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No Path But Through
Hello dear blog.
I'm spamming ember spirit, first picking him in every game, regardless of compositions. I will not stop until I reach a 60% win rate with him. The only exception would be if ember is already taken, or we're doing a fun party queue or inhouse. For the majority of the times, if I solo queue either unranked or ranked, it will be only ember spirit.
A bit about myself:
Long time TL poster circa 2004, now in graduate school so I have time for only 1, 2 games / day. Played broodwar okay (D+ on iccup), played SC2 okay (master zerg on US server). Currently 4.2k mmr.
My current ember record
+ Show Spoiler +
I've learned most of my dota through extensively playing SandKing, here's my dotabuff:
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/33682264
As you can see, I have 250 games of Sandking. For a period of time I've only played sandking, for about 100+ games straight. And I think through extensively playing only 1 hero my understanding of the game has increased significantly.
The main difficulties of learning dota in depth is the presents of many different variables. A different environment is created each time you play a new game, that's why Dota as a game takes so long to converge to a stable meta, compared to the relatively stable meta of Starcraft. As a consequence, it is also very difficult to progress in skills in Dota, at least technically. In Starcraft I can practice build orders and macroing with a high degree of repetition, making sure I am not supply blocked and have even worker spread among all of my expansions, and through grinding on ladder repetitively, these build orders and mechanics improve relatively quickly. The hope here is to do the same in Dota2, by limiting variation, and only practicing one hero.
Now I picked ember for multiple reasons.
1) He has a high risk/reward tendency, which means if you are unskilled with him it will cost you greatly.
2) He has high damage output
3) He has a disable
4) He scales relatively well with items to the late game
But most of all, playing ember is a state of mind, the sheer feeling of playing ember is not unlike that of invoking 1314134 spells as invoker, or poofing multiple meepos, or blink triple raze as shadowfiend, or zipping around as tinker. It's a physical rush. I wish some day I could be as good as 430:
+ Show Spoiler +
No disrespect to sandking, flying around with forcestaff into burrowstrike is cool as hell too.
Every once in awhile (starting now) I will post here my exact training plans and results, and all the intimate details I've learned about ember spirit that many might not be aware of.
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Fundamentals
Just like splitting workers in starcraft, the fundamentals of any hero is last hit and deny.
For today I will be focusing purely on farming and get as much rice in as possible.
+ Show Spoiler +
More specifically,
Laning:
I will first pay special attention to ember's attack animation, base damage, and how to last hit with him under towers.
Mid/Late Game:
Where to find the most optimal farm after a gank / teamfight, the best jungling routes
How to farm most aggressively w/o being ganked
I will first do a BOT game to grasp his basic movements and animations, then for today maybe just 1 real game, but playing it hard.
For build order, I will go for a fixed building order for no particular reason:
bottle / boot /
magic wand
BoT
Bfury
Bfury
Dead
Divine
Divine
That's it, it's a very simple plan, just the fundamentals. I will post results, along with some details I've picked up here soon!
Things Learned from a Bot Game
A melee creep has 550 Hp (2 armour), with 2 GG branch, roughly speaking, the worst case you deal 47 damage, while the best case you deal 54 damage. A safe average to assume would be 50 damage per hit.
What it means is on each attack you deal about 1 / 11 of the creep's HP as damage. On the other hand, a ranged creep has 300 Hp, by comparison, you would've safely dealt 1/6 of the creep's HP as damage.
Of course, all that is extremely difficult to gauge in game. What I found on my particular set up is:
You should hit the melee creep when the health bar remaining is roughly the shape of a box:
[_]------------------------------
You should hit the ranged creep when the health bar remaining is roughly a 1x2 rectangle
[__]----------------------------
4 creeps spawn every 30 seconds, 8 creeps / min.
Ideally speaking, 8 x min should be the last hit you want to aiming for in the early game, sans catapults.
After a practice bot game of 8 minutes (no bot, just me), I have at 8 minutes 57 - 24, and 3.6k in bank.
That is sufficient for bottle, magic wand, and BoT.
For farming mid-gamem, we know every ~8 minutes the creep receives 10 more Hp, assuming we're farming around 25 minute mark with a Bfury (at level 11 it is safe to assume 120 damage).
A melee creep would've had 550 + 30 = 580 Hp
An auto attack would take out 1/5 of it's damage safely.
What this means on my set up is once you have a Bfury, melee creep is like a range creep of early game. You would hit it when the Hp remaining is a 1x2 rectangle (if not slightly more, 1x3) to be safe. And a range creep would've been safe to kill as soon as its hp drop below half.
This means to best kill a creep wave you should just auto attack it and wait for these special conditions to show up.
When last hitting, a common problem seems to be when 2 creeps are both low on HP and you can only last hit 1 of them! I think this can be reduced by hitting the more damaged creep first to make sure the HP of all the creeps are as staggerd as possible so this condition does not arise to begin with.
We'll now do a real games and see how things pan out.
+ Show Spoiler [games of day1] +game1: was able to finish BoT, Bfury by 22 min mark despite feeding firstblood and getting owned mid. I think i would've missed a lot of last hit if not for what I've learned in the bot game. I got too carried away trying to last hit and got ganked many many times (LC blink duel, storm blink silence). I will have to look for safer areas to farm in the mid-game, but I suspect that's what you get for first pick ember anyways, you get counter picked hard. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B0oSMs4.png)
+ Show Spoiler [games of day2] +pretty slow game, got to farm a lot and using a shield based build. Was very powerful as I was able to kill bane/invoker diving for a first blood under my tower (with help of a pudge). just farmed lots afterwards and remained out of pre-ganks and such unless I can BoT in to help. Was able to 1 shot people by the end game, ultrakill in the mid game due to sheer item advantage. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1005018639
+ Show Spoiler [games of day3] +woke up early today (well not, i woke up at 11 but I don't have stuff to do until 3pm anyways) So i thought i SNEAK a game in there before work... http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1006287423541 gpm, i guess i'll never be antimage level gpm with ember. We'll have to see. I went bfury -> dead -> bfury this time, because I was spending a lot of time just hacking people, and stacking a 2nd bfury seems unjustified. Absolutely out farmed razor mid lane, (weird I know) I thnik he's just bad. just FYI, selight of fist does _not_ break the damage steal http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1006856684Another game. 733 GPM!! I lost though, the ursa had a basher stun when I try to click him once. And in the end fight I was silenced by an orchid and got owned, leaving behind 2 rapiers ;/
+ Show Spoiler [games of day4] +http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1009118625Wanted to try a ranked. Ended up being a very very clowny games and we somehow won with 4 carries (lol new meta) I was forced to do a lot of fights and had to content with scrappier item choices and I died a lot.
more to come of the fundamental section games...
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I'm guessing you won't ever get a 60% win rate if you keep spamming the same hero. Your mmr should equilibrate no matter how good you are and you should stay around 50% winrate forever. You can only have that high of a winrate if you start from a low mmr and go up a long ways or you are at the top of the ladder and you have a high winrate versus anyone.
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On November 04 2014 13:52 Rainling wrote:
I'm guessing you won't ever get a 60% win rate if you keep spamming the same hero. Your mmr should equilibrate no matter how good you are and you should stay around 50% winrate forever. You can only have that high of a winrate if you start from a low mmr and go up a long ways or you are at the top of the ladder and you have a high winrate versus anyone.
well I do have 60% winrate as sandking. we'll see. Maybe i won't get it but I suspect my skill will improve and move up MMR as well.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina983 Posts
Ember is nice of a hero. Maybe not my favorite one but top 3 for sure just because of potential if u have great skill with him u can destroy enemy team. But his weakness i would say are silences. I remember how man times i put remnant down and push the lane up and some pesky silencer or DP comes and silences me and I'm basicly dead. But remnants just give so much mobility like last game i had as ember i like dodged 3 magnus RPs and 380944234 stuns of good sleight of fist and remnant usage. For me ember is like kunkka for sure. If u look at their skills they're very similar in a way (like to play them both). Just my 2 cents on the hero. GL with u games.
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haha ive been seeing you spam those ember games
BoT rush isn't necessarily the best, if you want a cookie cutter build the phase/drum/bfury is probably a better bet. And like duck- says, whats your skill build?
for example: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1002998353
the 1 point in flame guard is completely useless because it'll get cancelled by any magical damage.
then here: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1000871518
you're getting sleight too early imo, maxing out flame guard will help you survive a lot longer and give you more dps early, especially given that you choose not to build phase...
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On November 04 2014 19:37 DucK- wrote:
What is your skill build
I haven't really worried much about skill build yet. But I think it's normally maxing out chain and sof with just 1 pt in ult and maxing shield afterwards. This way I can just keep farming but I can help out against ganks with a BoT (Actually just to 收割人头 after fight broke out ) I dunno how to translation but basically u ks hahah
Edit.
Yeah I regret my 1 level in shield a lot... Level 1 any ember skill sucks.... It's just I think while in lane I kinda get shield first since out of the many sux lvl 1 ember skills, shield sucks the least t.t.
I will try 4-0-4-1 build I think, it seems a diff way of playing but I didn't want to have shield damage messing up my last hit. But Thanks for the input I'll incorporate theM
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Build drums out of spit for DucK + Show Spoiler +as like 90% of his posts are about how bad drums are
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thing is, most of your early laning kills will come from chasing them with flame guard. also, having maxed flame guard gives you better rune control since youre able to push out the wave.
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The 4th point in Chains doesn't really bring much more than the third. You should aim for 2-0-2 and when you hit level 5, you put it either in Shield if it gets disabled in a single burst (read : too fast), or chains if it doesn't.
From there you should transition to 3-0-4-1, and put a point in SoF then, or alternatively you can put it earlier if you need to rotate, but you don't need SoF for the laning phase. Then you max out SoF.
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On November 04 2014 22:41 evanthebouncy! wrote:I haven't really worried much about skill build yet. But I think it's normally maxing out chain and sof with just 1 pt in ult and maxing shield afterwards. This way I can just keep farming but I can help out against ganks with a BoT (Actually just to 收割人头 after fight broke out ) I dunno how to translation but basically u ks hahah Edit. Yeah I regret my 1 level in shield a lot... Level 1 any ember skill sucks.... It's just I think while in lane I kinda get shield first since out of the many sux lvl 1 ember skills, shield sucks the least t.t. I will try 4-0-4-1 build I think, it seems a diff way of playing but I didn't want to have shield damage messing up my last hit. But Thanks for the input I'll incorporate theM
You definitely don't want to be farming and ks-ing with Ember, considering how good his skill set is in early-mid game. 4-4-0-1 and 4-0-4-1 are 2 different styles of Ember. I personally think the former is a much better way to play him, but the latter has its place in some games. Whatever build you go, don't go for a hybrid skill build (ie. 2-4-2-1 or something) because like you have realised, all of Ember skills suck at low levels. Rank 1 SoF to land Chains is fine though.
For 4-4-0-1 build, some swore by BoT as first item. Personally I prefer to just go BF first and get BoT later as your 3rd or 4th item, because I don't think the advantage of early BoT outweighs the insurance provided by having an earlier BF.
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right like i said. I'm focusing on the fundamentals by isolating each aspect of a hero. Now I'm working on pure farming, so the actual gameplay aspect can be dropped
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On November 05 2014 03:38 evanthebouncy! wrote:
right like i said. I'm focusing on the fundamentals by isolating each aspect of a hero. Now I'm working on pure farming, so the actual gameplay aspect can be dropped
Ah okay. Then you probably want early Guards to rice faster 
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On November 05 2014 03:49 DucK- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2014 03:38 evanthebouncy! wrote:
right like i said. I'm focusing on the fundamentals by isolating each aspect of a hero. Now I'm working on pure farming, so the actual gameplay aspect can be dropped Ah okay. Then you probably want early Guards to rice faster
it's quite a different approach than chain/SoF (but i'm sure you're well aware. I think I read most posts in the ember thread, if not every post)
I'm going to adapt a build and play more tonight. I believe if you max shield the right build is in fact phase/drum, even tread/drum, because shield give you so much magical tankability, and early game if you can hit a timing when auto-atk damage is weak (i mean you're mid, everyone is bit under leveled at this point). You just go run around hacking people like a maniac.
Shield is a great skill in that it forces you to learn what your opponent has, because you don't want your shield to break.
At level one it absorbs 50 damage which is easily broken.
But at level two it absorbs 200, which is quite more than a level 2 nuke.
At level 4 you can absorb close to 2 level 4 nukes.
I think by understanding shield usage you can perform extremely well as an early/mid game slasher ember, it's a completely different playstyle than the chain/sof ember.
+ Show Spoiler [one of many great shield ember clip] +note how he keep tracks of brew master's nuke damage, so it just doesn't break his shield the auto attacks, they're real. also tread switching! it'll be really fun to do the cycle I imagine
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On November 05 2014 04:28 YourGoodFriend wrote:I am starting to do the same thing with Ember but I can't play that much (7 month old, full time job. married) http://www.dotabuff.com/players/52994388I had a great team for my most recent game http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1004221854I find playing super safe early and skipping drums and going phase into BF works best for me (I am 2.8k mmr.. that might have something to do with it)
iirc deso is not a great pairing with bfury, I think if you go double bfury the right extension is a crit
you probably got the deso first I imagine
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On November 05 2014 04:46 evanthebouncy! wrote:iirc deso is not a great pairing with bfury, I think if you go double bfury the right extension is a crit you probably got the deso first I imagine
I actually got it last haha and your right I just kind of picked it without thinking about it
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gogo evan!
op scs represent
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On November 05 2014 00:26 Comeh wrote:Build drums out of spit for DucK + Show Spoiler +as like 90% of his posts are about how bad drums are
This is an aside from the topic and I realize you're joking but actually DucK's strong opinions about items are a welcome sight where literally all the other opinions about items expressed are from A) people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about, B) people who just regurgitate what they've internalized as safe or standard, C) people who think what pros do for items is generally infallible. Edit: I forgot D) people who say their MMR and defend their item builds.
I come from pretty much the opposite school of thought as DucK and tho until now I've never discussed or publicly stated it, some of his builds [ ok prolly some not entirely his own ] have made me reconsider and try it out and I've liked the outcome.
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