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While this thread is labeled "DotA2", this is in fact a community thread first. Many of the users in the TL LoL subforum have been playing as friends for over a year now, so it makes logical sense that they would want to play other games together.
Do not compare DotA2 to LoL, you will get banned.
TL LoL veterans know what is expected. Newcomers be warned.
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United States47024 Posts
On September 05 2012 00:53 Shikyo wrote:
Phantom Assassin - At what point should I buy my HOTD? Right after BF? However that feels too late - I can't stack them for killing with my BF. Before BF? Delays BF a crapton unnecessarily.
As is I'm just completely skipping HOTD until I'm building Satanic ...
I don't even like HotD that much on PA to begin with. Your farming power gets to where it needs to be with Battle Fury. You can rotate lanes and jungle, and leave the Ancients to your teammates to farm. After that, you should be transitioning into fighting items like BKB, not dragging out your farming phase even longer.
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On September 05 2012 01:25 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2012 00:53 Shikyo wrote:
Phantom Assassin - At what point should I buy my HOTD? Right after BF? However that feels too late - I can't stack them for killing with my BF. Before BF? Delays BF a crapton unnecessarily.
As is I'm just completely skipping HOTD until I'm building Satanic ... I don't even like HotD that much on PA to begin with. Your farming power gets to where it needs to be with Battle Fury. You can rotate lanes and jungle, and leave the Ancients to your teammates to farm. After that, you should be transitioning into fighting items like BKB, not dragging out your farming phase even longer.
Right so I'm doing it correctly when my general build is BF -> BKB -> MKB -> Satanic? Any situational alterations you could suggest or is that going to be fine?
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I would skip the MKB unless you absolutely need the true strike, or opt for a casual vitality booster before. Heart or satanic does a lot for your longevity in fights, and will help if you get caught with bkb down.
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On September 05 2012 00:51 volcryn wrote:
I seem to wind up playing the 4/5 spot in our group queues with evo/yango/TD etc so I'll offer my 2c on veno.
you clearly need to play with me more because i spend 80% of my games playing position 5.
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On September 05 2012 05:10 greggy wrote:
Whoa now, don't be a numbers.
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On September 05 2012 06:29 dnastyx wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2012 00:51 volcryn wrote:
I seem to wind up playing the 4/5 spot in our group queues with evo/yango/TD etc so I'll offer my 2c on veno.
you clearly need to play with me more because i spend 80% of my games playing position 5.
What do you mean position x anyway? o_O I didn't think there was an order like that ;S Unless you play... what mode, RD?
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The position thing refers to a Chinese system of ranking the spots on a team from 1-5 in terms of how much farm they need, 1 being the most and 5 being the least. Generally, 1 is your hard carry and farms the long lane, 2 is your solo mid, 3 is your off lane solo, and 4 and 5 are supports (although this can vary a bit depending on who your jungler is, etc).
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Hmm I only play position 1 then so I guess finding a team will take a while ^-^
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OK, some more silly questions - I play support quite frequently in LoL, but I'm not sure exactly if that will translate usefully to any of the skills position 4/5 heroes seem to need in DotA2.
° Since there's no brush to provide a guessing game re: your location, and no Flash effect pre-Blink Dagger, if you're playing an equivalent to Alistar/Leona, how do you initiate in lane? Trades don't seem to happen as often (due to the prohibitive mana cost of abilities), so I'm guessing you need to all-in if you're doing anything beyond autoattack harrassment. Are you able to drop LoS via the treeline to manoeuvre into position?
° With the limited amount of wards available, if you're running a solo top/jungler, is the top/jungler responsible for warding top, or will the botlane support need to rotate up to do so?
° Since there's no GP/5 items, is support income predicated on last-hitting jungle creeps that you've stacked then pulled your own minions into? Or are you able to occasionally grab last-hits in lane without your lanepartner getting annoyed? If you're laning w/a carry, is the expectation that they get the last-hits and you focus on denials?
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#1 - What's "Equivalent to Alistar/Leona" for you? Give some hero examples. =P
Basically the offensive supports (e.g. Lion, Lina) can sometimes zone people off creeps from lvl 1 onwards and/or force the enemy to regen with just autoattacks. Once they get low enough in a lane which is designed to combo people (e.g. CK/Lina or Lion/Sandking) one of them initiates and that's usually enough to drop people from 70-80% to 0%. Also, trees are op as fuck in this game. You can drop LoS, juke, hide, etc.etc
#2 You usually want wards in the long lane to keep the enemy from warding and sometimes wards in the shortlane to stay safe vs trilanes. "It depends" - it's common to see the hardlaner buy wards for themselves. Ideal case the supports buy lal of them and just give them to the guy who needs them.
#3 Usually supports have timings where they need team items (Arcanes, Urn, Mek, Drum, Pipe) or core items for themselves (blink). Just go ahead and farm to get those, usually post laning phase when the carry started farming jungle/ancients effectively.
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Consider these are my experiences mostly from laning with decent support players as I only play melee hardcarries:
You can actually instakill most people with 2 heroes with proper communication and animation canceling. You initiate by just walking up to them - It's pretty easy to sneak up to the enemy from behind or from the side because there tends to be plenty of trees or just blindspots where you can arrive from, in League of Legends you tend to have a lot more vision(apart from brushes of course). A flash really isn't necessary. I'm not sure which heroes you're referring to but for a Crystal Maiden for instance you just walk into range from a non-obvious place, slow them, and then catch up to them and stun them, cancel the animation, and begin animation canceling attacks moving forward(so that you can keep doing this when they run away and get extra hits off). Then if your lane partner has a stun, say Leshrac, it's an incredibly easy kill. Yeah the LoS drops really easily but again the opponents don't have flash either so just walking behind them generally has them totally cornered.
The support can buy the wards and leave them on the courier and the jungler / the toplaner will take it just fine, you shouldn't be moving around like that but you will be buying them. However remember that the most important goal for the warding is to protect your carry. Also you should counterward as much as possible, especially when you are sure of a ward spot for the enemy. They are limited so it's quite a big deal.
You shouldn't lasthit in lane unless your lane partner is sure to miss it. You will mostly gain gold from tower kills(200 gold) and assists and kills. The jungle camps are indeed the main source of "neutral income", though, unless you're left to guard a lane or, say, accidentally AoE some creeps while harrassing. (Or "accidentally" if you really need an item). Yes, you let the carry lasthit and you focus on denies. Depending on the lanes most of the supports can also harrass heavily and you indeed should harrass as much as you possibly can if the enemies aren't able to properly put up with it. Supports tend to be the most powerful heroes in the game near level 1 so make the most out of it. Animation canceling is extremely important for this because you want to retreat as fast as possible due to the damage the aggroed creeps deal to you. Remember that in DotA2 your skills always deal same damage no matter how much farm you have so gold isn't as crucial for supports and you will be able to accomplish your job just fine without them. If you really need boots 1 or a new pair of wards or smoke due to an invisible threat, just tell your carry to let you lasthit a few and if he's not an asshole he's going to let you. If he's not, just steal a few with your nukes or pull the jungle camp and so on.
Another rather important thing to do is to take care of the consumables because you can use them on others. Go ahead and buy a healing salve for your carry to use when he's at low hp. If he's a Phantom Assassin who's oom but who needs to spam Q to lasthit due to it being relatively dangerous, use a clarity on him. And so on. Carrying a few salves around can allow your carry who barely escaped the fight to run back right after, and this might cause you to win a fight you should have lost. Urn accomplishes the same thing and I believe that it's really good to pick up on certain supports.
And finally as long as you do this you will be very useful(Assuming you are dual laning with a hardcarry):
Buy courier, possibly upgrade
Buy wards, ward, counterward(read a warding guide for spots). Keep your carry protected with vision.
Harrass as much as possible, deny. Don't bother a carry's lasthitting. Just attacking it randomly can ruin an elaborate plan the carry had and ruin a lasthit(For instance I once had a plan to lasthit -> dagger -> lasthit 3 creeps but due to support attacking one 2 of them died at the same time thus costing me one). Only do this when tower is attacking them and the carry cannot do it himself fast enough (Melee carry who's not close enough to a ranged creep under tower fire to hit it once before lasthitting it so you will attack it once so that the carry gets the lasthit).
Carry's survival goes above everything else. If you need to die so that the carry lives, do so without a second thought. Carry living is even more important in DotA than it is in LoL, you absolutely want to do everything in your power to keep him from dying. It's a gigantic setback and you want to avoid it.
When the time comes to go for a kill, ping the target before you go on him. Pretty simple. Know your lane partner so that you can go for kills. Note that even with hardcarries that seem useless, they too can go for those kills and actually deal a surprising amount of damage, even though you will of course be the main damage source.
Pull the creepcamp often. If the carry knows how to lasthit under turret he's going to get every single creep every single time because it's that easy(apart from cannon, dat rng) and it keeps you safe. However, be mindful of people contesting your pulls, and try to determine if it's worth fighting over.
Give all kills to the carry whenever possible. Note that this does not mean that you should just let them run away costing you a kill. This does mean, though, that if the Phantom Assassin has slowed the opponent and is in between his attack animations with the opponent at ~30 hp, you really shouldn't attack him. Every kill belongs to the carry whenever possible, so try to play for that every time.
Another thing, the carry might be busy with lasthitting so you should be the one more intensely looking at the minimap and taking care of hero positions. When in doubt, be sure to tell the carry to retreat because it's better safe than sorry especially in DotA.
You can also move around and gank other lanes but I'm not too familiar with that. However if you happen to pick up an invis or a haste and the situation seems beneficial, go for it. Helping other lanes is always useful etc~. Oh, though your carry's lane could also be killable with a rune like that so work on your gamesense to know what's possible.
Then after laning, well... I of course am not an expert, but you want to keep buying wards and counterwarding, perhaps even with a gem. In teamfights you might be relegated to suicidebombing a priority target with your CC and dying but don't worry about dying as a support, you're not worth a whole lot anyway and it's for the greater good.
Most important thing about playing support: When your team won, it's thanks to you in an equal amount to the carry or whoever who theoretically carried your team. If the carry gets fed early and carries because you supported him well, you carried the game just as hard. If your lane partner carry is bad who misses all lasthits even if you enable him to freefarm, remember that the game probably wouldn't have gone any better if you had picked a hardcarry yourself and if you had tried to steal all his lasthits. Remember that even though some games you cannot win, as long as you play to improve and become a better players, the wins will come almost automatically later on.
(A bit longwinded and I'm not sure if it's even correct but I guess it's too long to backspace)
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On September 05 2012 07:40 Haasts wrote:
OK, some more silly questions - I play support quite frequently in LoL, but I'm not sure exactly if that will translate usefully to any of the skills position 4/5 heroes seem to need in DotA2.
° Since there's no brush to provide a guessing game re: your location, and no Flash effect pre-Blink Dagger, if you're playing an equivalent to Alistar/Leona, how do you initiate in lane? Trades don't seem to happen as often (due to the prohibitive mana cost of abilities), so I'm guessing you need to all-in if you're doing anything beyond autoattack harrassment. Are you able to drop LoS via the treeline to manoeuvre into position?
Yes hiding behind/around trees will break LOS. It is an essential mechanic for getting into position
° With the limited amount of wards available, if you're running a solo top/jungler, is the top/jungler responsible for warding top, or will the botlane support need to rotate up to do so?
On good teams, both the supports will be warding their respective sides or wherever is in need of it. Via matchmaking you will have trouble finding these sorts of players so will likely have to do it yourself if you want it done.
° Since there's no GP/5 items, is support income predicated on last-hitting jungle creeps that you've stacked then pulled your own minions into? Or are you able to occasionally grab last-hits in lane without your lanepartner getting annoyed? If you're laning w/a carry, is the expectation that they get the last-hits and you focus on denials?
The position 1 player will probably be expecting all the last hits in lane, supports are usually there to deny or harass enemies to get them out of last hit/exp range. Creeps via stacking and whatnot are fair game, IMO, but others may not see it that way. Gold over time and getting assists in kills will be how most supports get money.
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If anybody else wants to play together, I'm playing some Dota 2 again. I played when I first got into beta last November, but I haven't really played since January. My id on steam is tlbluebird
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supports should probably consider that supporting in the off-lane is often quite different from supporting in the safe lane. (from here on out off-lane = hard lane = suicide lane = top for radiant/bottom for dire, safe lane = easy lane = bottom for radiant/top for dire)
I'm going to assume you're not running a trilane or a dual mid in a pub so if you're running support you're either in the offlane, where you're mostly just trying to keep yourself and your lane partner alive, or you're in the safe lane, where you have the same goal but also the additional goal of denying your opponent experience/farm.
off-lane supporting
#1 priority is to not die.
Obviously denying your opponent exp/gold in the off lane is cool too but you can never really do it as effectively as in the safe lane because you're always so far removed from the safety of your tower. It's also very hard/nearly impossible to jungle pull in the off-lane, though it's possible on radiant side with a tango/quelling blade (not sure why you'd run QB on a support though)
At any rate in the off-lane you don't want to go for kills unless you've got an ally ganking for you, or you're 100% sure you'll get a kill. This is because any mistake or hesitation and you have to run really fucking far back to tower = free hits for your opponent/lots of creep damage/lots of time for enemies in other lanes/the jungle to come and snipe your sorry ass. Thus as support in off-lane merely focus on keeping your enemies off your lane partner. Ward their pull camp or the area in front of it (the one closest to the lane tower) both to block the camp (and prevent pulls) and to give vision of incoming ganks from junglers/mid. Consider warding the rune spot as well.
If you're standing around doing nothing and it seems like your lane partner is safe/competent enough, leave the lane and go gank (mid, for example) so that you don't leech your partner's exp for nothing, and at the very least are doing something. Remember that your #1 priority is to not die, although it's acceptable to trade your life for a kill as long as at least one other hero is involved in the kill and you're the only one who dies.
Once you get good enough at supporting you will be able to do things like pressure their jungler by going on forays into their jungle (requires good map awareness and a steel set of balls) or contesting their pull. Basically you're riding that fine line between getting your lane partner the advantage he needs and feeding his lane. Don't try it unless you're experienced at supporting, basically.
safe-lane supporting
#1 priority is still to not die.
Best thing you can learn to do is how to stack and pull the jungle camp closest to the outer tower. When your carry is not getting molested by the enemy in the lane it can be a huge advantage to deny your enemy gold/experience by stacking the pull camp and then pulling the creep wave into it. Look up any video guide on this, and practice repeatedly in a private lobby.
Basically the gist of it is this:
Between x:51 and x:54 attack the creep camp and walk directly away from it, breaking line of sight with the spawn. This should cause a second camp to spawn on top of the (now empty) camp at the :00 mark, so you've successfully "stacked" the camp (there are two spawns of creeps in the camp now)
Then at x:15 or x:45 after the stack, attack/pull aggro of the camp and pull it into the incoming creep wave, so that the lane creeps fight the jungle creeps. Stand around and last-hit the jungle creeps for gold+exp and if any lane creeps remain after the jungle creeps are dead, deny them.
If the enemy shows up to try and contest you, just fucking kill them or zone them out with spells (and ping for your carry to come help if needed)
Learning when to stack/pull is pretty easy: you should almost always have the camp stacked so that you can pull at will. Usually it's pretty easy to just stack the camp at 0:51 since your carry doesn't really need your help on the first wave of creeps. Then as soon as it seems as if your lane is starting to push you can pull the camp. Don't pull the camp if your carry is getting aggressively pushed into his tower, since then it's really easy for the enemy to just dive him while you're busy pulling the wave.
Otherwise, your job is to zone out the enemy and autoattack them whenever possible. Against a solo hero this is pretty straightforward; you just walk up to them and start autoattacking them (make sure the creep wave is far enough away that you don't aggro them as you attack the guy). Against any solo hero that is not named broodmother or darkseer this should generally mean (assuming your carry is also denying allied creeps as they get low and is only last hitting) that the enemy should never get a drop of experience until he gets support from another lane or your carry decides to push the lane.
If they're running a duo then your job is still the same but you need to be a bit more passive. Time your autoattacks so that whenever an enemy is coming forward to get a last hit, you punish them for it. If you feel like you can get a kill with spells, ping for your carry to prep him and then go for the kill when the creep advantage is in your favor. Basically this is all the same as LoL support stuff.
edit: forgot a very important point: attack any of your ALLIED creeps that are below half health. Constantly denying is the one of the most effective ways to win any lane in the early game, because it prevents your lane from pushing (causing your carry to lose farm and be unsafe to ganks) and it denies your opponent gold/exp assuming you get the last hit.
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On September 05 2012 06:29 dnastyx wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2012 00:51 volcryn wrote:
I seem to wind up playing the 4/5 spot in our group queues with evo/yango/TD etc so I'll offer my 2c on veno.
you clearly need to play with me more because i spend 80% of my games playing position 5.
I played chen and enchant with you last night, but I definitely need to work on my transitions from early to mid-game.
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It is also worth mentioning, to those who are asking about getting in position for a kill, you can also use smoke of deceit to set up your positioning, and avoid enemy wards. It can be an incredibly powerdul early tool, especially coming out of the jungle.
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I'm not afraid to take first blood sometimes and immediately upgrade the courrier to benefit the team.
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a lot of your farm early is going to come from pulling camps. know that you need to pull the camp at ~X:52 mark in order to safely stack(cause more than one spawn) at the specific camp. Usually a double camp is enough to wipe out a creep wave, the exception to this is when you have a combination of satyrs and wolves.
It takes some practice to chain pull camps into the creep wave. Through this and some creative tree killing, you can pull every camp in the game. Some of them are significantly harder to do than others, especially on the radiant side. To do the safe large camp radiant side, you need to pull the neutrals mid just before the creep wave spawns. The safe dire large can be chain pulled off the small camp.
Make sure you don't miss your last hits on the neutrals and be aware of what is occuring in your lane. Pulling is not always safe, and will sometimes expose your carry.
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I want to learn to play position 2/3 heroes (generally ones that go mid) to help me improve at this shitty game.
Heroes I want to learn:
QoP
Rexxar
Storm Spirit
Puck
Rubick
Am I missing anyone really important (for mid)?
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Invoker, Tinker are both played at top levels fairly frequently and go mid.
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United States47024 Posts
Realistically if you want to learn the role, there are a lot of good tempo-carrying heroes mid that are not competitive, but fill the role well for the purpose of learning in pub games--Lion, Viper, or even Bloodseeker.
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On September 05 2012 15:11 dnastyx wrote:
I want to learn to play position 2/3 heroes (generally ones that go mid) to help me improve at this shitty game.
Heroes I want to learn:
QoP
Rexxar
Storm Spirit
Puck
Rubick
Am I missing anyone really important (for mid)?
rexxar doesn't go mid very often nowadays. Usually goes suicide lane.
I'd say in addition to Invoker and Tinker (as the above guy said), Night Stalker, Pugna, rhasta (shadow shaman), windrunner, leshrac, death prophet, Outworld Destroyer, Templar Assassin, Ancient Apparition, Pudge, and Keeper of the Light are all worth learning for mid.
KoTL, rhasta, WR, pugna etc. can all be run as supports as well.
Personally I'd say focus on like 6-10 heroes from that pool and play the crap out of them if you want to become a decent mid player. I myself really like QoP, storm, tinker, pugna, rhasta, NS, TA, Leshrac, and WR, and I'd say mid is probably my best role.
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EPT
