On August 30 2014 08:33 zelphin wrote: what. noone skips bkb when against kunkka the question is whether to get it asap after fury. whatever.
No top carry goes anything but bfury (often vlads) Manta -> heart/bkb/bfly. Burning Sylar Hao Black all do the same early item progression. BKB before Manta is garbage since you don't do any damage without Manta anyway and it kills your farming acceleration.
BKB is also much much worse in low level pub games (probably anything less than 4.5-5k) because your team's disables won't be on point and the enemy will just kite you. the entire point of BKB is that your team holds them in place, you can't be stopped and just murder them one by one. The need for it is also less in those games, because you can bait your team and the enemy won't be smart enough to hold their spells just for you usually.
because they are discussing getting bkb as a situational item against a hero like kunkka, and most of the time a heart will be better. Hence why mentioning bkb being worse than a heart is relevant to the discussion at hand.
AM with the manta will be hard to kill if they have less than 3 heroes going for you, or someone with insane lockdown like lion/ss coming to join the party with the kunkka.
and yeah, sorry sn0man, I misundestood you. I never play kunkka and didn't realize it functioned like that.
On August 30 2014 05:14 Sn0_Man wrote: No, you misunderstood me. The timing on X varies depending on the level plus kunkka can change the timing manually by recalling. So while glimpse is predictable and counterable, X is much harder to counter because you have to time it simultaneous to your opponent's instant-cast ability and/or the expiration of X which you don't even know the timing on since you can't see how many levels they have in it.
Semi-related, but there actually is a trick to deduce the skill rank for a skill that has variable range on ranks. If you select their hero and mouse over the skill icon, it displays the range indicator for the current rank of the skill. With reasonable knowledge of ranges, you can pretty easily figure out what rank of X Kunkka has.
Everything else you said still stands though.
On August 30 2014 06:00 Sn0_Man wrote: BKB on AM is very much a "I have to fight right fucking now and I can't fight with any other item except BKB" type item. Its really fucking awful but sometimes u just have to buy it.
Heart is bkb only preferable whenever you can afford to not bkb. It also makes ur illusions surprisingly good at slow-sieging bases.
Heart vs. BKB is a matter of teamcomps more than what you described.
Essentially, when considering the two, you have to ask the question "are fights decided by maximizing my damage dealt in the first 4-10 seconds of the fight"? If yes, then BKB is reasonable. If no, Heart is probably better given it's superiority in sieging, split-pushing, non-teamfight situations, longer drawn-out fights, etc.
The answer is usually only yes in teamcomps with big teamfight disable heroes like Mag or Enigma where you kind of just want to cleave-kill a ton of people right away when fights happen.
>Burning Sylar Hao Black all do the same early item progression< they dont, i like blacks one bkb vs heart is mainly an experience/feel thing... u will know which one to get if u play enough games. but against stuff like doom u always go heart
On August 31 2014 03:11 ChunderBoy wrote: >Burning Sylar Hao Black all do the same early item progression< they dont, i like blacks one bkb vs heart is mainly an experience/feel thing... u will know which one to get if u play enough games. but against stuff like doom u always go heart
Well Black goes treads first so you can farm neutral camps after pushing waves in laning phase while some of the others do that terrible naked bfury rush, but all of them will go bfury (vlads) manta heart or bkb/sometimes bfly every game, not bfury bkb crap.
On August 30 2014 08:33 zelphin wrote: what. noone skips bkb when against kunkka the question is whether to get it asap after fury. whatever.
No top carry goes anything but bfury (often vlads) Manta -> heart/bkb/bfly. Burning Sylar Hao Black all do the same early item progression. BKB before Manta is garbage since you don't do any damage without Manta anyway and it kills your farming acceleration.
BKB is also much much worse in low level pub games (probably anything less than 4.5-5k) because your team's disables won't be on point and the enemy will just kite you. the entire point of BKB is that your team holds them in place, you can't be stopped and just murder them one by one. The need for it is also less in those games, because you can bait your team and the enemy won't be smart enough to hold their spells just for you usually.
There was a pro game were an Anti-Mage built BF --> BKB before Manta. I'll see if I can find the replay.
Btw, I tested the vlads manta vyse build. Its fun but is extremely hard to farm as AM without a BF past the laning phase. If you don't have free farm, don't ever go for it as you won't be able to outfarm your opponent.
Just did a pub game on my test smurf account to see how Anti-Mage feels on this new patch. Never saw a need for bkb. Though I really wish I could tell my smurf's account normal unranked mmr. Some games it feels like it's not too below my normal account already, other games we get team compositions like my anti-mage game.
But even against a team with venomancer, jakiro, pudge, skywrath and techies for magic damage and disable, I never felt the need for a bkb. Here is link.
On November 26 2014 06:51 SoylentGamer wrote: KuroKY went Maelstrom after vlad's, but then again that was Captain's Draft, and this is Kuro we're talking about.
I think this is a really interesting idea. The lighting gives you sudo cleave. You don't have the regen from BF but if you get an early vlads before the maelstrom you are ok and total cost is about the same but you have better early game items. Maybe need a CM on the team (he had one in his game) to get the needed mana regen for constant blinking. I think it could be a good plan for when you are going to be getting too slow of a battle fury. The vlads really helps you early on and lets you go to the jungle much sooner so you dont get completely shut down in lane.
I think its generally inferior to the battlefury in terms of farming efficiency. It's a way better combat item though. I've thought about lategame switching the BF for an MJ because you can still push out waves pretty fast and the raw attack speed and active on an AM is really nice.
That captains draft game was situational. He did it because he had to get the vlads first because he was under pressure. I don't think he would of went it if he could of gotten a reasonably timed BF. As mentioned above, the lack of int regen will result in a lot more base trips than you would usually want to make which will further hurt your farming/split push efficiency.
I looked up the game: He had under 40cs at 10 minutes, so quite the crappy laning phase. Also, a CM which was mentioned earlier.
So I'm 3.5k player trying to play more antimage. I have had success getting a battlefury around 15min or so and then finishing treads, yasha, manta by like 20-25min or so. This seems pretty good for my level but then I dont really know what to do as the hero. I can split push all day and keep the lanes pushed but i really struggle trying to contribute in teamfights or taking objectives.
My question is what should my mentality be? Do I need more key items to fight beyond the manta in the progression I mentioned? Should I just stop trying to fight? Should my targeting in fights solo be supports vs cores?
I'm sure that I am missing something about his play style.
Your teamfight strength is highest one item after Manta. Manta is when you start being generally strong, but as a full-on 5v5 teamfighter you need Heart to make you and your illusions sufficiently bulky as to be hard to deal with or a 10s BKB to make you unmanageable.
Manta is when you start being able to really do stuff, but teamfighting proactively only really kicks in 1 item after that.
On January 30 2015 13:21 TheYango wrote: Your teamfight strength is highest one item after Manta. Manta is when you start being generally strong, but as a full-on 5v5 teamfighter you need Heart to make you and your illusions sufficiently bulky as to be hard to deal with or a 10s BKB to make you unmanageable.
Manta is when you start being able to really do stuff, but teamfighting proactively only really kicks in 1 item after that.
Thats interesting. I was under the impression I should be going damage/chase after manta, specifically I had been trying basher. This was a decision I was definitely not confident about. I will try getting a tanky item like heart or bkb next there. Thanks for suggestion.
Those are good timings on BF and Manta. Heart is considered the "gold standard" after Manta (<30 mins is a good timing for Heart), with BKB as a situational item (you typically don't want to have to get BKB as AM).
You can fight with Manta but you're still pretty squishy at that point so it is one of those "proceed with caution" types of things, but if you think you can survive Manta is basically when AM's offense comes online as he can pop manta on top of someone and blow them up with Mana Void. Most likely however want to continue to put pressure on the enemy team by split pushing at this point (if the enemy team groups up and takes a tower but you get a tower trade in return that is a good trade unless your team feeds as well).
If you're forced to fight you should stay on the sidelines and wait for the fight to develop and bit, paying attention to what skills are still available from the opposing team and jump in when you think you have a window. Generally target the highest priority target you think you can burst down, being mindful of how Mana Void damage calculation works.
Basher/blfy/BKB/Heart are all viable after manta. Not an AM player myself but I'd say BKB/Heart for more when you're behind. Basher for fighting/killing but only if you're in a good/ahead position. If you're behind you're likely not in position to run in and bash stuff without getting blown up. Bfly is the best way to extend a lead, no one is gonna catch up to you farm-wise with a bfly. But likely the weakest fighting option.
Bash after Manta is stronger if there's a single specific hero you have to manfight, but in general having illusions that don't die instantly ends up doing a lot more because of Mana Break, even when you're ahead. Even though Heart provides no direct DPS stats, it adds a ton of damage in fights through illusion survivability, plus the mana denial.
You have to be against some goofy teamcomp that has like zero AoE skills for this not to be the case.
Generally, I try to stave off getting a heart unless I feel I have to, like vs a tinker or some really heavy lockdown comp. Basically I ask myself the question of, if I get a heart, can they ever actually kill me? If the answer is yes then I usually grab it if I want to fight. However if you want to split push harder, IE: you don't want to teamfight then I usually go butterfly. If I'm doing decently and I want to pick people off more efficiently, abyssal is the route I go. I tend to favor the abyssal because it lets you play significantly more aggressively and get much faster kills and forces the enemy to respond to you as 2+ or die, and even then depending on position you might still be able to kill them.
I feel heart is a safe choice that doesn't improve your pushing that much (particularly if you have vlads already) nor does it directly improve your mainfighting/pickoffs the way an abyssal does. But it does let you survive if they need to kill you during chain stuns/hexes/silences because that 1k hp goes a long way on antimage. But that's one of the fun things about AM, while your 6 slot is usually the same, the order in which you get your last 3 items can change quite a bit situatiionally depending. Same thing for your skill build, whether to get more stats, when to skill mana break, weather or not to get stats over max spell shield.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1196418082 Here is a game I recently played, I'm about 4k. If I got a heart in this game I would of been not killable, but I chose abyssal to allow me to constantly threaten kills before TP's could get in, and as a result I am able to kill the dusa, mag pretty consistently and accelerate my following items.
EPT
