My favorite hero is probably someone like Spectre cause I always played the ricer when I used to compete on CAL, and there were few heroes better for hitting creeps for 50 minutes than the old Spectre, especially since you don't even need to TP to help your team defend towers or pushes

I don't go an interesting skill build, I usually grab Phase Boots, Vanguard, Radiance, and from there I may branch off into Heart, Butterfly, Manta, Skadi, Diffusal - depends on how the game is going and what heroes I'm up against.

But I have some better stories regarding heroes that aren't Spectre...

Back when the DotA Allstars competitive forum was just in its infant stages, I was the leader of a team called FTM and one of our matches got submitted to the forum and posted, and it received a lot of acclaim as it was an epic and long game where I was QoP, and got really fat against a just as fat Silencer. For most of the late game, all I did was keep blinking into the silencer and nuking and fighting him one on one, and bailing before I died - and I did this constantly. The first few posters were like "Wow, that QoP's play was awesome! So exciting! He was so ballsy!" and I was feeling pretty damn good... then later posters were like "If that QoP got better or more useful items his team probably would have won," or "That QoP got so farmed and still didn't get any good items"

so I stopped posting in the thread

. (I got like Linkens, Aghanim's, Skadi, or something to that nature)

-

I used to always play pranks on my team, telling them we had a scrim against JMC, or coL (when those teams were the big two) and harassing them to get online, get on East, to hurry up, etc. then they'd join the channel and I would laugh at go back to west :-]. Around this time, Shaang made Pudge a popular hero by dominating competitive games with him and I started using him in my team's competitive games. As we had starting getting demos posted in the forums, some of my demos where I was playing Pudge got posted and warr1ck from coL apparently saw them and so when I joined their East channel and asked for a scrim, they actually agreed and said sure. I went and tried to get my team to come on and I think my excitement and genuine eagerness tipped them off that I *must* have been lying again... and I can't tell you how long it took me to convince them to just believe me.

It didn't work out well anyway, when we scrimmed coL started the match saying "go ahead, pick Pudge" (which at first made my dick real big), but I'm from Hawaii and if you've ever played DotA back in the day before LC or Garena and 300 ping, it genuinely doesn't go too well :-)

alphafuzard

United States1610 Posts

November 04 2011 16:00 GMT

#183

Great AM guide!

My favorite hero has to be Sandking. With his blinkstun, sandstorm jukage, farming explosions, and EPIC ULTIMATE, he's a ton of fun, and useful at all levels of play.

For skill build I normally max burrowstrike and epicenter whenever possible, sandstorm is now decent to level, and one level of caustic early if I am laning against melees (too much caustic will push your lane).

Item build:
Starting items vary based on what your team composition is. SK is a viable person to buy early wards or chicken, but if you have a support bitch, let them take care of that. Generally you want some cheap stats and regen, like most heroes.
Bottle is great on SK, because you will be GANKING like a boss, especially after level 6. Magic stick is always good as well. After boots and finishing bracers if you are having health problems, immediately begin saving for blink dagger. You can even steal some farm from semi-carries and the like because it is critical that you have this for team fights. Next you want to build Ult scepter for the crazyness and health/mana. You can also upgrade boots to travels if you have lots of extra money lying around. Late game items are game dependent. Things like heart, pipe, BKB, linkens, sheepstick, blademail, and even Vladamir's can all be useful items.

Gameplay: Early game you hopefully laned with another stunner and you are looking to chain stun to get some early kills. You can be a bit more aggressive than most heroes because you have sandstorm to get out of sticky situations. Once you hit 6, its gank fest every time that ultimate is up. Get your blink ASAP and the ganks get ridiculous. You can buy/place wards for your team because you will be moving around the map quite a bit. In team fights, your job is to get a big initiate off on their most clustered/dangerous heroes and stun every time its on CD. Again you can play more aggressively than most because SK is very adept at escaping bad situations, and you are much less valuable than your carry (this is what makes SK fun!).

Ult combo:
Normally you want to channel your ult out of sight and shift queue either blink or burrowstrike into the battle. This makes it neigh impossible to cancel your ult. Sometimes it can be hard to do it with burrowstrike as the range is somewhat limited, so you can channel after burrowstrike if facing enemies without stuns. With blink, you always want to channel beforehand.

Funny game:
I once saved a game after Testie fucked up mid lane (yes it happens) by triple killing two team fights! Awwwwww yeaaaa

Cyper

Germany14 Posts

November 04 2011 17:01 GMT

#184

this is really helping

im gonna pick up dota 2 as my first moba and im watching alot of games lately (mostly the joindota vods). so im focussing on anti-mage while keeping this guide in mind, just to get a better grip on whats going on.
in this game http://www.joindota.com/vods/eswc-group-stage-monkey-vs-virus-245244 (monkey vs virus) @ around 34min (20min ingame) i saw the anti mage having poor mans shield and vanguard.
do there effects stack? if im not completly wrong poor mans shield isnt used in anything, why would you buy both when youre not up against alot of melee harass?

theres most likely an obvious answer to this, but as i said, i mostly have no clue about whats going on

i also saw some games where the carries are running around with 6-7k gold at the end without picking up an item, if im not mistaken, there is a cooldown on buyback, why would a carry keep more money if he still could buy a good item (especially when there isnt much going on in the game)?

flamewheel

FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts

November 05 2011 00:50 GMT

#185

Sorry Bumblebee has been MIA on me for a few days now... Need to try to rope him down again.

Cool Cat

United States1644 Posts

November 05 2011 01:05 GMT

#186

On November 05 2011 09:50 flamewheel wrote:
Sorry Bumblebee has been MIA on me for a few days now... Need to try to rope him down again.

He's on teamspeak quite regularly, and is on right now.

nyxnyxnyx

Indonesia2978 Posts

November 05 2011 08:38 GMT

#187

just chipping in here.

hero armour magic resistance : 25%
spell shield : 50%
magic stick/wand : -15 flat

damage taken from a typical 300 damage nuke = 300*0.75*0.5 minus 15 healed from 1 charge of magic stick = 97.5

essentially this is what makes -damage reduction so strong in dota (think spectre, bristleback, old visage, antimage etcetc). its the cumulative reduction with additional flat 'mitigation' to boot

Benjef

United Kingdom6921 Posts

November 05 2011 09:59 GMT

#188

Just followed this AM guide won a game a man down from the 10 minute mark and a rax down by the 20 minute mark. Game went on for about 50 minutes and I managed to rice up to about 250 cs and out carried them hard.

:D

saltywet

Hong Kong1316 Posts

November 05 2011 16:27 GMT

#189

lol i just saw zsmj magina pub build
pms
wand
phase
agi treads
BF
vlads
3 divine

flamewheel

FREEAGLELAND26781 Posts

November 05 2011 21:16 GMT

#190

Okay roped him down! Sorry this is a bit late but congratulations to EchelonTee and SilentchilL! You both win a nice shiny Beta Key courtesy of Bumblebee, and I hope you enjoy your escapades in DotA 2. There were many great posts, so this was definitely a hard choice to make, but there will be more key giveaways in the future so keep an eye out for any future DotA blogs by either Bumblebee or myself.

EchelonTee

United States5245 Posts

November 05 2011 21:21 GMT

#191

OMG SERIOUSLY???? WOW I'VE NEVER WON A CONTEST BEFORE THANKSSS

SilentchiLL

Germany1405 Posts

November 06 2011 05:40 GMT

#192

I WON!
I WON!
I WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!

VICTORY!

You couldn't imagine how much bigger my e-penis is now.

EDIT: So where exactly do I have to send it to start downloading O_o?

EDIT2: Problem solved :D

Keype

Sweden455 Posts

November 06 2011 11:57 GMT

#193

Wow man this was sick took me a couple of days to read it, well I splitted it up in periods;) But really detailed and best guide I have read so far out of every thing.

You made Anti-Mage be my favorite hero through this guide! Thanks and keep it coming it is highly appreciated!

Cwall

United States64 Posts

November 06 2011 12:42 GMT

#194

nice guide, just played against your antimage

maybe i should write a guide on venomancer

Bumblebee

3237 Posts

November 06 2011 15:42 GMT

#195

hahahahaha.. cwall, yeah please teach him haha

mordk

Chile8385 Posts

November 06 2011 20:26 GMT

#196

I have a question about AM magic resistance. In original DotA, IIRC, in order for Hood of defiance's MR to add up with AM's skill granted MR you had to do it in a specific order. I think you had to build HoD before getting any levels on Spell shield for it to work (It might be the other way around, but you get the idea). Does this happen in dota 2 as well?

RHUmbra

United States34 Posts

November 06 2011 21:36 GMT

#197

Probably the coolest looking hero in my opinion.

EchelonTee

United States5245 Posts

November 12 2011 09:17 GMT

#198

Just won a game hardcarrying as AM

70 minute game, I went 22/5/X while rest of my team was negative... felt great. So stressful though. Early game went 5-0 thanks to vengeful spirit, got a 15min Bfury, everything else went together. I would say that BKB is an ESSENTIAL item for late game; otherwise AM can get bursted by concentrated hexes/stuns.