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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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/1006287423 541 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/1006856684 Another 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 ;/
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1009118625 Wanted 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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)
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)
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.
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.
Tbh my past week of casual ember games I've followed the chain build and it's pretty powerful. You don't have to commit and you have good damage burst once every 8 seconds. Kinda like how you play tiny except safer and less dmg. It's time to attempt the shield build though
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.
Tbh my past week of casual ember games I've followed the chain build and it's pretty powerful. You don't have to commit and you have good damage burst once every 8 seconds. Kinda like how you play tiny except safer and less dmg. It's time to attempt the shield build though
Basicly i use the same skill build expect if im mid vs range hero dat dishes a lot of physical dmg (sniper mid ) so i do the 2-1-2 build where i can use my sleight of fist to farm or just to harras sniper. Basicly its very situational but 2-0-2 opening is quite allright.
EDIT: btw did someone tried the item build i saw from mr.singsing with eyeofskadi rush instead of bfury?
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.
Tbh my past week of casual ember games I've followed the chain build and it's pretty powerful. You don't have to commit and you have good damage burst once every 8 seconds. Kinda like how you play tiny except safer and less dmg. It's time to attempt the shield build though
Basicly i use the same skill build expect if im mid vs range hero dat dishes a lot of physical dmg (sniper mid ) so i do the 2-1-2 build where i can use my sleight of fist to farm or just to harras sniper. Basicly its very situational but 2-0-2 opening is quite allright.
EDIT: btw did someone tried the item build i saw from mr.singsing with eyeofskadi rush instead of bfury?
I saw that build although I didn't watch the game yet (temporarily deleted dota2 while I do exams). Skadi doesn't make much sense to me though, although of course I'd have to see the game to know why he used it. Ember doesn't need stats unless he's manfighting, but he's not much of a manfighting hero, nor does he need to be. Only good thing about skadi for him is the slow on attack, but even then I don't think it's worth it.
Apparently the shield/chain build is pretty good. You just use remnant instead of SoF to set up your chains and just hack people to death. I'm liking it quite a lot. The maxed shield makes you actually durable, along with a bracer it is hard for them to kill you. With your mobility on the remnant you actually can avoid heavy physical dps (which are not that heavy in early game anyways) I think my ability increased a lot simply due to having a better fundamentals in last hitting. I was able to get richer faster, and have more level/items under my resource when I do choose to fight, it makes a huge difference.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1006287423 My only 2 death is from doom's solo kill with DOOM, life's harsh when you first pick ember so far i'm 15 - 19 with ember now haha, it's an improvement from 1 - 9 that I started off with
I'm not quite certain what's a "gg" late game setup either. This game I had 2 bfury 1 dead 2 divine. Not quite sure if that's optimal or not. Then again all their heros are beefy as hell so I don't know.
I'm not quite certain what's a "gg" late game setup either. This game I had 2 bfury 1 dead 2 divine. Not quite sure if that's optimal or not. Then again all their heros are beefy as hell so I don't know.
Idk if buying divines is a good idea on a hero that will die in 1 disable. Unless you're like ridiculously ahead.
Late game there's nothing else to buy really, probably could have gotten a BKB vs the orchid once you saw that building but otherwise rapier's not bad.
I've been in the same boat as you. I had like 30% winrate when the hero was new. I didn't want to learn him, because everyone picked him or terrorblade and just farmed mmr with them. He felt so overpowered to play against, I just left him alone.
Then at and around Ti4 I started watching ferrari play the hero, and I felt that I wanted to get better at the hero. 4 months later I'm at 65-70% winrate and pretty much love the hero. Dodging everything from chrono to black holes with remnant is so amazing. Quickcast and remnants rewards reactions like nothing else.
My dream is that storms ultimate one day will get embers ultimate cast point.
On the bright side, this hero can do everything. From killing everyone in ganks to lategame carrying. You're pretty weak to focus, so you have to play smart and use good positioning. Most of the hero is mechanics, so you'll get a lot better in general at dota by playing him.
I'm not quite certain what's a "gg" late game setup either. This game I had 2 bfury 1 dead 2 divine. Not quite sure if that's optimal or not. Then again all their heros are beefy as hell so I don't know.
Idk if buying divines is a good idea on a hero that will die in 1 disable. Unless you're like ridiculously ahead.
On November 06 2014 12:59 kaztah wrote: I've been in the same boat as you. I had like 30% winrate when the hero was new. I didn't want to learn him, because everyone picked him or terrorblade and just farmed mmr with them. He felt so overpowered to play against, I just left him alone.
Then at and around Ti4 I started watching ferrari play the hero, and I felt that I wanted to get better at the hero. 4 months later I'm at 65-70% winrate and pretty much love the hero. Dodging everything from chrono to black holes with remnant is so amazing. Quickcast and remnants rewards reactions like nothing else.
My dream is that storms ultimate one day will get embers ultimate cast point.
On the bright side, this hero can do everything. From killing everyone in ganks to lategame carrying. You're pretty weak to focus, so you have to play smart and use good positioning. Most of the hero is mechanics, so you'll get a lot better in general at dota by playing him.
I'm not quite certain what's a "gg" late game setup either. This game I had 2 bfury 1 dead 2 divine. Not quite sure if that's optimal or not. Then again all their heros are beefy as hell so I don't know.
Idk if buying divines is a good idea on a hero that will die in 1 disable. Unless you're like ridiculously ahead.
Combinations of BF and daed do nearly as much as divine stacking and are a lot safer. 3BF 2daed travels or something is plenty of DPS in most cases. Against tons of beefy melees and.or minions like that game, add more BF; if they're naturally spreading, add more crit. It's worth considering Linkens/BKB as a final slot if they have stuff that can catch you out.
I mean there's times when divines are appropriate, but it's a hail-Mary just like for gyro. Ember doesn't really want them as part of his standard progression because he drops them too easily.
On November 06 2014 17:14 Belisarius wrote: Combinations of BF and daed do nearly as much as divine stacking and are a lot safer. 3BF 2daed travels or something is plenty of DPS in most cases. Against tons of beefy melees and.or minions like that game, add more BF; if they're naturally spreading, add more crit. It's worth considering Linkens/BKB as a final slot if they have stuff that can catch you out.
I mean there's times when divines are appropriate, but it's a hail-Mary just like for gyro. Ember doesn't really want them as part of his standard progression because he drops them too easily.
I would definitely not get them before getting 6-slotted with BF and daed, but if you ever get enough cash for a divine and have buyback and haven't been dying much at all then it's not a bad idea at all.
IMO divine fits better on kunkka as you can x-mark the spot blink into a hit and still x mark works even if u are silenced while ember just can't return to his remnant spot if he's silenced so he atleast needs bkb or maybe if he's snowballing hard.
On November 06 2014 17:14 Belisarius wrote: Combinations of BF and daed do nearly as much as divine stacking and are a lot safer. 3BF 2daed travels or something is plenty of DPS in most cases. Against tons of beefy melees and.or minions like that game, add more BF; if they're naturally spreading, add more crit. It's worth considering Linkens/BKB as a final slot if they have stuff that can catch you out.
I mean there's times when divines are appropriate, but it's a hail-Mary just like for gyro. Ember doesn't really want them as part of his standard progression because he drops them too easily.
I would definitely not get them before getting 6-slotted with BF and daed, but if you ever get enough cash for a divine and have buyback and haven't been dying much at all then it's not a bad idea at all.
Buyback really doesn't matter that much when you've just fed them a rapier...
It does add to his damage as a 6th slot. That's fine. Losing the game because your glass cannon got caught out is not fine, especially when you're otherwise winning and a safer build would have done the job.
Imo, only heroes named dusa should plan to get a rapier unless the game is lost without it.
You don't need rapier on him, unless you are far behind. It isn't that easy to catch an ember after sof that has a safety remnant anyway. 2nd daed as 5th item is fine, unless you need safety items.
I will now work on the next part of training. The precise calculation of ember's solo kill potentials.
When i first played sandking, I had done something similar, and it boils down to at level 7, with 310 mana, you can kill anyone with <800HP. And at level 11, you can kill anyone with <1000 HP. The intent here is to do the same calculation with ember spirit, make some assumptions, and get a rule of thumb number at each level.
With these numerics, I will then play a few games, attempting to locate and destroy heros with less than the kill threshold HP, and I will keep trying to kill hero in a calculated manner, only attacking if I can be absolutely certain I can get a kill. This will necessarily rule out initiations, which I won't be practicing yet, and limit my focus to head hunting.
I will get back to you after I do a bot game and collect some data.
After a bot game: I must say I am not at all impressed by his damage output. At least in a short burst, the chain/fist build at level 6 has roughly 550 damage after reduction, assuming you land a triple remnant burst, and 2 auto attacks. I don't want to do the shield build since it might take a while for damage to set in, making things more volatile. I will do some calculation on the shield build soon.
But so far we'll go with the threshold of 550 HP. Without ult, the pure chain + SoF(maxed) is roughly 350 damage.
Now let's play some real games. We will asap reach level 6 or 7 and go into full time ganking mode, farming only when out of mana or close to a big item. Keep in mind at all times that 550 hp / 350 hp is the threshold.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1011126522 a fully retarded game. Chain + SoF highly depends on if your teammates has enough balls to go in or not. Turns out my entire team is made of pussies and just stood around when I always chained up people. Will have to re-do the whole thing with shield build it seems... the damage calculation will be difficult.
Overall theme... I don't know how to make sure the rest of my team profit from my early game ganks. I'd gank and get a lot of kills and money, but at the expense of my teammates. This cause them not to want to fight with me much more, and as a result I lose my snow-balling potentials from a lack of fights. And let's face it a full farming ember is no were as effective as a farming carry.
Ember spirit is pretty much my best hero, I've played like 80 games with him or something and have I think at least a 60% win rate with him. My mmr is around 4300.
Most of the time if you want to be successful with him you either need to focus on farming your lane, or ganking other lanes. He can be played either way, but you kind of have to be successful because he is very item dependent in the later stages of the game. The good news is that he is all about magic early on and is very skill based.
I mostly play him mid, but if you play safe lane that can work too I just will swap up my item build slightly. For mid I almost always go tangos/shield/2-3 branches. I have experimented getting a PMS and 2 tangos pooled to me, and even an orb of venom at times but don't worry about that for now. I almost always max out shield then chains, there are very few times where you need your sleight of fist early on. Lv 2 chains doubles the duration of lv 1, Lv 3 chains is double the dps upgrade over lv 2, and lv 4 a +1 sec duration upgrade over 3, so now a days I will get at least 3 points in chains before I get 1 in sleight of fist, unless it guarantees a kill. Just get 1 point in your ult when you hit 6, max out all your other skills before you put lvs 2-3 into your ult.
Item wise, you want to be grabbing your bottle first, then phase boots, then drums. Don't try to gank without at least a bottle, brown boots, and level 6. Any type of slow/disable pretty much guarantees you'll get a kill on someone with flameguard, it's dps in the early game is pretty legit. Your ult + chains means you can chase and lock down anyone.
Build into a battlefury asap. I generally finish perseverance into damage items since ember needs lots of mana for his spells early on (hence the usefullness of a bottle), but if you have lots of support healing and giving you mana then sometimes you can go for the claymore first. Try to get the battlefury by 22 min, if you can you are in a decent position and have been getting some kills or farming efficiently. After bfury get Daedalus into 2 more bfuries. Sometimes you can grab 2 bfury and a 2nd crit, it goes to preference. Some games you have to get a bkb after your crysalis or daedalus, if the enemy team has lots of disables this may be best. In team fights stay back and hit ppl with your fists, early on you can be a bit more agressive but you are suppose to be a very elusive hero. Stack items, stack kills, stack wins.
edit: I've seen other builds on him, such as rushing boots of travel and going for skadi/manta etc. Don't worry about those, go for the basics first and move from there once you have success and feel comfortable. BoT rush may be vaible over bottle in lane because you can leave a remnant and immediately teleport back, but I would only do that if you are getting free farm in lane. Remember you still have a bit of downtime from the fountain heal.
Playing against nature's prophet and tinker, BoT is so excellent for defending the split push. Combine that with the remnants which cut down trees and you can chase tinker into wherever he blinks, or burn down NP's tree defence that he will try to TP out of.
In other situations I generally wouldn't bother, phase boots are excellent.
I've been playing a fair amount without drums and it helps greatly for accelerating your BF acquisition. It does make it slightly harder to manmode in early team-fights, so it depends a bit on your play-style and the other team's composition. If you're going to be ganking a lot, drums are pretty decent.
On November 09 2014 16:11 Valhalla44 wrote: haha im only 20-10 on ember. I have problem with closing games with ember if i'm not snowballing.
you want someone on your team that can take objectives. Very often you'd have a good team fight but ember's push is so shit you can't really translate that into a lasting advantage.
Just buy a Linken's (or even better, have someone else buy it) for late-game against single-target disable guys. Use quick-cast and the Linken's pop audio cue to stay safe. Buy BKB instead against AoE disable. I don't think I'd buy Divine without one of these two items unless it's the "defending game-ending push" kind of situation.
People are still getting crit before the second BF. Your teamfight dps might be slightly higher but I don't see too many fights that you'd win with the former build and lose with the latter. What you give up is taking 2-3x as long to kill a creep wave due to how SoF works. I feel the substantial jump in pushing power of the second BF isn't worth losing in all but the most niche scenarios.
The 3rd BF is also ignored by a lot of people but in those games where the vast majority of your SoF damage is cleave due to enemy summons or illusions, allied AoE disables (RP/Vacuum/etc.), and/or just superior positioning, it gets you up to almost 50% more dps (70%->105%), which can match the output of a Divine with much less risk.
BoTs first is only really good occasionally against early push. Phase is really only good with the Flame Guard build since you need to chase. With SoF+Chains, you can get 90% of the same damage just buying an early Broadsword and rushing that BF since you won't be doing much chasing outside of Remnant jumps. So I end up with naked boots somewhat often.
The Moonmeander & Meracle videos with Manta/Skadi/Bfly/AC style is lame. If the opponent spends their entire front-loaded dps to 95% an Ember who can SoF back to full of course you're going to win. I'm not 100% sure that build isn't awful (like 90%) but I want to see games where that sort of Ember is flat out ignored and how that'd go.
Can you guys tell I'm sad the Ember thread in Strategy has been dead for a week?
it's not that bad, the difference is that you end up tanky enough to autoattack so you put out a lot more sustained damage on a semi-related note treads own, the treads attackspeed bonus is really noticeable when you're farming
Ember feels sort of weak as an autoattack/farm hero though, seems a lot stronger as a glass cannon. Heroes like PA, tiny etc. are a lot better at being in-your-face once you hit mid-late game.
The problem with shadow blade is that a) you already have an escape, and b) it's non-scaling damage, and c) you already have two ways of getting close to people for ganks.
On November 14 2014 19:38 Birdie wrote: The problem with shadow blade is that a) you already have an escape, and b) it's non-scaling damage, and c) you already have two ways of getting close to people for ganks.
This is probably true. But I won't say for certain unless I try it. The sb combo with SoF seems nice, and at early game with only lvl 1 in SoF sb is a good way of getting close (pretty sure I can get bottle/boot/bracer/sb by 15 min). Like I said, I wouldn't say for certain unless I try it out.
So far my understanding is 1bfury sucks for team fights, it only has a oomph when you get 2, 3. But an early SB seems offer so much more, especially in MMR it's hard to get your teammates to coordinate ganks continuously, they'l do it once in awhile but it's sporatic at best. With SB I can gank nonstop, all the time.
RESULTS:
Okay SB is kind of terrible. The mana cost seems pretty high and the burst I was expecting in a solo jungle gank is rather low as well. I think the argument shouldn't be "you already have a way of getting close", the argument should be "remnant is 100x better at getting close than SB, as it's faster and ignores fucking terrains"
The cool combo of fade -> SoF... I mean... You don't really get to do it that much. The SB has such high cooldown it's not as natural as a synchronized SoF/Chain combo. Again, the manacost is too high with SB, you barely get by w/o manaboot as a normal ember, I think if you go SB you definitely needs to do manaboot.
Maybe the right snowball build is actually Dead into 2x bfury, and the safe ricer build is 2bfury into dead. Just permute the order. I will have to give it a shot and see how it goes.
On November 16 2014 08:04 evanthebouncy! wrote: It's going badly guys!! ;( I think I have to revert to a more primitive thing to practice before I can try it on ranked. I went 0-3 on ranked today ;/
Watching your most recent game now. First of all, picking first as ember makes you easy to counter, which I daresay is why the next two picks were viper and storm spirit. Both do pretty well in lane against you and storm spirit generally is very good vs ember in my experience.
Usually you should ask for pooled tangos so you can get a faster bottle, but if you're laning against viper going for four tangos first is reasonable. However, there's a storm spirit on their team so it's far more likely you will be laning against storm spirit. Huh, pubs are random lul. Viper mid means you can't really play very aggressively. Chains first was ok because of the gank, and because guard first isn't particularly amazing vs viper.
Your attempted gank at ~6.30 was a poor decision, you're already low on farm and there's nothing really there for you to go on, so why roam down there and miss a couple of waves of farm? Second death was also not great because you didn't have mana for your ulti and a remnant sitting somewhere to jump to. Ember without mana is weaksauce, would have been better for you to sit at the tower and wait for a rune, or TP home and remnant back, something like that. Speaking of which, it's a good idea to grab a TP along with your boots so you can counter-gank and pick up kills.
Your third death was really random, viper and storm spirit wreck you so hard and you try to 1v2 them? I could see you soloing storm at that stage of the game MAYBE, but both of them wasn't good. At 12 minutes you have 21 last hits, which is less than two per minute. Sure you were laning against a viper but your poor gank decisions and deaths have basically set you behind by at least 1k gold, making you quite weak going into the mid game. Then you go gank void when there's nothing solid there, and lose out on another heap of gold and exp. 13.20 you walked past a jungle stack that would have been SO good, minor thing but taking that not only denies it from their team but also helps out your major gold problems. I think you panicked when viper came out of the jungle and attacked you, as you used all your mana up when you just needed a single remnant to get away. It would have been smarter to throw out the remnant, then pop JUST flame guard or JUST the chains and start hitting viper, then using remnant to get away ezpz.
After that death, at around 14.50 you start walking towards bottom. However, your TP is on cooldown so you're going to get there too late to do much. Your team will win or lose that fight without you and at best you might pick up a kill or save one person when you get there. Better to go to mid and take the 1.5 waves there, then head towards top to create some space for your team by pressuring their T1.
OK so you show up late and your entire team is dead, and you're going up against three of them. No problem, as you have a remnant back to keep you out of trouble. But then you...remnant into the middle of them? Plus void had his ulti up which you should have been trying to keep track of, although that's harder to do in a pub game. If you had stayed by the tower you would be able to guard it and not die. Instead, both you and the tower go down.
17.50ish you TP bottom, but again you're late to a finished fight and achieve nothing. It would be much better for you to work on your very poor last hits and create some space by pushing out mid, or running a gank against viper with slark at top lane, or going into the jungle and working on getting some gold. At this stage you're no-drums, no-PMS BF rush but there's no way you're going to get it before 20 minutes, which suggests serious gold starvation.
Big team fight goes down, but you remnant out way too early. Then you don't replace the escape remnant and nearly get killed. Always keep one handy after the early game for escape purposes.
Selling your shield for a slightly faster claymore is meh to me, the survivability is still alright and you're not exactly swimming in items. Just wait a short time for the claymore gold or just buy broadsword, don't waste your shield.
Pushing out top was a good idea, it created a little bit of space and got you some gold. Double kill in the teamfight was nice, I think you could have been more bold with your flame guard as you had a getaway remnant but otherwise good work. I think ideally you would have stayed mid and used a TP to get into the fight once it was actually underway, would have granted you a wave extra of gold.
Minor thing but you appear to be doubletapping your courier hotkey when delivering your items, and not using the quick purchase hotkeys. Small things but it's better to use the quickbuy and use F3 or whatever your Courier Deliver hotkey is instead of micromanaging it. Could be the difference between void jumping in and lolsphering you, or you being aware and jumping away.
You didn't last hit top tower when phoenix TPed in. Check the colour of the TP and if it's someone who can't trap you just keep hitting the tower, it's worth a lot of gold. Instead phoenix denied it so you lost out on a lot of gold.
Your fifth death was because you didn't save a remnant, it needs to become ingrained in you that at all times you have a getaway remnant. I cannot stress this enough, you would be on 3-4 fewer deaths if you were more careful with that.
Sexy lolsphere dodge! I assume you're saving for buyback. It's a real shame the rest of your team is securing all those kills as the gold would help you a lot
At 29.15 or so you went mid and took some of the last hits. Better to just stay in jungle and let mirana take the lane hits, sharing is caring and you wouldn't really miss any gold.
I need to go nap now, may finish the replay review later.
I think you gave me plenty of good things to work on already. Buying TP with boot is a fantastic idea.
I think I'll fall back to focusing on farming. I'd need to adapt. When I was doing non ranked ember earlier this week I had easier time cuz my unranked mmr is really low and I actually win lanes as ember, so I'm not used to fighting w.o a huge item advantage, usually I just run in and stuff dies. This needs to change.
It's about antimage but a lot of what he says in this and his other replay analysis' is about efficiency of fighting vs farming. Often it's simply better not to roam and fight when you could stay in lane or jungle and farm. Ember can be played as a ganking style vs some compositions but particularly until you get phase boots it's really good to just sit in lane and only gank if you get a haste rune or if someone dives tower and you can TP to that tower and secure some kills.
It's going bad guys T_________T, my MMR is tanking 200 ;/ Maybe I'll just quote Rocky that it's not about how hard you hit, but how hard you can get hit and still move forward. I'll just slug it out.
Alright guys. Here's the biggest question at the moment. I love ember a lot, but he seems to be hard to win solo queue with. It seems a lot of solo queue depends on winning mid and helping in ganks. Ember feels different. He horribly loses the lane and unless he can make up the loss in good fights where everyone else knows how to fight, he is useless.
It seems the usual logic of playing mid in a solo pub of "win lane ==> win game" does not apply. Some games felt incredibly easy because I outskill the other mid and win mid as ember, and just completely dominates because I wasn't suppose to win the lane. Other games felt incredibly hard because the other mid is better or of equal skill, on a hero that has advantages mid. As a result I am weak and I needed a lot of coordinated fights to make back the loss (which can't always be there), and I end up useless.
I'm not sure if it's just a communication issue where I should've coordinated with my teammates more via chat etc or if there's some playstyle change you can make. Ember is awkward as you need the fight to make the farm back and supress the other team's farm, which seems to be hard to coordinate in a pub.
If you can't watch the game, just answer this: You finally made it to level 6, and have boot / bottle, you lost the lane. The other lanes are losing as well. What do you do? which is definitely a bad question because there are different scenarios, which means maybe watch the game if you can. I'd appreciate it.
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