In this thread we can talk about good combinations, bad combinations or other fun stuff you have encountered. It can also be used in general to talk about the mode itself.
Few things I have noticed from the mode point of view
Its really bad if you get heroes with bad base stats ~5 seconds is way too little to pick an ability, esp if someone else picks the ability you had in mind.
Good combinations that I have used Insatiable hunger+incapacitating bite on a ranged hero or the standard fury swipes on any ranged hero basically
the bad....... well.
On January 30 2014 08:29 TheEmulator wrote: This kennigit drafted repel, spin web, fiery soul, and rearm on Broodmother
Enchant Totem + Phantom Strike + Duel was slightly ridiculous on a PA we had. She didn't manage to get Coup, so she just rushed crit and proceeded to wreck people. The duel's just there to snowball you, eventually just one shot people.
Napalm + Aftershock was some annoying semi-permastun.
Veno wards without Poison Sting was kinda shitty. Not sure how Eclipse works without Lucent beam.
napalm + overload or napalm + fiery soul was completely broken. I heard stuff like static field works on toggled no cd spells, but that sounds just boring to me.
Lycan with Untouchable, Feral Impulse, Earthshock, and Shapeshift. Get an early BKB and you are pretty much impossible to kill while have ridiculous chasing power.
Another sick combo I saw was Gyro with Fiery Soul, Take Aim, Voodoo Restoration, and Markmanship.
The truly broken things are the on-cast abilities with free 0cd toggles. Zeus passive with something like rot probably takes the cake for instakilling entire teams for 0 mana in <1s.
Ranged castable orbs seem to give range to melee heroes, also.
For all the napalm stuff, you can do it with Bristle's goo too, a long time ago I did a techies(for the long range) goo+overload and the harass was hilarious
well there was a combo i was one of the first to make (im pretty sure since i played a lot of omg dota 1 with my friend in ba). idk if i should say it or everyone would do it D:
enchant totem with kunkka cleave + any damage buffs like grow is instant gg. just get a daedulus and you can crit 3k easily
A lot of people in this mode seem obsessed with trying to build uber carries with l33t synergy but it tends not to work out because you end up having like 5 other guys thinking the same thing and then they all end up being some weird donothing that has little synergy between their first two picks and second two. Meanwhile I end up with Blink Dagger and a bunch of disables or some hilarious jungling build (OD with conversion+leech seed+guise+bhole yeah boi)
Other random thoughts: I wouldn't get Crypt Swarm or Exorcism unless I could also get Witchcraft, they just suck too much otherwise. Walrus Punch with other +damage effects is dumb. Saw an AM with Phantom Strike+Astral Spirit+Walrus Punch, 1400 damage crits was not cool. Untouchable is extremely annoying on anything tankier than Enchantress Permainvis is extremely good on a caster Mana Drain + summons = good times jungling Witchcraft and Unstable Current don't stack. Wouldn't want to try to stack other +movespeed effects either
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
Only 1 ult. Otherwise rearm + zeus ult or furion ult would be broken as hell.
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
Only 1 ult. Otherwise rearm + zeus ult or furion ult would be broken as hell.
Because balance was the reason this mode was created.
Re-arm + chakra + anything would be insane though.
Alright so one thing that would be really cool with this thread is if we compiled a list of what heroes are available in the mode. so far from what I can tell it's limited to heroes with exactly 4 skills and it doesn't have meepo. I think there are others not available though, so we're going to hive mind this shit and figure it out.
Below is a list of confirmed heroes (heroes are considered 'in' when you can select their abilities)
On January 30 2014 14:38 LeLoup wrote: Alright so one thing that would be really cool with this thread is if we compiled a list of what heroes are available in the mode. so far from what I can tell it's limited to heroes with exactly 4 skills and it doesn't have meepo. I think there are others not available though, so we're going to hive mind this shit and figure it out.
Below is a list of confirmed heroes (heroes are considered 'in' when you can select their abilities)
Earth Spirit, Phoenix, Io, Beastmaster, Doom, Morphling, Lone Druid, Troll Warlord, Ember Spirit, Shadow Fiend, Terrorblade, Puck, Ogre Magi, Keeper of the Light, Rubick, Shadow Demon, Batrider, Invoker
Let me know if you've seen anyone not listed.
Beuheuheu, no Meepo (with clearly the single most broken ability in the game, just slap it on any hero with decent stat gain... like PL with 4.2 agi/lvl)
Edit : Nevermind, slap it on nearly any hero. 5xHex for entire team disable? 5xDragon Slave? 5xTinker's laser?
Alright so one thing that would be really cool with this thread is if we compiled a list of what heroes are available in the mode. so far from what I can tell it's limited to heroes with exactly 4 skills and it doesn't have meepo. I think there are others not available though, so we're going to hive mind this shit and figure it out.
Below is a list of confirmed heroes (heroes are considered 'in' when you can select their abilities)
Alright so one thing that would be really cool with this thread is if we compiled a list of what heroes are available in the mode. so far from what I can tell it's limited to heroes with exactly 4 skills and it doesn't have meepo. I think there are others not available though, so we're going to hive mind this shit and figure it out.
Below is a list of confirmed heroes (heroes are considered 'in' when you can select their abilities)
Apparently you can get viper's orb and use it from 500 range (or whatever range viper has) even if you are melee. Goddamn Ursa chewed my face before I even realized what was going on.
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
pretty sure you can only get one ulti.
but rearm + rocket flare would be pretty gg lol
I need to try rearm+rocket flare. Sounds like you can play the entire game from the fountain.
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
pretty sure you can only get one ulti.
but rearm + rocket flare would be pretty gg lol
I need to try rearm+rocket flare. Sounds like you can play the entire game from the fountain.
I wonder, would you still get XP from last hits + hero kills/assists?
It would be so boring.. but so effective. No way for the enemy team to do anything about you.
I'm finding most games end up with everyone first-picking the carry passives, and then running out, and then picking random support skills from the rest of the pool. Lot of very useless heroes ensue.
I'm having success with just taking two stuns - ideally one primary and a follow-up like Split Earth - and then just roaming from level 2. Like 4 seconds of stun from 1 hero at 1:30 is hilariously effective.
On January 30 2014 15:09 LeLoup wrote: Stifling dagger, take aim, essence aura, impetus.
Would be fun.
wut I just stated impetus does not proc essence aura
I am pretty sure impetus does not stack with take aim. the range for impetus is always 500 (or whatever the default value is) regardless of your hero's base range or any range modifying abilities. at least, when I played warlock with imp my range was the default value instead of warlock's actual 600.
also, I'm pretty sure imp is a projectile modifier, so melee heroes cannot use the spell. this happened with an es that tried to use glaives, it just bugged the game out.
On January 30 2014 17:49 Belisarius wrote: I'm finding most games end up with everyone first-picking the carry passives, and then running out, and then picking random support skills from the rest of the pool. Lot of very useless heroes ensue.
I'm having success with just taking two stuns - ideally one primary and a follow-up like Split Earth - and then just roaming from level 2. Like 4 seconds of stun from 1 hero at 1:30 is hilariously effective.
I do wish you could chat during the picks.
yea back in OMG days, this ended up being the most efficient way to draft, it usually ends up with the ones that gets 2 picks that ends up being the carry
The bugged spells we found so far were: Grow - When tiny had grow it did nothing at all, not even move speed or base damage. DK ult - Only tested it on DK himself, but it turned him into a melee dragon. Dragon tail did have the correct range though.
In terms of strong combos, Enchant totem + scaling carry passive was pretty disgusting (geminate meant 1-shotting people at level 5 since both attacks had +400% damage, coup de gras meant with just a shadowblade 3.5k crits). Fiery soul is mental, especially if you can get bristle's spines + ult too. Apparently zeus' passive and mana shield toggle is a thing (I think mana shield toggle triggers a lot of things it probably shouldn't, maybe even bristle's ult). I had the ultimate jungler (and a pretty silly carry) with Fury swipes + Moment of courage meaning i had a 5-6 minute vlads and level 6.
On January 30 2014 18:49 RockIronrod wrote: this mode is killing me every game is a stomp one way or the other and every game i've had at least 3 people on my team go 1-3/20
Yeah, for a fun game mode, it really seems to bring out the worst in players.
In regular Dota they're limited by a reasonable hero design, but here they can realize their wet dream of playing the ultimate glass cannon "carries" and burst nukers that die in 1 stun.
What would be required for people to stop raging and play this as a FUN game mode? Silly music that signifies the fact that it's not supposed to be taken seriously? Power-ups like in Mario Kart so you can throw banana peels at people?
I've had nothing but fun with this mode so far. Only raged once myself when I was transferring items around with courier and dropped dust on the ground (so i could plant sentrys then go back and pick it up) and a bristle picked it up, then didn't use it when we probably could have pushed to win if we'd gotten the kill.
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
pretty sure you can only get one ulti.
but rearm + rocket flare would be pretty gg lol
I need to try rearm+rocket flare. Sounds like you can play the entire game from the fountain.
holy shit never thought of this .. with level 16 rearm it is assured that all your will receive damage non-stop if you press fast enough .. you could also add beast master summons(since the change allows you to not resummon units)
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
pretty sure you can only get one ulti.
but rearm + rocket flare would be pretty gg lol
I need to try rearm+rocket flare. Sounds like you can play the entire game from the fountain.
holy shit never thought of this .. with level 16 rearm it is assured that all your will receive damage non-stop if you press fast enough .. you could also add beast master summons(since the change allows you to not resummon units)
You will get abandoned if you just sit in fountain* and spam, someone was complaining about it on reddit earlier.
The 5-second thing messed me up in my first game last night. I ended up first pick and it randomed my first ability because I didn't realise how short a time I had.
Fortunately it ended up working out. I had Clinkz with Slithereen Crush, Windrun, Mana Burn and Focus Fire. And I was dual-laning with a Lina who had Wraithfire Blast, Spiked Carapace, Doppelwalk and Reincarnation; it was surprisingly effective, no idea how but it was.
Well I really like this mode. My only downside so far is that I've been either 1st, 9th or 10th drafter (being matched with stacks) in all my games, meaning I have to draft twice in a row very fast every game. And of course, all abilties I've eyed have been taken just before me. Anyway, will keep on playing it for now.
My first game I got Ursa and didn't understand I only had 5 seconds to pick abilities, ended up going mid with furi's tp, dazzles heal, od's aura and venge ult. That was versus an od with ursa's passive, game was not fun
On January 30 2014 20:19 goody153 wrote: get any long range hero then get Psi Blades(lanaya) + Overpower(ursa) + Take Aim(Sniper) + Impetus(enchantress)
just get levels and wards then kill your enemies from afar.
You need an ulti in there, I tried an all-normal-ability draft and it doesn't work.
On January 30 2014 20:19 goody153 wrote: get any long range hero then get Psi Blades(lanaya) + Overpower(ursa) + Take Aim(Sniper) + Impetus(enchantress)
just get levels and wards then kill your enemies from afar.
You need an ulti in there, I tried an all-normal-ability draft and it doesn't work.
On January 30 2014 20:33 sluggaslamoo wrote: Been seeing a lot of tryhards who take this mode way too seriously, its really annoying.
You mean they pick good abilities and kill you?
That's not what I meant by tryhard. More like telling teammates what to do, complaining on global chat and getting all serious when its the most un-serious mode in the game.
Its been really fun, but every now and then there's always a couple of guys that take it a little too seriously. Like why aren't they playing ranked?
On January 30 2014 13:34 fdsdfg wrote: Could you theoretically pick Rearm and a global ability, like Sunstrike or Gyro Ult w/ aghs? Or can you only have one ult?
Seems like you could get away with just sitting in fountain casting constantly
pretty sure you can only get one ulti.
but rearm + rocket flare would be pretty gg lol
I need to try rearm+rocket flare. Sounds like you can play the entire game from the fountain.
holy shit never thought of this .. with level 16 rearm it is assured that all your will receive damage non-stop if you press fast enough .. you could also add beast master summons(since the change allows you to not resummon units)
Or you could *GASP* turn on smart casting... gosh I can never get used to smart casting... but this might be the first time I'd think using it~
EDIT: I realize I sound kinda rude... No offense intended... I guess not sleeping through the night has made me a bit more bitter in all my comments~ also I just hate smart casting
If you take Nature's Guise and Witch Doctor ultimate you can do the "Invisible rave party" trick from level 6 rather than having to build up a Lothars. Couple that with an Aghs rush and you've got a very potent, quick to get, teamfight weapon.
Bonus points for taking Fatal Bonds as well and using it beforehand.
On January 30 2014 23:16 Kyyuna wrote: Rearm + Flare
Which flare?
Rocket flare one already been mentioned but surely you get a disconnect from being in the fountain? (Only way to keep enough mana for it over and over is to just sit in the fountain.)
gotta say. had some of the most fun games i've had playing abilities draft. carry disruptor with shallow grave, germinate, juxtapose and alchemist rage. had manta, skadi, 2 bashers and bots in 30 minutes. i usually don't post boasting posts but these games were insanely fun. had a naga with shukuchi, time lapse, flesh heap and rot lol.
On January 30 2014 23:16 Kyyuna wrote: Rearm + Flare
Which flare?
Rocket flare one already been mentioned but surely you get a disconnect from being in the fountain? (Only way to keep enough mana for it over and over is to just sit in the fountain.)
Mystic Flare you can't have two ultimates.
Rocket Flare from Clock...I had a good early game and got lv2 rearm.
I got Lina with her Light strike array? (stun), Rocket Flare, March of the machine and rearm.
Got BoT, TP'd left and right and if they ever push I just TP back to fountain and spam flares at towers. Only downfall to this strat was we snowball'd with an insane Tusk build (Abaddon shield, Omni Heal, Huskar's ulti..can't remember last skill) so they were unable to push any T1s
edit: waiting to get a range hero and do some magic
I had veno with static link and tiny ult, Insane damage! and if you get aghs, +splash. I also looked like a giant banana. Terrorblade would probably be as big as roshan with tiny ult.
I also had lycan with hook, windrun, veno gale, and flaming lasso. That was extremely fun to play. (gale-> hook-> lasso-> windrun towards nearest tower)
I think the funniest build I've got yet is Timbersaw with Dragon's Blood, Reactive Armor, Spell Shield, and Eye of the Storm. Rushed for Aghs+Refresher, sat in the middle of teamfights taking practically no damage and literally rained down hell. Stupid, yet effective at the same time! Also funny as fuck, it worked way better than I thought it was going to, rofl
I was against a weaver with Shukuchi and Battery Assault. I was very, very, very sad.
Also Drow with Enchant Totem + Precision Aura + Walrus Punch. Ugh.
I made a Monster Jungle Axe with Helix, Press The Attack and Cleave with Axe Ult. Unfortunately someone else took call so I couldn't get that, so had cleave.
Rearm with tiny combo and rhasta lightning. even though it was on bounty hunter it felt like playing a juiced up version of tinker, just going around the map flash farming creep waves and raping people damage wise.
Ion shell, battery assault with duel, managed to end up with +350 damage with duel, that plus 2 divine rapiers meant I had around 1.1k damage per hit. I saw the combo in the picking screen and was pretty happy it worked out, just shell, battery blink duel gg.
I had skewer, centaur stomp and riki ult perma invi. My other skill was useless, nature's guise. Well anyways my style was simple; buy wards, courier and just go lane and go lvl 6 ASAP.
Combo is pretty easy, since i was invi all the time, i just skewer someone in my tower then stomp. They eventually bought sentries for me, but I already saved up for a blink dagger (I rushed it since I know they would buy detection eventually). My items was just wards smoke arcane boots dagger and wand. And also refresher at the end.
People really blow my mind in this game mode. EVERYONE still buys their recommended items even if they don't have a single original ability. Necro with glaives of wisdom, shadow walk, mana drain and finger of death + bloodstone. Genius. Or Spirit Breaker with timber chain, shuriken toss, sadist and global silence + mask of madness. Wow, just fucking wow.
On January 31 2014 00:40 GGitsJack wrote: Some notable builds I managed to get today:
Rearm with tiny combo and rhasta lightning. even though it was on bounty hunter it felt like playing a juiced up version of tinker, just going around the map flash farming creep waves and raping people damage wise.
Ion shell, battery assault with duel, managed to end up with +350 damage with duel, that plus 2 divine rapiers meant I had around 1.1k damage per hit. I saw the combo in the picking screen and was pretty happy it worked out, just shell, battery blink duel gg.
How the hell did you live through the early game? I went duel, battery assault, cogs and some other skill and it did NOT work out :D
Just had OD with Diabolic Edict, Concussive Shot, Thunder Strike, Permanent Invisibility.
Went mid, got quick Phase Boots, went 15-0 very quickly. They couldn't be on the map.
It was perfect. Even Thunder Strike which doesn't sound optimal, you're already killing them easily, you don't need another super abusive spell, having vision of the target shuts down getting juked, too. (Also, it does 400 damage before resists, which is legit.)
Usually you'd expect people to pick their skills to be either fun combo or generally powerful mix, but I don't know how to handle it when I happen to get teammates like omniknight who first picks OD ult and then picks Dragon's Blood and Sprint, what is he trying to achieve? What's the fun in playing with as bad mix as possible? I could understand that someone picked his pre-planned skill but when you still have a decent amount of universally good options or even few that could be fun to combo with, you choose some of the least fun skills that actually do work against your initial plan.
I can understand some people like to play things like old naix style mass passives into lategame, but this is something absurd, it isn't fun to them, it isn't fun to us, it might be a bit fun for the opponents who prey on him. Sometimes you get shafted with an useless skill, but that's usually your last one, not every single one of them.
It's not a problem if people are having a bad game, but intentionally making it so to themselves - I just can't understand it.
Just played a nice game with Perma Cloak, Lucent Beam, Starfall and Static Field and also got a Dagon. I confused the heck out of the enemy team, most of them didn't even get it xD
On January 31 2014 04:11 Kuroeeah wrote: Abilities you can toggle off and on counts towards Fiery Soul, so you can toggle split shot and move almost faster than everyone.
On January 31 2014 04:11 Kuroeeah wrote: Abilities you can toggle off and on counts towards Fiery Soul, so you can toggle split shot and move almost faster than everyone.
Pretty sure spectre isn't in the mode.
I think you quoted the wrong post here XD
And yeah, Perma invis is much much better than I originally thought since the change that allows you to cast without revealing.
On January 31 2014 04:11 Kuroeeah wrote: Abilities you can toggle off and on counts towards Fiery Soul, so you can toggle split shot and move almost faster than everyone.
Had rot and static field, but that didn't work sadly =/
Also just finished a fun game where i was kunkka, and had burrowstrike/torrent/ensnare/call down. Made a quick bloodstone and ganks/teamfights were easily won.
does anyone know if this mode factors in your mmr?
I had a super frustrating game where a tusk took away skeleton walk, moment of courage, chaos strike, and duel he initiated 5 duels in 40 minutes.. Losing duels is one thing, not dueling when you have the perfect initiation & means to win one is seriously something else.
On January 31 2014 04:17 NeonFlare wrote: Usually you'd expect people to pick their skills to be either fun combo or generally powerful mix, but I don't know how to handle it when I happen to get teammates like omniknight who first picks OD ult and then picks Dragon's Blood and Sprint, what is he trying to achieve? What's the fun in playing with as bad mix as possible? I could understand that someone picked his pre-planned skill but when you still have a decent amount of universally good options or even few that could be fun to combo with, you choose some of the least fun skills that actually do work against your initial plan.
I can understand some people like to play things like old naix style mass passives into lategame, but this is something absurd, it isn't fun to them, it isn't fun to us, it might be a bit fun for the opponents who prey on him. Sometimes you get shafted with an useless skill, but that's usually your last one, not every single one of them.
It's not a problem if people are having a bad game, but intentionally making it so to themselves - I just can't understand it.
A lot of people seem to pick for a good laning phase, which is kind of pointless since normal rules don't apply.
Yesterday I was going for natural order sukuchi gyro. But those skills were drafted before it was my turn. I randomed geminate and astral spirit and it was actually pretty effective. Astral spirit for more movement speed and damage and I attacked twice and I was doing insane damage with nothing but phase and a yasha.
Was a slardar with slithereen crush and windwalk. Just getting those 2 skills felt dirty and then no one else picked up reverse polarity so.....yea..I also had sprint so my lvl 1 windwalk became a lvl 3/4 windwalk for no added manacost. I was basically playing mag except you land awesome surprise buttsecks rp's for the first couple times.
Just played Tiny with Starfall, Scream of Pain, Backstab , (Randomed, yes probably the worst spell he could get but i just lvled stats instead) and Tide Ulti. Built a Dagon 5 and Eblade later on, went really good :D
Also Timbersaw With Astral Spirit, Shukuchi, Timberchain and Blackhole was pretty legit.
Just tried my first one, was surprisingly fun (won it though, that could be one of the reasons )
Got Ursa and had no idea what to pick so I just derped it. Frost Arrow (expected it to be bugged so I would get a ranged slow, it was unfortunately not. Worked out fine though, they have no way to get away from you once you're close enough). Followed it up with Blur because I thought I would play this tanky annoying dude who jumps in and sticks to people like crazy. For this, I followed it up with Clocks Chain Ulti. Pretty nice to ulti in, freeze them down and dodge everything. Nothing outstanding left after that, so I got Banes life drain (way too mana heavy for Ursa, but got me some kills).
As for items, I went basilius (which was far from enough to sustain the life leech), phase boots, Hood of Defiance, Sange and Yasha, Linkens, Daedalus.
As for strong combos I saw in the game, an Axe got berserkers call and rocket barrage, that was insanely effective in the early midgame.
Had np teleport, bloodseeker's passive to see low health heros, and omnislash on lifestealer. Another one which worked well was Am with his blink, dragon knight passive armor ability, alch farming ability, and clinkz ult. Had like 1400 gpm or something, and was six slotted by 28 minutes or something.
Timber chain and natures guise, you don't lose the invis when chaining across the lane. Do whatever you want for the other skills, shit is funny as hell.
On January 31 2014 06:42 Tobberoth wrote: Just tried my first one, was surprisingly fun (won it though, that could be one of the reasons )
Got Ursa and had no idea what to pick so I just derped it. Frost Arrow (expected it to be bugged so I would get a ranged slow, it was unfortunately not. Worked out fine though, they have no way to get away from you once you're close enough). Followed it up with Blur because I thought I would play this tanky annoying dude who jumps in and sticks to people like crazy. For this, I followed it up with Clocks Chain Ulti. Pretty nice to ulti in, freeze them down and dodge everything. Nothing outstanding left after that, so I got Banes life drain (way too mana heavy for Ursa, but got me some kills).
As for items, I went basilius (which was far from enough to sustain the life leech), phase boots, Hood of Defiance, Sange and Yasha, Linkens, Daedalus.
As for strong combos I saw in the game, an Axe got berserkers call and rocket barrage, that was insanely effective in the early midgame.
I'm pretty sure Frost Arrow DOES work as a ranged slow on melee heroes, but only if you manually cast it. I'm guessing you were using auto-cast.
Had this insane ET who went Fiery Soul, Quill Spray, Timelock, mirana ult. With the low cooldown of quill spray, he got constant +225 attack speed from Fiery Soul and almost permabash with Timelock. Carried our team to victory.
I just got to play against a Zeus with Heartstopper Aura, two nukes and... Riki's permanent invisibility. Casting spells doesn't reveal the invisibility, so he just walked around all game nuking to his heart's content and dealing damage with his aura without ever being seen.
My best so far has been viper with headshot, take aim, vengeance aura and god's strength. was critting people for about 1500 from incredibly far away in the end there. OP!
Had a really fun lane today. I was LC with thirst, essence shift, slitheren crush and amp damage, a sick chasing build. Laned with a jakiro who had Ice path, press the attack (!), living armor (!!!), and ravage. Fucking dives galore.
I had Elder Titan with Flak Cannon and Greevils Greed.
Got richer than Bill Gates Prime.
We got a DC and they actually got to our ancient fast because it was 4v5 (or 3v5 because my early game sucked). After that they went Full Rat Dot[A] to try to finish us off, but I was making so much bank that I had AC, Heart and 3 Rapiers and would wipe multiple waves of mega-creeps and their entire team in one shot. So convenient!
Every single time we moved out, their team would race to our ancient. So I would stay back to guard the fort while my team mates would push towers down one by one. I would just enable flak cannon and one shot the megacreeps, and inevitably their team trying to backdoor would just die.
After team wiping them for the 10th time in a row my other team mates had enough farm to kill T3s and the Ancient in one push.
The 4v5 win would have felt really good if it wasn't for the cunt on our team that would global chat "noob team" while we were losing, and then gloated after the win.
I had an Elder Titan with Fiery Soul, Burning Spear, Sticky Napalm and Life Break. It was incredibly fun to play. This should be an actual hero. Burning Spear gives you a ranged attack, but only if you cast it manually. With normal right-clicks you're melee. Burning Spear doesn't trigger Fiery Soul, but Sticky Napalm does. I don't think Sticky Napalm and Burning Spear interact, but still stuff was dying very fast. What's interesting is that you don't need mana, but your stuff costs health. Obviously that's similar to how Huskar plays, but more interesting in my opinion since there's the melee-ranged duality, you have more clicking to do and you get supercharged by casting spells, not being low on health.
Mana shield + Fiery souls works as well and I think it is much better then napalm. It basiclaly perma free attack speed when ever. Then combo with anything else that good with attack speed and you get dead team.
On January 30 2014 11:27 hunts wrote: I had napalm+storm ult, there was no escape. Though sadly we lost to lycan with firefly and shapeshift and some other skills.
This mode is severely lacking some sort of algorithm balancing between ranged and melee heroes. In the normal game the two are balanced based on abilities (and then some), but when you're in Ability Draft it's night and day. Having 5 melee heroes vs 5 ranged heroes is just sad. Of course the mode is 0 balanced anyways, but it's supposed to be imbalanced from the abilities not the hero shells.
Anyways still is a blast. Cool that Silencer keeps his int growth (it'd be fun to have flesh heap + duel on silencer and just go maximum snowball mode).
Yo ok I was a slark with luna's glaives and that shit was straight up borked. All that would h appen is a spinning glaive artifcat would appear permanently every time i hit something but never bounce anywhere
On January 31 2014 11:11 Logo wrote: This mode is severely lacking some sort of algorithm balancing between ranged and melee heroes. In the normal game the two are balanced based on abilities (and then some), but when you're in Ability Draft it's night and day. Having 5 melee heroes vs 5 ranged heroes is just sad. Of course the mode is 0 balanced anyways, but it's supposed to be imbalanced from the abilities not the hero shells.
Anyways still is a blast. Cool that Silencer keeps his int growth (it'd be fun to have flesh heap + duel on silencer and just go maximum snowball mode).
Then you get an orb on a melee hero and you end up with a hero with a high damage, instant and invisible projectile. You can do some absurdly OP shit with a melee carry.
On January 31 2014 08:11 Scorch wrote: I just got to play against a Zeus with Heartstopper Aura, two nukes and... Riki's permanent invisibility. Casting spells doesn't reveal the invisibility, so he just walked around all game nuking to his heart's content and dealing damage with his aura without ever being seen.
Worked pretty well, all low mana cost, insane slow and during mid game anyone I jumped on died in under 3 seconds. Besides Pudge timewalking and spamming remnants looked cool as fuck. Won that game 4v5.
Someone who had Furi TP and ravage was also pretty funny although didn't work that game as well as it could've.
Got Witch Doctor. Picked Grow, Mortal Strike, Blood Rage and Blood Thirst. Picture a gigantic Witch Doctor moving at max speed critting for 2k. Giggles were had
Time Walk doesn't move fast enough to cancel batrider ulti, making it a free jump while pulling an enemy with Flaming Lasso. Adding Bristleback(the passive) wasn't even that necessary.
The worst combination I saw has to be Laser, March Of The Machines, Scream Of Pain and PL ult on Pudge. He was slow and could barely cast 3 spells because of his small manapool.
On January 31 2014 12:19 Kmatt wrote: People take this way too seriously
Also Death pulse+anchor smash+sadist+invis
Eul's Shivas Dagon. You will never have enough gems. PA still complains over my >New Meta lycan build. Looked like a KwarK smurf.
Ya, I went to ability draft because I thought everyone there would be doing it for laughs, nope, same old whiny bitches just migrated over.
Even if they are on the other team, they rat on some poor player on global chat and I tell them to "go play ranked". I can't believe these kinds of people even live on this planet.
Ironically the most unserious game I played was on ranked, where we did a 4 man conga-line around the map and had really awkward bromance conversations over mic while alllied clock would spam his ult into us putting it on permanent cooldown. I then bought two rapiers and we won.
Found out the hard way that frost blast was really fucking expensive (who cares about mana when u play lich?) and my idea of frost blast + frost arrow seemed to fail.
On the other hand I did have a great time with my Ion Shell + Electric Vortex + Epicenter combo. Vortex + Epi was just an incredible combo, and Vortex seemd to make a really good combo with Ion shell during laning.
Gotta say you should probably think a lot more about the laning stage than one would think. If you get run over during laning whatever super combo you might have in mind might just never get a chance to develop. Picking upp stuff like viper/clinkz/huskar autoattack buffs to rape during laning on various heroes just makes life so much easier. The game I got Ion shell everything just seemed easier at least :p
And while you might be able to pick up 3 nukes, dont. The last one will be maxed by level 14, at which point the game might be decided anyway. Or you might have to build some rediculous mana regen to be able to sustain spamming 3 nukes at max level. You're probably often better off with 2 nukes/stuns/slows whatever and the a good passive or other good skill which comes into play later at lvl 10,12,13,14.
Voodoo restoration+Essence Aura is broken. I mean.. Its really and literally broken. You always have full mana and give your teammates 40hp regen per second.
My best (I think) was an ursa with Nether Blast, Double Edge, Sprint, and Perma Invis. I played it sooo wrong though... while I should have been farming in the midgame with the massive waveclear of Nether + Double Edge, I instead did fuck all and got a really slow dagon and didn't snowball at all.
Second best was Gyro with Geminate, Web, Living armour and Drow Ult. Ezpz.
And I think silencer is one of the best base heroes, because he retains his intel steal on kills, making him the only hero with an innate passive (?)
We had Bounty Hunter with Tiny Ult, Broodmother Passive, Nightstalker Passive and I think another passive forgot which, he hurt a lot and didn't die.
And I got wrecked pretty hard by a CM with Impetus, Frosbite, Jinada and something accompanied by Drow with Slardar Bash and Overpower from Ursa.
I played a Leshrac with summon treants, teleport, hex and serpent wards. My plan was to be be like a late game Furion after 6 mins, it didn't go that smooth but towers did fall everytime I had ult up.
Maybe it's just me but it feels like it's much easier to make ranged heroes to work here as you got the mana to support several actives while it's hard to draft good passives for melee heroes and they don't have the mana for actives.
Not sure how much I'l end up playing this mode but it does feel nice and casual in comparison to regular queue and I don't really feel like tryharding here, kind a painful when you end up with a awful hero though.
On January 31 2014 06:42 Tobberoth wrote: Just tried my first one, was surprisingly fun (won it though, that could be one of the reasons )
Got Ursa and had no idea what to pick so I just derped it. Frost Arrow (expected it to be bugged so I would get a ranged slow, it was unfortunately not. Worked out fine though, they have no way to get away from you once you're close enough). Followed it up with Blur because I thought I would play this tanky annoying dude who jumps in and sticks to people like crazy. For this, I followed it up with Clocks Chain Ulti. Pretty nice to ulti in, freeze them down and dodge everything. Nothing outstanding left after that, so I got Banes life drain (way too mana heavy for Ursa, but got me some kills).
As for items, I went basilius (which was far from enough to sustain the life leech), phase boots, Hood of Defiance, Sange and Yasha, Linkens, Daedalus.
As for strong combos I saw in the game, an Axe got berserkers call and rocket barrage, that was insanely effective in the early midgame.
I'm pretty sure Frost Arrow DOES work as a ranged slow on melee heroes, but only if you manually cast it. I'm guessing you were using auto-cast.
No, I tried manually casting it several times, nothing happened.
Ability Draft counts for victories... but is it counted on dotabuff as well? Because that's kind of annoying since, while fun, it's no way to measure skill. Not that you can't be good at it, I just don't want wins on heroes I suck as just because I got a sick ability combo on them.
On January 31 2014 17:02 Tobberoth wrote: Ability Draft counts for victories... but is it counted on dotabuff as well? Because that's kind of annoying since, while fun, it's no way to measure skill. Not that you can't be good at it, I just don't want wins on heroes I suck as just because I got a sick ability combo on them.
Doesn't seem to do so right now at least, can't say about future.
My matches aren't even showing up and I don't think my win rate % has moved at all.
My silliest one so far. Witch doctor with Aftershock, Voodoo Restoration, Nasal Goo and Serpent Wards. I used Nasal Goo + Aftershock to destroy creep wave and was able to take all their towers in 15 minutes with Serpent Wards. I bought a Bloodstone for the gold and was able to have Voodoo Restoration permanently running while spamming Nasal Goo to permastun everyone. It was ridiculous. Sadly, Voodoo Restoration didn't proc Aftershock which I was hoping.
On January 31 2014 17:02 Tobberoth wrote: Ability Draft counts for victories... but is it counted on dotabuff as well? Because that's kind of annoying since, while fun, it's no way to measure skill. Not that you can't be good at it, I just don't want wins on heroes I suck as just because I got a sick ability combo on them.
Dotabuff keeps track of it, but only as an "irrelevant" game (it shows when you select the All Matches category).
Void with backtrack, static link, nasal goo and chrono. Was really fun but weird initiating with blink dagger. Kept missing chronos but with static link and goo, nobody could get away from me with MoM
So far haven't got any of the 0 cd toggle spam combos, people seem to already know about them and counterpick eachother, I have seen single game where a combo was avaiable but both skills were left in pool. But, Riki's invis is pain in the ass with any decent skills, I managed to get decrepify and nukes once with it, enemies were stacked with anti-invis soon after though. Probably most fun not really combo has been Lycan with Fissure, Frostbite, Treants and Fiend's Grip. Could farm anywhere and drop so many disables that every small skirmish was pretty much autowin after few levels and manaboots. Enemy's reaction to Lycan who's animations stop dead when casting Grip were funny, this wolf dude stares you down from comfortable distance looking afk and you are in trouble.
The strongest combination I had in this mode was Enchant Totem + Flak Cannon + Teleportation. Ultimate didn't matter at all.
I learned though, that casting time is seen as a characteristic of a skill rather than a characteristic of a hero model. Also I learned the hard way that Huskar has abysmal stats and he is only good because of how good his skills are.
On January 31 2014 20:16 Mataza wrote: The strongest combination I had in this mode was Enchant Totem + Flak Cannon + Teleportation. Ultimate didn't matter at all.
I learned though, that casting time is seen as a characteristic of a skill rather than a characteristic of a hero model. Also I learned the hard way that Huskar has abysmal stats and he is only good because of how good his skills are.
cast depends on which slot the skill is (seriously valve?) i had a slardar with crush as his first spell (instead of sprint) and could crush everything without cast animation.
Rearm and sacrifice. I was level 14 at 16 minutes. Unfortunately our riki fed hard despite having possibly the best abilities of anyone. I also couldn't really farm because of that and the fact that I didn't really have any other good abilities so my plan of getting a huge level advantage and facerushing them ended up not working but it was hilarious.
(On Legion Commander) Napalm, Bladefury, ET Aura, Lesh Ult. Anything with 3+ stacks of napalm instantly died to bladefury. Had a 20 charge bloodstone at 20 minutes. Could solo their team twice and be fine. Utterly broken.
(On Storm Spirit) Napalm, Essence Aura, Overload, Chakram. Infinite mana, spam napalm and chakram all day, every attack is overloaded.
Just played a game of Spirit Breaker with Greater Bash and Chemical Rage. Rage on such an innately tanky hero is insane.
I played a game last night against a Huskar who managed to secure Berserker's Blood, Flaming Spear and Flesh Heap.
It was very, very painful.
Although not as painful as the CK with Chemical Rage and Reality Rift.
I really wish you could talk to teammates in the draft. I played one game where I had two really mana expensive normal spells and a mana expensive ult. Sacrifice was in the pool so I figured I'd get that to fuel it all. Instead the Death Prophet on my team right before me picked it up, and she had a cheap ult and one cheap normal spell. -_-
I also discovered that OD's high Int growth is a key factor in Arcane Orb/Essence Aura being viable. I tried it on Warlock but his stat growth wasn't quite good enough to rely on the procs to keep manad up. So despite maxing Essence first I was still constantly out of mana.
Got Rearm + Nature's Guise + Shrapnel + March of the Machines....
Unfortunately it was on a venomancer and my mana pool was terrible. I knew it was going to be a problem, but my whole team agreed I should take rearm as first pick and by time the pick got to me a 2nd time there were no stun-nukes or any other rearm-gank combos left in the pool.
I ended up with Boots, bottle, force staff, linken's and manta which was almost enough to really be a pushing powerhouse, but I still needed like 300 more mana or just have had everything come online sooner. I probably should have gone soul ring, but I just way under-estimated the mana costs early on. I thought with Shrapnel being cheaper to cast I could easily push/farm the mid game with that and transition to a later on motm + shrapnel strategy.
Also played against someone with sniper & fiery soul, take aim, and venomancer wards.... ouch.
I'd say sticky napalm combined with DoTs with many instances are one of the strongest combinations. Played a clinkz with napalm + ion shell earlier today, there was nothing the opposing lane could do. At level 2, one point in napalm one in ion shell, the ion shell deals 130 damage/second with one stack, and adds 100 dmg/second per stack of napalm. Its impossible to go near a ioned creep, and with a lvl 4 napalm you add 250 dmg/second per stack. If you get one shell off and two stacks in a fight your opponents can only run.
Darc pact(10 instances) and diabolic edict(32 instances) are also very potent with napalm.
given there are snipers headshot and voids timelock, and they are united on one hero. how would htey interact? not connected at all, so we have 40%sniper and 25%void bash? or would htey add up to 65%bash + the sum of their both dmg?
On February 01 2014 01:12 Rodberd wrote: given there are snipers headshot and voids timelock, and they are united on one hero. how would htey interact? not connected at all, so we have 40%sniper and 25%void bash? or would htey add up to 65%bash + the sum of their both dmg?
Most likely they would just have separate calculations each hit, and if they both hit, one should have priority over the other.
On February 01 2014 01:12 Rodberd wrote: given there are snipers headshot and voids timelock, and they are united on one hero. how would htey interact? not connected at all, so we have 40%sniper and 25%void bash? or would htey add up to 65%bash + the sum of their both dmg?
Most likely they would just have separate calculations each hit, and if they both hit, one should have priority over the other.
Doubt there is much priority, I expect that both effects proccing simply means that both occur, which means the damage stacks but the stuns obviously wouldn't. Only when both proc of course. Yes you would end up with over 50% chance to cancel TP's on hit though.
PS: I got Windranger ulti and Void bash on one hero. Permabash was gud
On February 01 2014 01:12 Rodberd wrote: given there are snipers headshot and voids timelock, and they are united on one hero. how would htey interact? not connected at all, so we have 40%sniper and 25%void bash? or would htey add up to 65%bash + the sum of their both dmg?
Most likely they would just have separate calculations each hit, and if they both hit, one should have priority over the other.
Doubt there is much priority, I expect that both effects proccing simply means that both occur, which means the damage stacks but the stuns obviously wouldn't. Only when both proc of course. Yes you would end up with over 50% chance to cancel TP's on hit though.
PS: I got Windranger ulti and Void bash on one hero. Permabash was gud
Well, in wc3 Dota, bashes didn't stack, at least on ranged heroes. It's not something Ability Draft should break, it already exists ingame if you pick Basher/MKB with Sniper. Stuns stacking actually is relevant. If they stack, the longest one will apply, if they don't, it may be the shortest one. IIRC in wc3 it was the one you adquired last.
I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Animation should honestly matter as much as range, so even if you evened out ranged/melee composition, you'd get fucked by having a hero with a shit cast animation. Laning shouldn't actually matter that much, it's just that people try to play this too much like normal DotA, but when you get to cherry pick the best skills from a pool of heroes like this, you should end up with powerful fighting heroes that are just running around killing each other from the beginning.
The best way would actually be for you to draft your hero model from the pool, either as your first or last pick.
On February 01 2014 02:29 Mataza wrote: I'm like 90% sure that the skills come with their original cast animations, not using those of your hero.
Well then you are 90% wrong
Cuz while certain abilities don't use their hero's cast animation, most do. Sniper, for example, takes around a second to use enchant totem
Some abilities have set animations tho it's true (gale always instant for example).
I had enchant totem with 4 different heroes, and it always took the same time as it does with Earth Shaker. Also Sniper's cast animation is only 0.3 seconds, while Shaker's is 0.69 seconds. Enchant Totem always takes 0.69 seconds.
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
I dont get what's the point of letting people pick skills in such a ridiculously small pool
just played with bloodseeker and the other 9 heroes were only spellcasters, so it's GG game guaranteed right away cause every spell is expensive. What 's the fucking point of letting them pick anyway? Half of players are picking 3-4 spells of their heroes any fucking ways.
Just random every single skill. And it doesnt waste all this time for no reason
On February 01 2014 03:17 Fatalize wrote: I dont get what's the point of letting people pick skills in such a ridiculously small pool
just played with bloodseeker and the other 9 heroes were only spellcasters, so it's GG game guaranteed right away cause every spell is expensive. What 's the fucking point of letting them pick anyway? Half of players are picking 3-4 spells of their heroes any fucking ways.
Just random every single skill. And it doesnt waste all this time for no reason
Feel free to play the D2Ware random skills mode (it's been around for a while).
Picking skills is FUN! You can buy arcanes to afford spells jesus. Randoming skills rarely lets you do shit like Slardar Bash + Void Bash + Spirit Breaker Bash for ultimate bashlording. Which is mega-fun to do every once and a while, even if it isn't the most balanced lol.
I don't think I've ever saw someone draft their own 4 spell, and even 3 was extremelly rare. Drafting skills is kinda the point of the game mode, it's hardly an useless feature. They could add the random skills mode, which would be even better if they also added -dm, but it wouldn't be a stricly better game and it would be even less serious.
agreed. if you do'nt like the mode because you think it's pointless it's probably because you're looking at the skill draft from too narrow a mindset. Just because you have a bloodseeker doesn't mean you can't play him as a support role if you just change your item builds. Yes if you draft only high mana cost spells as a BS, get no passives, but still build things like Sange and Yasha on him, them you're doing it wrong.. not the game mode.
Mana boots fix a lot of your mana problems. I played support AM last night with malifice, cold feet, split earth, and earth spliter. Went mana boots into blood stone into necro. It felt good running around as a spell using, ward placing, AM.
Also, am's ult animation looks pretty sick for earth spliter
I just got Fury Swipes, Overpower, Split Shot and Focus Fire on a Medusa. Roshan never knew what hit him and the enemy team melted just as quickly whenever their Ghost Sceptres were down. Apparently Split Shot secondary targets gets their Fury Swipes count increased each time they are hit but only the main target takes the bonus damage.
And earlier today I had a Vengeful Spirit with Berserkers Blood, Bash, Warcry and God's Strength. Was insane as well. Super gankers are more interesting to play though.
On February 01 2014 03:47 Kreb wrote: Holy fuck is Untouchable good on str (or any tanky) heroes. And more than good, super fun rofl. Im never not first picking it again!
I had a ck with untouchable, corrosive skin, spell shield, and weave proceeded to get vanguard, shiva's, ac, heart
you literally got one autoattack off every 4 seconds
Not sure if mentioned. If you get Silencer, you steal Int as it is Silencer's built in passive.
Had a game as VS with Enchant Totem, Greed, Flak Cannon and Call Down. Farmed so well lol. Shame it was on VS. Sniper with DK ult also has some interesting range...Was getting shot by him 567389 yards away.
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
Except melee heroes with ranged orbs (Treant, for example) are incredibly strong.
On a side note, Storm Spirit with sticky napalm, overload, and nethertoxin with treant ultimate is hilarious to play.
On January 30 2014 14:57 me_viet wrote: I want to get something like Tree with Untouchable, Berserker Blood/, Flesh Heap, + Random ult
How would you even kill that? lol
I've gotten bristleback and manashield on a DS before, it's literally raid boss status
oh wait the best I've had is WD ult with guise... casting spell don't reveal you and I Just hide in the trees team wiped them like 3 times hahahah
also my friend got thirst and spider-web on a ranged hero, it is sooo strong... you're invis, you can attack the enemy hero w/o him ever hitting back. And when he's low you get insane +dmg and movespeed you just go kill him
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
I really think they should have used single draft instead of RD.
Give each person an exclusive pool of like five heroes and let them pick their chassis and all spells without having to fight for them, or random.
90% of the advantages of RD, like counterpicking and being able to plan a team, are irrelevant here. About all that's left is bumrushing the strong combos and hoping your opponents don't know them. That's only going to get harder as people wise up, too.
Letting people choose from all skills would definatelly not work, it would be all about everyone picking the single most obnoxious combo. The game being broken is fun, but not if everyone always has the same OP combo every game and almost nothing else is practical. Limiting it to a certain set of heroes for each person would just mean that some players would get far better skills than others, and it would make the game even more random.
If the best thing you can do is hope the opponents let you pick a strong combo, and that's getting harder as people wise up, that means games will be more balanced and skill choices will be more meaningful.
DP with Storm Bolt, Burrowstrike, Natural Order and Earth Splitter is p fun guys.
And honestly so was Tree with Living Armor and then other useful stuff. I was disconnected through the picks in my first game and ended up with Living Armor, Gust, Repel and Pulse Nova, and it really wasn't as shit to play as I had expected. You're so unbelievably helpful in teamfights and skirmishes with damage block, magic immunity, push and silence.
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
since when is meele a problerm....pick an orb like frost arrow/posion attack = problem solved
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
since when is meele a problerm....pick an orb like frost arrow/posion attack = problem solved
There uh what only 6 regular skill orbs in the game + psi blades, impetus, and take aim?
Had some fun games today, with a nya with hook thirst homing missile and rupture. Was surprisingly succesful, even though we never get to point were targets survived long enough to be killed by rupture ->hook. Also the number of stuns a hero can have is ridiculous. Later I had shackleshot split earth and visage birds on one hero, easy 8+ second stuns if the shackle lands.
so many bugs, so many skills not working properly just takes the fun out if half the skills you draft actually have no effect cuz its bugged and u wasted 40 minutes on a game where u do nothing since u play without skills :/
i just played a support brew with untouchable, bristle back, attendants, and chemical rage. First item hood of defiance, into mek and finish pipe, then ac, and finally heart. I tanked their fountain as our carry ench got rampages. so fun XP
On February 01 2014 09:22 teddyoojo wrote: so many bugs, so many skills not working properly just takes the fun out if half the skills you draft actually have no effect cuz its bugged and u wasted 40 minutes on a game where u do nothing since u play without skills :/
I'm surprised when some things work, like when I saw a Sven take Searing Arrows and enter the lane shooting creeps from 500 range away.
Haven't tried the mode out yet, but been churning my brain for possibilities.
Something like Quill Spray, Bristleback Untouchable and Dream Coil (actually, another ult might be better for this) on an innately tanky strength hero looks fun
On February 01 2014 02:04 Kipsate wrote: I think they should either make sure there is an even composition of ranged vs melee or change the random factor of the draft. Right now if you are melee against ranged you are pretty much just fucked unless there are orbs in the pool.
Could not agree more, this game mode can be fun, but very broken. Out of the 8 games I've played I've had a melee hero 7 times. 5 range vs 4 melee, its hardly ever fair. They should make it so every team has like 2str 2 intel 1 agi or some combination of that. I'm not sure, the concept is cool but it is hardly ever fair.
since when is meele a problerm....pick an orb like frost arrow/posion attack = problem solved
because there is enough for every hero right? you think they are in the pool every game? things like that get taken almost first pick...common sense, its a good skill to have
My first game I got Skywrath. For abilities I drafted tombstone, shackle shot, rocket flare, and life drain. Skywrath's intelligence gain is quite good for spammy builds.
So teammate had silencer and used dragon form... his range in that form was 972. Towers could not touch him, was so stupidly hilarious. I wonder what dragon form on sniper with his range passive would be like...
Isn't Mana Shield toggling supposed to trigger Aftershock? I drafted that combo yesterday expecting to own shit up, but nothing happened and I ended up with a completely useless hero. Was it patched out?
rly ability draft is annoying me so much everygame i have a combo that just doesnt work or spells simply do nothing and are bugged i just drafted timberchain AS TIMBERSAW and it has about 5 seconds of animations for some reason
On January 31 2014 00:40 GGitsJack wrote: Some notable builds I managed to get today:
Rearm with tiny combo and rhasta lightning. even though it was on bounty hunter it felt like playing a juiced up version of tinker, just going around the map flash farming creep waves and raping people damage wise.
Ion shell, battery assault with duel, managed to end up with +350 damage with duel, that plus 2 divine rapiers meant I had around 1.1k damage per hit. I saw the combo in the picking screen and was pretty happy it worked out, just shell, battery blink duel gg.
How the hell did you live through the early game? I went duel, battery assault, cogs and some other skill and it did NOT work out :D
Mid, try get someone to gank for you at level 6 even. I've gotten this combo twice now, first time I scored nightmare as a 3rd so was able to walk up and duel quite easy, second time had doppelwalk so just managed to kill the guy before i even hit level 6.
Treant with Untouchable, Spell Shield, Spiked Carapace, Pulse Nova.
We were losing heavily for a long time, only our Naix with AM Blink plus Focus Fire and a basher were stopping them from running us over. And then my build started to come online.
By the end of the game I was 4500hp just driving the whole enemy team away with Radiance and Aghs Pulse Nova while being completely unkillable.
On February 01 2014 20:18 Scorch wrote: Isn't Mana Shield toggling supposed to trigger Aftershock? I drafted that combo yesterday expecting to own shit up, but nothing happened and I ended up with a completely useless hero. Was it patched out?
No toggles trigger aftershock, at least LoD it didn't, nor should it. Would be dumb
I got Riki ult for Zeus and it would not work for upwards of 7-8 minutes at a time. I didn't even attack or move. Hell, I stayed in fountain a good half-minute to see if it would activate. What the fuck.
On February 02 2014 06:15 plasmidghost wrote: I got Riki ult for Zeus and it would not work for upwards of 7-8 minutes at a time. I didn't even attack or move. Hell, I stayed in fountain a good half-minute to see if it would activate. What the fuck.
It's a visual bug that occurs on Riki as well. The ult is active, it just doesn't show on you at all.
On February 02 2014 06:15 plasmidghost wrote: I got Riki ult for Zeus and it would not work for upwards of 7-8 minutes at a time. I didn't even attack or move. Hell, I stayed in fountain a good half-minute to see if it would activate. What the fuck.
It's a visual bug that occurs on Riki as well. The ult is active, it just doesn't show on you at all.
Oh, well fuck. I kept avoiding fights because I thought I was visible
It's funny how one game, you can build something completely imba, and the next game you end up with a shitty hero who sucks at everything, has skills with no synergy and not enough mana to use them. Only having 5 seconds to pick doesn't help either.
My best and most fun build of today was a Storm Spirit with Fiery Soul who zapped around for mobility and attack speed stacks, with Static Remnant and Nethertoxin to supercharge his damage output.
Medusa with incapacitating bite, ck crit, ice shards and walrus punch... was pretty much dominating my lane until someone on the other team abandoned. I think this would have wrecked everything that game with the ability to kite and prevent people from escaping. In particular, I really like the incapacitating bite + Medusa's 600 attack range. Made for some pretty OP harass.
On February 02 2014 10:57 Scorch wrote: It's funny how one game, you can build something completely imba, and the next game you end up with a shitty hero who sucks at everything, has skills with no synergy and not enough mana to use them. Only having 5 seconds to pick doesn't help either.
The best is when you manage to do both in the same game. One game drafted a storm spirit with aftershock/pugna blast/static remnant/echo slam. I was completely useless for the first 20 minutes or so, but then I got my arcanes/blink and became earthshaker on steroids, doing absurd amounts of stun and damage in an aoe.
You have to weigh getting your own skillset and ruining the combos your enemies try to build. Even Enchant Totem can be useless if you don't get any skill that combines well. I had that on Huskar, and boy, is Huskar bad without Berserker Blood.
arcane bolt with 2 sec cd + essence aura (unli mana) + blink (unkillable) + shadow dance for movespeed and a oh fuck button ...
as long as you can see your enemies and you can click fast enough then you will be fine .. just spam arcane bolt everytime you see an enemy and use blink to chase and escape
On February 02 2014 23:41 FFGenerations wrote: how is it different? i could play this all day except i have to sleep all day coz i was playing all night
At the start of the game, each player gets ~9 heroes to choose their 4 abilities with
So, I might have say - Slark, Huskar, Tusk etc you get the point,
Player B will have - Magnus, Pheonix etc etc up to 9
Using your heroes, you choose your 4 abilities from your 9 heroes - which you have ~ 1 - 2minutes to choose your entire pool
You don't compete for skills of the same hero
You don't 'random' a hero, you choose your hero once you have selected your 4 abilities (your hero is one of the 9)
No 2 heroes are in the same draft, i.e. we both can't have slark for example
All the shitty bugs i.e orb attack on melee becomes ranged are fixed
This 'ability draft' is pathetic compared to the original but has the potential to be just as good
So nice, got Venge with Svens stun and Kunkkas torrent. Guaranteed hit every time, ganking and owning mid was pure ez. Had vacuum and illusion wall as well, but only got to use it once because we dominated all game, ended something like 50-5.
Venge is such a sweet char to get, great stats gains.
On February 02 2014 23:41 FFGenerations wrote: how is it different? i could play this all day except i have to sleep all day coz i was playing all night
At the start of the game, each player gets ~9 heroes to choose their 4 abilities with
So, I might have say - Slark, Huskar, Tusk etc you get the point,
Player B will have - Magnus, Pheonix etc etc up to 9
Using your heroes, you choose your 4 abilities from your 9 heroes - which you have ~ 1 - 2minutes to choose your entire pool
You don't compete for skills of the same hero
You don't 'random' a hero, you choose your hero once you have selected your 4 abilities (your hero is one of the 9)
No 2 heroes are in the same draft, i.e. we both can't have slark for example
All the shitty bugs i.e orb attack on melee becomes ranged are fixed
This 'ability draft' is pathetic compared to the original but has the potential to be just as good
ugh pls volvo
That's not even the original. That's merely one of several ways it existed on Wc3, it wasn't the first one and imo not the best one.
On February 03 2014 00:08 run.at.me wrote: All the shitty bugs i.e orb attack on melee becomes ranged are fixed
That's not a bug though, they are spells with a range. It's why manually casting the orb of certain heroes that normally have them can slightly boost their attack range.
Huskar has 400 attack range but burning spears has 450 cast range. If burning spears is on auto cast then it's only 400 range, if it's manually cast it's 450 because it works as a spell with a range.
It might be broken and it might need to be changed, but it's not a bug.
My favorite was Natural Order + Finger of Death. Had Blink Strike to set it up, was on Spirit Breaker for added hilarity. Was not practical, would play again.
I cant play this anymore without a stack, or at the very least I have to be super greedy and pick hard carry every game. Makes me sad when I draft a super sick support then look around and see that the closest thing our team has to a carry is a tidehunter with ursa passive, ursa ult, anchor smash, and tinker rockets. It kind of blows my mind how many people (on both teams) cant figure out how to draft a good hero.
Haha so fun mode my bests until now are Undying with bersekers call, voids bash, rocketbarage, chronosphere lion with enigmas summons,spiked carapace,hex, blackhole Elder titan with natural order,centaurs stun,blink,freezing field
It's really fun to play until you lane with a guy who picked 3 auras on int hero, skilled them in a completely wrong - useless way and afk farms, wont help harass or kill the enemy heroes.
I think they need to have the ability options be more random; having 10 of them be the full set of abilities on the heroes chassis that were randomed really takes away from the feel of it being a whole different game to me. It's more like the abilities are shuffled around then you're drafting from a wide set. Also, i'm surprised they didn't include more of the good features and known issues from omg mode. It's not like this is totally new, there's years of experience with it.
This mode makes you realize how fucking OP shukuchi is and how fucking useless Weaver is without it. He's like unplayable in this mode unless you get an OP combo. Low health, slow, no particularly high damage.
My best game so far in this mode was one where I was AFK through the draft. I tabbed in, saw 30 seconds on the clock and thought I was about to miss the first wave of creeps. Immediately buy tp and boots and TP mid, turns out it was 30 seconds before the creeps spawn. I was tide with huskar passive (the one that increase attack speed based on hp lost), cm aura, nature's attendants, and boat. I was against a mirana with take aim and huskar orb (1000 range flaming spears). I managed to get my bottle in a reasonable time, and not die in lane. One of my teammates roamed mid with a stun a couple times and I got some easy kills. Grabbed me some treads and a helm of dom. My attack speed was truly insane once I got low, and with the lifesteal and boat I was virtually unkillable. Got a mjollnir and just charged at people, lols were had and the game ended with a score of 26-3
I found Weaver to be really useless without Shukuchi or Time Lapse as well. I think I tried to deny too many things while not picking particularly well; I ended up with Essence Shift, Geminate Attack, Flak Cannon and Sanity's Eclipse (this one was an accident, I was trying to get Dual Breath or Ice Path or something because I didn't realize I didn't have an ultimate yet and so it randomed).
My personal favourite draft was the Kunkka model with Arcane Bolt, Mystic Snake, Dark Pact, and Permanent Invisibility. I went Basilius, Arcane boots, then disassembled them into Tranquils once I got the other components for Eul's. Then I built Bloodstone. We lost anyways because the other team had Essence Shift + Flak Cannon + Chronosphere on Gyrocopter, but it was extremely fun in a game where mysteriously nobody bought sentries. The natural tankiness of Kunkka's 3 str/level made it really easy to itemize int and MS.
My most successful draft was the Silencer model with Untouchable, Essence Shift, Incapacitating Bite, and Insatiable Hunger. I went for Treads > Oblivion Staff > Rod of Aui > Orchid > Sheep. I don't think my item choices mattered in the slightest, because nearly their entire team had skilled for right clicks, and we had Purification and Guardian Angel, in addition to my untouchable. I stole a lot of int that game. I found I didn't really need to itemize attack speed that much, because in long fights I ended up getting tons of Essence Shift stacks anyways.
I find I prioritize denying Essence Shift when facing long-ranged heroes... Would it be more important to deny that, a bash, or an imba steroid like Insatiable Hunger?
Tiny ult on any hero with a decent attack animation is godlike.
Shukuchi + battery assault.
Luna can be a very interesting support choice. Her high base movespeed means you can ignore boots for a while and her stat growth is not bad. Give her some low mana cost spells and it's like a crystal maiden on speed.
I played only one time. I was veno, picked first 2 skills of timber(both pure), mana drain of lion and AA ulti. Basically I was an endless damage machine. Only problem was the shit stats of veno but I am ok with it. Did some feeding but eventually win against a trilane. I don't understand why people trilane and tryhard in RAD mode. This is an unbalanced fun mode dammit.
Had an absurd lategame combo the other day. Was Medusa. And I basically took all of her abilities. Except I switched out Mystic Snake for Enchantress' Untouchable. That skill is downright BROKEN if you get it with Mana Shield. You just don't die unless the entire other team blows all of their nukes on you. They can't autoattack at all and I'm just chilling in the middle of every teamfight with Split Shot.
Unfortunately by the midgame they did and they could. I'd survived my lane ok but the outer lanes got pretty fed and couldn't hold on for long enough for me to farm up.
On February 03 2014 20:36 -Celestial- wrote: Had an absurd lategame combo the other day. Was Medusa. And I basically took all of her abilities. Except I switched out Mystic Snake for Enchantress' Untouchable. That skill is downright BROKEN if you get it with Mana Shield. You just don't die unless the entire other team blows all of their nukes on you. They can't autoattack at all and I'm just chilling in the middle of every teamfight with Split Shot.
Unfortunately by the midgame they did and they could. I'd survived my lane ok but the outer lanes got pretty fed and couldn't hold on for long enough for me to farm up.
Had a centaur who picked grow, untouchable, ginada and blur. The guy was imposible to kill due his absurd strength gain
On February 03 2014 13:59 Fumanchu wrote: Tidebringer, Jinada, enchant totem, grow. Easily the best possible combination you could hope for. Especially once you get shadowblade.
Level 11 you auto crit over 1000 in a splash every 6 seconds.
I would like to see a tree with alchemist ulti, naix rage, blink, and some kind of bash, like slardar or headshot (dunno if headshot would work on melee though).
On February 03 2014 21:19 run.at.me wrote: why are half the heroes never drafted? doom? TB? seems as tho its always the likes of viper, enchant, eartshaker, sven etc and maybe 25 others
Heroes with skills that require more than four keys are excluded. I assume this is to stop people ending up with skillsets that need D and F twice.
I'm not sure why TB isn't in. Probably just because he's new.
On February 03 2014 21:19 Razyda wrote: I would like to see a tree with alchemist ulti, naix rage, blink, and some kind of bash, like slardar or headshot (dunno if headshot would work on melee though).
You're better off with viper or drow orb on Tree, it's brutal.
On February 03 2014 22:52 -Celestial- wrote: Oh also a friend of mine made the classic ultimate pick mistake.
He first picked Luna ult and didn't have back to back picks. Of course the other team immediately took Lucent Beam away from him.
Ha, I was just gonna ask why you'd need Lucent Beam. I had no idea the ult was based on that skill. I learned so much about the game playing AD already.
Makes you wonder why he didn't just pick lucent beam to begin with. The only other option after that is that someone else takes a useless ultimate or you get the ultimate for free.
on any str hero, best on chaos knight (starting moving speed 325) pretty op since pubs could not handle much of invisibility
earth shaker's totem kunkka's tidebringer bounty hunter's jinada sven's strength of god
item build phase boot, yasha, blink dagger
other notable combos aftershock is crazy good with blink, and works good with no cd ult, i.e. chakram laguna blade, lightning bolt, sacrafice, decrepify for early game
Speaking of broken stuff, Mana Shield and Split Shot toggling is working with Fiery Soul and Essence Aura. Does it proc Aftershock and Static Field or was it patched?
Ranged tidebringer is very close to the most busted thing possible in this game. Adding enchant totem is just outright unfair
The only thing that denied me my 1-hit rampage was reincarnation
Also I'm 1-0 Lifetime vs the Ran/DTB stack in this mode. Ez. E:
On February 03 2014 23:31 robaq wrote: Speaking of broken stuff, Mana Shield and Split Shot toggling is working with Fiery Soul and Essence Aura. Does it proc Aftershock and Static Field or was it patched?
Those 2 were patched to not be procced by 0-mana toggles although I think WD heal and other mana-costed toggles still work.
On February 03 2014 23:25 SeakayKu wrote: on any str hero, best on chaos knight (starting moving speed 325) pretty op since pubs could not handle much of invisibility
earth shaker's totem kunkka's tidebringer bounty hunter's jinada sven's strength of god
item build phase boot, yasha, blink dagger
other notable combos aftershock is crazy good with blink, and works good with no cd ult, i.e. chakram laguna blade, lightning bolt, sacrafice, decrepify for early game
I'm getting over the what-if builds, unless they change ability draft back to how LoD was, it will never happen. You'd be lucky to get 2 of the skills you wanted.
Ability draft is trash currently, waiting on them to build on it.
Yeah its hard to get some of the more busted combos without others scooping up the abilities you want (and even just having them all in the pool tbh) but I did get Tidebringer + enchant totem (see above) once and it totally worked. Key is to be ranged though. Sure god's strength woulda been nice but Jinada doesn't even feel that relevant. Some other guy stole my jinada/walrus punch in the draft I mentioned and in the end I wasn't even mad.
BTW builds based around bash on ranged heroes actually suck in my experience. It feels really powerful until you realize that it only works if you are miles ahead in which case anything would have worked. Only attempt if you can secure windranger ulti (for the rosh permabash )
Bash on ranged heroes, maybe, but we had a game with a clinkz that managed to get fury swipes and LC heal (there was also overpower and strafe to choose from, so many +Attack speed spells!) and he just ripped through everyone. Ranged fury swipes is so ridiculously powerful.
Its funny how much better LC heal is when compared to shit like strafe lol.
Also clinkz is a terrible base model (Awful animation, stat gain, damage, everything except range) but obviously you can still make a good hero out of him.
On February 03 2014 22:52 -Celestial- wrote: Oh also a friend of mine made the classic ultimate pick mistake.
He first picked Luna ult and didn't have back to back picks. Of course the other team immediately took Lucent Beam away from him.
Ha, I was just gonna ask why you'd need Lucent Beam. I had no idea the ult was based on that skill. I learned so much about the game playing AD already.
It happens in normal games too sometimes when you get a Luna who gets aura+glaives then wonders why her ult isn't doing anything. But AD just takes it to a whole other level with potentially being unable to ever make it do anything.
On February 03 2014 23:24 kaztah wrote: Makes you wonder why he didn't just pick lucent beam to begin with. The only other option after that is that someone else takes a useless ultimate or you get the ultimate for free.
I know. I don't think he realised that you need Lucent for it to work.
They really, really badly need to add in chat though. Its really hard to organise unless you're all on mics. :-\
As far as this Clinkz thing goes. Honestly I've always hated Clinkz's attack animation. Frankly I can last hit better on Lina than I can on Clinkz, even with her insane windup time.
On February 03 2014 13:59 Fumanchu wrote: Tidebringer, Jinada, enchant totem, grow. Easily the best possible combination you could hope for. Especially once you get shadowblade.
Level 11 you auto crit over 1000 in a splash every 6 seconds.
except you cant proc enchant totem
? are you thinking of aftershock or smth or is there some interaction with tide/jinada/enchant totem I'm not aware of
Jinata+Liquid fire on a mele cary hero. Liquid fire gives you a free 500 range attack that stacks with your damage + Jinata slow and bonus damage. Pair that with a 3rd normal skill and possibly flesh golem, and you'll be doing infinite damage my friend.
Overload + (insert spammable spell) + BristleBack ult is simply unfair. Actually scratch that, Overload and any random spammable spell is stupidly good on ranged heroes. I don't think it's as good when it's on mele heroes because you can't harass people in lane, though it still works.
Aftershock + spammable slow like goo. Fuck this combo. Infinite stun, no mana cost.
Enchant totem on a ranged hero. Level 5 will have you chunking people in lane for 20% of their health. Simply ridiculous.
I tried the aftershock goo combo once. Had leshrac with split earth and lesh ult as well. Learned that toggling lesh ult doesn't trigger aftershock... And as soon as they noticed what was going on they just ff'd me down every fight. I'd almost always get the person I stuck on, but the other 4 would just throw every nuke they had my way. Went a tank build and still couldn't survive T.T
And then my team had generally useless spells so they couldn't exactly clean up =p
This mode seems to lose its appeal after 3 or 4 games. Usually heroes are either incredibly overpowered, or a little underpowered. Most all games I've been in have had a laning phase centered around 'oh I didn't know he had that', into a lategame with a 950 range Mirana, or 1.0 BAT earthshaker, or some crazy passive combo that annihilates everyone.
I'm sure 8/10 players most games do the initial ability picks, and immediately wish they could go try a new game because they didn't get anything great.
On February 04 2014 04:18 Xxazn4lyfe51xX wrote: I tried the aftershock goo combo once. Had leshrac with split earth and lesh ult as well. Learned that toggling lesh ult doesn't trigger aftershock... And as soon as they noticed what was going on they just ff'd me down every fight. I'd almost always get the person I stuck on, but the other 4 would just throw every nuke they had my way. Went a tank build and still couldn't survive T.T
And then my team had generally useless spells so they couldn't exactly clean up =p
It kinda weird how aftershock work because toggling Mana shield does proc Fiery Soul. Thus you would expect that aftershock give similar affect when toggling ability like lesh ulti but it doesnt :/. Same can be said about voodoo restoration which doesnt proc after shock as well. I am not sure if they also proc fiery soul.
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: Usually heroes are either incredibly overpowered
Thats the whole point
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: Most all games I've been in have had a laning phase centered around 'oh I didn't know he had that',
Yeah its hilarious
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: into a lategame with a 950 range Mirana,
Hows that different from a 950 range sniper?
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: or 1.0 BAT earthshaker,
... So?
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: or some crazy passive combo that annihilates everyone.
this is the best kind because it means somebody successfully assembled megatron or whatever. GJ to them!
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: I'm sure 8/10 players most games do the initial ability picks, and immediately wish they could go try a new game because they didn't get anything great.
Its true, 8/10 players are pretty fucking stupid and can't figure out how to draft sweet-ass heroes.
I mean, yeah the game isn't infinitely deep like real dota but its got enough replayability that its always good for a laugh IMO.
On February 04 2014 04:18 Xxazn4lyfe51xX wrote: I tried the aftershock goo combo once. Had leshrac with split earth and lesh ult as well. Learned that toggling lesh ult doesn't trigger aftershock... And as soon as they noticed what was going on they just ff'd me down every fight. I'd almost always get the person I stuck on, but the other 4 would just throw every nuke they had my way. Went a tank build and still couldn't survive T.T
And then my team had generally useless spells so they couldn't exactly clean up =p
It kinda weird how aftershock work because toggling Mana shield does proc Fiery Soul. Thus you would expect that aftershock give similar affect when toggling ability like lesh ulti but it doesnt :/. Same can be said about voodoo restoration which doesnt proc after shock as well. I am not sure if they also proc fiery soul.
When ability draft was released, aftershock DID work with toggles, and it was stupid. Valve quickly patched it out.
Just played against a Witch Doctor with Blink, Rocket Barrage, Frostbite and Freezing Field.
Holy shit that was cruel..he blinks on to you ---> dead
later he added an aghanims to the fun
edit:
Hahaha the enemy team just allowed me to get zeus' passive, afterschock and quill spray on bristleback. Didnt even need to skill my ultimate until when I had to ; D Buy BKB, run into enemy team, spam W and have fun.
i'm with sn0_man if you play RAD, just play for the hell of it and to have fun and understand that sometimes youg et good shit, sometimes you don't, but if you plan ahead, you won't be completely useless. but people normally only queue once. don't get it. pick something awful. lose to a melee with ranged orb, or ranged with melee passives, and immediately rage/quit THIS IS DUMB, and never come back. fine by me. get out. then finally i can play with more people who actually want to playt he mode. it's for fun.
look at this game. we got crushed hard by lich carry, but it was hilarious cuz we ALL knew (all pubs) as a team that this mode is meant for laughs and potential for greatness. not the other way around. everytime we'd get a kill we'd laugh our asses off at how bad we were.
Nature's Guise + Magic Missile + Thunder Strike was dreamy since both nukes do over the standard 300 damage and have pretty managable cooldowns. It's so much fun just nuking teams without revealing yourself then watching them all scramble around trying to figure out where you are.
On February 04 2014 06:52 Logo wrote: Nature's Guise is so much fun in Ability Draft.
Nature's Guise + Magic Missile + Thunder Strike was dreamy since both nukes do over the standard 300 damage and have pretty managable cooldowns. It's so much fun just nuking teams without revealing yourself then watching them all scramble around trying to figure out where you are.
Omg i just thought of a hilarious combo. Nature's guise, tinker rockets, essence aura, rearm. guerrilla warefare at it's finest. Endless stream of rockets from the trees.
The dream is Enchant Totem + Jinada + Tidebringer + Grow on Treant. 3k AoE crits with no items at level 16. If you get aghs and phaseboots, you're doing like 6k aoe damage because of double cleave.
You're never gonna get all those abilities together obviously, but still.
On February 04 2014 07:22 cecek wrote: The dream is Enchant Totem + Jinada + Tidebringer + Grow on Treant. 3k AoE crits with no items at level 16. If you get aghs and phaseboots, you're doing like 6k aoe damage because of double cleave.
You're never gonna get all those abilities together obviously, but still.
I think the gamemode is really fun, even though i screwed up a few heros horribly. Luna with fury swipes and eclipse = no ult and no lifesteal :/ Didn't get any of the gg combos yet.
But my tendency to overpick passives and build for lategame led to hilarious ursa with no active skill (well ult can be). Fury swipes + corrosive skin + curse of avernus + borrowed time. Turns out everything you touch dies gets permaslowed and dies pretty quicklick, you dont die yourself and roshan is pretty easy
On February 04 2014 09:30 GtC wrote: If greater bash does damage based on ms, would having chrono or thirst massively increase your bash damage output?
Well 40% of 1000 is 400 so yeah those are some big fuckin' bashes.
You've also made me wonder how stacking bashes are programmed in Dota 2. You can't have them normally because bash heroes just can't purchase basher. The best you can do is get MKB (which I believe stacks fully with everything, including itself, meaning you can proc a minibash on the same attack as another bash, a Headshot, or another MKB minibash).
Also I had a Bane with Chrono, Void bash, and Strafe in a game today. He bought Shadowblade and Mjollnir. It was fucking terrifying.
On February 04 2014 09:30 GtC wrote: If greater bash does damage based on ms, would having chrono or thirst massively increase your bash damage output?
Well 40% of 1000 is 400 so yeah those are some big fuckin' bashes.
You've also made me wonder how stacking bashes are programmed in Dota 2. You can't have them normally because bash heroes just can't purchase basher. The best you can do is get MKB (which I believe stacks fully with everything, including itself, meaning you can proc a minibash on the same attack as another bash, a Headshot, or another MKB minibash).
Also I had a Bane with Chrono, Void bash, and Strafe in a game today. He bought Shadowblade and Mjollnir. It was fucking terrifying.
I had a void the other day who had slardar bash + time lock.
He did have a really high proc chance, but he was still kind of useless because he gave up all his other skills to do it and had no mobility. I'd say it's not really worth it unless you can get a blink and an AS steroid as well.
I would assume they stack the way any other proc stacks; both roll and if they proc at the same time the one with higher damage triggers.
I drafted WraithNight with bloodrage, Vampiric Aura, Berseker Blood and Ressurection. No Keyboard Playstyle. Also web + pudge hook, shit coming out of nowhere.
On February 04 2014 08:56 Staboteur wrote: Any full-out woods builds?
I've done a Drow with Enchant + webs + Drow Aura + Drow Ult... and it worked, but mostly because of webs rather than effective use of the woods.
I had reactive armor + counter helix on earth shaker (also had dragontail and borrowed time but they werent really relevant for jungle part obviously) I had VERY efficient jungle, finished treads mek before 9 minutes and just got my team to push with me, tanking everything ezpz. Was very fun had vanguard in few minutes after that, then went shivas into heart. Ult was complete waste but its all that was left.
Jihada + Enchant Totem + Drow Aura + Drow Ult, on the enemy team Vengeful was pretty dirty. Came out just one-hit critting for 1500 at lvl 11, somehow we won though, felt great:D Popping blademail vs her was funny. Oh and I blindly stole Rosh with Pugna using fissue, like a bawss. Only in AD, and ya i was just checking rosh
I was phantom assasin with Slarks leap, Voodoo restoration, web and slarks ulti. I had such high HP regen. It wasn't a great build but we won. being on webs counted as being unseen and activated slarks ulti.
On February 04 2014 15:51 Jaaaaasper wrote: I got qop blink and scream to go with earthshaker ulti and passive on lion, and went like 18-4 with a ton of assists. That was a really good combo.
On February 04 2014 15:51 Jaaaaasper wrote: I got qop blink and scream to go with earthshaker ulti and passive on lion, and went like 18-4 with a ton of assists. That was a really good combo.
On February 04 2014 04:33 fdsdfg wrote: I'm sure 8/10 players most games do the initial ability picks, and immediately wish they could go try a new game because they didn't get anything great.
Its true, 8/10 players are pretty fucking stupid and can't figure out how to draft sweet-ass heroes.
I mean, yeah the game isn't infinitely deep like real dota but its got enough replayability that its always good for a laugh IMO.
My main problem seems to be that its always someone on the other team that builds Megatron while the randoms on my team (haven't played it in a full stack yet) almost always end up with useless combinations which don't make any sense and take up otherwise strong ultimates. While I'm stuck with a decent hero (not quite overpowered or at least not as strong as Megatron) and do decently until the laning stage ends when Megatron proceeds to destroy our whole team and by the time the team has realised that we need to focus him down we are already so far behind that it doesn't matter.
Maybe I have just had bad luck or something, I think I'm about 2 wins for 8 losses so far in ability draft.
Edit: I do agree that it's a game mode that should be good for some laughs, but it's kind of discouraging getting crushed so many games in a row.
I'm noticing how big a deal it is to have dip abilities that work with only one point. If all three of your non-ultimate abilities need to be maxed to be effective, you don't really come into your power until levels 12-14.
Oh man I just remembered the Earthshaker who had Untouchable and Berserker's Blood. It was the funniest but most frustrating shit ever. COULDN'T DO DAMAGE TO HIM.
The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
4 days ago i was trying out this mode for the first time. Mainly getting crushed in my games all day. So i decided to talk it up with some teamspeak mates.. and visit tl.net for some insight ^^
Yesterday i played like 7-8 gamez or so. In 1 of those gamez I got tinker in 7th position i think. I was sure im not getting rearm... but hey. Too much good heroes were available. So i took rearm as my first choice. They also allowed me to get the following spells: Overwhelming odds, Press the attack, Curse of the silent. I was teleporting in, hammered the arrows into the enemies, cursed them fools, healed everyone on my team that needed it. And ported out. It. Was. Fun.
One game erlier i had bane. Gave him the combo sticky napalm and overload. Nice laning i tell you ^^ But that was not all. They let me have rocket flare and ice blast, too. When i wasnt wrecking the lane, i was kill securing(xD) everwhere else. Glorious killing - much fun.
Last game i had dragon knight. I thought to myself, lets gank! xD Got: Ice shards, Flak cannon, Sadist and Elder Dragon Form. I didnt build BKB, cause than it would have been too easy. But the combo Flak Cannon + Ulti was so much dmg....
Ability draft really motivates me to play more dota2. Even though, 9/10 gamez are either "we wreck the enemie team" or the opposite, while 1 game is close and takes at least 45+ minutes.
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
Oh I mute people really quickly, too bad you can't mute pings but meh I can ignore that. I just wish people would pick their fights more intelligently in AD sometimes. I love to go for crit- and/or aoe-heavy passives, a combination that needs +attack speed and a basher since I don't have any stuns. So with a build like that I need a couple of items. At the same time, I don't want to just farm up while seeing my teammates lose in 4v5 scenarios so I often end up not farming and being too late for the fights T_T
That's kind of the point with AD though. There's a natural bent towards early aggression, because that's the obvious result of allowing people to choose their skills.
Every hero gets - in theory - even better at what it's supposed to do. For the gankers, teamfighters and pushers, this generally means that they come online sooner and harder and are more difficult to deal with. As a result, everyone is incredibly efficient at killing things and the game moves much faster.
Comparatively, for a multi-passive carry, your 6-slot becomes unreal... but that doesn't help at 15 minutes when the other team's OP wombo combo is in full effect. 4-protect-1 is tough enough in normal dota right now.
Try Sacred Arrow on Brewmaster His model is slightly skewed to the left of where he walks, meaning the Arrow shot gets skewed. Having to shoot the right amount to the left of where the hero you want to hit is, gives skillshotting an entire new meaning.
is THD's duel breath bugged? seems on synderens stream, the first 'breath' doesn't do damage, whereas the second breath does (from memory, theres 2 higher blasts of dmg then damge over time)
he's zeus, dno if that has any significance,
doesn't look likes synderens picked up on it either.
On February 04 2014 22:14 run.at.me wrote: is THD's duel breath bugged? seems on synderens stream, the first 'breath' doesn't do damage, whereas the second breath does (from memory, theres 2 higher blasts of dmg then damge over time)
he's zeus, dno if that has any significance,
doesn't look likes synderens picked up on it either.
Like this?
Jakiro Dual Breath burn and slow duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds Dual Breath DPS increased from 5/10/15/20 to 16/36/56/76 Dual Breath damage interval improved from every 1 second to every 0.5 seconds Dual Breath Attack Speed slow increased from -20 to -30 Removed initial impact damage from Dual Breath
On February 04 2014 22:14 run.at.me wrote: is THD's duel breath bugged? seems on synderens stream, the first 'breath' doesn't do damage, whereas the second breath does (from memory, theres 2 higher blasts of dmg then damge over time)
he's zeus, dno if that has any significance,
doesn't look likes synderens picked up on it either.
Jakiro Dual Breath burn and slow duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds Dual Breath DPS increased from 5/10/15/20 to 16/36/56/76 Dual Breath damage interval improved from every 1 second to every 0.5 seconds Dual Breath Attack Speed slow increased from -20 to -30 Removed initial impact damage from Dual Breath
Touche, lol, I haven't played this patch yet ;( exams
enemy night stalker with chronosphere didn't have much fun when i realized that I as a void can also walk around and hit stuff inside his chronosphere C:
On February 04 2014 22:45 fusefuse wrote: enemy night stalker with chronosphere didn't have much fun when i realized that I as a void can also walk around and hit stuff inside his chronosphere C:
I had an Omniknight on my team the other day pick up Chronosphere and we had a Void too. So they'd just drop chronosphere then run in together and start hitting away together.
Admittedly it didn't help much due to the epic feed from Omni and one or two others on my team. But it was a pretty neat strategy to see. If you got it on something like an Antimage the two of you could act as a roaming, blinking chronosphere kill team.
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
Oh I mute people really quickly, too bad you can't mute pings but meh I can ignore that. I just wish people would pick their fights more intelligently in AD sometimes. I love to go for crit- and/or aoe-heavy passives, a combination that needs +attack speed and a basher since I don't have any stuns. So with a build like that I need a couple of items. At the same time, I don't want to just farm up while seeing my teammates lose in 4v5 scenarios so I often end up not farming and being too late for the fights T_T
Building those kind of heroes is like throwing the game
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
Oh I mute people really quickly, too bad you can't mute pings but meh I can ignore that. I just wish people would pick their fights more intelligently in AD sometimes. I love to go for crit- and/or aoe-heavy passives, a combination that needs +attack speed and a basher since I don't have any stuns. So with a build like that I need a couple of items. At the same time, I don't want to just farm up while seeing my teammates lose in 4v5 scenarios so I often end up not farming and being too late for the fights T_T
Building those kind of heroes is like throwing the game
Yeah. If you have only passives you're kinda just deadweight.
Ion shell + sticky napalm is incredibly broken. I had an ally build it on spirit breaker and he could just melt enemies. He maxed napalm first, then ion shell. Enemy HP bars were sliding to the left at such a fast rate, it was hilarious.
Everything with many instances over short time is kind of broken.
Ion shell, rocket barrage, dark pact and mystic flare all do one instance of damage every 0,1 second, so it's just to multiply the extra napalm dmg by 10 and number of stacks to get how much damage per second you get.
4 stacks of lvl 4 napalm and all of a sudden dark pact is a 1000 dmg aoe nuke.
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
Oh I mute people really quickly, too bad you can't mute pings but meh I can ignore that. I just wish people would pick their fights more intelligently in AD sometimes. I love to go for crit- and/or aoe-heavy passives, a combination that needs +attack speed and a basher since I don't have any stuns. So with a build like that I need a couple of items. At the same time, I don't want to just farm up while seeing my teammates lose in 4v5 scenarios so I often end up not farming and being too late for the fights T_T
Building those kind of heroes is like throwing the game
Yeah. If you have only passives you're kinda just deadweight.
It depends on the passives. If you've got Blade Dance, Vamp Aura and Gravekeeper's plus Reincarnation, yeah, you're probably deadweight. If you have Curse of Avernus, Essence Shift, Unstable Current and Grow!, then yeah, you're probably pretty damned effective.
Dispersion, Backtrack, Bristleback + Borrowed Time for the funniest passive build. But it was better in Wc3 when multiple triggered heals actually healed you.
On February 04 2014 19:39 Mandalor wrote: The only gripe I have with this game mode is that people want to fight waaaay too much. It seems like once the laning phase is over, our opponents just 5 man push the mid towers for the rest of the game. There's just no time to ever farm up / I get pinged at and insulted constantly cuz I don't sit at the tower for minutes in case something happens. Otherwise this is a ton of fun. I can't see myself playing this alone tho. If you're with 2 or more friends, the likelyhood of you getting really strong combinations is so much higher.
Just mute them, ability draft is for fun, you don't have to follow their orders. The reason people do that though, is not surprising, they want to test their ability combos. If they wanted to farm items they would be playing normal dota. I'm sort of the same, I play WAY more aggressive in ability draft, picking nice stun combos and so on. Doesn't mean I'm being an ass to people who want to farm though, so the guys are just being pricks, mute em.
Oh I mute people really quickly, too bad you can't mute pings but meh I can ignore that. I just wish people would pick their fights more intelligently in AD sometimes. I love to go for crit- and/or aoe-heavy passives, a combination that needs +attack speed and a basher since I don't have any stuns. So with a build like that I need a couple of items. At the same time, I don't want to just farm up while seeing my teammates lose in 4v5 scenarios so I often end up not farming and being too late for the fights T_T
Building those kind of heroes is like throwing the game
Yeah. If you have only passives you're kinda just deadweight.
I had a Chaos Knight who took Backtrack, Reactive Armour, Mirror Image, and Guardian Angel. He stated early on that his plan was to rush Radiance and farm up and be unkillable. It was pretty painful but we did eventually win. I couldn't complain anyway because I'd done a silly draft with Battle Hunger, Time Walk, Repel, and Fiend's Grip on Shadow Shaman (my plan was to go mid, get fast level 6, and be a ganking terror with a blink and an uninterruptable Grip while the target eats BH damage, I ended up hard supporting though so that didn't work out lolol).
Oh yeah and I found out that Glaives doesn't work on melee heroes.
You just end up with a million glaives spinning in place forever.
On February 05 2014 01:11 Gowerly wrote: Lots of things and sticky napalm is completely broken. I had Sticky Napalm + Rocket Barrage + Liquid Fire. I literally melted people.
On February 05 2014 04:38 LuckoftheIrish wrote: Has anyone given any thought to putting together a guide to AD?
Much, much too srs.
If you want tho you can do an ability-tier type thing.
Tier 1: REALLY FUCKING BUSTED tidebringer rearm (needs a combo skill tho usually). shukuchi Tier 2: Always busted every mobility skill (blink, leap, global tp, pounce, most invis, etc) Tier 3: Busted situationally castable orbs on melee heroes, walrus punch, enchant totem, busted melee passives on ranged heroes (jinada/mana burn etc), most busted ults Tier 4: Filler but good most stuns Tier 5: SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT The rest.
I'm not thinking in terms of tiers, just because so much depends on combinations. I'm thinking more in terms of how to build towards accomplishing specific goals, how to itemize with particular skills, ways to get the most out of particular heroes and some common trap/mistakes. (And since March and Missiles will always be in the pool with Ream, Rearm has stuff to combo with.)
On February 04 2014 21:26 Dubzex wrote: Just a note: if you play nighstalker and you get aghs, you still get the aoe vision around him even without his normal ult.
That's neat. Get Nightstalker, pick an ult with a good Agh's upgrade. Profit
My friend once drafted NS ult and other team drafted the passive. Most useless ult ever . Has anyone ever drafted something like Shadow walk + Shukuchi + Skeleton walk + Permanent invisibility? Rushing shadowblade mandatory
svenstun-visagenuke-skywrathnuke(the scaling one) and wall of replica (well, there wasn't any dmg left).
sry for the names... But the first 15 mins of the game were hilarious... "nukenukenuke":.. To bad my stun was also the only stun on my entire team and everyone else decided to go for "antimage whiteout blink"-skills -.-
On February 04 2014 21:26 Dubzex wrote: Just a note: if you play nighstalker and you get aghs, you still get the aoe vision around him even without his normal ult.
That's neat. Get Nightstalker, pick an ult with a good Agh's upgrade. Profit
On the flipside, the aghs scepter upgrade doesn't work with the ult on other heroes.
I love just drafting as many disables as possible so you can chain stun people ridiculously just on your own.
hookshot + thunerclap snowball + slithereen crush shukuchi + mana shield + poison sting (then just building linkens) skeleton walk + nukes/stuns (calldown, frost nova).
also had a fun one with a bane with storm hammer, frost nova, shackles and death ward.
EDIT: and one with tiny with great cleave, untouchable, grow and a 4th i can't remember. Just the ridiculous base damage after lvl 3 grow with the cleave was hilarious.
I've found the best thing to do is focus on grabbing 2 abilities with synergy and working from there. Sometimes you get lucky and can grab more, but trying to make the most busted combo you can out of 2 abilities generally works best.
Also, never underestimate fiery soul. Most broken ability in this mode.
i got a tinker and picked laser, rocket and static storm. went blink and aghanims asap. 3 skills get buffed by aghanims lol also saw a sniper with grow, precision aura, bloodrage and range. he hits like a fucking truck
i just played against a dark seer with ion shell , rot , hearth stopper aura and riki´s ulti... that was the most frustrating build i have ever seen... he even rushed a radiance and a shivas Q.Q
I made the mistake of picking fiery soul on drow thinking I was going to have some awesome combo, then realised there wasn't a single spell or ability with a low cd or for less than 100 mana to pick with it
But it turns out Spirit Lance works really well with any hard carry, so I was still able to do a lot of damage (with drow ulti/passive to finish off my skills)
If anyone wants a guide, there are really just 3 things to take note of:
1) Be familiar with your basic hero stats
Some heroes are butt awful without their iconic skills. So if you get Weaver but can't get any of his skills, he is most probably going to suck. Same with alchey without his ulti, Night stalker without his passive, etc. On the other hand, some heroes have great stat growths and you should bear these in mind (e.g. Punga with any int scaling spell).
If you have shitty hero, don't wory. Go support. Normally in AD no one wards so you'll be contributing to your team a lot more than trying to gank with lousy stats. You should also try to block the opponent's draft by taking skills they want. When blocking skills, remember you don't need to take the whole combo to block, just the key skill. This allows you to block more stuff by selectively taking skills.
Public AD games are usually decided in the first 30 minutes. If your build takes level 12 and 2 expensive items to get online, you're probably useless. Also, focus on skills that have great gains for 1 skill point. That way you can start being active as soon as possible. If in public games, picking a huge amount of passives is almost a sure way to lose because you never get to the point where all your auras come online AND you will need a team mate/item to hold someone in place so you can kill them.
If you have the luxury of playing with friends, then having one farmer/carry (again figure out who has the best stat growth) would be good. Warning though, EVERYONE is going to try and take the carry passives, which makes building a good set difficult.
Specific Skills that are great:
I just want to highlight two that most people don't talk about:
Borrow Strike. This is a blink AND a stun AND a nuke, and it is a great initation skill. Pair it with another or nuke and you're good to go.
3) Roles
Generally, play aggressively and try to gank as much as possible. This is why initation and mobility skills are so great.
Keep in mind that focusing on particular roles is generally going to get you no where. For exmaple, lots of people think that they are going to build a hero that is tanky as shit, and so pick a skill set like reactive armour, dragons blood, bristleback, or evasion. Sure you'll be super hard to kill, but you also contribute nearly nothing to fights (unless you can farm up items). So what is going to happen is that people will just ignore you since there is no need to kill you. Similarly focusing on being super DPS is uselss if you don't have a stun or disable, since everyone will just run away from you.
On February 05 2014 13:44 levelping wrote: If anyone wants a guide, there are really just 3 things to take note of:
1) Be familiar with your basic hero stats
Some heroes are butt awful without their iconic skills. So if you get Weaver but can't get any of his skills, he is most probably going to suck. Same with alchey without his ulti, Night stalker without his passive, etc. On the other hand, some heroes have great stat growths and you should bear these in mind (e.g. Punga with any int scaling spell).
If you have shitty hero, don't wory. Go support. Normally in AD no one wards so you'll be contributing to your team a lot more than trying to gank with lousy stats. You should also try to block the opponent's draft by taking skills they want. When blocking skills, remember you don't need to take the whole combo to block, just the key skill. This allows you to block more stuff by selectively taking skills.
Public AD games are usually decided in the first 30 minutes. If your build takes level 12 and 2 expensive items to get online, you're probably useless. Also, focus on skills that have great gains for 1 skill point. That way you can start being active as soon as possible. If in public games, picking a huge amount of passives is almost a sure way to lose because you never get to the point where all your auras come online AND you will need a team mate/item to hold someone in place so you can kill them.
If you have the luxury of playing with friends, then having one farmer/carry (again figure out who has the best stat growth) would be good. Warning though, EVERYONE is going to try and take the carry passives, which makes building a good set difficult.
Specific Skills that are great:
I just want to highlight two that most people don't talk about:
Borrow Strike. This is a blink AND a stun AND a nuke, and it is a great initation skill. Pair it with another or nuke and you're good to go.
3) Roles
Generally, play aggressively and try to gank as much as possible. This is why initation and mobility skills are so great.
Keep in mind that focusing on particular roles is generally going to get you no where. For exmaple, lots of people think that they are going to build a hero that is tanky as shit, and so pick a skill set like reactive armour, dragons blood, bristleback, or evasion. Sure you'll be super hard to kill, but you also contribute nearly nothing to fights (unless you can farm up items). So what is going to happen is that people will just ignore you since there is no need to kill you. Similarly focusing on being super DPS is uselss if you don't have a stun or disable, since everyone will just run away from you.
That last paragraph seems so backwards. Drafting for a specific role seems like -exactly- what you want to be doing. The problem arises when there are holes in your team's skillset overall - For example, if three of your teammates all drafted "Passive-heavy farm-dependent carries" Then you're kind of fucked. Even if none of their builds are individually bad, the fact that you've now got to fit three essentially position-one cores into three lanes leaves extremely little space for your remaining two members to draft, and -chances are- at least one of the remaining two drafted more nukes and spells than their set can contain, so they -also- need farm to get themselves online.
So you end up with awkward greedy teams that can't get the money they need and end up with a bunch of shitty timings.
So it isn't that you shouldn't draft for a specific role, it's more that you should lean away from drafting a skillset that requires farm most of the time, because most of the time you're not going to be able to rely on getting it.
There -really- needs to be a way to communicate before / during drafting, so you can give your allies some idea of what you're going to try and do, so you can coordinate.
I recently had 2 very silly games, in another one I got Clinkz and last pick (2 skills in row) and they let me have Jinada and Enchant Totem (the rest I got were Skeleton Walk and Brood's Ult) so at level 8 I started to crit around 1000 and oneshot pretty much everyone, it was pretty hilarious with the lazy attack speed of clinkz and the sloppy flight of the arrow. Built blink so they couldn't really stop me from pre-cast totem and just jump in to shoot someone and run away. One of them managed to build blademail towards end but the game was already over.
Another one I got OD with Skywrath's spam nuke, essence aura and manashield, enemy Skywrath got so angry that after few deaths he started to jungle, died to neutrals and started to intentionally feed/cruise around the map being useless.
Ranged orbs on melee and some ridiculous passives on ranged like-wise seems pretty insane, though I personally enjoy getting bunch of good stuns/nukes and blink.
This game mode caught my interest by a far larger amount then I expected. As someone whos only been playing for 6months it is quite the learning experience feeling different heroes stat gains and how important some of their skills really are to them. I also found that I can't find a taste for dexterity heroes in this mode.
1st Pick is almost always a skill on the board that just look too good to pass up and/or too good to give to the opposistion. Perm invis/grow/chemical rage/living armour/reactive armour/take aim. 2nd 90% of the time a projectile stun, unless I took the only one as 1st pick. Then this is probably an OP passive. 3rd Would be a passive, some sort of low-cost aoe nuke or more lockdown. 4th Is almost always one of the leftover ultimates. I've found that most are situational utility, but no matter which one I get it's easy to put it to good use.
If im one of 4 last ones picking then I get all stuns/lockdown and push skills. How do you draft?
On February 05 2014 16:54 WakaDoDo wrote: This game mode caught my interest by a far larger amount then I expected. As someone whos only been playing for 6months it is quite the learning experience feeling different heroes stat gains and how important some of their skills really are to them. I also found that I can't find a taste for dexterity heroes in this mode.
1st Pick is almost always a skill on the board that just look too good to pass up and/or too good to give to the opposistion. Perm invis/grow/chemical rage/living armour/reactive armour/take aim. 2nd 90% of the time a projectile stun, unless I took the only one as 1st pick. Then this is probably an OP passive. 3rd Would be a passive, some sort of low-cost aoe nuke or more lockdown. 4th Is almost always one of the leftover ultimates. I've found that most are situational utility, but no matter which one I get it's easy to put it to good use.
If im one of 4 last ones picking then I get all stuns/lockdown and push skills. How do you draft?
I usually try to look for combos which look interesting (two ability combos, I think it's unreasonable to expect getting the really ridiculous 4 ability combos people like to theorycraft). After that, I look at what hero I got. If I get an int hero, I will almost always go for stun combos, so I can stunlock and gank a lot early. If I'm strength, I try to go for annoying initiation/tank style. If I'm agility, I start looking at carry passives.
If there is a good ultimate I want, I will usually go for it second pick, first pick is almost always a stun, regardless of my hero, stuns are just so god damn good in Dota. Otherwise, I do like you and just last pick a remaining ulti, I feel like the strength of ability draft comes more from your combination of normal skills than ultimates anyway.
The only rule I have for drafting is get as much lockdown as possible, regardless of base hero. I will first pick a spammable stun 100% of the time.
Chain stunning/nuking that used to require 2-3 people can now be done with a single hero. It's just way too good to pass up. Most people in AD try to draft a super hard carry so instead of trying to do the same, I let them farm and draft hero killing abilities and get gold that way. It's more fun and far more effective.
Like the guy a few posts above mentioned, Burrowstrike is probably the #1 spell in the game to take first. There is just way too much utility in the spell for either a support/ganker or a carry. The spammable combos that you can create through burrowstrike or similar aoe disables really allow you to control fights and the game.
As a tip for drafters, really look at all the options during that time before picking begins. Have a plan ready and secondary options/combos if your spell gets taken. Also be aware of where in the pick phase you are. If you are blue/pink or orange/brown you have a double pick (or close enough) at some point so use that to your advantage.
Stuns are ridiculously good in this mode for early game if you have a decently coordinated team. I solo queued an AD game today where our team ended up with basically every form of lockdown in the pool. Impale, burrowstrike, earth spike, spiked carapace, walrus punch, chrono. Obviously with all the stuns on one team, the game was rather lopsided.
Was a hilarious game too, as burrowstrike, earth spike and spiked carapace were all on our Ursa, who dubbed himself the Spike Lord. We also had a void, and I had chrono, so whenever I chrono'd, we had 2 heroes running around killing things in it.
On February 05 2014 13:44 levelping wrote: If anyone wants a guide, there are really just 3 things to take note of:
1) Be familiar with your basic hero stats
Some heroes are butt awful without their iconic skills. So if you get Weaver but can't get any of his skills, he is most probably going to suck. Same with alchey without his ulti, Night stalker without his passive, etc. On the other hand, some heroes have great stat growths and you should bear these in mind (e.g. Punga with any int scaling spell).
If you have shitty hero, don't wory. Go support. Normally in AD no one wards so you'll be contributing to your team a lot more than trying to gank with lousy stats. You should also try to block the opponent's draft by taking skills they want. When blocking skills, remember you don't need to take the whole combo to block, just the key skill. This allows you to block more stuff by selectively taking skills.
Public AD games are usually decided in the first 30 minutes. If your build takes level 12 and 2 expensive items to get online, you're probably useless. Also, focus on skills that have great gains for 1 skill point. That way you can start being active as soon as possible. If in public games, picking a huge amount of passives is almost a sure way to lose because you never get to the point where all your auras come online AND you will need a team mate/item to hold someone in place so you can kill them.
If you have the luxury of playing with friends, then having one farmer/carry (again figure out who has the best stat growth) would be good. Warning though, EVERYONE is going to try and take the carry passives, which makes building a good set difficult.
Specific Skills that are great:
I just want to highlight two that most people don't talk about:
Borrow Strike. This is a blink AND a stun AND a nuke, and it is a great initation skill. Pair it with another or nuke and you're good to go.
3) Roles
Generally, play aggressively and try to gank as much as possible. This is why initation and mobility skills are so great.
Keep in mind that focusing on particular roles is generally going to get you no where. For exmaple, lots of people think that they are going to build a hero that is tanky as shit, and so pick a skill set like reactive armour, dragons blood, bristleback, or evasion. Sure you'll be super hard to kill, but you also contribute nearly nothing to fights (unless you can farm up items). So what is going to happen is that people will just ignore you since there is no need to kill you. Similarly focusing on being super DPS is uselss if you don't have a stun or disable, since everyone will just run away from you.
That last paragraph seems so backwards. Drafting for a specific role seems like -exactly- what you want to be doing. The problem arises when there are holes in your team's skillset overall - For example, if three of your teammates all drafted "Passive-heavy farm-dependent carries" Then you're kind of fucked. Even if none of their builds are individually bad, the fact that you've now got to fit three essentially position-one cores into three lanes leaves extremely little space for your remaining two members to draft, and -chances are- at least one of the remaining two drafted more nukes and spells than their set can contain, so they -also- need farm to get themselves online.
So you end up with awkward greedy teams that can't get the money they need and end up with a bunch of shitty timings.
So it isn't that you shouldn't draft for a specific role, it's more that you should lean away from drafting a skillset that requires farm most of the time, because most of the time you're not going to be able to rely on getting it.
There -really- needs to be a way to communicate before / during drafting, so you can give your allies some idea of what you're going to try and do, so you can coordinate.
I'd have to disagree. My point is that three-passive-and-ult-carry builds are horrible because it is too specialised and depends on all kinds of stuff that won't happen. You will be entirely dependent on your team mates to stun, intitate and chase, and you can't do any of that because you want to be a DPS god. If you look at normal dota, the good carries will have utility spells that help them initiate, avoid damge, or chase.
Same for tanky heros - they have annoying abilities that make you need to kill them, isntead of ignoring them.
is it btw officially confirmed that ad makes no use of your hidden mmr rating? because the variety of skill is retarded. this isnt a normal mmr whine its just that it feels way way different to normal matchmaking
On February 05 2014 16:54 WakaDoDo wrote: This game mode caught my interest by a far larger amount then I expected. As someone whos only been playing for 6months it is quite the learning experience feeling different heroes stat gains and how important some of their skills really are to them. I also found that I can't find a taste for dexterity heroes in this mode.
1st Pick is almost always a skill on the board that just look too good to pass up and/or too good to give to the opposistion. Perm invis/grow/chemical rage/living armour/reactive armour/take aim. 2nd 90% of the time a projectile stun, unless I took the only one as 1st pick. Then this is probably an OP passive. 3rd Would be a passive, some sort of low-cost aoe nuke or more lockdown. 4th Is almost always one of the leftover ultimates. I've found that most are situational utility, but no matter which one I get it's easy to put it to good use.
If im one of 4 last ones picking then I get all stuns/lockdown and push skills. How do you draft?
I usually try to look for combos which look interesting (two ability combos, I think it's unreasonable to expect getting the really ridiculous 4 ability combos people like to theorycraft). After that, I look at what hero I got. If I get an int hero, I will almost always go for stun combos, so I can stunlock and gank a lot early. If I'm strength, I try to go for annoying initiation/tank style. If I'm agility, I start looking at carry passives.
If there is a good ultimate I want, I will usually go for it second pick, first pick is almost always a stun, regardless of my hero, stuns are just so god damn good in Dota. Otherwise, I do like you and just last pick a remaining ulti, I feel like the strength of ability draft comes more from your combination of normal skills than ultimates anyway.
I feel much like this too. People should generally look if they're an Agi/Str/Int hero and if Int->Try get at least 2 nukes/stuns/slows with damage, if Agi->At least 1 passive and at most 1 mana intensive skill (the typical 10-12 sec 300dmg stun/slow/nuke), sometimes 1 mana intensive + one not intensive works too. Str should probably be wary of the mana usage too, although it depends a bit on the hero. Timber can do a lot more with mana than many other for example.
I've seen a lot of int heroes insta-picking the typical "OP" passives (fiery soul, take aim, bashes, orbs, etc) and falling short because their hero is just not built to use them to do proper right click damage.
Then theres of course the picks that overrides all preferences. Shukuchi, Blinks, Perma-Invis, Other invis skills, Chemical rage and a few more. Those are good on all heroes and should probably be picked up asap if you get a chance.
Also something I think is good is to find a skill thats good with 1pt in it but doesnt require 4pts to be maxed. Examples would be, say, Doppelwalk (all heroes can use a 1pt escape), Dragon Tail (terrible scaling, awesome with 1pt, everyone can use a good stun), windrun, etc. These skills will very often complement your nukes if you're playing nuker and your passives if you're playing carry. And you just need to dump 1pt into them some time early and then max them lvl 12-14.
I had a Jakiro with Hex (from Rhasta) , Ice Path, Sprout and Macropyre.
Turned out as a pretty deadly combo, initiate with Ice Path, Sprout as many enemy heroes as possible, roast them with Macropyre and lockdown escapers with hex.
Too bad in the enemy team there was a Chrystal Maiden with Avalanche, Frostbite, Ensare, Mystic Flare which proved to be totally imbalanced... once caught -> guaranteed dead. Scariest 1v1 Chrystal Maiden you'll ever see.
I personally find God's Strength ridiculously powerful, since it stacks with any other potential booster. Very first game someone rolled my team with God's Strength and Jinada on a ranged hero. I can only imagine what it would be like with Tidebringer...or even worse, Static Link.
On February 05 2014 13:44 levelping wrote: If anyone wants a guide, there are really just 3 things to take note of:
1) Be familiar with your basic hero stats
Some heroes are butt awful without their iconic skills. So if you get Weaver but can't get any of his skills, he is most probably going to suck. Same with alchey without his ulti, Night stalker without his passive, etc. On the other hand, some heroes have great stat growths and you should bear these in mind (e.g. Punga with any int scaling spell).
If you have shitty hero, don't wory. Go support. Normally in AD no one wards so you'll be contributing to your team a lot more than trying to gank with lousy stats. You should also try to block the opponent's draft by taking skills they want. When blocking skills, remember you don't need to take the whole combo to block, just the key skill. This allows you to block more stuff by selectively taking skills.
Public AD games are usually decided in the first 30 minutes. If your build takes level 12 and 2 expensive items to get online, you're probably useless. Also, focus on skills that have great gains for 1 skill point. That way you can start being active as soon as possible. If in public games, picking a huge amount of passives is almost a sure way to lose because you never get to the point where all your auras come online AND you will need a team mate/item to hold someone in place so you can kill them.
If you have the luxury of playing with friends, then having one farmer/carry (again figure out who has the best stat growth) would be good. Warning though, EVERYONE is going to try and take the carry passives, which makes building a good set difficult.
Specific Skills that are great:
I just want to highlight two that most people don't talk about:
Borrow Strike. This is a blink AND a stun AND a nuke, and it is a great initation skill. Pair it with another or nuke and you're good to go.
3) Roles
Generally, play aggressively and try to gank as much as possible. This is why initation and mobility skills are so great.
Keep in mind that focusing on particular roles is generally going to get you no where. For exmaple, lots of people think that they are going to build a hero that is tanky as shit, and so pick a skill set like reactive armour, dragons blood, bristleback, or evasion. Sure you'll be super hard to kill, but you also contribute nearly nothing to fights (unless you can farm up items). So what is going to happen is that people will just ignore you since there is no need to kill you. Similarly focusing on being super DPS is uselss if you don't have a stun or disable, since everyone will just run away from you.
That last paragraph seems so backwards. Drafting for a specific role seems like -exactly- what you want to be doing. The problem arises when there are holes in your team's skillset overall - For example, if three of your teammates all drafted "Passive-heavy farm-dependent carries" Then you're kind of fucked. Even if none of their builds are individually bad, the fact that you've now got to fit three essentially position-one cores into three lanes leaves extremely little space for your remaining two members to draft, and -chances are- at least one of the remaining two drafted more nukes and spells than their set can contain, so they -also- need farm to get themselves online.
So you end up with awkward greedy teams that can't get the money they need and end up with a bunch of shitty timings.
So it isn't that you shouldn't draft for a specific role, it's more that you should lean away from drafting a skillset that requires farm most of the time, because most of the time you're not going to be able to rely on getting it.
There -really- needs to be a way to communicate before / during drafting, so you can give your allies some idea of what you're going to try and do, so you can coordinate.
I'd have to disagree. My point is that three-passive-and-ult-carry builds are horrible because it is too specialised and depends on all kinds of stuff that won't happen. You will be entirely dependent on your team mates to stun, intitate and chase, and you can't do any of that because you want to be a DPS god. If you look at normal dota, the good carries will have utility spells that help them initiate, avoid damge, or chase.
Same for tanky heros - they have annoying abilities that make you need to kill them, isntead of ignoring them.
Those are kind of special cases, though. You've picked the two most useless roles, including one which isn't even a role ("we need a tank!"), and then concluded that targeting a role is bad.
Targeting a role isn't bad in and of itself. Ganker, initiator, teamfight utility, snowball and midgame carry are all excellent roles to fill. The problem is that nobody wants to take those roles because omg critzzz.
Don't confuse stacking passives with specialisation in general.
Sven's ult, with any passive critical skill. As long as you have a good primary stat gain, it lets you get huge crits with a minimal gear requirement.
Geminate attack on sniper is insane with his fast animation and projectile.
Any three stun build is crazy, and you can cast any spell from under riki or treant's invisibility. Combine these with the absence of wards in this mode, you can build a great initiator/ganker that is almost unstoppable.
A friend of mine encountered a guy who had Lina passive and Medusa shield. You can just spam the medusa ability, and you'll have an insane amount of attack speed throughout the entire game. That game made him not want to play AD anymore
Any three stun build is crazy, and you can cast any spell from under riki or treant's invisibility. Combine these with the absence of wards in this mode, you can build a great initiator/ganker that is almost unstoppable.
I had naga with riki's invis, riptide and slardar stun. riptide pretty much instant, so i could just use riptide followed by the stun(the stun has more AOE now, so it won't miss) Riptide took their armor, and sladar stuns was fisical, good overall dmg without being revealed.
Meepo abilities and base model can't show up in AD. There's a lot of heroes like that, including all heroes with more than 4 total possible abilities including subabilities (puck, beastmaster etc are disallowed based on this).
The complexity depends on how hero abilities are implemented to begin with. The way Multicast works, it has to be made to interact with most spells. Because it's originally intended for use by one hero, I don't think it is coded in a way that it transforms other skills on the fly. What likely happens behind the scenes is that Ogre's skills have built-in multicast states that activate when the ultimate is leveled. This makes applying it to custom spells a massive pain in the ass, as you would have to add a multicast variant to each of the other spells.
Also Multicast normally grants Unrefined Fireblast as well, and Ability Draft doesn't allow heroes with more than four slots.
After having played this a few times some things I noticed are:
- don't get too many spells on a strength or agility hero; having a 3x stun Earthshaker sounds nice but it's useless of your oom after 2 spells. - Tidebringer is insane if you combo it with anything. Winning a teamfight is pretty easy if you crit Tidebringer with Coup de Grace. - Track is a really really good spell. I don't think there's a single ability I would pick over this.
On February 06 2014 03:48 Talin wrote: Also Multicast normally grants Unrefined Fireblast as well, and Ability Draft doesn't allow heroes with more than four slots.
you get unrefined only when using ahgs on ogre.
i found it quite helpful to use track on supports when there are only offensive ults to pick.
my dream-setup: - treants - eidolons - summon wolfs (or replace with NP-tele) - CK ult
combine this with a necro3 and similar stuff, might be messy
On February 06 2014 03:48 Talin wrote: Also Multicast normally grants Unrefined Fireblast as well, and Ability Draft doesn't allow heroes with more than four slots.
you get unrefined only when using ahgs on ogre.
i found it quite helpful to use track on supports when there are only offensive ults to pick.
my dream-setup: - treants - eidolons - summon wolfs (or replace with NP-tele) - CK ult
combine this with a necro3 and similar stuff, might be messy
What about re-arm instead? Oh my god can you imagine the tree eidolon army?
On February 06 2014 03:48 Talin wrote: Also Multicast normally grants Unrefined Fireblast as well, and Ability Draft doesn't allow heroes with more than four slots.
you get unrefined only when using ahgs on ogre.
i found it quite helpful to use track on supports when there are only offensive ults to pick.
my dream-setup: - treants - eidolons - summon wolfs (or replace with NP-tele) - CK ult
combine this with a necro3 and similar stuff, might be messy
What about re-arm instead? Oh my god can you imagine the tree eidolon army?
Tree, eidolan, teleport, rearm
That has to be the quickest combo to finish a game
But imagine how much cash you would feed a decent cleaver!
Had enchantress and grabbed strafe+impetus+shackleshot for myself, but turned out pretty shitty since enchantress has such shit stat growth that you'll either die or not have enough mana to make a meaningful difference.
I've since come around to the "draft as many disables as you can support on your manabase" philosophy, but I did have one game where I got lina with Fiery Soul, Nasal Goo, Huskar Berserker's Blood and God's Strength - pewpewpew.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Rearm + Tombstone is just insane. Just set up shop right outside a tower and wait. All you need is to rush BoTs to go back to the well for mana.
synderen has tombstone + rearm right now on his stream, seems really mean stuff.
when you have totem + DoT-stuff, like disruptor-ult, BH, or liquid fire. will the increased dmg work during the whole duration of the other skill or just for the firs tick?
Riki with Backstab, Charge of Darkness, Spiked Carapace and Black hole. It was glorious.
I went mid vs an OD with fury swipes... I stayed far back until I got level 6. Then I just ganked with charge and black hole every chance I got. OD went Dagon as first item for some reason. They eventually ragequit.
I ended up against a Clockwerk with Enchant Totem + Walrus Punch, needless to say he was 1 shotting everyone from level 6... Ouch lol.
Last game I was Pugna and picked up Sticky Naplam with Sandstorm and Life Drain... It was glorious! Went Mek first into Aghs, once I had the Aghs it was retarded as I could chaincast Life Drain after dropping Napalm.
I went 28-2 and 700 gpm with a Death Prophet with Shukuchi, Glaives of Wisdom, Ice Block and Track, fully six slotted and right clicking away for 500 damage. Shukuchi is an insane skill. It allows you to be extremely aggressive while still being safe and gives you great mobility. Definitely first pick material on many heroes, even if it's not as flashy as "build around me" skills like Enchant Totem, Fiery Soul, Sticky Napalm, ranged orbs or carry passives.
I thought I was going somewhere when I managed to get Mist Coil, Double Edge, and Borrowed Time. But then I realized I didn't know what I was going to do besides live for a while and be annoying. Didn't have a good passive that went along with it.
Love the afk jungle builds... Feast, Kraken Shell, Blur. And then this PA went and got necro ult. He never really died, but also never did anything either. And he never actually had mana to use his ult. The 1 actual not passive spell he had cost more mana than his entire manapool up until like level 12. Sigh =p
I was playing a Tiny with Shikuchi and Germinate (which because you're melee, hits instantly and acts as a double damage hit) and Wrath of the thundergod. Not an attack you see coming. Stealth in, take off half someones hitpoints away in one punch, explode them with thunder. So much fun.
Haha, just managed to pick up Chemical Rage, Leech Seed, Press the Attack and Inner Vitality. The amount of self regen was quite silly.
And Im starting to value Leech Seed almost as 1st pick on most heroes. Its sick good. Above average damage (360 maxed). Slow which is good for chasing/escaping. Heal which is also good for escaping (seed your attacker then run). Incredibly good for manning up. It makes you not need any lifesteal/regen to sustain yourself farming. Oh, and its a 10sec CD team mek for everyone staying close to creep when you're pushing. Its pretty much my go-to nuke on any hero recently.
Played Shadow Shaman against Gyro with Blade Dance (Juggernauts crit), enchant totem, coup de grace. I had permastun build with aftershock arcane bolt arc lighting calldown. Copter hit pretty goddamn hard but had nothing to do when i got my euls up and just stand next to him throwing out stuff.
It was insane, just run in dropping a napalm and hit them for AoE Overload, Dark Pact into Overload, into Napalm, into Overload.... They are dead and they can't run.
Overload + Fiery soul + rot.... seriously just had the most rediculous game, if only I was on a ranged hero instead of pudge. Spam rot so every attack has the overload with super attack speed from fiery soul omg.
downright broken. sadly my team didn't do anything with the time I bought them and wouldn't fight with me when I got my hexstick and had permanent double hex ;__;
On February 09 2014 10:56 Megapenthes wrote: rearm + eidolons + sacrifice + hex
downright broken. sadly my team didn't do anything with the time I bought them and wouldn't fight with me when I got my hexstick and had permanent double hex ;__;
Could you sacrifice Eidolons over and over with rearm for infinite experience?
how does DK ult work in AD? i just played and a slardar took it, but he delt no dmg when he was in ult-from. he basically just placed snot-baals in the air which didnt move at all. but right now on wagas stream there is a naix who can use DK-ult and gets ranged attack and dmg.
On February 09 2014 23:44 Rodberd wrote: how does DK ult work in AD? i just played and a slardar took it, but he delt no dmg when he was in ult-from. he basically just placed snot-baals in the air which didnt move at all. but right now on wagas stream there is a naix who can use DK-ult and gets ranged attack and dmg.
DK ult is weird, it sometimes works, sometimes it bugs out like that. It depends on the hero and I don't think there's any logic to it.
On February 09 2014 10:56 Megapenthes wrote: rearm + eidolons + sacrifice + hex
downright broken. sadly my team didn't do anything with the time I bought them and wouldn't fight with me when I got my hexstick and had permanent double hex ;__;
Could you sacrifice Eidolons over and over with rearm for infinite experience?
Sadly you can't sacrifice summoned creatures. But you could sacrifice your creep waves pretty quickly.
The random ET I laned with top let me farm and I ended up going 22-0-28. I don't have much experience in this, but picking multiple passives (maybe defensive passives in particular) seems to work well. Impetus seems super strong.
I jsut played my first ability draft game after a month break of dota,
For some reason every hotkey was fucked, poisin sting was R, sonic wave was C... How do I fix? I use legacy... I unticked/ticked legacy box and doesn't fix it.
Will this always happen if my keys clash? I think because I had corrosive skin which is meant to be C, it just fucked every skill. Not to mention my timberchain was E, what a fucking nightmare.
edit: 2nd game, even without key clashes, hotkeys are retarded....whyyyy
On February 10 2014 11:09 run.at.me wrote: I jsut played my first ability draft game after a month break of dota,
For some reason every hotkey was fucked, poisin sting was R, sonic wave was C... How do I fix? I use legacy... I unticked/ticked legacy box and doesn't fix it.
Will this always happen if my keys clash? I think because I had corrosive skin which is meant to be C, it just fucked every skill. Not to mention my timberchain was E, what a fucking nightmare.
edit: 2nd game, even without key clashes, hotkeys are retarded....whyyyy
Your hotkeys on legacy will be the legacy hotkeys of the hero model you have. I'm guessing you were playing axe? Call (E), Hunger (R), Culling (C)? There's no way to fix this other than going to the QWER setup. It annoys me too =p
On February 10 2014 11:09 run.at.me wrote: I jsut played my first ability draft game after a month break of dota,
For some reason every hotkey was fucked, poisin sting was R, sonic wave was C... How do I fix? I use legacy... I unticked/ticked legacy box and doesn't fix it.
Will this always happen if my keys clash? I think because I had corrosive skin which is meant to be C, it just fucked every skill. Not to mention my timberchain was E, what a fucking nightmare.
edit: 2nd game, even without key clashes, hotkeys are retarded....whyyyy
Your hotkeys on legacy will be the legacy hotkeys of the hero model you have. I'm guessing you were playing axe? Call (E), Hunger (R), Culling (C)? There's no way to fix this other than going to the QWER setup. It annoys me too =p
I was OD lol... R for orb (that was sting, true)
So annoying, I purposefully pick skills that don't stack hotkeys, but still fails. Pls be more accommodating to the veterans
On February 10 2014 11:09 run.at.me wrote: I jsut played my first ability draft game after a month break of dota,
For some reason every hotkey was fucked, poisin sting was R, sonic wave was C... How do I fix? I use legacy... I unticked/ticked legacy box and doesn't fix it.
Will this always happen if my keys clash? I think because I had corrosive skin which is meant to be C, it just fucked every skill. Not to mention my timberchain was E, what a fucking nightmare.
edit: 2nd game, even without key clashes, hotkeys are retarded....whyyyy
Your hotkeys on legacy will be the legacy hotkeys of the hero model you have. I'm guessing you were playing axe? Call (E), Hunger (R), Culling (C)? There's no way to fix this other than going to the QWER setup. It annoys me too =p
I was OD lol... R for orb (that was sting, true)
So annoying, I purposefully pick skills that don't stack hotkeys, but still fails. Pls be more accommodating to the veterans
Then it would be an advantage to use legacy keys over QWER though. Although the best solution would be to do what you said, and have the original skills to prioritize mapping to the correct QWER key as well.
The amount of times I've had my hero just walk into 5 heroes (followed by "is this guy retarded?") because I was trying to press E for rocket flare on clock and instead it was on W... (because I picked it 2nd instead of 3rd)
When its on a different hero its not so bad, its just when its the original skill on the hero.
Logged in for the first time in ages to post this..
I don't know if it's just at my mmr or whether this is widespread but I am starting to get frustrated at this mode (which I enjoy greatly).
My question is, are somewhat standard games/strategies actually completely void in this mode? Or is this just the mundane thinking of some players who see gank oriented drafts and just want to run around killing people/fighting with their fancy new custom made hero?
The reason I am asking is because I have had several games recently where I have drafted late game/farm oriented spells (e.g greevil's greed, or a viable jungle build), only to have my team abuse me, tell me farming/jungling is useless in this mode and if I want to farm I should go play all pick, report me and tell the other team how useless I am (even if we won/I end up carrying).
It seems like almost everyone I see in this mode is only interested in disables, nukes, escapes and attack modifiers (which lets face it, are all fun/highly valuable spells in their own right.. But there are perfectly viable builds outside of drafting a 2 stun, 1 escape 1 nuke hero).
Just to throw an example out there - one of my favourite games in this mode was where I ended up with Lina (march of the machines, sadist, inner vitality and rearm). Went mid until travels and soul ring then basically had unlimited rearms/march of the machines due to soul ring/sadist and inner vitality without even having to return to the fountain via teleport/rearm..
tl;dr is nobody else interested in the viability of strategies/concepts in this mode outside of bash and crash teamwipes until someone wins?
Elder Dragon Form adds 372 range (melee range is 128) so Lina with Elder Dragon Form has 1022 range. I think the highest you could get currently is Elder Dragon Form + Take Aim on Lina which gives 1422 range. If TA and Terrorblade were in Ability Draft having Psi Blades and Metamorphosis as well would give Lina 2212 range.
On February 10 2014 17:32 IceSlipper wrote: Logged in for the first time in ages to post this..
I don't know if it's just at my mmr or whether this is widespread but I am starting to get frustrated at this mode (which I enjoy greatly).
My question is, are somewhat standard games/strategies actually completely void in this mode? Or is this just the mundane thinking of some players who see gank oriented drafts and just want to run around killing people/fighting with their fancy new custom made hero?
The reason I am asking is because I have had several games recently where I have drafted late game/farm oriented spells (e.g greevil's greed, or a viable jungle build), only to have my team abuse me, tell me farming/jungling is useless in this mode and if I want to farm I should go play all pick, report me and tell the other team how useless I am (even if we won/I end up carrying).
It seems like almost everyone I see in this mode is only interested in disables, nukes, escapes and attack modifiers (which lets face it, are all fun/highly valuable spells in their own right.. But there are perfectly viable builds outside of drafting a 2 stun, 1 escape 1 nuke hero).
Just to throw an example out there - one of my favourite games in this mode was where I ended up with Lina (march of the machines, sadist, inner vitality and rearm). Went mid until travels and soul ring then basically had unlimited rearms/march of the machines due to soul ring/sadist and inner vitality without even having to return to the fountain via teleport/rearm..
tl;dr is nobody else interested in the viability of strategies/concepts in this mode outside of bash and crash teamwipes until someone wins?
=p Strange. Where I'm at, every single person goes lategame. And then you have a team with 5 people who want to carry xD vs. another 5 carry team. So if you're the one person who picks a supporting 2 stun lineup, buy wards and go ganking, you auto-win the game for your team.
On February 10 2014 17:32 IceSlipper wrote: Logged in for the first time in ages to post this..
I don't know if it's just at my mmr or whether this is widespread but I am starting to get frustrated at this mode (which I enjoy greatly).
My question is, are somewhat standard games/strategies actually completely void in this mode? Or is this just the mundane thinking of some players who see gank oriented drafts and just want to run around killing people/fighting with their fancy new custom made hero?
The reason I am asking is because I have had several games recently where I have drafted late game/farm oriented spells (e.g greevil's greed, or a viable jungle build), only to have my team abuse me, tell me farming/jungling is useless in this mode and if I want to farm I should go play all pick, report me and tell the other team how useless I am (even if we won/I end up carrying).
It seems like almost everyone I see in this mode is only interested in disables, nukes, escapes and attack modifiers (which lets face it, are all fun/highly valuable spells in their own right.. But there are perfectly viable builds outside of drafting a 2 stun, 1 escape 1 nuke hero).
Just to throw an example out there - one of my favourite games in this mode was where I ended up with Lina (march of the machines, sadist, inner vitality and rearm). Went mid until travels and soul ring then basically had unlimited rearms/march of the machines due to soul ring/sadist and inner vitality without even having to return to the fountain via teleport/rearm..
tl;dr is nobody else interested in the viability of strategies/concepts in this mode outside of bash and crash teamwipes until someone wins?
=p Strange. Where I'm at, every single person goes lategame. And then you have a team with 5 people who want to carry xD vs. another 5 carry team. So if you're the one person who picks a supporting 2 stun lineup, buy wards and go ganking, you auto-win the game for your team.
Yeah this happens a lot. There's always atleast 2 people on your team that 2 pick passives, a carry orientated ulti (bonus points if it's another passive) and then their third skill is something random because there where no more passives to pick. What happens is that they are completely useless untill atleast 20/30 minutes in. And if the other team picked stuns/nukes/early game stuff then this is a pretty big problem. It's even worse if they did it on a int hero or a strength hero with bad stat gain.
It's so hard to get a really imba combo unless the other team is brain dead with their picks. I've played quite a few games so far, and I always end up with 1 or 2 skills that I had to pick just because there was nothing left that synergized with my build. And it's the same for the other players in the game. I did manage to get fiery soul + goo on antimage which was great damage late game but there wasn't much in the way of stuns or support abilities on the team so we did eventually end up losing.
The most effective single pick ability i've seen so far is viper poison orb on melee str heros. Played against a clockwerk and he destroyed everyone early game
I managed to draft QOP blink + flaming lassoo last night...
And another game with skeleton walk + frost arrows + reapers scythe ganking machine...
Also I love mystic snake on support heroes. nice way to harass in lane without being too mana intensive, and a decent way to contribute to pushes/get some farm when you find a free lane. had a mystic snake/hex/nightmare/serpent ward draft and pushed down so many towers early.
Played a game recently as Webstealer. Lifestealer with spin web, venomous bite, juggernaut's crit, and some random ulti. Played mid and just owned the lane with one point in spin web for the first ten minutes. Never even needed a bottle.
Just had a Blink Stike (PA), Battle Hunger, Headshot + Perm invis Legion Commander.
Forever chase and disrupt for this build. All I need is someone to start the fight I can jump on anyone, even their damage dealers, and perma stun or kill them. We have an Axe with Counter/Moment of Courage/Battle call and wolf form. He starts 1 fight in a 48 minute game. Le sigh.
On February 10 2014 17:32 IceSlipper wrote: Logged in for the first time in ages to post this..
I don't know if it's just at my mmr or whether this is widespread but I am starting to get frustrated at this mode (which I enjoy greatly).
My question is, are somewhat standard games/strategies actually completely void in this mode? Or is this just the mundane thinking of some players who see gank oriented drafts and just want to run around killing people/fighting with their fancy new custom made hero?
The reason I am asking is because I have had several games recently where I have drafted late game/farm oriented spells (e.g greevil's greed, or a viable jungle build), only to have my team abuse me, tell me farming/jungling is useless in this mode and if I want to farm I should go play all pick, report me and tell the other team how useless I am (even if we won/I end up carrying).
It seems like almost everyone I see in this mode is only interested in disables, nukes, escapes and attack modifiers (which lets face it, are all fun/highly valuable spells in their own right.. But there are perfectly viable builds outside of drafting a 2 stun, 1 escape 1 nuke hero).
Just to throw an example out there - one of my favourite games in this mode was where I ended up with Lina (march of the machines, sadist, inner vitality and rearm). Went mid until travels and soul ring then basically had unlimited rearms/march of the machines due to soul ring/sadist and inner vitality without even having to return to the fountain via teleport/rearm..
tl;dr is nobody else interested in the viability of strategies/concepts in this mode outside of bash and crash teamwipes until someone wins?
=p Strange. Where I'm at, every single person goes lategame. And then you have a team with 5 people who want to carry xD vs. another 5 carry team. So if you're the one person who picks a supporting 2 stun lineup, buy wards and go ganking, you auto-win the game for your team.
This is good to hear.. Guess ive just been unlucky lately..
I played a game as sniper with BH's Jinada. That guaranteed crit whenever I engaged was devastating. I literally one shot their Silencer at full health when I had a DD towards the end of the game. Also, I had Sniper's usual Assassinate ulti and was able to 2 shot most of their hero's with a Jinada crit + Assassinate about 15 min into the game.
Another Sniper build that I saw that was stupid OP was CK's crit, Drow's Frost Arrows, Luna's Bonus Dmg and Drow's Agility Bonus Ulti. Sniper was hitting like a freight train. Unfortunately the rest of our team wasn't as lucky on their draft and we still got rolled.
I just built an artillery Death Prophet with all the super long range skills: Sacred Arrow, Powershot, Torrent and Assassinate. All the skill shots were a lot of fun to play (though I'm terrible with Torrent), and the enemy heroes never knew what hit them.
Oh god the tick rate on Shadow Shaman's Shackles is way faster than I thought it was. Got that, Cold Feet, Sticky Napalm, and Dismember on AA. For first blood I got 8 stacks on somebody, Shackled them, and they just died instantly, funniest shit I've ever seen.
I tried to get AA's ulti too but someone else took it.
I managed to construct what I thought would be a really good draft on Drow with Marksmanship, Drunken Brawler, Gust, and Cogs, but sadly somebody abandoned in the first minute so I never got to see it pan out.
I thought I was being incredibly cunning and getting viper poison attack with bristle ulti. Didn't realise orb attacks didn't count as spell casts and ended up having a completely useless ulti
im waiting to get my hands on this combo: hook, fleshheap, X , rupture
than you can rupture, hook, forcestaff. that should be ebough movement to kill almost all heros that got hit. of not, add drow-silence for more knockback.
On February 12 2014 17:51 Rodberd wrote: im waiting to get my hands on this combo: hook, fleshheap, X , rupture
than you can rupture, hook, forcestaff. that should be ebough movement to kill almost all heros that got hit. of not, add drow-silence for more knockback.
it's actually not that strong lol, if you really wanna be gosu, go rupture + toss + skewer and buy a blink dagger + force staff
Blink in, rupture + skewer 1000 range, toss 1300 range back and force staff another 1000 range = 1980 hp removal + 350 initial rupture damage + 360 toss damage + 280 skewer damage = 2970 damage lollol, add in hook for another 1000 damage lol.
Now that's alot of damage, and the combo can't be blocked by bkb lol
On February 12 2014 20:33 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: I haven't tried it yet but has anyone tried Mirror image and Rearm? couldn't you sit in fountain and make 100s of images?
Nah
Too busy rearming a bazillion pugna wards to watch people exploding from a TP.
On February 12 2014 20:33 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: I haven't tried it yet but has anyone tried Mirror image and Rearm? couldn't you sit in fountain and make 100s of images?
Nah
Too busy rearming a bazillion pugna wards to watch people exploding from a TP.
I had ONE game where I managed to get Rearm and Nether Ward, but I had a leaver RIGHT before I hit level 9, which was when I would've have my first level of Rearm (I had Shockwave and March as well, I had a hard time figuring out what to prioritize).
Anyway, I'm incredibly envious of having teammates that know how to prevent disasters from happening (I only solo queue). Getting everyone on my team to pick every low CD spell when an enemy has Aftershock is pretty sweet. Or taking Eclipse/Lucent Beam.
Still want to get Grow and enchant totem on a decent ranged hero, any mobility skill after that is just icing on the cake. With that combo you can do a 1500 damage hit around the time you get lvl 11 or so
On February 12 2014 09:25 randombum wrote: ^ to be fair, with 8 stacks you probably would've killed him with auto attacks.
Not necessarily, Napalm is only 10 damage per stack at lvl 1, 80 bonus damage per auto attack is alot, but they can still just run away when they see how much damage they're taking unless they're disabled (and it was Lycan + Nightstalker, so they both have pretty good base HP).
8 was definitely redundant, I just didn't realise how fast Shackles ticks. I stuck to one stack + Cold Feet into Shackles after that.
On February 13 2014 06:59 LSB wrote: We should make a tier list for ability draft. But I am kindof conflicted because I like drafting my sticky napalm combinations
It's less about tier lists and more about combo's and how the skill fits the hero. Besides obvious OP stuff like Shukuchi, the rule of thumb is more like "please pick stuns".
On February 13 2014 09:19 LuckoftheIrish wrote: Where do you like drafting?
I like being in one of the last slots so you can autodraft a combo instead of picking half the combo and hoping that no one else picks the other half in the next ~16 picks, but it really depends.
Sometimes there's that one broken skill for your hero though so you wanna be first pick.
I like to pick close to last because it has the highest chance of getting a combo. Picking first can be good if you can get something like Shukuchi, Riki invis, Take Aim or Drunken Brawler. Being somewhere in the middle is the worst because likely you get neither an OP skill nor a combo.
I got sticky napalm for the first time. I figured every DoT would be gone... I ended up with corrosive skin, sand storm and viper ulti... Obviously, it was silly. I went mid versus Viper with poison orb... yeah, he died.
On February 13 2014 16:32 Belisarius wrote: The worst ones are like 4th/5th, you're not close enough to the start to get an OP skill and not far enough down to guarantee an OP combo.
Agreed although lots of idiots go for a combo skill in first pick and let the busted stuff like shukuchi pass to picks 5-6. E: oops thats an old post lel
Shukuchi Pudge is like a ezy-mode version of pudge.
Just swapped hook for shukuchi, and you basically get free kills whenever you want from lvl 2.
Also diabolic edict + bounty invis is amazing fun until the other team starts warding/dusting everywhere, but if nothing else it forces them to waste a lot of cash
When you finally draft your dream lineup of skills. And you're praying throughout the whole draft that nobody takes your desired moves. It's the build you've been talking about since this mode was introduced. Will it really be as good as you've imagined?
You managed to randomly get the last hit on a couple of heroes early game, and you cackle with glee as you reach level 6. "Two kills and I haven't even used my epic combo", you say. The other heroes are hanging back now, they can see how skillful you are, they're too afraid to even try and last hit. "Stay back as long as you want", you sneer, "soon enough you won't be able to hide from me".
But then all of a sudden, the enemy team starts saying "gg". It's not possible, you're dominating your lane but surely other people will want to throw their might against yours. And that's when you look at your team and see a lesh with take aim, enchant totem, and jinada. He's 10-0 and the other team is just turtling in their base.
And you know you'll never get a chance at those skills again.
laned against a tinker built like a tinker (same spell) middle, pwnt him in lane so hard. Ganked sidelane easily with 522 movement speed, lucent beam nuke and culling blade. Snowball with agh.
So what if they have essence shift luna, doesn't matter at all haha
big idea: 1) get movement / manuverability (i.e. shukuchi) 2) get a spell that's brutal if you can get close (i.e. culling blade)
Decided to que with a few friends from school, one of them was in low prio, napalm + rot and ball lightning. And you know how the rest of the story goes.
Decided to que with a few friends from school, one of them was in low prio, napalm + rot and ball lightning. And you know how the rest of the story goes.
How did it take you 55 minutes to win in a 10:1 k:d ratio game :/
game was already over at ~30 but we just decided to fountain camp as many kills as we could and my friend with firefly went around hunting the people who had tp'd / smoked out.
On February 17 2014 13:13 GGitsJack wrote: game was already over at ~30 but we just decided to fountain camp as many kills as we could and my friend with firefly went around hunting the people who had tp'd / smoked out.
Sadly, the essence shift didnt work for split shot but my god.....each split shot attack can procs Juxtopox. Each clone will also have split shot. Therefore, just attack once and you have 1-5 clones if 5 enemy are near by. You though dusa with manta was bad? Try cancer dusa!! It also very easy to draft these abilities too. I think you pretty much have to first pick split shot and if you get lucky and get Juxtopox then your pretty much guaranteed Phantom edge since no one will pick phantom edge for obvious reason.
On February 17 2014 17:37 SheaR619 wrote: Split shot Juxtopox essence shift
Phantom edge for ulti
Sadly, the essence shift didnt work for split shot but my god.....each split shot attack can procs Juxtopox. Each clone will also have split shot. Therefore, just attack once and you have 1-5 clones if 5 enemy are near by. You though dusa with manta was bad? Try cancer dusa!! It also very easy to draft these abilities too. I think you pretty much have to first pick split shot and if you get lucky and get Juxtopox then your pretty much guaranteed Phantom edge since no one will pick phantom edge for obvious reason.
On February 17 2014 17:37 SheaR619 wrote: SNIP: d if you get lucky and get Juxtopox then your pretty much guaranteed Phantom edge since no one will pick phantom edge for obvious reason.
Huh. Anytime I take Juxtapose, someone always takes Phantom Edge from me, 3/3 times. Why, no idea. Maybe think ult passive is OP, or just deliberately denying it.
On February 17 2014 17:21 Meta wrote: If it was low priority give him a break, those guys deserved it.
People like him are WHY some people are low priority. I'd quit, eat the abandon and happily take some low priority games if I had to after just five to ten minutes of fountain diving just to stop wasting my time. Let alone nearly half an hour.
This kind of thing is why the "DOTA2 should have a surrender option" is even an argument that is had. Absolutely ridiculous.
On February 17 2014 17:37 SheaR619 wrote: SNIP: d if you get lucky and get Juxtopox then your pretty much guaranteed Phantom edge since no one will pick phantom edge for obvious reason.
Huh. Anytime I take Juxtapose, someone always takes Phantom Edge from me, 3/3 times. Why, no idea. Maybe think ult passive is OP, or just deliberately denying it.
I actually got Juxtapose and Phantom Edge in a game yesterday, and combined it with Viper's Corrosive Skin. Was pretty fun since the magic resistance stacks and illusions get the passive too.
On February 17 2014 17:37 SheaR619 wrote: SNIP: d if you get lucky and get Juxtopox then your pretty much guaranteed Phantom edge since no one will pick phantom edge for obvious reason.
Huh. Anytime I take Juxtapose, someone always takes Phantom Edge from me, 3/3 times. Why, no idea. Maybe think ult passive is OP, or just deliberately denying it.
Well I hope it not your own team that take it lol. Either way, forcing them to take Phantom edge is pretty good imo if they fear any sort of Jux + phantom combo. I think Jux can still have some usage even though you dont have phantom edge but phantom edge by itself is pretty useless for an ulti. Seems like you just have bad luck
was Sladar the game just now and I made a Naix 2.0
Q = Naix's rage W = SpiritBreaker's bash E = Naix's passive heal R = Omno's guardian angel
it is basically just running in with phase/ drums and smashing stuffs. if needed, pop rage for magic immunity and GA for physical immunity. Sladar have one heck of a good base stat to begin. went 15-0-17 from it alone
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
On February 17 2014 21:15 Velr wrote: Bristle Spinethingy. Bristle Goo. Aftershock Razor-Ult (or Warpath? Not sure anymore).
Yeah.. game lastet 15 mins or something like that :p.
I have no idea how you managed to get all of those skills lol
I got Aftershock, Earthshock (Ursa), Lighting Remnant and Ball Lighting once, on Dark Seer. I'm not sure I could theorycraft a better Aftershock combo.
Ursa Fury swipes + winder ranger's focus fire was amazing. Essence shift + focus fire was really good aswell. I wonder how sick those 3 skills together would be.
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
what does "orbs" mean? sorry, im dota 2 noob
Frost arrows, burning spears, poison attack, etc. The skills that change your attack and you are able to manually use or auto cast, and are still ranged even on melee heroes.
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
what does "orbs" mean? sorry, im dota 2 noob
Frost arrows, burning spears, poison attack, etc. The skills that change your attack and you are able to manually use or auto cast, and are still ranged even on melee heroes.
On the other hand, OD's orb obviously procs essence aura, so there are always exceptions. I'm unsure if the exception is with the orb or aura. Stuff in AD is hard to sit down and actually test.
Also they definitely have not patched all the toggles. Mana shield and split shot trigger overload as of like yesterday. I'm not sure about other combinations.
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
what does "orbs" mean? sorry, im dota 2 noob
Frost arrows, burning spears, poison attack, etc. The skills that change your attack and you are able to manually use or auto cast, and are still ranged even on melee heroes.
On the other hand, OD's orb obviously procs essence aura, so there are always exceptions. I'm unsure if the exception is with the orb or aura. Stuff in AD is hard to sit down and actually test.
Also they definitely have not patched all the toggles. Mana shield and split shot trigger overload as of like yesterday. I'm not sure about other combinations.
Exception is on the Orb, it's like that specifically because of how OD works. I'm not sure how Impetus works. There's no general rule in Dota, there's always something weird that doesn't make sense. I picked Frost Arrows and Fury Swipes as a melee and both worked at the same time, even though they are both Unique Attack Modifiers.
I'm pretty sure I've read they patched out manaless toggles from OP combos, like Essence Aura, Static Field, etc, maybe Overload is also an exception.
Just now -- Unstable Concoction, Teleport, Epicenter.
Start the concoction, bounce in, fling the stun and start the epi. Although, between the recent two-second nerf to Concoction and Teleport's long cast time, I got a lot of self-stuns.
On February 19 2014 04:32 jinorazi wrote: what are some abilities to take advantage of overload?
does frost/searing arrows work with overload, along with other autocasts including morph?
i laned with someone with split shot and overload, it was the most hilarious/annoying thing i've seen early game.
Orbs don't, Split shot and other toggles used to work, but as far as I know all have been fixed. So you basically need spammable cheap skills, like Quillspray/Goo/Arcane bolt/Remnant, etc. Depends on your mana pool as well. It the same with Aftershock.
Enchant Totem can be pretty ridiculous with it.
has anyone tried overload + burning spear?
Spell triggers don't work with orbs, so wouldn't work.
I had goo + overload + warpath + nethertoxin on viper, that worked pretty well, but base cast animation felt too slow so it didn't feel as effective as it should be.
Got totally destroyed that game by a bristle with aftershock + static remnant + ball lightning.
He literally jumped on you, spammed ball lightning/remnant and kept you perma stunned until you died.
Somehow managed to kill him in second half of game then just desperately rushed throne before he respawned
poison attack, rot,overload,clinkz ulti with mid ursa. was kinda fun.
If the enemy had no Tangos or a QB (who does after 5/10 minutes?) then I was pretty much guaranteed to land a full ulti on someone. If they stand still, Sprout and Mystic Flare. If they've run away, Glimpse - Sprout - Mystic Flare.
My fourth skill was Thunder Strike, which was okay, and I suppose the vision it gives helps with Glimpse but I would have rather had something else.
The hero I had was Jakiro, so the high Str and Int helped somewhat. It was such a fun game to play.
i had a mirana with moon glaive + geminate attack + flesh heap + time lapse... lets just say the hardest right-click carry ever. I could flash farm a 1st item linkens super quickly with geminate->glaive, and I was completely invincible after a couple kills with flesh heap stacks to time lapse with
edit: I just played a DP with tombstone + march of the machines + OD's essence aura + rearm. Once I got sheep + shivas I didn't even have to go to base, I could just TP around ganking people with infinite mana and perma-sheep tombstone stacks.
On February 19 2014 18:00 SilverSkyLark wrote: Does this game mode require a 5 man stack? Also, Invoker is pretty useless, yes?
the mode can be played with solo-queueueue but its better for combining the skill-picks if you have some ppl on yout team that you know and communicate with.
invoker is not in this mode, no hero that has 5+ skillslots can be used. so heros like meepo, rubick and some more wont show up. and since your hero is randomed for you, you cant even decide what look you want. and the skills are piked 1 by 1.
So I just got shat on last night by a DS that picked up Ion Shell and Sticky Napalm... that was not a fun game. Honestly I don't even know what other abilities he had, it doesn't matter anyways. It's bananas how quickly your health disappears when that combo hits you. With 1300+ hp I would literally die in about a second. No one on our team had an answer for him which is unfortunate because aside from their DS destroying us I was actually doing pretty well as LC.
On February 20 2014 02:20 Achaia wrote: So I just got shat on last night by a DS that picked up Ion Shell and Sticky Napalm... that was not a fun game. Honestly I don't even know what other abilities he had, it doesn't matter anyways. It's bananas how quickly your health disappears when that combo hits you. With 1300+ hp I would literally die in about a second. No one on our team had an answer for him which is unfortunate because aside from their DS destroying us I was actually doing pretty well as LC.
blademail or BKB. Had a team respond with this when i had barrage + napalm. Makes that person fall off till all the bkb's die down to 4 seconds.
The answer is not letting anyone get ion shell and sticky napalm. You won't have blademail on level 2. By the point you have it, he will have a BKB because of his beyond godlike streaks.
I got Ion Shell and Sticky Napalm once, and a guy didn't let me mid because I had shit skills. Not that it mattered that much in the end, but it was funny.
lol had a game with viper's corrosive skin, napalm and rocket barrage, on a cm (-_-)
During laning, the visage accidentally hit me once with 8 stacks of napalm on him, he lost 3/4 hp lol, that was hilarious, I never never got harassed again :D
On February 20 2014 07:31 me_viet wrote: lol had a game with viper's corrosive skin, napalm and rocket barrage, on a cm (-_-)
During laning, the visage accidentally hit me once with 8 stacks of napalm on him, he lost 3/4 hp lol, that was hilarious, I never never got harassed again :D
ps. CM is by far the worse hero base ever lol
Weaver's about as bad. He has worse strength, far worse int, and 175 less attack range. His attack animation is better, but his ms is only 10 units better.
On February 20 2014 09:18 Severedevil wrote: Speaking of chassis..
Do you think ability draft would be better if the hero chassis were also part of the picking pool?
If it was done at the same time as the skills, it would be weird, because skills depends on which body you get. If it was done beforehand, it would be bad, because it would just mean first picks get the good bodies.
I honestly don't mind it being random, as bad as it can be. Picking bodies just leads to the same bodies being picked every game and I don't think drafting them would work that well.
On February 20 2014 07:31 me_viet wrote: lol had a game with viper's corrosive skin, napalm and rocket barrage, on a cm (-_-)
During laning, the visage accidentally hit me once with 8 stacks of napalm on him, he lost 3/4 hp lol, that was hilarious, I never never got harassed again :D
ps. CM is by far the worse hero base ever lol
Weaver's about as bad. He has worse strength, far worse int, and 175 less attack range. His attack animation is better, but his ms is only 10 units better.
dude slark is by far the worst ._______. just as bad statwise as the heros you listed, and a melee on top of it.
I would prefer if they could put in all the functional hero skills randomly into a pool than only getting the skills from the body. So many fun hero abilities aren't being used at the moment.
I feel like it works fine as it is, it can be slightly frustrating getting an entire team of int heroes (like last game) but it just makes it fun to try and play around it.
5th in line as sniper, 3 melee in front. take aim and dragon form available. take aim + dragon form, the ultimate combo i've been waiting for. 4th in line, in my team, silencer takes take aim.
got skeleton walk, slithereen crush and macropyre...
first 2 rotations after level 6 i just invis up behind 2 macropyre on them and hit a 2 man crush for a double kill. But it doesn't scale well and noone on my team had any carry potential so we still just got way behind eventually.
today i played with synderen and got a really dirty pick: sniper with -range -backstab -greater cleave (we havent been sure if it workts ... well it does in melee-range) -drow ult
just bought MoM, treads and forcestaff and it got really messy (well Abyssal for the luz at the end) but backstab is really mean on ranged, i think in combination with dusa-ult you force them to take dmg anyway. the turn away from you -> backstab look to you, get stoned and take additional dmg from ult
This game mode is getting sadder and sadder for me.
So many players seem to be abandoning at draft, for one thing. This is so much worse in AD because it inevitably happens that one time you get napalm+pact or whatever.
So many other players (on my team) have no idea how to draft. You just have to sit there and watch all the OP mobility/combos go to the other team, and all the carry passives go to your own team on squishy int chassis, and then you have to support as a ranged agi with 200 mana to stop the other team getting 100% of the stuns.
Or the game where one team rolls nothing but melee strength heroes while the other team gets two ranged agi carries and bulk supports, and picks appropriately.
I would really like them to add a single-draft format. People who prefer RD-style can keep playing RD-style, that's fine, but please give me more control over what I can do with my hero.
On February 22 2014 15:01 Zariel wrote: Best is something like fury swipes, overpower and feast and chronosphere, get a hero like lifestealer for instant cast
Sounds good for jungling, but without mobility or defense against lockdown spells or any disable besides Chronosphere you're gonna have a hard time hitting people. (Feast also doesn't work on Roshan so you'll still need Vlad's to solo him.)
Some days you just feel like drafting a hero that can't and won't die. Chaos knight with untouchable, corrosive skin, surge and phantasm. I went armlet, heart, heaven's halberd and then AC. I could run 1v3 and not die and if my team was near enemies couldn't engage on me because they had no way to kill me.
Was fun, even if i didn't have any burst or stuns. I was just a walking death machine with a stable and high damage output from auto attacks.
As long as you have some damage output it's ok, i've played quite a few games against super tanks with no dps who you quickly learn to just ignore and kill the rest of the team
On February 22 2014 19:52 Svetz wrote: As long as you have some damage output it's ok, i've played quite a few games against super tanks with no dps who you quickly learn to just ignore and kill the rest of the team
I was CK, dem stats. He's a great base-hero. Armlet was plenty to deal respectable damage and with CK ult i had good teamfight presence.
Ok.. not sure if meepo was just added but I saw him for the first time today. Our batrider got meepo ult + zeus lightning bolt + wave of terror + shallow grave Once he got to lvl 11 he was like a roaming lvl 3 aghanims laguna blade on a 6 second cooldown Once he got aghs he could keep shallow grave on someone permanently
On February 25 2014 12:38 ZeaL. wrote: Ok.. not sure if meepo was just added but I saw him for the first time today. Our batrider got meepo ult + zeus lightning bolt + wave of terror + shallow grave Once he got to lvl 11 he was like a roaming lvl 3 aghanims laguna blade on a 6 second cooldown Once he got aghs he could keep shallow grave on someone permanently
so insane lol
If you get meepo ult, you can't get laguna blade (2 ulties)
If they actually put in meepo ulti into this game, that is retarded, potentially 10 stuns and 5 nukes on one hero is stupid
On February 25 2014 12:38 ZeaL. wrote: Ok.. not sure if meepo was just added but I saw him for the first time today. Our batrider got meepo ult + zeus lightning bolt + wave of terror + shallow grave Once he got to lvl 11 he was like a roaming lvl 3 aghanims laguna blade on a 6 second cooldown Once he got aghs he could keep shallow grave on someone permanently
so insane lol
If you get meepo ult, you can't get laguna blade (2 ulties)
If they actually put in meepo ulti into this game, that is retarded, potentially 10 stuns and 5 nukes on one hero is stupid
He had Lightning Bolt. With enough Meepos, he did the same damage as a lvl 3 Aghs Laguna Blade every 3 seconds because he had multiple heroes.
Divided We Stand sounds cool and all, but it isn't. Some abilities just don't work in ability draft. It can be amusing the first time but it completelly breaks the game.
Bane with fissure, crystal nova, arcane aura, and grip. A cm that's not affected by 280 ms, an es w/o severe mana issues and grip for good solo kill power.
On February 26 2014 05:07 Rodberd wrote: dragonform seems to be the most random skill some heros its totally fine with, sometimes your hero getsu selss when you have it.
so my advice: dont pick it at all, only on DK or heros you are 100% sure it works
From what I could gather, most melee heroes have a projectile speed of 0, which is fine because they never use ranged attacks, but that breaks Luna's Glaives and Elder Dragon form and the attacks basically never move. Which is why those skills works only in ranged heroes and some melee heroes.
On February 26 2014 06:05 r_con wrote: what heroes are not in ad?
All heroes with more than 4 abilities on their bar (aka any hero with a subability etc). Even heroes like ogre count here because if he gets an aghs thats an extra ability.
On February 26 2014 05:07 Rodberd wrote: dragonform seems to be the most random skill some heros its totally fine with, sometimes your hero getsu selss when you have it.
so my advice: dont pick it at all, only on DK or heros you are 100% sure it works
From what I could gather, most melee heroes have a projectile speed of 0, which is fine because they never use ranged attacks, but that breaks Luna's Glaives and Elder Dragon form and the attacks basically never move. Which is why those skills works only in ranged heroes and some melee heroes.
would be great if it was so easy, sometimes you get ranged attacks if you pick these skills, or you get screwed and end up with useless slots. havent seen a real pattern so far.
On February 26 2014 05:07 Rodberd wrote: dragonform seems to be the most random skill some heros its totally fine with, sometimes your hero getsu selss when you have it.
so my advice: dont pick it at all, only on DK or heros you are 100% sure it works
From what I could gather, most melee heroes have a projectile speed of 0, which is fine because they never use ranged attacks, but that breaks Luna's Glaives and Elder Dragon form and the attacks basically never move. Which is why those skills works only in ranged heroes and some melee heroes.
would be great if it was so easy, sometimes you get ranged attacks if you pick these skills, or you get screwed and end up with useless slots. havent seen a real pattern so far.
I don't recall if I ever saw a ranged hero where it was bugged, and the issue may be that there's no standard rule for what melee heroes actually have 0 projectile speed, since it's a meaningless number in regular games for most of them.
I was Batrider. First pick. I took Untouchable. Berseker's Blood falls all the way back to me. Pick it up with lifebreak. Final slot I get Arcane Orb.
Some games you get guys who seem absolutely mental at picking. Untouchable + BB = physical and magical attacks useless. Not to mention the insane attk speed with arcane orb. Lifebreak for the slow + initiate. And with aghs it has a cd of 4 seconds.
managed to get walrus punch + tidebringer... cue me getting a daedalus up and then getting tide bonus + punch bonus + massive crit for 1 hit triple kill...
warlock 1) sb charge 2) sven stun 3) soul assumption 4) song of the siren
buy bottle and collect runes safely since you just killed everyone
least fun hero ever:
undying with repel and untouchable.... constant magic immunity + physical immunity = not a fun game if it wasnt bad enough he also had gravekeepers cloak (reduces your attack speed even more...) i didnt know that repel lasts 12 frickin seconds
Diffusal removes repel. Also unless he had some super badass ultimate odds are he'll hit like a melting stick of butter until his third major item so you can just ignore him and kill his team before coming back to him mostly.
It's sad that they were so incompetent as to put divided we stand into ad mode. It's like they completely ignore all the lessons learned from dota1's omg mode.
On February 26 2014 14:01 zlefin wrote: It's sad that they were so incompetent as to put divided we stand into ad mode. It's like they completely ignore all the lessons learned from dota1's omg mode.
omg never had divided we stand. lod had it but it granted additional meepos
exactly, that's my point, omg mode SPECIFICALLY excluded divided we stand BECAUSE it was horribly horribly broken, even by the standards of omg mode. And the dota2 idiots somehow ignored that and put it in; hence failing to learn the lessons of omg mode.
On February 26 2014 14:31 zlefin wrote: exactly, that's my point, omg mode SPECIFICALLY excluded divided we stand BECAUSE it was horribly horribly broken, even by the standards of omg mode. And the dota2 idiots somehow ignored that and put it in; hence failing to learn the lessons of omg mode.
it wasnt in wc3 because it was annoying to implement
Yeah meepo ulti isnt even funny, it's just annoying. Worst thing was we had first pick and our viper took slarks stat steal skill instead of divided we stand :/
I've seen divided we stand a few times now and it's lost every time because the enemy team just drafts a bunch of aoe. Also poof doesn't work, so there's that, but I can see how it can be a problem if the player drafts things like nether ward or tombstone.
On February 27 2014 04:28 meldo wrote: turns out sticky napalm + dark pact is quite good
unfortunely sticky napalm doesnt work with passive dots as I had poison sting as well
It's not about being a passive dot, poison attack doesn't disable healing or blink as well. Other dots, like burning spear or corrosive skin, work fine with sticky napalm.
can someone clarify to me which is the viper skill that will give melee heroes range? i tried picking it once but got the wrong one..... is it the autocast or is it one of the passives?
All auto-castable "orbs" (aka attacks that add an affect to your attack, like clinkz searing arrows or OD's arcane orb, or Enchantress ulti) have a "cast range" that when manually casted allow you to "attack" at that range.
So its viper's "Q" aka poison attack or whatever. The autocastable one. But you can't auto cast you have to manually cast it.
I haven't met meepo yet, is the "can be leveld at lvl3" a property of meepo or of divided we stand? i.e can it be skilled on lvl 3 by every hero, or can meepo take any ult at lvl 3?
welp, I can confirm that Divided is stupidly broken. I got an abaddon with split shot, flesh heap, mana shield and divided and fed for the first 5 minutes before giving up on the lane and going into the jungle. Cue 15 minutes later with aghs, heart, and vlads. I would just go attack a tower and anything that walked into split shot range instantly evaporated.
I feel like its just stupidly broken no matter what other skills you get. If you get actives then you can keep someone permanently locked down or whatever, and if you get decent passives you can just carry stupidly hard.
Another meepo another impossible game. He had netherwards and heat seeking rockets (can't remember 3rd) and had a sniper model, we managed to kill him a couple of times, but any time they pushed as a team we had 0 chance
Nightstalker with Blur (Phantom Assasin), Teleport (NP), Burning Spears (Huskar) and Lifebreak (Huskar). Was pretty fun, raped in every stage of game. Vanguard was perfectly suitable for that hero and made me snowball really hard. Was able to dish out lots of damage from nowhere while being difficult to take down at the same time.
Is it a commonly-known thing that swapping heroes is kinda bugged? I did it last night and ended up with a veno with Phantasm and Moon Glaives, but when I cast Phantasm (and later Manta Style), the spawned illusions had my old skillset, and thus didn't shoot glaives. The person I swapped with reported that casting Scream of Pain deselected their hero momentarily as well. :/ Anyone know of any other strange interactions with swapping like this?
So I was wondering, is there any combination of active spells that would not be horribly broken with Divided We Stand, outside of Meepo's normal abilities?
Edit: I guess spells with absolutely no cc or damage attached to them, so Sven's War Cry and AM+QOP blinks might do the trick.
On March 09 2014 17:32 Aldrovandi wrote: So I was wondering, is there any combination of active spells that would not be horribly broken with Divided We Stand, outside of Meepo's normal abilities?
Edit: I guess spells with absolutely no cc or damage attached to them, so Sven's War Cry and AM+QOP blinks might do the trick.
On March 08 2014 12:11 levelping wrote: Agree meepo ultimate is too strong. When it's in the pool whoever picks it will win.
prety much comes down to whoever has first pick lol
Until your firstpick takes PA crit on a sandking instead. That thing is like crack to some people.
On March 09 2014 17:32 Aldrovandi wrote: So I was wondering, is there any combination of active spells that would not be horribly broken with Divided We Stand, outside of Meepo's normal abilities?
Well... there's plenty, really. It can't CC and it can't do real damage, but there's actually a lot of spells that do neither. Any of the utility support gear (CM aura, manadrain etc), anything that doesn't stack with itself (VS wave, most teambuffs like howl, warcry etc), any of the mobility spells if you have no follow up...
If you sit down and design a useless hero, it's always possible. Still, when you can pick DwS and then random every other skill and still dominate the game 9.9 times out of 10, there is a problem.
In the last game I played I was last pick with Meepo and Divided we Stand fell all the way to our Jakiro at pick number 8.
Things that were taken in front of it include: Enfeeble, Tidebringer, Luna Glaives, Eidolons, and Geostrike. Yeah... the guy who got Divided we stand went like 20-2-9.
I don't know how, but I actually managed to do decently with a 'support' meepo, getting corrosive skin, shockwave, brain sap, and fiend's grip (went 12-1-15). Go figure me and the Jakiro laned together as well against a solo Earthshaker who took Enfeeble as his first pick.
Won my first ever game vs DWS. It took 60 minutes of split pushing and running away whenever the DWS player came (despite us being 30 kills ahead) before we finally managed to win.
I feel like I should get some kind of achievement. He had pretty bad picks as well Viper body with Static Field, Snowball and something not very useful
Had a game with Divided we stand on enemy team, and they also picked Naga Illusions + Veno Passive + something. I got Blink + Echo Slam. Got Aghs. Damage was dealt.
we lost with DWS coz our team 3v5ed on the other end of the map at 50 mins. me and DWS player were just facepalming as we watched them walk up from our tier 3 to opponent tier 3, telling them in chat and audio not to go, they still went as 3 and evaporated. much facepalm
(also it took DWS about 40 minutes to understand not to attack into blademail, i don't think he'd seen it before lol)
Played as Brewmaster last night - Tiny's Grow, Naix's Rage, Gyro's Flak Cannon, Naix's Open Wounds. Rushed Midas and Vlads - Quelling Axe for single hit kills - ended up with Skadi + Manta As soon as I hit Rage and Flak Cannon it was devastating. 25 kills, 0 deaths. Couple ultra kills in there just walking over the team.
Divided We Stand is totally broken upon swap. Or at least it was a week ago. Clones wouldn't die when the main one did, and the main wouldn't die when the clones did. Clones don't share experience, have skillset of previous owner at level 0.
Still don't get why people insisting on trying to build stupid carry builds on terrible bodies. Crystal Maiden gets a bunch of passives and CK ulti. Your still going to hit like a pansy and die in 2 hits!
On March 15 2014 10:39 Svetz wrote: Still don't get why people insisting on trying to build stupid carry builds on terrible bodies. Crystal Maiden gets a bunch of passives and CK ulti. Your still going to hit like a pansy and die in 2 hits!
just had a cm who drafted both overpower and furyswipe
didn't matter she was a cm, her base dmg prolly same as ursa's hahaha
On March 10 2014 07:53 Svetz wrote: Divided we stand with wolves let you summon 10 wolves at a time.
That was probably the fastest game i've ever seen, 12 minutes :/
Wolves, Treants, Eidolons plus Divided We Stand would be even faster I think.
Nether Blast + Edict + Essence Aura + Divided we stand is even faster, deadlier and has less counters.
I would like to see 5 nether blasts hitting a tower. You could probably just backdoor a T4 in a handful of seconds.
Had riki with divided we stand today. I picked Nether Blast+Nether Ward. Its kinda ridiculous, 5 Nether wards make sure that everyone who casts a spell is dead instantly and Nether Blast takes care of the rest.
devided we stand should be removed from ad, it destroys the game mode completly. Whenever its in the pool the first pick wins the game.
On March 16 2014 09:45 TerransHill wrote: devided we stand should be removed from ad, it destroys the game mode completly. Whenever its in the pool the first pick wins the game.
A lot like Fiery Soul in conjunction with a spammable spell.
On March 16 2014 09:45 TerransHill wrote: devided we stand should be removed from ad, it destroys the game mode completly. Whenever its in the pool the first pick wins the game.
A lot like Fiery Soul in conjunction with a spammable spell.
I don't find that is nearly as bad. There are many such godly combos - aftershock and spammable spells comes to mind - but the problem is that DWS is overpowered with the majority of abilities en the game, which means counterpicking is futile. If someone gets fiery soul or aftershock, their opponents can focus on picking up the best low cd spells. With DWS - what can you do? Take all actives?
Played Axe with Arcane Aura + Fissure + Enchant. Outrageous laning phase. Jungles good, boosts every lane with Arcane Aura, and come in whenever it's convenient to trap the bad guys up against a big creep.
Also, Laguna Blade looks awesome with the Axe dunk animation.
On March 16 2014 09:45 TerransHill wrote: devided we stand should be removed from ad, it destroys the game mode completly. Whenever its in the pool the first pick wins the game.
A lot like Fiery Soul in conjunction with a spammable spell.
I don't find that is nearly as bad. There are many such godly combos - aftershock and spammable spells comes to mind - but the problem is that DWS is overpowered with the majority of abilities en the game, which means counterpicking is futile. If someone gets fiery soul or aftershock, their opponents can focus on picking up the best low cd spells. With DWS - what can you do? Take all actives?
exactly... The only way to counter DWS is when you get extremely lucky with very little useful active spells in the pool but what are the odds? Of course AD is more of a fun mode and it cant/shouldnt be balanced but DWS screws it so hard.
On March 16 2014 22:47 et wrote: Do orb attacks like drows arrow count as "spells" for fiery soul, aftershock and war path etc?
Nope. But I know that Arcane Orb triggers Overload, dont know about other Spells.
Is it possible to select two different Ultimate in ability draft ? If yes, I think the combination of Zeus and Tinker ultimates would be the most powerful and nothing could match it.
If you could pick 2 ult, which one would you choose ?
By the way, this is my first post in the forum. Hope we will have great opportunities to discuss about dota & esports!
Well I lost my first ever game with DWS. I feel like I need to quit Dota now.
I had weaver body and first pick was Heat seeking missiles. I knew I was going to be squidgy with a weaver body, so I got gravekeepers cloak as a second pick, which turned out to be a massive mistake. When it got to third pick all that was left was TC stomp, which is pretty much useless without ancestral spirit (80 damage).
Spent the entire game going into team fights, launching a salvo of missiles, getting there entire team to 25% hp, then their team team rolled over my team and me before the cooldown reset (I don't think my team had a single stun or disable).
They had a pretty nasty abbadon with shukuchi, natural order and level 5 dagon who was level 25 before anyone on my team was past 15 (I'm not sure what happened in the top lanes!), so from about that point onwards, if i left the base he could nuke me down before I even knew he was there
Ah well, I've beat one DWS now and lost as one so I guess I'm 1-1 in shame/celebration!
On March 15 2014 06:00 plasmidghost wrote: Hahahahah our Lich got Divided We Stand, ES totem, flak cannon and vengeance aura. Easiest game of my life
Did the vengance aura stack?
And damn I saw a vid with Wraith King that had March, Hook, Carrion Swarm, and Divided we Stand, damn he was killing the guys at the fountain with 4 stacks of march.
Had DVS with NS using void, hunter of the night and flesh heap. Combined with the fact NS maphack works without having darkness made me just cruise around killing everything and being unkillable after 2 hearts
Ok, had to bring this back to share my draft last night.
Got Lycan. Picked Searing Arrows, Vengeance Aura and Soul Assumption (had Death Pact too for want of a better ultimate, but didn't skill it until 23/24/25 because I really didn't need it).
That build is just absolutely disgusting. Searing Arrows is absurd on melee heroes. Got a bunch of in-lane kills with my lane partner. Our other lanes lost hard and ragequit, but we still absolutely wrecked 2v5.
I hear a lot of people say that you should only pick 1 passive ability except in rare case. In which combos would 2 passive be above getting something like a great stun or something?
On June 14 2014 00:51 crunchbite wrote: I hear a lot of people say that you should only pick 1 passive ability except in rare case. In which combos would 2 passive be above getting something like a great stun or something?
I guess if you're on a carry and you get the option to pick up some combination of passives that you need anyway?
For example if you were offered the chance to pick up Coup de Grace, Feast and Bash on a good agility carry base it'd be really, really tempting to do so. Because you could focus entirely on building as much agility and survivability as possible then above all else.
There's no "amount of passives" rule. People just try to make things too simple when it can't be done. You simply shouldn't pick a hero that's shit in lane unless he becomes a monster later one without needing too many items. You should pick good skills over not so good skills. So pick stuns/good nukes over average passives like bashes or crits. The main issue is being shit in lane, so passives are ussually much worse for melee heroes, ranged heroes with mana break or something are still annoying to play against.
If you have essence shift, mana break, take aim and grow on a ranged agi hero you are a broken hero even with 4 passives. Realize that coup de grace is actually kinda crappy as a steroids ult compared to several other alternatives.
On June 19 2014 00:54 SKC wrote: There's no "amount of passives" rule. People just try to make things too simple when it can't be done. You simply shouldn't pick a hero that's shit in lane unless he becomes a monster later one without needing too many items. You should pick good skills over not so good skills. So pick stuns/good nukes over average passives like bashes or crits. The main issue is being shit in lane, so passives are ussually much worse for melee heroes, ranged heroes with mana break or something are still annoying to play against.
If you have essence shift, mana break, take aim and grow on a ranged agi hero you are a broken hero even with 4 passives. Realize that coup de grace is actually kinda crappy as a steroids ult compared to several other alternatives.
Thanks, that was pretty helpful. Did not realise that bashes and crits weren't good passives. Cheers
Definitely agree with you SKC. I don't know why people have a hard on for Crits or Bashes. They don't do anything until you're farmed up, but Ability Draft is not a mode to farm in. Unless you combo Bash with Windrunner ultimate of course.
On June 14 2014 00:51 crunchbite wrote: I hear a lot of people say that you should only pick 1 passive ability except in rare case. In which combos would 2 passive be above getting something like a great stun or something?
night stalker passive, slark passive, fury swipes, troll active
On June 25 2014 10:47 icystorage wrote: night stalker passive, slark passive, fury swipes, troll active
buy bkb, fight at night = win
Troll isn't in AD (due to having two different versions of Whirling Axes).
-----
I just got a game of Broodmother with Shukuchi, Fiery Soul, Incapacitating Bite, and Pulse Nova (Leshrac's ult). Absolute monster. Laning was ez-mode due to Shukuchi. In teamfights, just activate Pulse Nova, go Shukuchi, run into the middle of the fight dealing both Shukuchi and Pulse Nova damage to everyone, then start right-clicking with 2-3 stacks of Fiery Soul. I built Radiance to add to the "everybody around me dies quickly" factor, and BKB to help with the "initiate by running straight into the entire enemy team" thing. Also impossible to run from due to Shukuchi and 40% move slow on attack.
I was laughing at someone picking aftershock with Arcane Orb assuming there was no way those 2 would work together. Turns out I was wrong. That was a painful game
I've been playing a lot of AD over the last few months and it still seems to be fairly popular.
I've found that if you pick good support skills (stuns!) you generally have a much higher chance of winning as most players go ridiculous hard carry builds and 5 late game carries do about as well as you would expect vs a well balanced team.
On November 07 2014 12:49 Svetz wrote: I've found that if you pick good support skills (stuns!) you generally have a much higher chance of winning as most players go ridiculous hard carry builds and 5 late game carries do about as well as you would expect vs a well balanced team.
I'd say this is true against "late game carry" builds that are only good after 2-3 items, but there are some skills/combos that are really good early game and then just keep getting better late game. Like, Shukuchi is fantastic all game long; ditto for some of the better passives like Berserker's Blood and Corrosive Skin, and for broken skill combos like Sticky Napalm+Ion Shell.
Speaking of which, I just had a game where I got Pugna (4 int/level!) with Shukuchi, Ion Shell, Aphotic Shield, and Borrowed Time. I built Ags, Radiance, and tankiness, and holy shit I was unkillable. It felt so good. Game went to 70+ minutes, and by the end we were down 4 rax, and I was 1v5ing a team that included a 6-slotted Venge with Reincarnation. Made me want to build Radiance Weaver even though I know it sucks :\ .
of the six times i've gotten it, i've won every game. and the best part about it is that they're not the common go-to spells that people will pick/deny
On June 19 2014 00:54 SKC wrote: There's no "amount of passives" rule. People just try to make things too simple when it can't be done. You simply shouldn't pick a hero that's shit in lane unless he becomes a monster later one without needing too many items. You should pick good skills over not so good skills. So pick stuns/good nukes over average passives like bashes or crits. The main issue is being shit in lane, so passives are ussually much worse for melee heroes, ranged heroes with mana break or something are still annoying to play against.
If you have essence shift, mana break, take aim and grow on a ranged agi hero you are a broken hero even with 4 passives. Realize that coup de grace is actually kinda crappy as a steroids ult compared to several other alternatives.
Thanks, that was pretty helpful. Did not realise that bashes and crits weren't good passives. Cheers
Bashes are pretty strong if you get them on a ranged hero. As a broad rule of thumb, passives from melee hereos are very strong if you can get them on a ranged chassis with good agi gain.
The real problem with picking passives is that all 5 players on your team often try to do it, which means you end up fighting each other for spells and end up with 5 abortive carries that all suck while the other guys pick stuns and mobility and just roll over you.
There's nothing wrong with stacking passives on a good chassis if you come online decently early and your team is picking to run interference for you. The likelihood of that is pretty low though.
maybe i should look up my game and upload it ;D thats nothing had a huskar with 7k hp other team couldnt kill me :D flesh heap mana shield,huskar berserkers blood.,and coup de grace, how i got it im still astonished that i did not get denied any of them.
I find good laning abilities to be so important. As long as you can get one. Some games are auto win basically if they're mid did a build with no lane presence. So. Either it's just simple shit.
One funny build I had was omni with empower, repel, degenerate aura and blink strike. I had 80 cs at 10 Min's mid lane, could 1v3 by 20min with some basic items. Good times.
And napalm shackles is retarded. Only seen it once. So much dog by lvl 2......
Abaddon with untouchable, aphotic shield, corrosive skin, and borrowed time
Was practically unkillable though I couldn't really do much damage, so I rushed sceptre to help team before going for shivas bots and AC. Ended 0 kills, 0 deaths and a shitload of assists
Napalm, Ancient Seal, Power Cogs, Mystic Flare. Napalm and silence them, catch them in cogs, inescapable mega damage mystic flare = instagib. OD skillset is already broken, put that on with silencer's innate int steal?? GG FF. Focus fire + fury swipes + a bash + a crit = melting heroes Stacking armor reduction spells is also OP, things like Acid Spray, Wave of Terror, Nasal Goo, and Amplify Damage. -40 armor at max level, add medallion, deso, and AC for teh lulz. Caustic Finale + Ether blast + Sadist + Mass Serpent is rat master. Ether blast and finale combo to instagib entire waves, sadist regens all the mana, and mass serpent bulldozes the towers. Natural Order, Ancient Seal, Decrepify, and Finger of death = nuke instagib, build agh's, eblade, and dagon for teh lulz.
On November 08 2014 05:51 SKC wrote: Just stacking defensive skills is kinda shitty. I have no idea why people love it that much. This is a game mode where you can do stuff like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDdeI_KNS6s
And people like heroes that make your team fight 4v5.
I once went Treant with Bristle Back, and Backtrack :/ rushed vanguard then went heart, ended up getting 2 hearts in the end, I was unkillable and in fights I could suck up the bulwark of the damage in fights, since I was a strength hero, those hearts also gave me ridiculous DPS.
You can only suck up the bulk of the damage in a fight if they for some reason decide to attack the guy that never dies but does no damage.
Tree body is ridiculous enough that you can be useful even if you just skilled stats, but with just defensive skills your laning sucks, you have no way to farm and can only hope people are bad enough to underestimate you. You would always be much better with skills that actually do something.
It's not that they never works, I've seen plenty of useless heroes keep farming for 30 mins while the team wins 4v5 and then come out with radiance + AC or whathever and do something. But it's just not the best builds you can draft.
On November 08 2014 06:13 SKC wrote: You can only suck up the bulk of the damage in a fight if they for some reason decide to attack the guy that never dies but does no damage.
Tree body is ridiculous enough that you can be useful even if you just skilled stats, but with just defensive skills your laning sucks, you have no way to farm and can only hope people are bad enough to underestimate you. You would always be much better with skills that actually do something.
It's not that they never works, I've seen plenty of useless heroes keep farming for 30 mins while the team wins 4v5 and then come out with radiance + AC or whathever and do something. But it's just not the best builds you can draft.
This is ability draft we're talking about. People aren't this smart in Ability draft, they'll totally focus the tank.
On November 08 2014 06:13 SKC wrote: You can only suck up the bulk of the damage in a fight if they for some reason decide to attack the guy that never dies but does no damage.
Tree body is ridiculous enough that you can be useful even if you just skilled stats, but with just defensive skills your laning sucks, you have no way to farm and can only hope people are bad enough to underestimate you. You would always be much better with skills that actually do something.
It's not that they never works, I've seen plenty of useless heroes keep farming for 30 mins while the team wins 4v5 and then come out with radiance + AC or whathever and do something. But it's just not the best builds you can draft.
This is ability draft we're talking about. People aren't this smart in Ability draft, they'll totally focus the tank.
What do you mean people arent smart in ability draft??
On November 08 2014 06:13 SKC wrote: You can only suck up the bulk of the damage in a fight if they for some reason decide to attack the guy that never dies but does no damage.
Tree body is ridiculous enough that you can be useful even if you just skilled stats, but with just defensive skills your laning sucks, you have no way to farm and can only hope people are bad enough to underestimate you. You would always be much better with skills that actually do something.
It's not that they never works, I've seen plenty of useless heroes keep farming for 30 mins while the team wins 4v5 and then come out with radiance + AC or whathever and do something. But it's just not the best builds you can draft.
This is ability draft we're talking about. People aren't this smart in Ability draft, they'll totally focus the tank.
What do you mean people arent smart in ability draft??
I see people doing things like stacking nukes on say, phantom assassin, then continuing to just go phase and cleave as if they were playing normal phantom assassin all the time.
People pick shitty skills and the skill levels are lower because of how few people play it. Stacking most games are free wins. I had around 80% winrate this month last time I checked Dotabufff.
That still doesn't mean those builds are good. You win games you would win anyway. They are shitty the few times the opponents know how to play.
Just played a fun, long and really quite even game:
AM base hero with: Shukuchi, Pounce, Dark Pact, BroodUlt. I was really lucky to get all those skills to be honest, I was second pick with first taking chemical rage.
Essentially a super annoying hero that can go in and out of fight at will with all the low cooldown abilities (mana permitting, which didn't happen too often until much later), has some burst damage AND sustainable right click with the ult, could split push decently too, and help push back the guy that went webs/spiderlings/wolves.
Went aquila treads orchid butterfly MKB(they had incapacitating bite) skadi and finally linkens. Won the game through split pushing and ganking with orchid and avoiding teamfights until eventually just becoming too difficult to kill after skadi and especially linkens. Should have probably gotten the linkens earlier than I did really, would have been able to split push far more aggressively.
Anyone have any thoughts playing against a Void body.
Do you take Chrono yourself to stop them being able to abuse the void + whatever hero picked it bashing you to death?
I normally leave it and get an ulti to go with my build but I find the void being able to pick a different ulti and still run around in the chrono can lead to you getting mashed, I've even seen int heros take the chrono then get a refresher to let void have as much time as he needs to take down half your team
On November 08 2014 05:51 SKC wrote: Just stacking defensive skills is kinda shitty. I have no idea why people love it that much. This is a game mode where you can do stuff like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDdeI_KNS6s
And people like heroes that make your team fight 4v5.
I was the Centaur with all passives and just stood in front tanking everything never dying and allowing the team to deal damage from the backline. It's circumstancial, sure, but so is everything in AD.
I am more amazed by people constanly undervaluing stuns in AD, I had Heroes with 3 stuns on them which is just crazy.
Fun Hero I build recently: Zeus with Vendetta, Natural Order and two nukes. Enemy WR with Walrus punch build Rapier first.-> Dat Zeus rightclick! Natural Order is way undervalued IMHO.
Really? Huh. I guess at the end of the day he's still a melee chassis with poor int.
Those stats are actually pretty interesting. No surprise that silencer is owning. Warlock and gyro are kinda dark horses. Like I'd be happy if I got them, but I wouldn't have put them top5/10.
Also surprised timber is like weaver-tier. I usually don't mind him since he has great int for a str hero. Even Pudge isn't that bad, I would have thought. I wonder if that's due to people not being able to resist firstpicking hook when they get him or something...
I see so many people trying to make weaver body carries and just ending up being terrible so no surprise to see he's so low, but pudge surprises me.
I've played a few games last night and got Web several times. You can make some really strong position based combos with web and can end up carrying the game even if the rest of your team does nothing.
I've found battery assault/rocket barrage combined with fiends grip is a great combo that won't be counter picked but does insane damage 1on1 providing you can get close (blink or web).
Lots of stuns on one hero will usually work wonders, as long as it's an INT hero so you can afford it. Like someone mentioned earlier, 3x stuns means you can gank extremely well. Sure it's not some OP combo, it's just very effective. I also think a fun build is Furion's teleport + lots of nukes. Good global ganking.
Any hero can afford 3 stuns if you somehow can draft it. Even Mortred is fine after mana boots, and you will keep building mana items anyway. This is one of most common mistakes people make, picking good skills is far more important than the starting int of your hero and it is the one base stat that is very easy to fix.
Also people tend to look too much into the primary attribute over the stats the hero actually have. People will for some reason be more confortable picking high mana cost spells for CM or enchantress than for heroes like Alchemist or Undying.
Rearm and Dragon tail is always good. Just build mana and something to close distance like blink. I got Rearm, Dragon Tail, and Sacrifice, those were good times.
Just get greevil's greed on any carry and decent ulti. I got sven and his ulti with greevil's greed Meant that I got 45min items at 20 min, people never mess with you while you jungle. Just pick up a midas and sit and farm, ez mode. Also got abbadon and his ult with greevil's greed, destroyed everything.
Also got Dark Seer with broods ult, fury swipes, blink, and overpower, that was really fun.
On November 11 2014 06:57 Belisarius wrote: Those stats are actually pretty interesting. No surprise that silencer is owning. Warlock and gyro are kinda dark horses. Like I'd be happy if I got them, but I wouldn't have put them top5/10.
Gyro is the ranged Agi hero with the highest Int. So he gets to go for a full right-click carry build and still spam spells.
I went teleport, lightning bolt, shockwave, and reaper's sythe with a dagon 5 for the ultimate assassin build, but got owned by a magnus that was essentially huskar with spirit breaker's ulti. Berserker's blood too stronk TT.
I once went a game as brood with SK abilities, except greevil's greed instead of caustic finale, jungled to a 10 minute blink, late game had aghanims, veil, and shiva's, so many wipes.
On November 13 2014 03:26 SKC wrote: Any hero can afford 3 stuns if you somehow can draft it. Even Mortred is fine after mana boots, and you will keep building mana items anyway. This is one of most common mistakes people make, picking good skills is far more important than the starting int of your hero and it is the one base stat that is very easy to fix.
Also people tend to look too much into the primary attribute over the stats the hero actually have. People will for some reason be more confortable picking high mana cost spells for CM or enchantress than for heroes like Alchemist or Undying.
Often I'd take 2 nukes+lategame focused passive over 3 nukes for regular skills. It's not just a mana issue--you can't max out all 3 skills until level 14 anyway, and the difference in effectiveness of having two nukes you max out as 4-4-0-1 vs. having a 3rd nuke you can put a value point in doesn't always favor getting a 3rd nuke--it depends on what nukes are in the pool and their relative scaling by ranks. If the pool doesn't favor the effectiveness of taking a 3rd nuke (e.g. by your 3rd/4th skill pick the remaining nukes tend to have poor rank 1 value, or poor value overall), a strong scaling passive that gives you a smooth transition into stat/item-based fighting strength like Flesh Heap or Fiery Soul is often just better than taking a weak 3rd nuke.
The problem is there's always a few people who prioritize those passives early in the draft, so it's often the case that there are no good passives left before there are no good nukes.
Recently played against someone who went sticky napalm + fatal bonds, by the mid game she could instagib my entire team with that combo + one right click. Turns out sticky napalm + any other damage-over-time is super strong, pretty much broken.
On November 14 2014 05:53 Birdie wrote: Recently played against someone who went sticky napalm + fatal bonds, by the mid game she could instagib my entire team with that combo + one right click. Turns out sticky napalm + any other damage-over-time is super strong, pretty much broken.
my easiest ad game involved my dragon knight body getting sticky napalm, rocket barrage, dark pact, and poison nova (though i didnt really have the mana to support the ult)
level 2 i walked up to the other mid and 100-0'd them with rocket barrage and like 3 napalm stacks
On November 14 2014 05:53 Birdie wrote: Recently played against someone who went sticky napalm + fatal bonds, by the mid game she could instagib my entire team with that combo + one right click. Turns out sticky napalm + any other damage-over-time is super strong, pretty much broken.
that sounds hilariously brokenly strong.
It is. As in, it's actually broken and a hilarious bug. There's no "by the midgame". Any tick of damage causes an infinite loop which kills everything bonded.
On November 13 2014 03:26 SKC wrote: Any hero can afford 3 stuns if you somehow can draft it. Even Mortred is fine after mana boots, and you will keep building mana items anyway. This is one of most common mistakes people make, picking good skills is far more important than the starting int of your hero and it is the one base stat that is very easy to fix.
Also people tend to look too much into the primary attribute over the stats the hero actually have. People will for some reason be more confortable picking high mana cost spells for CM or enchantress than for heroes like Alchemist or Undying.
Often I'd take 2 nukes+lategame focused passive over 3 nukes for regular skills. It's not just a mana issue--you can't max out all 3 skills until level 14 anyway, and the difference in effectiveness of having two nukes you max out as 4-4-0-1 vs. having a 3rd nuke you can put a value point in doesn't always favor getting a 3rd nuke--it depends on what nukes are in the pool and their relative scaling by ranks. If the pool doesn't favor the effectiveness of taking a 3rd nuke (e.g. by your 3rd/4th skill pick the remaining nukes tend to have poor rank 1 value, or poor value overall), a strong scaling passive that gives you a smooth transition into stat/item-based fighting strength like Flesh Heap or Fiery Soul is often just better than taking a weak 3rd nuke.
The problem is there's always a few people who prioritize those passives early in the draft, so it's often the case that there are no good passives left before there are no good nukes.
Yeah, you will never get a good passive for the last pick. You may get an ok nuke. Specially something like Fiery soul which is most of the time first pick worthy.
Three stuns is also not the same as 3 nukes. 3 stuns stay relevant at any level.
On November 14 2014 05:53 Birdie wrote: Recently played against someone who went sticky napalm + fatal bonds, by the mid game she could instagib my entire team with that combo + one right click. Turns out sticky napalm + any other damage-over-time is super strong, pretty much broken.
that sounds hilariously brokenly strong.
It is. As in, it's actually broken and a hilarious bug. There's no "by the midgame". Any tick of damage causes an infinite loop which kills everything bonded.
I don't think it's even a bug; it's just the obvious outcome of how the two spells work.
Sticky Napalm: Adds a flat amount of damage every time you deal a tick of damage to a its target.
Fatal Bonds: Shares some percentage of the damage any target takes with its other targets.
So, you Fatal Bonds and Sticky Napalm some people. You punch one of them. He takes your attack damage + Sticky Napalm damage. His friends take some percentage of that; it doesn't matter how much, the point is they take some amount of damage. They're afflicted by Sticky Napalm, so in addition to the damage they take from Fatal Bonds, they take your Sticky Napalm bonus damage. Fatal bonds shares some percentage of the Sticky Napalm damage, so everybody's friends take a new instance of damage...which gets your Sticky Napalm bonus added to it, yadda yadda yadda.
It's brokenly imbalanced in Ability Draft, but I think it's working as intended.
Not really. It's obvious why it occurs, but I think calling that "working as intended" is a bit of a stretch. At best it's an unintended consequence.
Napalm has historically been given hardcoded exceptions for its untended consequences, like not stacking with radiance burn. Being consistent with the spell mechanic does not mean something is automatically fine.
I'm not sure if icefrog has bothered doing that for any other cross-hero spell interactions, but none of the previous ones have been capable of instakilling entire teams in actual CM games, either.
I mean, I would prefer to have something cheap like goo or quill spray, but people always try and counter pick them while a lot of people don't realise arcane orb works.
And even just 500 mana will keep someone (or more than one) stunned for 7.5 seconds, and you can easily get that with just mana boots.
Last game I played vs they were a low int str hero (cant remember which) but it was still enough stuns to turn around most of the team fights
Arcane orb is still better than both goo and Quill Spray by themselfs. Neither of them actually permastun, and mana issues in general are way overplayed. You kill enough shit with just mana boots + blink.
Aftershock + Chakram was really broken and not everyone knew about it. You activated the passive every time you pressed R when it was returning to you, so you could do huge amounts of damage in a couple of seconds for little mana by spamming it.
On November 18 2014 11:34 SKC wrote: Arcane orb is still better than both goo and Quill Spray by themselfs. Neither of them actually permastun, and mana issues in general are way overplayed. You kill enough shit with just mana boots + blink.
Aftershock + Chakram was really broken and not everyone knew about it. You activated the passive every time you pressed R when it was returning to you, so you could do huge amounts of damage in a couple of seconds for little mana by spamming it.
They fixed chakram, right?
I wish they'd finally get rid of the remaining toggle interactions, like manashield with overload. It's just kind of dumb, to me.
On November 18 2014 11:34 SKC wrote: Arcane orb is still better than both goo and Quill Spray by themselfs. Neither of them actually permastun, and mana issues in general are way overplayed. You kill enough shit with just mana boots + blink.
Aftershock + Chakram was really broken and not everyone knew about it. You activated the passive every time you pressed R when it was returning to you, so you could do huge amounts of damage in a couple of seconds for little mana by spamming it.
They fixed chakram, right?
I wish they'd finally get rid of the remaining toggle interactions, like manashield with overload. It's just kind of dumb, to me.
I think they removed Timbersaw now that Aghs gives him a second skill. I haven't seen him in ages at least.
The AD mode is fun until you get a hero you REALLY want to play and end up playing Tauren Chieftain with his original spells in the wrong order so you have to control group the spirit and can't press Q to get it back. Q -> T -> move -> F1 -> run away -> E (stomp) -> T -> W -> F1 -> run just to stomp someone and retract the spirit for movement speed.
Vendetta: I got Vendetta twice now as a last pick first round. Lets face it, Vendaetta plus two random nukes = dead Heroes. No one buying detection in AD helps
Stuns: Why are people not taking stuns first round?
Natures guise: All other invis is instantly gobbled up, yet guise is completly ignored.
Natural Order: Free damage amplification for your Nuker. Broken with Vendetta.
Overvalued:
Sticky Napalm: Yes there are broken things you can do with sticky Napalm. But if the pool only has one or two good tick damage spells it is not a first pick. You will be counterpicked! I have seen more then a few people first picking sticky and simply not getting anything to go with it.
Marksmanship: Yes it's nice damage IF you are Agi & rangend, but ffs stop first picking it, stop picking it on Int Heroes and don't don't DON'T pick it on Meele Heroes. Get a stun instead...
Untouchable: Yes it makes me rightcklick you slower. This is AD however, I have Nukes.
On the fence:
Grow: I really like taking Grow. But you sort of lock yourself into a rightcklicker role when taking it and getting to the point in AD where you get the items and levels up to be a "traditionall" late game carry is much harder then in a regular game.
What people need to do/not to do:
DO build a Hero that works with your base modell. The ammount of low mana pool Heroes with 4 active spells which they have mana for two of I see makes me sad.
DO build a support if you can. I know it's AD and everyone wants a broken Hero. But relisticly if you're 4th/5th just building a really good support will do more for your team then the "cute" combo you manage to assemble from the dregs.
DON'T build a jungler. AD means constant fighting, and your team being 4 v 5 for 15-20 minutes just loses you the game in most cases.
DO buy wards and detection. People love taking invis. If you counter their first pick with 180 gold for dust it's pretty sweet. Wards are even better in AD then in normal games, because people want to constantly fight. Having vision of rotations becomes even more important.
Oh god, I just found out in a game that Nightstalker's aghs upgrade, unobstructed night vision, works on him even if he doesn't have darkness as his ult.
I found this out because this guy just went Hunter in the Night, Lunar Blessing, Battery Assault, Hookshot on a Nightstalker base hero. Essentially, at night, he had a massive range of flying vision, and a way to initiate from an equally massive range. Never have I been more terrified in a game than I was half the time in that one.
That's the sort of not-obvious but very powerful combo that I would love to find and theorycraft about in AD.
>What people need to do: Make sure at least one of your abilities is a one-point wonder. You're much stronger without a dead skill slot for the first 11 levels. (If you're support, you may want two one-point wonders, because level 8 is a pretty hefty hump.)
If you're at least halfway support, then pick a stun, a nuke and always have at least one farming/pushing/counter pushing skill, it can be The same as one of The two mentioned
On November 22 2014 09:40 BlindSC2 wrote: Oh god, I just found out in a game that Nightstalker's aghs upgrade, unobstructed night vision, works on him even if he doesn't have darkness as his ult.
I found this out because this guy just went Hunter in the Night, Lunar Blessing, Battery Assault, Hookshot on a Nightstalker base hero. Essentially, at night, he had a massive range of flying vision, and a way to initiate from an equally massive range. Never have I been more terrified in a game than I was half the time in that one.
That's the sort of not-obvious but very powerful combo that I would love to find and theorycraft about in AD.
The aghs is tied to Hunter, not Darkness or NS himself.
On November 22 2014 09:40 BlindSC2 wrote: Oh god, I just found out in a game that Nightstalker's aghs upgrade, unobstructed night vision, works on him even if he doesn't have darkness as his ult.
I found this out because this guy just went Hunter in the Night, Lunar Blessing, Battery Assault, Hookshot on a Nightstalker base hero. Essentially, at night, he had a massive range of flying vision, and a way to initiate from an equally massive range. Never have I been more terrified in a game than I was half the time in that one.
That's the sort of not-obvious but very powerful combo that I would love to find and theorycraft about in AD.
The aghs is tied to Hunter, not Darkness or NS himself.
Kinda random, thats would be the only aghs upgrade tied to non-ulti skill. Can you pick it with aghs-upgradable ult and have both upgrades than?
It's tied to the body. NS with any upgradeable ult gets both effects. It's also not the only aghs upgrade tied to a non ult skill, Tinker also isnt for example.
On November 22 2014 09:40 BlindSC2 wrote: Oh god, I just found out in a game that Nightstalker's aghs upgrade, unobstructed night vision, works on him even if he doesn't have darkness as his ult.
I found this out because this guy just went Hunter in the Night, Lunar Blessing, Battery Assault, Hookshot on a Nightstalker base hero. Essentially, at night, he had a massive range of flying vision, and a way to initiate from an equally massive range. Never have I been more terrified in a game than I was half the time in that one.
That's the sort of not-obvious but very powerful combo that I would love to find and theorycraft about in AD.
The aghs is tied to Hunter, not Darkness or NS himself.
Kinda random, thats would be the only aghs upgrade tied to non-ulti skill. Can you pick it with aghs-upgradable ult and have both upgrades than?
On November 24 2014 10:47 SKC wrote: It's tied to the body. NS with any upgradeable ult gets both effects. It's also not the only aghs upgrade tied to a non ult skill, Tinker also isnt for example.
On November 24 2014 08:15 Svetz wrote: I've played a couple of games recently that have really shown off the power of germinate. Germinate + Coup de Grace was particularly brutal
Throw in a bit of life steal and it can be really hard to take them down.
Germinate is just really good on any right click Hero. I recently got it on Drow together with Precision Aura and Frost Arrows (so Vanilla Drow with Germinate really) and faces were rekt. Basicly Enemy couldn't fight the into the dps and we won with a 13-11 score simply because they couldn't defend Towers while I rightclicked and team backed me up with Purification and Natures Attendence.
On November 24 2014 08:15 Svetz wrote: I've played a couple of games recently that have really shown off the power of germinate. Germinate + Coup de Grace was particularly brutal
Throw in a bit of life steal and it can be really hard to take them down.
I think Weaver is going to take off as the next first pick/ban carry, Geminate already did strong damage, add that it can crit or proc effects? He's pretty much freelo.
Which i don't quite understand. Isn't it supposed to loop until all but one target runs out of hp? Or did they mean "we added Fatal Bonds to the short list of skills&items that don't trigger the damage of Sticky Napalm" (the others being urn, OoV and radiance i think)? That would make a lot more sense to me.
Just played a game as LC with Aftershock, Sadist, Static Remnant, and Ball Lightning.
Man, you get a truly, stupidly overpowered skillset like that so rarely you can forget what fun it is. Ended the game at about 32 minutes at 13-1-17 with a 30-charge Bloodstone. For some reason none of them ever built a BKB.
Haha, after reading that I managed to pick phantasm + glaives too... so good.
My other fun build lately was rockets + laser + aa ulti for ultimate aghanims scepter fun times. Just farmed scepter and bots and jumped around the map with teleporting prophet killing everything.
Anti-mage base hero with Meepo clones and Venomancer ward. The ability to have 30+ wards up at any instance made it impossible for the enemy to outpush the lane. If they were smart they would have just split push, but the wards still did the job.
On February 09 2015 13:36 Belisarius wrote: I'm saying that on the basis of the post above me, haven't encountered it myself. Nothing on devdota either.
Yeah, okay. Maybe he was just telling a story from a long time ago. I'll play a few games later and see if the Mappo shows up.
Turbo AD was great for the brief moment it existed. AD was never serious business anyway so it made plenty of sense.
Another of those cases where a diehard existing fanbase has a meltdown over changes that would have made their pet thing much more accessible to the rest of the universe.
That said, I do think the turbo mechanics themselves could do with a retune.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1jnETKM.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kYM9V6z.png)
)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CzC9o6w.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NLudaNI.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vp31nBK.jpg)
