Hi there, I’m CarlTheLlama, one of the top support mains who you may have seen on some of the popular streams, in tournaments, etc., captain of Beyond Reason which in its heyday placed 3rd/4th in NA. I had an idea for a cheese in a game yesterday that worked out, so I wanted to share it.
This is a small but effective timing-specific merc steal + well assassination, the timing of which can cripple your opponent's ability to sustain fights at tributes, and take a keep tower, which is as much XP as a fort.
(1) 30 seconds before merc camps spawn you take the watchtower, then show yourself somewhere on the map to distract any watchful eyes from your true intentions. (2) after showing yourself on the map, you go wait by the easy camp for it to spawn, in case someone comes to re-take the watchtower. (3) You take the merc camp, and when everyone goes to the tribute, you take their mid well. Of course, you can do just mercs or just well, but I think the combo works nicely together.
If you want to watch a short video to see how it works, you can here.
I keep a list of my current content (Tips & Tricks, guides, Psychology, etc.) below, which I try to add to each week.
Cursed hollow is one of my favorite maps because I don't feel you are as forced to do the objective as the other maps. You have other set of objectives in the mercenary camps and the curse needs 3 tributes to activate, which not only makes it easier for a team to not fall that far behind, but also, as they don't give you an immediate advantage, you can do other cool stuff like this.
Your team probably lost the first tribute, but still found themselves ahead in experience thanks to good soaking and you put pressure on the team with the merc camps while they are busy with the trib, making them deal maximum damage.
Also I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of healing fountains. If you destroy them they can't quickly back to heal and go back, and so they must either go to another fountain or back to base, where they'll lose a lot more time and will leave their team at a disadvantage.
So I really like that people explore other options instead of "let’s go as 5 to all tributes no matter what", as you can use the time to catch up in experience or get further ahead.
Seems a bit risky though, without abby it might take too long to cap the merc, and your team might die on the tribute if they are not aware what you are doing and don't play the stall game.
Quite risky and not a whole lot of payoff. I'd rather do something like an early boss or hard camp on my side then. Safer and puts more pressure.
Of course at cursed pushing and soaking while delaying the objective is a very good tactic and often great. It's in my opinion a blunder to go for the objective with 5 man if the other team has an abathur. It just means they get soak in on 1 or even 2 lanes extra because of the abathur while abathur can still help at the objective fight, it's terrible. Just leave a good pusher in the lane far from the tribute, deny abathur the easy soak a bit at least and force them to win the tribute with 4+hat vs 4. Sure you probably lose the tribute, but it isn't worth much, but you can reverse the roles by actually getting an advantage the longer the tribute fight lasts.
So you sacrificed a tribute, stopped soaking, and forced your team into a 4v5 situation just so you could kill a well? And that's assuming that the entire team "falls for it". That doesn't seem like a particularly great trade-off imo. Fortunately, the other team didn't kill off your team and get a huge exp lead.
a well kill is pretty nice early on. But there is usually no escape if they go for you. So its cute, but only if the people don't know how to deal with it.
He did stop stop soaking, and yet his team is still ahead oon experience. Taking your" siege giagants is not as good as they take longer to reach their destination and therefore deal less damage. Admiteddly though, the monk probably wasn't the best hero to do this. Someone with Bribe or Illidan cuald have made it a little quicker.
I'm still new to these forums, so sorry if this is a big mistake, but I'm gonna try to address all the comments so far in one post.
@Phantom Thanks for the encouragement! It means a lot coming from (what I perceive as a newb) someone of your prestige.
@EveryoneElse There seems to be a big disconnect on the value placed on tributes. I've long held that tributes are the weakest objective in the game, and trading them for soak, if done well enough will get you 10 on your opponents before the third tribute, which means they have to give it up, and even if they do you have a solid window to get kills, depending on how well you stalled. Even if you give up curse on the fourth tribute, if you're ahead on XP you have the advantage for a fight, and if they don't fight you you can just clear waves, taking a little bit of damage to structures. With your minions getting incinerated, they'll fall even further behind on XP as long as you don't panic during the curse and do something stupid. In short, Curse really only helps you if you're ahead (or have recently gotten kills, making you temporarily stronger on the map), otherwise it mostly just gives you confidence that often is unwarranted.
I'm not upset that this strat isn't spreading like the plague, but to be painfully honest I am a little surprised- people don't seem to recognize the payoff. Wells are a major factor for sustained tribute fights, and sacrificing one tribute to prevent everyone on the enemy team from restoring 30% HP/mana is an advantage you have to work hard to blow. Fats also push really hard when left alone, and with the timing of the tribute, that's exactly what happens to them. The gratification isn't instant, but it is substantial.
It is indeed a sacrifice of a tribute, but one well worth it in my experience, and I've been playing the game full time at a high level since December. I recognize the risks of getting caught, which are lower for Monk, although this comes at the expense of his clear time, and that's why it's labeled as a cheese. Doing a 6-pool every game isn't going to get you to pro status, but pros do occasionally 6-pool (I hope, I never actually watched much starcraft, you can sub in cannon rush or some other cheese for 6-pool if you prefer).
That's my perspective anyways, I hope that clears things up a bit.
Honestly though, the only reason it kinda pays off for you (if we assume that the destruction of the well is gonna cause issues for the enemy team) is because Abathur is helping you. I didn't really notice it at first, but he does help you kill of the 1st one, something that would have taken a longer amount of time if you were solo. You give away a lot of team-presence too, especially considering you're doing this as a support and not a melee like Illidan or Gazlowe. Even if you consider the 1st tribute to be rather useless (and i can see why you do) it's only a minor distraction that you give up at the cost of soaking - Something that you pointed out yourself was needed in order to break-even with the tributes gathered.
At the end of the day it just seems like a really mediocre cheese to me. If you were able to cut off a well from a tri-lane, then the destruction would obviously bring more value on the table, but given that it's mid-lane (which is infested with warriors in this meta) you just don't disrupt enough to justify giving up on both exp soaking and tribute-gathering.
EPT
