On November 02 2011 05:51 Zirith wrote: tldr, id rather use the chainlightning weapon and go with a mass on proc high as ms build, unless i completely forgot that chainlighting is an orb effect? Really long guide. haha
There is also a minimum time between procs for the lightning in DotA. Which means it doesn't help as much as many other items does in late game.
Kunkka X's Pudge back... Pudge throws a Hook at Kunkka... Tiny blinks next to Kunkka and uses toss... Pudge's hook hits Tiny instead of Kunkka... Tiny's Toss throws FV back into Pudge
Only way that would've been better is if FV used Chronosphere on the 3 of them at the end
When I played Dota a couple years back, my favorite hero was Spiritbreaker. This was back when he had his charge, a passive stun, and a passive movement speed boost. His ult would knockback the target. I'd start off with branches and maybe bracer components, and rush a SnY after my boots. Skill build I believe is 1 point in charge while maxing the two passives. I would charge from fountain, proc passive stun, ult, and usually they should be dead.
Nowadays I play HoN, here is a guide for Bubbles (Puck in dota). He has to play solo for the exp advantage, because his nuke power tapers off really fast as people catch up in levels. For middle, start with 2 branch, 1 +3 int, and tangos (can skip tangos if its a melee mid. Max your Nuke and your AoE silence, while getting ult and optional one point in Take Cover. Executing the combo is easy to learn: you shell surf into a group of enemies, pop your silence and ult right afterwards. More important is the timing: make sure your team is ready to go after your initiation. Once you have blink, combo becomes blink->silence+ult->shell surf->Take Cover->port to shell. If you have good farm, Bottle -> Boots -> Blink. If not, Bottle -> Boots -> Treads -> Blink. Swap treads for mana/health/agi for bottle sips when needed.
Mid laning tips: Last hit > Harass > deny is the general priority. With practice, you will know when to be aggressive - always push your limits, it will unnerve your opponent. Have someone ward the rune spawn, and run towards every rune. (your cheap starting items allows you a fast bottle for the 1st rune). With shell surf, you will be able to beat most opponents to the rune. Time the surf so you 1. slice through the enemy, damaging him 2. cuts in front of him so when you port, you are in front of him and win the race to the rune. Use the illu/dd runes liberally to last hit and harass better.
Ganking phase tips: You want to save the runes. Tp gank is safest, sure-fire gank. To do this, have courier bring you a tp and port (out of vision) to the lane where opponents are pushing forward. Remember bubbles is not a solo ganker, he needs friends to finish the job.
Funny story: I was playing with my noob friend and we were killing Roshan. My friend, who likes spamming keystrokes to boost his apm, accidentally attacks the aegis and destroys it. Everyone is standing still, thinking "am I dreaming, did he really just kill the aegis" wondering where the aegis went, while my friend is running around all hyper, not realizing what he had done.
"Oh, cool, an anti mage guide! Awesome to see DOTA 2 stuff on teamliqui..." *and he's giving away a DOTA 2 key!* + Show Spoiler +
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA
Anti-mage seems really strong in the beta. Listening to dota cinema it's cause he doesn't have any counter picks that work well in the game yet, but you list quite a few with pretty good reasoning.
As far as favorite hero goes, I'm entranced with tidehunter for DOTA 2, that fish looks amazing. I've never had a particular favorite champion or build/skill order because I'm pretty terrible, but Dazzle is always fun, maxing heal then shallow and letting allies go crazy (or covering my own ass when I get ganked).
On November 02 2011 04:35 BadAim wrote: Holy s**t my friend, nice write-up, an absolute joy to read!
Can we expect you to give us extensive guides to on *all* the dota2 heroes :D?
If I had the time. This guide came in at way over 10000 words, and Anti-Mage is one of the easy heroes to write about. I have a Windrunner guide in the making and the item builds section is going to make me pull out my hair.
On November 02 2011 04:58 saltywet wrote: i read the guide, i agree with almost everything except armlet being rejected
i think armlet is a good situational item, when activated, it gives more hp than vanguard, and you get damage and attack speed you also get hp regen and armor
its a cheap tanky dps item that can be gotten early
cilinder007 covered it a bit right below, but I'll talk about it a bit more anyway. Armlet is good when you're in a position to activate it and get away. One of Anti-Mage's problems is being chain-disabled to death, and that's very easy. Relying on the STR burst from Armlet is risky, and the AS increase is negligible. It's a cheap item, but it doesn't scale well at all and Anti-Mage farms quite well these days. Vanguard Treads Battle Fury Manta can all be gotten by 30 minutes in, and after that bigger-ticket items are in sight. Armlet is just a waste of 2600 gold since your illusions will be incredibly weak.
On November 02 2011 05:03 Horse...falcon wrote: Anybody know which (non-implemented heroes) are good against him? He's tearing up the beta right now.
I wanted to talk about him in the "foes" section but he's not implemented yet. Obsidian Destroyer absolutely destroys Anti-Mage. Pure damage through Arcane Orb goes through Spell Shield and damage block, and hurts Anti-Mage especially since he has such a low HP pool. Obsidian never runs out of mana either with his passive regeneration percentage chance. Shadow Demon can also destroy Anti-Mage. Disruptions create Anti-Mage illusions that burn away Anti-Mage's mana, Soul Catcher amplifies damage on him by 50%, and Purge is just nasty.
As I said in the guide, Void and Spectre can outcarry Anti-Mage. Neither cares too much about his/her mana, and Void with Butterfly negates half of Anti-Mage's hits. Spectre's dispersion means Anti-Mage hurts quite a bit when he hits her. As a carry, Syllabear can also push (somebody already talked about this below), and he gets his items much faster and can have more. An Anti-Mage with no room to farm is very useless.
And Invoker is pretty much just good against everybody.
On November 02 2011 05:15 shostakovich wrote: Nice guide.
But I think Phase Boots is a way superior choice than Power Treads. With Phase Boots and Yasha, Anti-Mage has a gigantic movespeed. This speed allows you to chase anyone in the battle, giving you the option of saving the Blink for escape purposes. Phase Boots allows more flexibility for Magina than Power Treads. It's not correct to say that Phase Boots doesn't add survivability, because it's speed boost can be used to run away. Survivability is more than simply having HP.
I agree with you on all this. I still tend to get Phase Boots when playing more of a ganking Anti-Mage, but that is rare. I tend to farm (just poorly) and Phase Boots aren't really needed. In today's burst-heavy game, you can go down in an instant to nukes and disables. The +152 HP through Strength treads helps a lot, and the Attack Speed scales better into lategame than the +24 damage from Phase Boots.
On November 02 2011 05:34 Osmoses wrote: This is the most ridiculous guide ever. How long did this take you to write?
Goddamnit now I need to start playing dota again.
I started writing this about two weeks ago. Took a long break then worked on it for about 5 hours today to finish it. Not sure about the total time, but I'd say around 15 to 20 hours.
On November 02 2011 05:35 LoliSquad wrote: A couple typos: The skillset says blink twice instead of Mana Void.
"Anti-Mage can also functional quite well as a semi-carry/ganker" This should probably say "function quite well".
Great guide. I would disagree slightly with your argument for Vanguard over PMS, as u say, blocking 20 out of 45 damage is nice, but 20 out of 150 is trivial. However the same is true to only a slightly lesser extent for the average of Vanguard, 28; blocking 28 out of 150 is trivial as well. That said, they are both good choices, but you give Vanguard more of an edge than I would. PMS is also finished a lot sooner than Vanguard, giving you better protection from harassment possibly and probably allowing you to farm (very) slightly better (the balance swings to Vanguard's side pretty hard when the RoH is purchased though, I would imagine). If you need the additional health of the Vanguard early on then that is probably the better choice, but if u feel u can get away without it I think PMS is superior.
PMS does finish faster, but in any case whether you want to go Battle Fury or get a Vanguard the Ring of Health is applicable to both. I'm very hesitant to run around with sub-1000 HP at level 16 these days.
On November 02 2011 05:56 Barundar wrote: Reading this made me want to play Anti Mage. I feel dirty.
I already posted much of it in another thread but I guess it fits the theme here if I change it a bit: My favourite hero is Abaddon,
if you have an inferiority complex you should really play him, because you can safe your mates so often in dire situations that the thank yous will give your ego a stronger boost than any of sharlie sheen's favourite courtesans. Your skills are wonderful for fragile carries, the heal heals(no really it does!) and can be used as a VERY good nuke(awesome range, dmg etc.), the only bad thing about it is that it damages you, but the damage isn't that bad and makes your buddies even more thankfull for getting healed and sometimes it can be even used to your advantage.
The shield makes attacking the shielded person dangerous, can be used together with your coil for a sudden burst of damage and has synergies with several different heroes(axe,pudge...), because it swallows a nice amount of damage done to you or your mates and lets it all out on your foes when it breaks. (and something that many people don't know is that it stops hex, which can be huge lateron and save a whole clash because the carry didn't lose valuable seconds of ownage).
The buffplacer/orb effect... oh that skill, we experienced so much together... it slowes enemies down AND enhances movement- AND attackspeed, a chaser like Riki or Magina will love you for it.
And of course his ulti, it autoactivates itself when you're about to die and only has a cooldown of 60 seconds, although it's sometimes much smarter to activate it manually to suprise your enemies, but what does it do? It transforms damage into hp! This, together with the shield and the orb give Abbadon excellent juking abilities, especially if you have phase boots for the speedboost and to move through your enemies(don't forget this when you want to feel like a real man, there's nothing better than to survive it when 5 guys focus you and run after you through the whole jungle).
And even if everything is lost and you know that you will die you can still deny the satisfaction (and the gold) to your enemies and commit suicide with the help of your coil(and heal/damage an enemy/foe at the same time as a farewell present) and make them rage, because they didn't manage to kill you after investing so much in it. If you want your fellow teammates to love you, play him, be a nice person and always support your fellow teammates and especially your carry.
As you may have noticed by now, I play abbadon as a supporter, although I usually like to play all of the roles, except some of the carries, because I don't like it to stay somewhere(on a lane, in the jungle) for long after the early to farm creeps. I usually play sigs on dota-league.com and there I always random(when the mode permits it), just because I really like the diversity (the great thing about not liking to play some of the very farm focussed carries is that there's nearly always somebody who wants to swap that hero with you^^) and it also makes it a bit more challenging(but it's very important that you random as soon as possible, because if you wait your teammates can't pick accordingly). I really love playing him, especially with a guy who likes to play Riki or Never or another carry like that, I love playing abbadon together with him, even if we have a bad early he doesn't just die in clashes or ganks because his hp is so low, because his farm was bad, I can keep him alive with my spells and he can still do his damage and even more of it thanks to my orb effect.
As for the funny moments, I play abba for years already so there are quite a few, but right now it's actually kinda hard to think of many, but for you guys(and the beta key:D) I'll write one down which I have in my mind right now.
In one game I played against a Bloodseeker on a LAN and he barely got away fight, he only had his normal boots and a radiance so when was running away a Dark Seer in my team missclicked and surged a ghoul instead of me to finish him off and since my coil was on cd I only had my shield ready to damage him, while everybody was still shouting and cursing the DS player(including himself) I quickly shielded the surged ghoul which ran as fast as possible after the Bloodseeker and his radiance did damage to him, now if the shieldburst would've have killed him it would have been funny, but it didn't instead the shield exploded and left the Bloodseeker barely alive. What did kill him was the ghoul itself, it hit him one last time and while we were already dissappointed that he survived the damage of my shield we all laughed out loud when the creep got him. The whole scene kinda sounded like this: "FUUUUUUUUCK NO!" "DS YOU..." "NICE IDEA ABBA!" "YEAAAAAAAAH no fuck wait SHIT §"%$&%(//&$§ HE'S ALIVE!" "THE CREEP, THE CREEP YAAAAAH!" "LOL!" Maybe it's one of the you-should-have-been-there-moments but even today it still makes me laugh.
PS: Here's a li'l video I found on youtube
EDIT: Yeah we lost the game about 10 minutes later, but it was very much fun. EDIT2: Oh and I always laugh when a carry tries to lasthit and I shield the creep in the last second to deny him the money and damage him.
My absolute favorite hero is Lich. I enjoy his versatility in the lane phase, his strong river/jungle control from his ult, and the late game support option from his ice armor.
As for skill build, the first 5 levels can vary greatly depending on what I am doing. If I am babysitting a non-aggressive carry: ritual -> nova -> ritual -> nova -> nova If I am in an aggressive lane looking for kills: ritual -> nova -> nova -> ritual -> nova If I am in a dangerous 1v2 lane because we have a jungle (A situation I find myself in fairly often) I will occasionally go with: ritual -> nova -> ritual -> nova -> ritual (generally do this if I don't expect much help from my jungler, and I plan to stay in the lane for a bit) If I am looking for a fight at level 1, whether it is to counter a level 1 rosh or fighting over the pull ward against an aggressive lane I will go nova first Obviously, I skill ult whenever I can, max nova after ult, and depending on the situation, I can max ritual or start getting points in frost armor.
The way I play can vary greatly depending on what the lanes are, but generally I like to leave my lane to roam when I am confident that my carry can safely farm. Ritual allows me to stay on the map without a bottle, and while Lich doesn't have the strongest ganking potential unless his ult is up, forcing people out of a lane with a gank or the threat of a gank is sometimes just as powerful as getting a kill.
My core items on lich are simply: tp's (always be ready to protect your carry when it's getting tower dived), wards, and counter wards (oh and magic stick, but everyone gets that) Beyond that, everything is reactionary. Generally I will get a mek because it is cheap and easy to assemble between buying wards. If the team is snowballing and I am doing really well, I get sheep stick. If physical damage is just destroying me every fight, I get the self banish. If big aoe's are a problem, I get a pipe. I also sometimes get a push stick because its the funnest item for support.
As for my story, its more a recurring thing for me because I play Lich so much. Chain Frost is a powerful tool for mid game jungle/river control because it can punish people very severely for walking around those areas in a group, away from their creep. But even when they are alone, sometimes Chain Frost can be deadly. I cannot count the number of times I kill someone in the bottom river because Chain Frost bounced to the neutral creep camp on the high ground and back to the hero. Lich is a pretty easy hero to play overall, but knowing these cute little Chain Frost spots can be pretty helpful sometimes
Now this is a story all about how baller I am How my life got restored after I fell down And I'd like to take a moment, just sit n' read here I'll tell you how I became a Baller of top lane
It went like this.
So I roll out my hood, see my homies hitting up some hoe's. They wave me over, and I see this white devil gurl . Being my baller self, I smack that gurl down. Before she knows it, she's flat on her back. My team is all like "Oh shit dude, you baller".
So I roll on down to my dog at the bot lane, and they all like. "Hey, I'm farming here!" and I'm all like "You ain't Gangsta, you ain't top dog homes".
I leave that player and stroll through the forest for some friendly fun. I find these little Gnoll punks, and decide to lay a smack down on them. When a couple of guys who were up to no good Started makin' trouble in my neighborhood I got in one little fight and my Team Leader got scared And said you're movin' with your auntie( )and uncle() in top lane
I whistled for a TP and when the courier came near The bird said "Squawk", and it had claws in the rear If anything I could say that this courier had flare But I thought man forget it's a stupid bird. Yo homes to top lane
I pulled up to the tower about 2 or 3 And I yelled to the courier 'yo homes squawk ya later' Looked at my forest, I was finally there To sit on my throne as the Baller of top lane
Later on in Baller Smith's career he fought aliens and saved the world
Edit: Oh and I wrote a song for IceFrog as well. I'm trying to record it. My voice isn't that good, nor my recording equipment either(meaning webcam micro is all I got >_<) Anyway, if your interested Flamewheel. I should have it up tonight. Recorded then mixing it with the instrumentals.
it used to be pretty troll to build to go Eul's into Guinsoos and just perma-disable someone on their team to feed your carry kill after kill.
funniest (and most frustrating) dragon knight moment is definitely any time you kite someone a really long time with your chain disables and it takes so long someone on their team comes and denies your kill with Tiny's toss or something like that.
Whenever I'm down and frustrated over allies, loss streaks, and general unproductivity from being addicted to dota, this hero is always a fix! (well for 2 out of 3).
What makes him so great is you can have a sure loss on your hand, the most frustrating allies, and still pull off moments that just makes you go: This is why I play dota.
Of course the hook ability is the most important reason I love pudge. Pulling off hooks into the dark, while just knowing you hit a fleeing hero right in the a, and getting that rewarding 250 text somewhere is just so awesome. Sometimes you hit "that game", and every single hook, even the most impossible, lands and net a kill. Pudge can just dominate the opponent team in a way no other hero is able to, getting into their head and almost making them walk into hooks. Bonus point when opponent team calls you a maphacker .
Secondly pudge can pull off so much harassment with rot. Even if you are losing, you still have the chance to deny yourself, feeling awesome as well as denying the opponents that little bit of gold. It helps with creeping, and most importantly you can run around owning even invisible heroes. As with hooks, it can give you that amazing feeling of dota pwnage.
Lastly pudge is just fat, and being fat and unkillable is just my thing. The amount of times I've made a narrow escape from a group of vicious enemies, due to his regen (items), magic immunity and kick ass hit point pool are countless. Often it allows my team to fall upon them making them pay, and me even snatching a few on the retreat. I don't think I subconsciously wants to be a wrestler, but being fat is just awesome.
My favorite game with pudge is of cause because of a hook. Sentinel, playing with 2 friends, we win a late game team fight defending our bottom tier 2 tower, yet the enemy carry, a well farmed clinkz, escapes on low hp. Just as I rack in the last of the enemies, netting me a double kill, I immediately start chasing. One friend (Dark Seer) surges me, the other force staffs me, and just before I get out of range I get surged again. In the mean time I see on mini map, just for a split second, clinkz appearing before he restealths near our middle tower. I walk through sentinel forest, through the water, and up into the small wood just behind the scourge middle tower, before doing my hook. And I hit, with very most edge of the hook, killing him off. What made it so great was not only the game deciding factor, neither the fact I hit a max speed invisible clinkz after chasing half the map, but the fact that it was a team effort to get there, and that we all shared the awesomeness
I started playing DotA with some people from TeamLiquid in 2007 or so. I didn't know much about the game and I didn't really have a main hero, I just played with whatever or would -random. I would play on and off until I found a hero that I completely fell in love with:
So small, so dangerous.
The perfect ganking hero. A hero that can throw enemies and stun them as well. And of course everybody knows the combo where you use Avalanche, use Toss to throw them straight up in the air and have them land back in the Avalanche for double the damage. Blink Dagger is of course amazing on Tiny and needed to close gaps as well as make great escapes if needed. Besides that, basic items for survivability (Bracers, TP's, Potions) as well as a Bottle and Arcane Boots is really all Tiny needs. Tiny is an excellent early-mid game hero and is not very dependent on items, which allows him to shine while he assists his allies.
Getting up close and personal is mandatory on this beast.
As far as skills, I alternate between Avalanche and Toss. After those two are maxed out, I then get Craggy Exterior which gives him that extra armor and helps for survivability. I save Grow for very last (even after stats) just to make Tiny that much harder to see and target. Yes, the extra range / damage / movespeed is nice, but so is the ability to squeeze through minions and other small paths, especially in Warcraft 3 where pathfinding plays a large role.
Of course, when playing with friends, throwing your allies into the fountain is always tempting... But of course as a nice, innocent Tiny player, surely you would never do that.
Does this face look guilty to you?
I've had some really fun games as Tiny where everything just seemed to go right. Ganks were executed perfectly and I did not make any silly mistakes with throws or stuns. It's really hard to pick one out in particular. But honestly every game with Tiny is fun and he's the hero that really got me interested in DotA.
When girls shirts have your favorite hero on them, you know he's for real.
I'm typing all of this from memory, so if I'm mistaken it's because I haven't played classic DotA in ~2-3 years. I've also played since DX/EX Eul era, so I may get things mixed up that have changed in patches over the course of the games.
My favorite hero of all time was the ghoul in DotA: Darkness Falls. For those who don't know, after Eul stopped updating DotA DX (or was it EX? I forget which one was the TFT version), a bunch of knockoffs emerged, including Darkness Falls and Allstars which were my 2 favorites. Allstars is the DotA still played today.
The ghoul had a shadow arrow stun, lifesteal aura, one skill I forgot, and his ultimate made 3 copies of himself that each made 3 copies every time they attacked. He was delightfully broken and pushed towers like no one's business. He was only out-brokened by Archimonde and Furion, which both had an instant teleport to anywhere on the map and a Holy Light/Death Coil that healed a teammate or damaged an enemy.
But I digress.
My favorite all-stars hero was probably the Night Stalker. I played him almost since his inception and ended up being quite good at him. He is a hero that is basically a vanilla strength hero during the day that gets supercharged at night, gaining near maximum movement speed, a powerful slow, and a silence/blind that renders his foes nearly helpless. If you venture out from your tower at night, you're asking for a swift and sure death.
First still is Void.
In day it does standard damage (the rough curve all normal nuke spells follow of 75/125/225/300), and at night it adds a powerful slow. This is your bread and butter nuke ability. You can use it to harass in lanes and you should use it every time you jump on someone at night (obviously after they use any escape they may have).
Second skill is Fear.
This spell does absolutely nothing during the day. At night, however, it's one of the most valuable CCs in the game.
Fear silences and blinds the enemy for a duration based on level. This isn't like the blinds in other games, it just makes a certain % of their attacks miss. It's one of the longest silences in the game, and it gives you a huge advantage over any spellcaster.
Third skill is Hunter in the Night (dunno hotkey, it's a passive):
This is what makes you stupid powerful at nighttime. During the day, it does nothing, however at night it increases your movement and attack speed by an atrocious amount, enabling you to easily hit max movement speed with power treads. You can blaze around the entire map with ease ganking anyone who gets out of position without fear of them being able to run due to your massive speed.
Ultimate is Nightfall.
You can use this at any time to make it night for a certain duration. At lvl 16, you can make it damn near permanently night with this skill, meaning you can just go nuts. In DotA 1, however, it turns the clock purple, so they're going to be well aware you just cast your ultimate and will be prepared for ganks.
Night Stalker is a great choice for a solo sidelane. Even if he gets zoned, he can last hit with Void and stay in exp range. As a STR hero, he has natural bulk that helps him survive light harass. Against a weaker opponent, he can use Void to harass and control the lane until lvl 6 when he can turn the tables and get a kill.
Early game:
Just stay in lane and get exp. Last hits are great, but your true income will be ganking at lvl 6+ so just make sure you don't get completely zoned. Harass if you can. Once you hit 6, activate the ulti and kill whoever is in your lane, or anyone else that overextends. I start with boots of speed and tangoes/branches. (if you are solo, consider a shield into vanguard instead)
Mid game:
You should be fresh off 1-2 ganks during your ult. This should let you finish STR treads and start a BKB (or finish vanguard if you were solo). Once night naturally rolls around, you should be roaming and picking off anyone who is out of position, if they are all turtling, then take their entire jungle, they should not be able to stop you. Do not be afraid to dive at this point.
Late game:
Once late game rolls around, you'll find you won't be able to compete with harder carries like Antimage, Bloodseeker, and the like unless you really, really outfarm them. This is where Night Stalker is the weakest, because everyone tends to stick mostly together and your main role becomes focusing squishies and fearing their carries rather than cleaning up all the kills.
An average gank should consist of you running in from behind them and Voiding, followed by a fear and autoattacks. You should be able to dive them as early as lvl 6 due to your natural bulk, but use good judgement when doing so. You are vunerable to stuns until you get a BKB, so be wary of that.
Skill order:
Void -> Hunter -> Void -> Fear -> Void -> Nightfall -> Hunter -> Hunter -> whatever. You want lvl 3 void at 5 for lane presence and gankability, and fear and hunter do nothing until the first night, but once you get your ult, you should stop leveling void and start leveling your night ganking skills. I prefer leaving fear at 1 and maxing void and hunter first, but that's just me, the other route is just as viable and even better depending on the matchup.
Item build:
Shield/3 branch/pot/tango to start if you're solo.
Otherwise, take boots/branch/tangoes.
You should end up with Str Treads, Vanguard, BKB as your 3 core items. These allow you to kill most everyone in the mid game. Follow it up with Helm -> Satanic. After that, use your discretion, if you need more tank items, get Heart/Curiass, if you need more damage, get Chrysalis -> Biruza, MKB, or S&Y.
Some of my favorite memories of Balanar were when I ended up getting a pre-6 kill in a solo sidelane (back when people used to always send 2 mid in pubs at least) and getting my ult before anyone else was 6. Then I'd run up behind mid and double kill them at the tower 90% of the time. After that, everyone would start bitching about how OP NS was while I raced around the map killing everyone that left their tower. At that point, a lot of people started ragequitting or tower camping, in which case I would just run around soloing jungle creeps and pushing with my team.
The only game I have a clear memory of that was even close was when I went up against a bloodseeker that got fed in one of our lanes. We ended up trading back and forth fighting in the river and jungle, he'd kill me, then I'd kill him next time (including a hilarious one where I didn't notice rupture while I had hunter on and just killed myself from half health in under 2 seconds). Then the teamfights started and he started making a grave mistake: He'd silence me. That gave me the damage boost I needed to rip right through him and, consequently, the rest of his team.
Good times.
Edit: Upon reflection, shield into vanguard is almost always better, but I don't think vanguard existed as an item when I stated playing NS.
I started playing DotA with some people from TeamLiquid in 2007 or so. I didn't know much about the game and I didn't really have a main hero, I just played with whatever or would -random. I would play on and off until I found a hero that I completely fell in love with:
So small, so dangerous.
The perfect ganking hero. A hero that can throw enemies and stun them as well. And of course everybody knows the combo where you use Avalanche, use Toss to throw them straight up in the air and have them land back in the Avalanche for double the damage. Blink Dagger is of course amazing on Tiny and needed to close gaps as well as make great escapes if needed. Besides that, basic items for survivability (Bracers, TP's, Potions) as well as an Arcane Ring, a Bottle, and Boots of course is really all Tiny needs. Tiny is an excellent early-mid game hero and is not very dependent on items, which allows him to shine while he assists his allies.
Getting up close and personal is mandatory on this beast.
As far as skills, I alternate between Avalanche and Toss. After those two are maxed out, I then get Craggy Exterior which gives him that extra armor and helps for survivability. I save Grow for very last (even after stats) just to make Tiny that much harder to see and target. Yes, the extra range / damage / movespeed is nice, but so is the ability to squeeze through minions and other small paths, especially in Warcraft 3 where pathfinding plays a large role.
Of course, when playing with friends, throwing your allies into the fountain is always tempting... But of course as a nice, innocent Tiny player, surely you would never do that.
Does this face look guilty to you?
I've had some really fun games as Tiny where everything just seemed to go right. Ganks were executed perfectly and I did not make any silly mistakes with throws or stuns. It's really hard to pick one out in particular. But honestly every game with Tiny is fun and he's the hero that really got me interested in DotA.
When girls shirts have your favorite hero on them, you know he's for real.
So, this is what you've been working on! It really shows that you've done a lot of research. Great job! Very thorough, detailed, and informative. You're a boss.
As for my favorite hero, it would probably have to be Sandking. I've always traditionally loved the roaming/ganking role, and I feel Sandking perfectly complements that style for myself personally. Not too much info in terms of a skill build, just your customary standard, prioritizing burrowstrike, occasionally getting sandstorm, and watching the game change when I hit lvl 6.
For items, honestly, I tend to play pretty light on SK, once I get my standard bottle, I grab boots and then desperately try and get that all important blink dagger. After that, I'm pretty much good to go.
My favorite hero is is Drow Ranger. I just love glass cannons like drow because of how careful you have to be and how focused you have to be to get the necessary cs to carry. She's a lovely character and I just can't wait to use her in DotA 2.
My skillbuild usually goes like this. solo mid Frost, Aura, Aura, Silence, Aura, Marksmanship, Aura, Silence, silence, Stats, Marksmanship, Silence, Stats, Stats, Frost, Marksmanship, Frost, Frost, stats
My starting items are usually Tangos, and boots (really depends on who i expect to solo against) If i suspect to solo with much better lane control: tangos, 3 gg branches, slipper, salve. My core consists of HotD and Manta. Luxury: buriza.
My most memorable game was a game with my friends. We did a two on two with pubs. The two on the other team firmly opposed the HotD build, and so i felt like proving them wrong. I really lived the name of a glass cannon by dying more than I should've in the beginning. But i focused on cs and proceeded to get my core and "dominated" them all. It's always fun owning your friends.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_t-rMoA7-qWs/TOcQkLQVMZI/AAAAAAAAACI/4DBEhDo58Qw/S748/Abaddon_Lord_of_Avernus.jpg)
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.![[image loading]](http://media.playdota.com/hero/115/thumb.gif)
at the bot lane, and they all like.![[image loading]](http://media.playdota.com/hero/34/thumb.jpg)
)and uncle(![[image loading]](http://media.playdota.com/hero/67/thumb.gif)
) in top lane![[image loading]](http://media.playdota.com/hero/106/thumb.gif)
.![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qJmYuKjmdhw/SVXa3hbycKI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/LVPFychyfTc/s400/Tiny.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://classic.battle.net/war3/images/nightelf/units/portraits/mountaingiant.gif)
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