[HoN/DotA] Let's Play~!! - Page 1189

Testie only advocates going lifetube first because he's a passive faggot with his item builds and doesn't want to expand and try something "different."

Let's just look at the numbers:

Lifetube/RoH - 5 hp/sec regen. Let's compare to the other items however:
Salve - 400 hp/10 secs= 40 hp/sec regen.
Tango - 115 hp/16 secs= 7.1875 hp/sec regen.
Bottle - 135 hp/3 secs= 45 hp/sec regen.

We can clearly see that going Lifetube first not only doesn't increase our damage at all, but it also gives us very pitiful regen over time. The healing salve gives 8 times the regen of a lifetube for about 1/9th the price. A single tango has almost equivalent regen of the lifetube, yet it is still higher. The bottle is the king of the hp regen as it gives a really great burst amount and also gives us mana regen as well, which is something the other 3 items do not do. On top of this, we can store runes such as Regen which also helps the regen obviously, but also illusion runes and dd runes for last hitting/harassing the opponent as well as haste and invisibility to gank/harass the enemy.

Compare by cost:
Lifetube: 875/5=175 gold/hp
Salve: 100/40=2.5 g/hp
Tango: 30/7.1875=4.1739 g/hp
Bottle: 200/45=4.4444 g/hp

Tango is 30 as we are using one instance; same deal with the bottle. As we can see, the lifetube is overall the most inefficient usage of gold per single point of hp regen as well. All the others are in the single digits, yet the Lifetube is at 175 gold per point of hp regen on the basis that it is a "permanent item". But nobody buys a lifetube simply for the hp regen, they buy it as components for their perseverance [which goes into refresher/linken's/battlefury] or vanguard. In terms of just strict regen, the lifetube loses out horribly. In fact, we could buy just about 9 healing salves and it would take 12 minutes for the lifetube to catch up to that which is about the time that people can farm a battlefury itself anyway.

On top of that, since the bottle has "infinite" charges on it, the g/hp value of it drops significantly to almost near 0. With a 600 gold investment, we get all the hp *and* mana regen that we need from the simple bottle and rune whoring or bottle ferrying which takes the most little of micro.

Now, we realize that the cost of a battlefury is not going to change regardless of the amount of gold we have or decide to put in: it's always going to be 4350 [1400+1200+875+875]. But the main difference is what order we buy the items. If you go lifetube first: then you won't be getting your next source of +damage for last hitting until at least another 875 gold which means that the 875 gold is merely just for this so called "lane survivability". But as we analyzed earlier, if you need enough hp regen in order to stay in the lane, then it can be easily covered by other items that provide more hp regen. Now you may say that "well, I'm spending more gold on this so that means I'm losing out on getting my bf earlier", realize that you also have to stay a bit back more because you can't come up to last hit because you don't have enough hp which is the reason why we're talking about this. But if you spend 100 gold on a hp pot, then you can get a quick 400 burst hp which is assuredly enough, which allows you to go back, last hit 2-3 creeps to make up the cost right away, and then last hit some more creeps while they whittle down that 400 hp barrier.

Now instead of having a first lifetube, you can have a claymore with +21 damage. So you're going to be hitting well over 100 on heroes and creeps. Now, keep in mind that earlier and midgame, players don't have a whole lot of hp; so the sudden increase in damage isn't something that they'll come to expect as +21 damage that earlier on really hurts them a lot, especially if they come to harass you, draw creep aggro, and then you blink/invis/time leap into them for the damage from the skills+auto attacks+creep damage. You can really take down them fast. And if you decide to chase, you can also have a hp pot in your inventory to pop if you get low.

Then, you can go the broadsword for +18 damage, so really early on, you'll have +39 damage+whatever stat items you have. This is huge. You have more damage than most other heroes will have even if they go phase boots which puts you at a tremendous advantage in terms of creeping and harassing as not only do you have skills that close the distance gap, but you have a generally faster attack point, higher base damage, and a bit more hp generally than most of the ranged heroes. This translates into an easier time in fights due to your increase in damage, easier time on creeping especially if you have a hatchet [at this point, the other heroes may as well forget about csing unless they nuke a creep], and you don't have to rely on slow-paced regen from your Lifetube.

Afterwards, you can go lifetube only because there's really no other choice, unless you're spamming spells like a madman and absolutely need your manatube. Either way:

If we analyze this - going the normal route, we farm up 875 gold,buy a lifetube. Have to wait til at least 875 more before our damage source comes in [but sometimes, we don't even use the mana and would rather buy the claymore for the higher damage, which means waiting 1400 instead of 875 more]. So for 875-1400 gold, we have no damage increase at all to help with last hitting or harassment. Meanwhile, if we had just waited 525 gold and bought the Claymore first, we have +21 damage for the next 1200 gold which then turns into +39 for the next 875 gold. So overall, we see that the second option of going Claymore first translates into more damage/time spent overall since regen is negligible coming from such a small source and the fact that with the higher damage+base damage, we can push enemy heroes outside of the lane along with our support.