Hi all, I'm trying to learn how to play Storm Spirit better. I play in ~4.5k bracket, and usually play carry currently (haven't played much mid since low 3k). However, I want to be able to play SS as I really enjoy the hero, and it's useful to have a go-to mid hero when stacking with lower MMR friends.
Unfortunately, I have <50% winrate and struggle far more than I should be with the hero. https://www.opendota.com/players/112545461/matches?hero_id=17&limit= is my yasp for the hero, and here's a video replay of me recently playing and getting absolutely hammered. I'd particularly like help on the first 15 minutes of play:
I would prefer only people 4.5k+ respond.
I basically want to know more about what I should be doing better in the laning stage, what matchups are favourable for storm (and how to win them perhaps), and what to do with regards to ganking vs farming vs fighting vs splitpushing in the first 15 or so minutes. In general, what are my glaring mistakes and what can I do to prevent them?
Have you tried watching some of the Blitz storm youtube videos? He's no sumail, but apparently they r super helpful and informative. I think you could watch them then compare it with your own.
I watched it. I'm no storm player but I do play a lot of mid at 5-5.5k
Your number 1 problem is CS. Practice the hero more. I counted 10+ easy missed CS in the first little bit, then I stopped counting. You got 9 min treads in an uncontested lane (1v1 with mag, your supports even got you an early kill). Second, stack your camps.
I wouldn't worry about laning or decision making or anything until you get farming down.
That game was the ideal storm game -- no real silence or hard disable aside from rp. Game plan should be to farm up, build your bloodstone charges, and go ham.
in early levels before u have grip, you should always zip past someone so u can guarantee the remnant will hit. zip past, overload hit, remnant, overload hit. at the same time, you should walk as close to engagements as possible before zipping. it's really easy to ball in from afar and end up burning all of ur mana. i think ur better off going arcane boots first, then soul ring, then disassembling into bloodstone before buying treads. the regen from arcanes as well as being able to drop them to get more mana from soul ring will help ur farming out a lot.
I'd also recommend going to the Blitzdota youtube. He has a whole series on "Storm vs X Hero" where he goes through the lane stage in the first 10 minutes. He also has a couple of full Storm tutorials where he goes through entire games, although some of them are a bit outdated in terms of item/skill builds...
I actually noticed a ton of little things in the first 10-15 minutes that I'd like to point out, so I'll make a more in depth post when I'm not in class. Storm is my most played hero so I should know a thing or two
On September 09 2016 00:25 ahw wrote: I watched it. I'm no storm player but I do play a lot of mid at 5-5.5k
Your number 1 problem is CS. Practice the hero more. I counted 10+ easy missed CS in the first little bit, then I stopped counting. You got 9 min treads in an uncontested lane (1v1 with mag, your supports even got you an early kill). Second, stack your camps.
I wouldn't worry about laning or decision making or anything until you get farming down.
That game was the ideal storm game -- no real silence or hard disable aside from rp. Game plan should be to farm up, build your bloodstone charges, and go ham.
I'm aware my CS was really poor in that particular game, but I'm not worried about improving that. Just need a bit of concentrated practice on storm last hitting. Having said that, I'm pretty sure I either should use my remnants MORE or LESS to farm in the lane, but not really sure which side I fall on.
I'm also fairly sure I could be playing more aggressively and getting kills in lane but don't know how to, unless the other player is extremely dopey or is weak like an SF.
With regards to stacking camps, I was under the impression that with the jungle magic resist buffs and storm nerfs it's no longer the play to focus on getting large stacks to clear, and instead I should ideally be playing aggressively in lanes and enemy jungle.
I've watched some of blitz's videos before but I will watch again, and watch the matchup ones that I haven't seen. Thx in advance emu for your coming post
I'm pretty sure I either should use my remnants MORE or LESS to farm in the lane, but not really sure which side I fall on.
You used them more than you should have pre bottle. I think you still had 300 gold to bottle and you were out of mana completely. Also I'm sure this doesn't need to be said, but you missed some CS with remnant which probably just comes down to not knowing remnant dmg well enough. Haven't watched more than the first 5 minutes so far though.
The most important thing when playing mid is to learn when you can be aggressive. For example when you are against a melee you should be zoning him out of the lane by threatening him with remnants, since he literally can't walk up to the creeps without taking a remnant to the face. If he's good he will do some creep aggro shenanigans and also dodge/bait remnants, so in that case you just right click him 10 times instead. Then when the lane pushes you should be right clicking him as he goes for cs under the tower (he can't do anything about this because you have the creep advantage). The Blitz vs TA video is good because TA is a pseudo melee hero anyway and he explains the whole zoning/aggression thing quite well
A good rule of thumb when it comes to laning with Storm is to play back against heroes like QoP/Lina/Invoker or any hero that can kill you easily. Try to aggro creeps back and farm as best as you can and if you feel like you might die it's completely fine to just go jungle a few camps to get your lvl 6. Against melee's or weak ranged hero's you should be pushing out the lane with remnant and zoning/harassing. One remnant per wave should be fine pre bottle.
just storm stuff/observations from someone who occaisionally picks it when there's nothing against it on the field. in my opinion, storm is an early-game efficiency hero that can get more done the more you're attentive to little details that count.
against magnus, i'd prioritize both boots and raindrops over stick. at around 500distance i believe you have enough time to react and dodge a shockwave with boots.
i don't think you need to get anything extra out of the lane except versus heroes like alchemist who you can pressure quite hard for free, even in the face of acid spray.
starting items aside from null tali, you can do 1x branch instead of 3 and start with a faerie fire+30g instead. it does mean you need to ship the salve upon bounty rune pickup (it'll come to you @0:30), but you have slightly more wiggle room for trading early. it's ofc a tiny nitpick and no one way is really right. by starting two extra branches, you're potentially selling that you want your wand earlier (otherwise there's slot problems), and possibly over raindrops ~5/6m or right after boots, so information is information. that's stuff roamers can watch to figure out where the courier is at and is definitely something i aim for myself when i play those heroes. alternatively, you can skip some branches and grab bottle pre-2:00 or very close to it. that's up to you how much you value that. just remember that wave will be middle at 2:20, possibly under your tower if they nuke it down.
with perfect CS give or take 1, you'll have bottle very close to 2:00. again, courier transfer is gonna take 30s from purchase so how you budget your resources matters and is affected a bit by how you last-hit early. depending on the matchup you have the possibility of bottle crow and CS enough to have boots on courier by the time you send it back again. so again, perfect CS makes that possible and snowballs the lane for an early raindrop/stick prior to 6 without a kill even happening.
i think the stacking thing is preference, not strictly so, but i have nothing concrete on it since every storm player/spammer seems to have their own opinion on what's efficient.
at some point in the lane (like mana boots + soul ring, or even earlier on when laning is getting tough) you can just walk and do camps in succession with bottle crowing. it's gold to get you to a full completed filler item once you've walked to base. it's a timing thing obviously so if it lines you up with a rune pick-up or an important level, that especially bonus.
there are just tiny things that incentivizes jungling as storm. more specifically: radiant medium camp close to lane there's an arteezy spot as i like to call it. not sure if it got patched recently, but you nestle in the corner inside the actual camp spawn and you can use a couple remnants before a spawn and take it out instantly when it does without blocking. imo, it's little things like these which makes giving up the lane a bit better of an option.
key timings to jungle... imo it's around minute 6 to get your full treads or soul ring. depends on how much you want to jungle early (soul ring) or if you can get the next rune (i think the safe bet is soul-ring). this time is when you're off the map during night time with level 6/7, a support takes the lane, you're back by 6:50 wave or you keep going until 7:20 wave.
let's say you get the soul ring. you can stay off the map and jungle until 10m and boots if you really wanted. remember ~10m is around the time junglers and some offlaners will have blink and smoke. for jungling bigger stacks i prefer the method of leashing, then running after the leashed mob as they're walking back to reset, you can reliably get one or two remnants during this time taking minimal damage. cost of balling is close to 100 iirc so you might as well remnant to finish off mana if you're missing damage... unless you're short by... 20 mana or so lol.
tiny things that are important, even if you know already: - fountain regen after tping. use a spell in base, use a spell after you tp from base for both the overcharge proc and the free spell/proc respectively. soul ring before tp if you know you're going to be zipping for a kill. - soul ring on str if that's a thing to you. early on you're at ~800hp or less. some quick napkin math... you gain like 25hp+ for treads swapping soul ring. conversely the same with dropping arcanes to soul ring for mana equivalent. up to you. same with bottling on agi. int to str is 2, str to int is 1, same as treads switching on AM or slark or any other but only on soul ring. honestly, i really don't recommend this if the other team has some invis heroes or a fast blink for those reasons alone. i had a game recently where i destroy some of storm's items during a nyx stun and because he remnants in panic, he kills himself on spiked carapace. we both said nothing to each other because we realized how saddening that situation was. - i think it's important that like with morphling you can attack and use items while balling. it's not as obvious with the attack, but it might be prudent to hit 'S' while balling to stop yourself from using overload or an auto on something passing by. not likely, and they might have changed how this works. personally never had this problem. -it is both important to understand how much each distance costs you in mana (think in percentages of your bar) and to a lesser extent how much damage your zip will do when you need to zip+tp to cut wave for a defense. i think 3000 units or 3 blink daggers worth is almost enough to kill the wave at level 16. so add more distance to make sure it gets the job done. if rax to river is 20 seconds and creeps move at 325 that means that distance is 6000-8000. so by reference, fountain to the edge of the base should be close to 3k range, etc etc. so the only problem you face with extending the game this way is if they understand the cutting is gonna happen and they pipe the wave, so then you have to zip from fountain and hit the wave further away from base, which can be quite risky and you need to understand where the wave is exactly from out of fog, it's sort of like hitting AA ult, but you're playing with your life on the line.
mana boots vs treads, i got no clue. i think bloodstone rushing off arcanes is more common now. you get one or two extra remnants and the bloodstone comes a couple minutes faster, but you give up some attack speed and the like. you also gain the option to skip treads and go into travels before or after orchid. the world is your oyster.
i think against melee mid you should start out trying to walk into their creeps and close to melee range to last hit and harass at very specific times. wave is half HP? that's kind of threatening for the melee. remnant slightly outranges, but they probably won't know that difference offhand, but will feel it when you walk up and threaten to remnant. it'll cause them to use aggro tricks and eventually push wave to your side of river. if you start attacking the hero outside of the 500 aggro range, you can do some really fancy stuff to get extra harass in, punishing them if they start without PMS.
I usually do faerie fire + branch, and eat the branch, but have seen sumail do 3branch and have been trying it on and off. I think in a lane where I can solo kill I will use faerie fire for those low-hp duels where the surprise HP can change the result, and go for 3branch particularly when I want a fast wand.
Managed to win a couple of games on my storm-only smurf after 5 losses, and definitely improved my first 5 minutes after all the advice here and on blitz's youtube. Still have issues with sometimes roaming around too much after ~lvl 8 instead of just farming camps for more reliable gold. Got solo kills on drow and tinker in lane (drow is actually so easy to kill, or at least this one was). My 5-15 minutes is still lacking somewhat as I definitely want to be getting quicker bloodstone timings and fewer deaths in that area, but I feel a lot more confident in lane now.
good to hear. maybe just try radically different styles in clusters of games until you rarely lose or you understand where the losses can be prevented.
one: the safefarm style, holding a TP after level 6 or vortex has been leveled, jungling to bluff that you do care about the rest of your team meanwhile free-farming with remaining regen and crowing.
two: the snowball style where you and your supports constantly contest runes, use levels for kills, ward their jungle and contest stacks, and don't mind fountain trips if it means putting your opponents behind.
i don't think dying is really an issue that comes up, but that's just what i choose to do, closer to style one. bloodstone and ramping up is priority for some, controlling the game is priority for others. a hero that i think has a similar ramp-up is drow, and their roles are extremely different. however, their item builds and timings affect the rest of the game as well as what your teammates can do. sometimes it's better to just cut the habit of what you feel is a comfortable item, and learn new ways to play so that other items work and become successful in your play also.
First rune contest was literally horrible. Also you used one tango instead of using the branch tango which nullifies the triple branch double pool over the single branch double pool plus Faerie Fire. I guess hindsight is 20/20.
Lane mechanics versus Mag - either make him suffer or trade farm and stack to snowball. Push out to stack, not just because. You have really solid damage and a sweet attack animation - use them to push Mag out of position instead of forcing yourself to play melee.
Punish him for being on your hill. Remnant Overload that Magnataur. Also, Mana control plus Salve instead of triple branch into bottle really helps you being able to be aggressive if you're that kinda guy. Remnant literally on, or preferably behind him. Mag is scary to Remnant behind, so just trade and use Remnants to farm whilst messing with Mag with Overload. Since you're not stacking, I'd argue that 2-1-2-1 is better at level 6 because you can punish pretty hard. I'm a 2-1-2-1 Storm most of the time, but that's just farming preference over fighting preference.
Bottle crow a lot. Just hog that courier. If you want to snowball as Storm and like using Remnants, this is the main mechanic.
6:45 - just kill the camp. It's more of a bother to stack than kill. 7:00 it's up again. Bottle crow negates the mana usage.
Stack, crow, don't play melee unless you want to kill, farm with Q and poke with E instead. Also, keep CS up. You got this.
i've got no clue if vortex that early on is a thing (pre 8, 9, 10), unless you really need it for a TP cancel. of course, i'd skip a point to add it if it's necessary, but it's not a very good value point IMO.
Can I get some help with roughly how to play different lane matchups?
Here's my current thoughts. Play back and safe until at least lvl 6 against: Lina, Viper, QoP, OD, WR, Leshrac, DP, Medusa, voker.
Not sure about mirana and sniper, sniper's super squish but IDK if you trade that well against him unless you got high ground advantage or he's dopey. Not sure about puck, I think maybe can play aggressive against a puck.
Zeus I think you just get 100% last hits and so does he, and then try kill each other at 6.
Against drow, can play pretty aggressively and push the lane as she can't really deal with creeps under tower until 6, and doesn't hit that hard either.
Against most melees, play aggressive in the wave and use remnant to constantly damage him when he comes to last hit. Same against morph and TA.
Are these all accurate or are there some exceptions or mis-categorizations here? Need help about mirana/puck/sniper particularly.
On September 13 2016 20:46 nanaoei wrote: i've got no clue if vortex that early on is a thing (pre 8, 9, 10), unless you really need it for a TP cancel. of course, i'd skip a point to add it if it's necessary, but it's not a very good value point IMO.
If you're looking to stomp with it, then Vortex pre 10 is great. If you go for a Eul's build-up or stick at the Null SR Treads Bottle Wand TP build - Vortex gives you additional catch when you're around getting the pre Bloodstone kills. It's all about playstyle and 2-0-3-1 is more reliable because it guarantees to net you farm, snowballing from kills is possible for sure and the Vortex enables your team to help you stick on someone when ganking. I've seen a few 7k players try some old 1-2-2 or even 1-3-1 builds to varied success. However, only a few people take early Vortex as standard (it is probably more and more rare the higher MMR you get) but you can net yourself kill/assist-gold from an active playstyle and overwhelm by force.
On September 14 2016 09:59 Birdie wrote: Can I get some help with roughly how to play different lane matchups?
Here's my current thoughts. Play back and safe until at least lvl 6 against: Lina, Viper, QoP, OD, WR, Leshrac, DP, Medusa, voker.
Not sure about mirana and sniper, sniper's super squish but IDK if you trade that well against him unless you got high ground advantage or he's dopey. Not sure about puck, I think maybe can play aggressive against a puck.
Zeus I think you just get 100% last hits and so does he, and then try kill each other at 6.
Against drow, can play pretty aggressively and push the lane as she can't really deal with creeps under tower until 6, and doesn't hit that hard either.
Against most melees, play aggressive in the wave and use remnant to constantly damage him when he comes to last hit. Same against morph and TA.
Are these all accurate or are there some exceptions or mis-categorizations here? Need help about mirana/puck/sniper particularly.
Storm is pretty weak in lane if you're talking about trading pressure because he can't combo abilities with autos for hero damage in the same way that Lina or Invoker can. He has amazing base armour and good attack range though, which enables him to get away pretty safely in a laning stage and also has the ability to flash farm. He doesn't have an infinite scaling, nor gains power with levels, but instead relies on an item advantage.
Lina, Viper, OD, WR, Dusa and to a minor extent Q/E Invoker can give you a hard time in lane.
Lina has a base armor of 1.3 which means you can trade autos with her well - beware of the range deficiency though (your 480 versus her 670) and use your high ground to mitigate this. If you need to contest in river, always push the wave and stack because the lane is pretty bad. Straight 1v1 you can't really duel Lina unless you Ball her Laguna or get an Orchid.
Viper wrecks everything with shorter range than him. Pull creeps under tower and stack camps. Ward high ground and make sure you win the sentry war. If he's allowed to orb walk you on your high-ground you're even more lost than before.
OD has a pretty mediocre laning stage but is still better than Storm. However, he NEEDS a BKB to make you weak. If he goes BKB second, you're gonna miss the Eul's -> Bloodstone -> Orchid or even Bloodstone -> Orchid timing. The Orchid pre BKB makes OD useless. Just do as stated above - stack camps. You're not going to have a fun lane.
WR has a lot of physical poke. She enjoys a 120 range advantage and you preferably need a sentry to remove high-ground vision. Do the Storm thing. Stack and farm post 8 minutes to equalise the farm disadvantage from lane. Also, remember that if she goes within 350 or so range of you, you can do a auto Q auto combo pretty safely to trade with hero autos. She does this more mana-efficiently than you and can negate this with Windrun, so beware.
Dusa has a mana-draining snake and a shield you can't do shit against. Bottle crow, stack and cry whilst your other core kills her later. Hopefully.
Q/E Invoker doesn't affect you that much because he's scaling, but the Cold Snap -> Forge and maybe an added Alacrity or Sun Strike can spell your demise if you aren't careful. Sitting at 600 range, just make sure you play as safe as possible - Invoker can't flash farm as efficiently as you so make use of that instead of trying to wreck him in lane. Your level 6 means nothing unless he lacks Cold Snap and Forge Spirits.
QoP is pretty weird because she, like you, likes shorter ranges. Akasha's scream has a 475 range radius which means it hits your AA range by five and five only. She generally likes facing a Storm early but without Eul's and/or Linken's/BKB later you will eat both her and her team. Just make sure Akasha doesn't wreck your team too fast. If she gets really far ahead, just rush the Eul's. If she gets level 2 Shadow Strike, bottle crow is a must.
DP likes short range heroes but doesn't necessarily benefit from this lane a lot. She likes to wave, like SF/Lina, but lacks any form of lockdown bar an anomalous early level in Silence which sets her mana pool way back. Early boots will secure a good laning stage so don't be afraid to hog that crow early.
TA wrecks you most of the time. Like 90% of the time. Psi Blades is pure and will shred you. You have ZERO potential to get a kill due to Refraction / Meld being too good against a non-counter hero like Storm.
PotM sucks to face because her Starfall eats you alive. Autos mean jack all though and if you pressure the lane hard enough early she falls behind because trash attack damage even though she sits at a sweet 630 range.
Sniper has trash damage against five armour. You can't punish pre 6 but stack and enjoy farm superiority as well as potentially free kills post 6 depending on TPs.
Puck is way better than Storm in lane. He has good damage, a sweet animation and worst of all - he can dodge Overload procs to change positional advantages in auto trades. Storm does Storm things later though.
90% of matchups are not favourable. You need to stack, farm, and recover through early fights. That's why I said focus on last hitting. Storm is all about being efficient for 10 minutes and then ballin out
On September 14 2016 23:24 ahw wrote: To summarize the good post above:
90% of matchups are not favourable. You need to stack, farm, and recover through early fights. That's why I said focus on last hitting. Storm is all about being efficient for 10 minutes and then ballin out
Thanks. I felt like I re-wrote the same chapter of a book with different nuances like ten times.
I think it's a useful point. You can start analyzing matchups, or you can just optimize farming and laning techniques that work in 90% of games, regardless of teammates or matchups. I'd rather invest my time in the 90% useful thing until I've got that to a 5-6k+ level, then focus on the finer things.
On September 15 2016 05:49 ahw wrote: I think it's a useful point. You can start analyzing matchups, or you can just optimize farming and laning techniques that work in 90% of games, regardless of teammates or matchups. I'd rather invest my time in the 90% useful thing until I've got that to a 5-6k+ level, then focus on the finer things.
I mean it's still pretty useful to have detailed info available, in addition to the general principle.
Would I go to the effort of practicing storm v. sniper over and over? Probably not, but if someone's made the effort it's super helpful to have a cheat sheet like that to check back on
Personally I suck at storm but I'd love to have something like that for a bunch of other heroes.
On September 15 2016 05:49 ahw wrote: I think it's a useful point. You can start analyzing matchups, or you can just optimize farming and laning techniques that work in 90% of games, regardless of teammates or matchups. I'd rather invest my time in the 90% useful thing until I've got that to a 5-6k+ level, then focus on the finer things.
I mean it's still pretty useful to have detailed info available, in addition to the general principle.
Would I go to the effort of practicing storm v. sniper over and over? Probably not, but if someone's made the effort it's super helpful to have a cheat sheet like that to check back on
Personally I suck at storm but I'd love to have something like that for a bunch of other heroes.
Certainly the blitzdota videos on TA vs storm, viper vs storm, lina vs storm completely changed how I approach hard and easy lanes, and it would be super handy to have the same on every matchup in the history of midlane but I'll practice the matchups myself as well and see how it goes.
It's all very well saying "storm loses most lanes" but you can punish some heroes easier than others if they misplay. Also not sure about TA being a lost lane for storm, watching blitz vs TA it seems like if anything it's storm favoured if you play it right. Which is more the kind of information I'm looking for; if it turns out that you can consistently bully, say, a sniper out of lane then I want to know that I can winning lane > trading equal > losing lane.
Thanks for the writeup though, pretty useful infos.
TA vs storm is extremely extremely TA favored. The thing is most ppl have gotten so good at dota that they usually know how to play the matchup well. if you play passive as storm vs TA, you would just get psi bladed to death. and once TA gets lvl 2 refraction the lane is pretty much over for storm, and you are relegated to using remanent to farm and push out.
The key to win a pure 1v1 mid as TA is to just get a salve early or even 2. lvl up psi blades and trade aggressively. If storm uses remanent to push out the first wave, he would most likely have to use one or even 2. And hes fucked for the rest of the laning phase once TA gets refraction at lvl 2. I would gladly trade 300 or even 200 of storm's mana at lvl 1 for 400-500 worth of hp dmg, because i know he will be fucked the rest of the lane.
On September 15 2016 14:26 Kaj wrote: TA vs storm is extremely extremely TA favored. The thing is most ppl have gotten so good at dota that they usually know how to play the matchup well. if you play passive as storm vs TA, you would just get psi bladed to death. and once TA gets lvl 2 refraction the lane is pretty much over for storm, and you are relegated to using remanent to farm and push out.
The key to win a pure 1v1 mid as TA is to just get a salve early or even 2. lvl up psi blades and trade aggressively. If storm uses remanent to push out the first wave, he would most likely have to use one or even 2. And hes fucked for the rest of the laning phase once TA gets refraction at lvl 2. I would gladly trade 300 or even 200 of storm's mana at lvl 1 for 400-500 worth of hp dmg, because i know he will be fucked the rest of the lane.
So this is basically wrong now? Even though he got a salve and psi blades first?
1) IF you watched carefully, the TA didnt skill psi blades first, he went lvl 1 refraction and probably 2 branches no wb whatever because he got his bottle WAY too fast. When you go no stats bottle rush there is zero chance you can make an effective trade.
2) This is like patch 6.82 whatever where storm CAN afford to remanent spam because it costs 70 instead of 100 now, which is a HUGE difference.
On September 15 2016 19:08 Kaj wrote: 1) IF you watched carefully, the TA didnt skill psi blades first, he went lvl 1 refraction and probably 2 branches no wb whatever because he got his bottle WAY too fast. When you go no stats bottle rush there is zero chance you can make an effective trade.
2) This is like patch 6.82 whatever where storm CAN afford to remanent spam because it costs 70 instead of 100 now, which is a HUGE difference.
Ye also the bottle mana regen nerf hurts storm way more than TA. And the ranged creep deny is in ta's favor as well with refraction which makes a big different now
Different heroes wreck you in different ways. Just remember that if you don't lose super-hard you will kill their team. He just has a poor synergy versus a lot of mid lane heroes 1v1.
I used to stack with a roaming Tusk mainly because Tusk early is one of the few heroes that can roam and also force your opponent to be melee with you for a while. It helps a lot do get double remnant out on someone on a roam. He is a great Storm enabler.
EPT
