You do what I did: Every game pick one aspect of your game you wanna improve whether it's last hitting, juking, timing, item build perfection, or harder heroes to play like potm/pudge, or challenge yourself and see how fast you can farm a relic on fiend/syllabear[for .48b where treads are still old style and can be bought for bear ] try to get a real understanding of the game, I.E. one set item build doesn't work every game. Learn that runes spawn at every even minute, random top or bot, but if one is already spawned another one won't. If you pick up a rune at a odd minute:55 seconds or before you can get a potential double rune action. Learn to jungle, to double or triple stack spawns, learn when to pull each specific camp.
Playing scrims with people you intend on making a team with is the only time you should scrim. Ringing is okay I guess.
Edit: read your post again and it sounds like you haven't played or understand every hero yet.
I don't know why people don't do this. Back in the day it was pretty mandatory and expected but newer players don't even play every hero. You should DEFINITELY play every hero at least once and know EVERY single skill and what it does, although you do not need to know exact cooldowns. There's a friend of mine who picked up dota like 3 months ago and he still didn't know that BM's roar was a 1 min cooldown, that's pretty important to know....
Same for items, but even more specific. You should know EVERY SINGLE item and what EXACTLY it does. Also, have a general idea about orbstacks.
People won't agree with this, but in my experience the most important thing you need to do to be an above-average DotA player is in the first 15 minutes of the game. If you fail at laning, you'll be behind all game and unable to really compete with better players who have multiple advantages over you at that point.
YOU NEED ITEMS ON 90% OF THE HEROES IN DOTA
I'm saying this because the better you are at making money the more successful you will be. No, "ricing" with lina isn't a good idea. But being able to last hit/deny with lina's animation is an effective way to get those early bottles, early boots, etc... Makes you a more successful laning partner and gives you the slight advantage.
Prime example:
You're in a game against Mer-lini and Vigoss, lets say. However, neither of them are in your lane. What is your strategy at this point? Well, your first goal is to dominate the lane you're in. Your lane is the easy lane, probably why you're in it too. Know this. The first step to winning team games is having confidence in your lane partner. Find someone around your skill level or better than you and pick two heroes who complement each other. At this point you don't want to worry about soloing because you won't be doing it 95% of the time.
So what makes a good lane?
Well, recognize that when you dual lane you'll almost always be against another dual lane. So you need to understand how to play in this environment. There are four heroes in your lane, including yourself. How is your positioning? Look at how the other 2 are playing. Are they huddling around the creep wave? Are you the initiator on your team, or the follow up? Are you positioned where the opposition can double stun you? (Never, ever do this if you can help it) Are you close enough to follow up if your teammate stuns?
There are two roles in a dual lane: A) Initiator B) Follow-up
A) You need to communicate well to your teammate. You need to make it obvious when you will go and when you are running. Understand which person to attack. When you're laning against sven/lina with SK/lesh, understand that as the SK your biggest advantage is that you can stun both of them at once. Try to land your stun in a way that hits both of them.. ie: Walk to a place where you can stun the lina and the sven is basically "in the way". You should let your Lesh know that he needs to harass the lina once or twice in order for the two of you to successfully kill.
B) HARASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Nobody understands that you need to lower their hp before you unless your combo.. not after. This results in you killing the lina before she light strikes/dragon slaves your SK. This is the essence of a successful lane. You can kill one, wait a few, and kill the other if he sticks around. If your SK is almost dead he's going to fountain and you're now alone.. then lina comes back and you're back at square one. Understand how long stuns last. Your job is to allow your sand king to smack lina *two* times after his stun, and you can even do it yourself if you're confident.. otherwise concentrate and stun slightly behind where lina was previously stunned. 90% of the time Lina will beeline straight back to tower after getting stunned. Good players will juke and trick you, but you shouldn't worry so much about this.
That covers a lot the "General" idea behind dual laning, I know most of it is obvious but I figured more people read this than comment and someone might pick something up from here.
On March 27 2008 07:53 TheMusiC wrote: so i have a hard time timing the global on silencer
any suggestions?
whenever i play him i'm like "fuck do i press it now? wait no, now? wait.."obv. it's useful in escaping/helping escapes, but what about team battles?
also i don't play him much, but whatever
There are two schools of thought... use it when your team is ready to initiate to make it easier for your team, or wait until the fight is underway and drop it to cause chaos. It really depends on your lineup and the type of players you're playing with. I don't think there is "one" answer to say when to use an ultimate like global silence.
Silence is used to stop their most important spell.
If they have SandKing/ES you do it before they go in, if they have lina/omniknight or whatever then you do it before they ult but after the fight starts.
ah yes, laning. I remember when I was reading a dota-allstars guide it said when the enemy hero attacks you let him because he'll take more damage from the creeps attacking him lol. So for a really long time I'd never harass with qop and just try to LH then someone told me that's really wrong so then I'd always attack the opposing hero and end up messing up the creep positioning. Now after watching a lot of replays I realize that for qop pretty much you can't waste a single arrow when laning. When you're not lasthitting/denying you have to hit the enemy hero a couple times, depending on positioning, creep numbers ofc. I try to scream harass starting at lv3 with lv2 scream but save my mana for lv5/lv3 scream.
Out of the people I play with, there's one really good player, about lv15 chinese ladder level which is top 50. When he plays qop I always see him being really really aggressive. When he was laning vs a potm as soon as the potm was 2/3 health and he was 2/3 health he'd get behind the creep waves and attack the potm, scream. When I was laning vs him with qop solo mid vs his WL in an inhouse. He did the exact same thing, whenever I was 2/3 or half health even when I was on my side with the high ground he'd get behind the creep waves and start attacking me, maybe it was because he knew I was noob so he was being ultra aggressive plus he was using warlock. In another in house I've seen him solo mid with skeleton king and completely dominate a puck to the point the puck switched lanes. Pretty funny stuff.
I always made the lineups for my team when we played competitively. The best thing is to have a team of 5 players who are able to execute every role. There's a lot more roles than you think: Solo, support, support-secondary carry, carry, pusher, initiator, follow-up initiator, ganker/roamer, jungle, jungle-ganker etc.
I was curious, if you could possibly give me examples of each of them roles. I had not really thought of so many roles before.
Note: Some heroes fall under more than one category, and some heroes like necrolyte can be used in a solo lane if you're playing on a really skilled team. Goes along the lines of what I said earlier about you need 5 who can play everything and you can start getting really imaginative. People even run solo rooftrellen. There are some overlapping roles, but be assured they are all present.
Solo: Not necessarily your carry, but a hero that is able to lane alone vs multiple people. Usually ends up being carry Examples: Silencer, Zeus, Mag, PotM, Shadowfiend, Viper, QoP, BM, Puck, Warlock
Support: Heroes that are able to buy wards, buy chicken/crow, in early game start the initiates, are able to amplify your carry/solo's effectiveness. Examples: CM, Tauren, Necro, Omni, Lina, Sven, Lesh, CK, SK, Skel King, Levi, Pugna, Tiny, Ogre Magi.... Generally, all str heroes since the majority of them have stuns. Support is a general term that encompasses all heroes that are not there to carry/solo/jungle.
Support Secondary Carry: Heroes that are inherently support OR are not able to start dealing decent damage until about midgame. It is very possible for these heroes to outclass and out dps your main carry but usually require sick items or farming time alone. Desolator is great on some of these heroes because it helps as the game progresses, and they don't have to actually farm for mkb,radiance,buriza etc. Examples: PotM, Furion, Magnus laning, Puck, Fiend, Razor, Sniper, Bane Elemental, Weaver, Juggernaught
Carry: This should be obvious, the heroes that can win the game for you in the long run. Whether through jungle or solo or lane. Examples: Mag, Terrorblade, Luna, Void, Spectre, Silencer, Fiend, almost all agi heroes.
Pusher: Pushers are usually only good when they provide two roles [like pugna for ward support and mek] or your team is trying to win a more fast paced game with an all push lineup. Mek is a really nice item on some these heroes. Examples: THD, Pugna, Avernus, Furion, KotL, Bane, Warlock, WD
Initiator: Mostly blink aoe stunners or someone who can start the team fights/ganks off. Examples: Any stunner... The best are blink aoe stunners like Tauren, Mag, Levi Then there's void with chrono, Beastmaster's roar, Warlock's infernal, Centaur's blink stun, Pudge's hook, Bane's sleep and fiends grip with necros out
Follow up initiator: Many overlap from the initator category but are MORE effective if there's a primary initiator on your team: Examples: Sand king blinking in with epi burrow after any initiator, Silencer's global, CM's ult, Levi
Ganker Roamer: Some heroes are able to almost exclusively roam which provides two benefits, 1 two solo on your team, granted they can handle it [ again alluding to my point ] and 2, rune control and keeps the other team guessing. If you play these expect not to get stacked items. Examples: Venomancer, BH, VS, Chen, Sven, Skel King
Jungle: Jungle is a really awesome technique. Provides 2 solos, money not stolen, if done correctly a faster way to level than even a solo could + more money and no denies. Must know how neutral spawns work in order to double or even triple stack. Also can double or triple stack ancients. Examples: Furion if not bothered and BM are by far probably the best junglers, I'll explain in the next category. In .48b you can crow yourself a full bottle so if someone buys it for you almost anyone can jungle but I'll list the classic ones/most effective. BB, Juggernaught, Terrorblade, Luna, Ursa, Centaur.
Jungle ganker: This is a nice role too. Most junglers are simply unable to help gank in between jungling because they don't have the hp or the versatility to move around. BM and Furion are the best simply because of maphawk roar and quillbeast for BM and furion can tp anywhere. If furion is completely left alone he is absolutely the easiest jungle hero. You can triple stack all 3-4 spawns in your area with created treants with a little micro. Not to mention he has a global that can hit anyone in his vision [ done correctly ] and is able to tp anywhere non fogged.
Hope that helped some people out, was a lot to type. Anyway, that's not the SOLE way to view this game but that's how I see it when you talk about roles and lineups. I couldn't list every single hero but I tried to list the most common ones. A lot of people fail to realize these different roles and try to stick heroes in a role they simply are not able to excel in.
Can you explain or give some tips as how to jungle well? I've read the dota-allstars guides. Stacking is just knowing when neutral creeps spawn, lure the creeps thats there already out so new ones will spawn there right.
Silencer can't solo versus good teams, once that first runes show up that silencer will be playing safe, he just screams "GANK ME" whenever he works mid.
Jungling is just pulling at the correct times, just watch some replays, look at the timer when they pull and take note of the order they do it in. Its essentially creeping in War3 ladder with a proper order and proper time. Neutral creeps return to their spawn points after 7 seconds of chase so if you are ranged or have summons (or illusions), you can attack while they run back, taking little damage.
On March 28 2008 01:57 !BigBlind! wrote: Scrim is a game between two different teams that, while it doesn't count for anything, is taken pretty seriously.
A game between 10 friends would be an inhouse.
I'm not sure which category you're having cw fit under.
its scrim, in the chinese ladder theres a cw room where teams of fives create or join games and then do bans/picks
This is the type of shit you need to learn to do when jungling:
When you're comfortable with creep pull times, knowing when you can take on double/triple spawns, and timing spawns so after your camp rotates you will always have another to go to, that's when you are a successful jungle player.
There are plenty of vids now where you level faster and get more gold via bottle+crow like I mentioned, but for pure skill and technicality that video displays good work. Also, something merlini is known for other than pure farming. It was pretty ingenious at the time when he discovered the technique with BM.
EPT
