Dazzle
10) Bane/Lina

Or really any other suggestions to boost. I actually don't know if I should even list Dazzle as he exemplifies my qualms with playing hard supports (if that's even a term). My issue with most supports actually is that I don't know my way around the map well enough for ward placement. And playing against the AI doesn't simulate how real players jungle. Add to the fact that I hate sucking and don't want to let my team down and that the group of people I currently play with aren't overly helpful with giving me tips (despite me asking for criticism).

Thanks for the tips.

[Gredival]

1) Silencer -- I like him a lot. Played with him a handful of times when I -random'd into him v. AI -- I've only half-read one guide on him though and haven't seen any strong replays of him.

Is a very good hero in terms of preventing devastating combos (notably, Earthshaker and Puck). If you are very good at reaction times, you can stop heroes who only have one spell to pop off after Blink (Tidehunter, Enigma). You aren't very useful against Sand King who generally activates ult then blinks in with it activated.

He's good at setting up your team to take a fortified position. Global silence before a blink can stop the initiator from getting torn up. He has extremely strong lane control against certain heroes (those with limited manapools and no low cost spells to use; orb walks don't remove curse of the silent but they are locked if you silence them)

2) Rasta -- My first go in the game was with sniper, but then for a handful of games I played Rasta. It was difficult at times with retarded AI though to get them to focus on one enemy. Though it was extremely fun to have 3 disables (shackles/voodoo/eul's)

Used a lot in competitive play. Important to trap a hero in the wards (pretty much makes them useless unless they have an immediate disjoint or can fight through the wards to walk out), then hex one and shackle another. If you do your job well, you tremendously affect the flow of a fight. Wards are also very effective at pushing.

3) Earthshaker/Sand King

Both very good initiators. Initiating is probably the hardest role mechanically to perform since you make or break the fight. I feel ES is less noob friendly because he's very easy to deny farm, and he's very blink dagger dependent. Sand King needs a blink for sure, but he can contribute a lot more without it. He also farms easier due to Caustic Finale wiping out waves of creeps.

Sand King can also function slightly better as an anti-pusher because Caustic Finale can rip through everything. ES's ult does the same thing but comes with an ult timer. Not so effective when you consider how fast Broodmother and Furion get creeps back vs. ES ult.

Can locate very informative VODs on both watching competitive play.

4) Dark Seer -- I have never played him, but he looks insane. How much skill does his ulti require to land effectively?

He is top tier auto-ban class. His ulti gets stronger with your opponents getting stronger. Ion Shell chase is very hard for some heroes to handle.

The ult is easy. The issue is sucking people through it to maximize the illusions. You need Scepter to get enemy illusions. Without it, you can just drop the wall wherever and have your team move through it. He has a moderately high skill cap.

5) Kunkka

Terrible. He's an infamous pub stomper because of an innate +60 dmg 100% cleave that is on a 4 second timer, so ideally you can run in to last hit and harass your opponents for 100 dmg every 4 second. But good opponents can counter this really easily with spacing or by orb walking the shit out of you.

People would build 4x Battle Fury and a Lothar and run in and one shot teams using the stacked cleave (Battle Fury stacks purely additively and combines with Cleave skills). But that's pub trolling and requires the other team to just completely drop the ball on letting him farm. That being said? I won a game today I was sure was lost at 20 minutes because they let it go til the hour mark. By then the Kunkka built the 4x BattleFury troll build and got an instant team kill when he splashed all of them in a little ball.

His stun is nice if it lands, but that's pretty hard given the delay between cast and activation. The ult is absolutely wretched. If it hits, it's like Tidehunter's Ravage and it can shape a team fight. If it misses, which is 95% of the time, your team effectively fights without an ultimate.

I hate playing with Kunkka on my team cuz I know I will hear "Now THAT was a fail boat!" more times than I can count.

6) Obsidian Destroyer

Very good INT based carry that can wreck other hard carries since they tend to have poor INT scores. Very strong early game lane control. But suffers from being even more of a glass cannon than a normal carry. Lacks a good escape mechanism, and can't really use Lothar's effectively as other carries who use Lothar for an escape. Best played as a counter-pick to high-impact low int heroes.

Obsidian can both destroy an Anti-Mage or get destroyed by him. That's the importance of the farm.

7) Venomancer

You will rarely see a competitive game played without Venomancer. He is important enough to be picked in every match-up, but not deadly enough to ban. The wards are phenomenally good at stopping pushes because they can't be cleared out easily with AOE spells. Venomous gale has a ridiculously long slow that makes it impossible to run in a big team fight. His orb can whittle your HP down terribly from sheer autoattack (but since it is permanent and not cast, you can't orb-walk; if you could, he would easily be the best lane control in the game). And his ult really fucking hurts, no matter how much HP you get.

8) Drow

Very basic, and pretty strong ranged carry. Frost arrows gives you an orb walk which normally gives you harass domination. Aura is very powerful on just yourself but gets a lot better if you have other high right-click DPS ranged heroes. In particular it gets really strong combining with Luna's aura or Vengeful Spirit's aura. Silence has decent utility if you get the superior positioning or the initiation. Also allows you to interrupt some key channels.

Her ult being a passive makes her more centered towards the midgame. Its a massive free AGI boost which is very powerful as it serves effectively as a free Eaglehorn, but when items start to cap out you'll wish to have a bigger high-impact team ult (like Void's bubble) in exchange for just buying a damn Eaglehorn for yourself.

9) Dazzle

Pretty good support, but he's better for some matchups than others. All in all it's hard to ever say he's a bad pick, but there are only a few situations where he is the best support (against Necrolyte, with Huskar)

10) Bane/Lina

These heroes play very differently. Lina's role is to instantly roast one person out of the fight with her three hit combo, then disable someone else with Cyclone Stick or Sheep Stick. She's a very good counter to other INTs as a result of this. The stun is too slow to be the team's primary AOE disable though, but it's a very good followup.

Bane is a very good crowd control anti-carry hero. Slap on Sleep to take someone out of the fight, Enfeeble to cripple a carry's damage, and then ult the highest priority target. The main issue for Bane is that he's basically Rhasta with a more powerful shackle, but Rhasta's wards are better pushing. Metagame generally favors pushing.

My issue with most supports actually is that I don't know my way around the map well enough for ward placement. And playing against the AI doesn't simulate how real players jungle. Add to the fact that I hate sucking and don't want to let my team down and that the group of people I currently play with aren't overly helpful with giving me tips (despite me asking for criticism).

Thanks for the tips.

Watch pro replays to see common spots, decide variation depending on your level of map control or what you want to accomplish (ward your own jungle if getting ganked, theirs if you want to gank; closer to base if you are losing the tower wards)

Or buy the wards and leave them in base for someone else to place.

[Odon]

You need Scepter to get enemy illusions. Without it, you can just drop the wall wherever and have your team move through it. He has a moderately high skill cap.

Other way around, Scepter lets your wall clone team mates.

[Gredival]

EG vs. Na'Vi live now! Game 1 of the Winner's Bracket Finals @ The Defense

http://www.joindota.com/en/live/tobiwan

EG: Chen (Maelk), Beastmaster (DeMoN), Windrunner (Lacoste), Mirana (MiSeRy-), N'aix (Fear)
Na'Vi: Invoker (Dendi), Furion (LightofHeaven), Vengeful (Xboct), Leshrac (AA), Earthshaker (Puppey)

Bans: Anti-Mage, Darkseer, Enchantress, Venomancer, Broodmother, Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Sand King

[Tahona]

wow @ Na'Vi. Are they always the favorites going into a match-up?

[Gredival]

They are the team to beat atm and have been since they won The International, but EG is mostly the old MYM squad which was top 3 finish at The International. EG beat Na'Vi last meeting in the Group Stage.

Game 2 matchups:

EG: Venomancer, Rhasta, Enchantress, Ancient Apparition, Skeleton King
Na'Vi: Chen, Windrunner, Sand King, Nightstalker, Crystal Maiden

Bans: Darkseer, Invoker, Furion, Antimage, Beastmaster, Broodmother, Pugna, Vengeful

[Slapper]

He is top tier auto-ban class. His ulti gets stronger with your opponents getting stronger. Ion Shell chase is very hard for some heroes to handle.

The ult is easy. The issue is sucking people through it to maximize the illusions. You need Scepter to get enemy illusions. Without it, you can just drop the wall wherever and have your team move through it. He has a moderately high skill cap.

I thought you needed scepter to create allied illusions

[Gredival]

Yeah I misspoke, was really sleepy.

[Tyr]

Yeah I misspoke, was really sleepy.

Thanks regardless for the awesome pointers.


Anyone still playing Dota1 and want to play sometime? Preferably someone that can skype so I can easily get pointers/tips while playing.

[Tyr]

EG vs. Na'Vi live now! Game 1 of the Winner's Bracket Finals @ The Defense

Man, I just watched the games in one sitting...

Spoiler: show

Freaking Na'Vi's team coordination is insaaaaane. In both games, Lacoste/LightofHeaven played awesome Windrunners. Na'Vi just seemed to outplay and overpower EG. I was really hoping for a comeback in game 2.

[Gredival]

Yeah if you know the correct shackle angles, Windrunner is such a good hero. Barely see a game without her being picked, when she's not banned.

Game 1, EG made a big mistake in taking Chen imo. Invoker or Furion would have been better. But giving them both just led to Tornado/EMP openings for a Furion teleport, and the global presence was too much. Na'Vi used Chen a lot better in Game 2, but I feel their setup was a little bit better for a Chen.

Anyway I'm doing an interview with MiSeRy- about the games and about the rematch Wednesday with SK/DeeDee/Quantic, so hopefully I can get some insight about the games.

[Tyr]

Anyway I'm doing an interview with MiSeRy- about the games and about the rematch Wednesday with SK/DeeDee/Quantic, so hopefully I can get some insight about the games.

I'm curious about the relationship between top groups like EG and Na'Vi -- I think my favorite moment was

Spoiler: show

in game 2, the trash talk between Night Stalker & SK. And then SK getting a kill on Balanar a little while after (sorta 1v1)

[Gredival]

I can ask them about inter-team relationships and stuff in a more broad interview. I'm going to be talking with Lacoste or MiSeRy- later on.

But I know that Maelk was rooting for EHome right in front of Na'Vi during The International finals lol (this was when Maelk, DeMoN, MiSeRy- and PlaymatE were in MYM)