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Dota 2 Beta Thread: [Brewmaster]
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On this topic, I have a question. Why did it seem like Milkman was being so ridiculously aggressive as Huskar that one game. I was playing Tiny and if I even got close to the creeps, he would attack me and set me on fire.
CreativeSK
Neo Member
hey guys, if u feel like playing come join the gaf channel. we are trying to get a team together but the channel is dead. 
uh, because he wasn't afraid of you? it's called harassing, and it's how experienced players win lanes.
hey guys, if u feel like playing come join the gaf channel. we are trying to get a team together but the channel is dead.
What's the channel name?
CreativeSK
Neo Member
NeoGAF
Right, I only meant "rule of thumb" as in terms of the bot matches when first learning.
I should note that people shouldn't apply that to actual games or once they feel more comfortable in practice games.
If you hit people repeatedly they are easier to kill if the stay in the lane or will eventually have to go heal if they don't.
As long as harassing doesn't put you at a disadvantage (like you really need to have X mana in case Y happens), it's a good move.
Having a ranged person versus only melee also tends to make good harassing scenarios.
In addition to what Kapura said, he had a range advantage over you from the beginning. Sure you could stun him at range or toss units at him, but you'd be forced to burn mana to do so. Huskar's flaming spears are far more spammable, because he merely has to sacrifice a little health for them (saving his mana for his heal and ultimate). I can't recall who your teammates were, but I think it would have been better to match ranged against ranged, someone who could escape if need be but also get a little farm.
Very very very helpful stuff so far, thank you both for taking the time to explain this stuff.
One more question for now: When it comes time to buy Core items to replace Starting items, how do I know which Starting items to replace/sell/discard? The first ones in the list or is there a hierarchy?
When does the laning phase end? How will I know that it's time to group together like Nirolak described?
What are wards? Items, I'm guessing? Or spells? What are some examples of common wards? Based on how I've seen the term used, I'm guessing wards apply to the team as a whole?
Which reminds me, can you explain pulling? I'm guessing it means allowing the enemy heroes/creeps to attempt to attack my own tower, but why would I do this? Ambush?
One more question for now: When it comes time to buy Core items to replace Starting items, how do I know which Starting items to replace/sell/discard? The first ones in the list or is there a hierarchy?
Basically.
Kenta:
Wards are a specific item. You buy them (2 for 200g) and you place them on the ground, they give you vision of the area around them. You use them to keep vision on some areas of the map. There are 2 types, normal vision wards, and then wards that can see anything invisible.
The laning phase tends to ends when a tower in a lane goes down, because those people are forced to move to another lane to be useful as you wouldn't want to be in the enemy half of the map as its very dangerous. Can end anywhere between 6 and 12. Sometimes people will just ditch lanes and start ganking because they have picked up enough items or the right skills to help get kills in any lane. Or push down towers.
The basic 'idea' behind pulling as you mentioned it is that you want to be in a safe position at the start on the game (to get good, safe farm) - that means being closer to your own tower (and closer to your side of the river). So you try to pull your lane/wave of creeps towards you through various methods. Denying creeps is the simplest way to do this, as they the enemy then has more creeps = lane gets pushed towards you.
All this information should be stuck together in the OP.
Wards are a specific item. You buy them (2 for 200g) and you place them on the ground, they give you vision of the area around them. You use them to keep vision on some areas of the map. There are 2 types, normal vision wards, and then wards that can see anything invisible.
The laning phase tends to ends when a tower in a lane goes down, because those people are forced to move to another lane to be useful as you wouldn't want to be in the enemy half of the map as its very dangerous. Can end anywhere between 6 and 12. Sometimes people will just ditch lanes and start ganking because they have picked up enough items or the right skills to help get kills in any lane. Or push down towers.
The basic 'idea' behind pulling as you mentioned it is that you want to be in a safe position at the start on the game (to get good, safe farm) - that means being closer to your own tower (and closer to your side of the river). So you try to pull your lane/wave of creeps towards you through various methods. Denying creeps is the simplest way to do this, as they the enemy then has more creeps = lane gets pushed towards you.
All this information should be stuck together in the OP.
They added the ability to create itemguides in game now, so they might be saved to a different location now.
Phandy covered the other stuff, but on this note, a lot of Starting Items are parts that you use in making Core items, so you want to get rid of your healing items instead (either by using them or selling them), or otherwise focusing on items that you never upgrade into anything else.
Clicking on an item in the shop will show you what builds that item, and click on the items that make that item shows you if any of those items are made by other items as well, which is helpful for identifying what to keep or sell.
I think that I posted two different versions, one of them doesn't have the right formatting for the text files, I'm not at my home computer and it's not in my dropbox, maybe ask Haly if he can send the files to you, I know he has them working.
It's all right there. If I know for a fact that I am better than the mid I am against, or more experienced; I'll play really aggressive and harass until I can get the kill with nukes. If you watch a lot of really good mid players (at least in HoN), they will harass you hard at level 1 and 2, and if they have a hero with a nuke (shadowfiend, lina, mirana); they can kill you at 3+. Getting that early kill or harassing your opponent out of lane basically wins you mid--it's fairly easy from then on to control the lane (unless they call for ganks).
Haven't seen him on yet. I changed something and now the recommended build is the same for all heroes, really annoying.
I getcha with the balancing and lack of visible stats. The thing is that I listen to you guys when you're playing matchmaking and you still end up upset after losing games there. Remember the game you were Viper and you guys spent at least half an hour arguing over items? Yeah.
I vastly prefer inhousing (I inhouse with other experienced players as well as GAFfers) because building a strong relationship between players is absolutely vital to good teamwork. This is why HyunA and I push for constant inhouses and lots of them. I can't tell you how many times I've had someone ring for our team in Dota 1 who was, individually, a skilled player, but had such bad synergy and teamwork ability that we had to throw them out. If you aren't a good team player you're useless, and I encourage people to start playing with other players (gaffers with gaffers) ASAP because not only will you learn faster but you'll learn smarter too. Building relationships and making friends with other players is key, and the more inhouses we do, the better we can accurately gauge someone's skill and balance accordingly. Actively avoiding inhouses works against this.
This is why we need more experienced players who are good at leading to play inhouses. It's important that people get used to working together. In inhouses, I'm thinking of sticking to playing mostly initiation heroes like Enigma from here on out, because I can be very direct with when we need to teamfight and when we need to back up. It helps the newer players learn to press the advantage or to minimize the disadvantage. It also helps that I can interact with players outside of the game and in this thread, in the gaf channel, in private message, etc. I can help explain why a certain team lost, why we won, what each team could have done better, so on and so forth. When you play matchmaking, you're isolated to your own team, whereas you can get feedback from the opposing side in inhouses.
For the most part Anbokr and dommynick covered it. To add some details for that specific game, it was because I know there's no way Tiny can kill me at level 1, 2, or 3 when I'm Huskar, unless I play unsafe and let you toss me into your tower range. And because of that, it was to my advantage to keep you away from the creeps so you couldn't get to the level where you could instantly kill me. Huskar excels at trading hits with enemies and you can bet I'm going to abuse that, especially with Tiny's low armor.
This sounds like some Inception-level crap. I feel like I'm wasting time when in the shop, though. I'm guessing this is just one of those things that will become second nature with more experience, but in general is it relatively safe to leave your lane here and there if you need to? Do you just trust your creeps to keep the balance?
Also, speaking of creeps, what's the point in destroying the enemy barracks if their creeps keep spawning anyways?
In HoN, I loved inhousing way more than tmm and I think a lot of others did too (but we had the same salt problem with a few players as well). I really felt like the only way to balance was pitting the two highest skilled players as captains against each other; ergo, Loki vs Thor, or Loki (or Thor) vs Swiftlame. These games were the most fun or challenging. Now I haven't played with your or your friends but it seems like for a balanced game, it needs to be you vs Hyuna. Loki/Thor hated playing each other at first (especially since they were within earshot of one another), but these games really were the most balanced and challenging, and they started doing it more and more.
Maybe when some more of Hongaf moves over and Loki/Thor get off of WoW, there will be some challenging games with them vs you and your friends, but until then; does anyone in GAF stack up against you guys? I honestly don't know because I play DOTA 2 maybe a couple times a week and only with a few people I know.
If you don't have a backup of the original then I can't do much for you until Haly comes around.
The bots are still........special. I was playing Venomancer in an all-bot game and Razor on the other team just ran right into the jungle creeps while running away from me.....when he had less than 100HP remaining. The neutrals ended up getting the last hit. (Or was he actually denying me? I'm honestly not sure)
your creeps will give you a certain amount of time, less if they're being autoattacked or pushed with skills. Using the shop gets easier the more you know what to do with it. It's something you can improve on in practice mode.
And destroying an enemy's barracks makes your creeps permanently stronger (and worth less gold to the enemy). Left to their own devices, super creeps from one destroyed barracks will eventually destroy the other barracks and then the ancient.
I don't really think you understand how much harder it would be to defend if your creeps just stopped spawning completely. If they stopped entirely, A) the destroying team would lose a lot of potential farm and B) there would basically need to be somebody defending that lane at all times for the destroyed team. If all barracks on both side got destroyed, the game would then only be about heroes and neuts, which is much less fun.
Generally yes. Unless they're doing some kind of push strategy, they won't be able to take down your tower very quickly, so it is safe to leave and go heal.
Ideally you want to leave while your lane partner is still in the lane, unless you are in the middle and thus most likely don't have a lane partner.
It makes your creeps in that lane stronger, meaning that they will push into the base and start attacking their internal towers and main building. This forces them to spend time killing those creeps, which puts them at a large disadvantage in terms of map control.
Edit:
Whoops, should have refreshed.
Check your PMs!
On second thought I don't think they are messed up. Just some wonky choices on some of them
ty!
My 2 biggest tips for newbies would be:
(I'm talking never touched a moba before)
Play with someone who is willing to talk you through the process really thouroughly.
Or just watch a few games being played - either in game or watch some Pro's stream.
I started playing HoN after i had watched my housemate play about 6-7 matches, and I instantly grasped things MUCH quicker just because I knew the simple basics and wasn't doing really dumb shit (like NOT auto-attacking, just LastHit etc).
(I'm talking never touched a moba before)
Play with someone who is willing to talk you through the process really thouroughly.
Or just watch a few games being played - either in game or watch some Pro's stream.
I started playing HoN after i had watched my housemate play about 6-7 matches, and I instantly grasped things MUCH quicker just because I knew the simple basics and wasn't doing really dumb shit (like NOT auto-attacking, just LastHit etc).
The item choices? I removed lots of the fluff and wtf items from the valve build, also made them more accurate for what people expect from the hero. The Crystal Maiden one is the most accurate.
have your team pick him first
hope he's being played by a bad
pick heroes with silences or a shitton of stuns
Except for Sheepstick as the luxury item =P
I watched many matches from The Invitational and learned the absolute basics around that time, so I'm not completely useless. Only mostly useless. But yes, I'm starting to feel like maybe everyone isn't speaking gibberish after all, these terms are starting to make sense.
But can you explain auto-attacking? Is it an option I have to enable or is it a button I press/hold? Do I just get within a certain range of an enemy or does something else have to happen? And by 'enemy', I mean a creep because I assume it would be dumb to auto-attack an enemy hero?
It's the only item you should be making if you have excess gold, maybe force staff if your good. Fuck that Blink Dagger shit, so many Crystal maidens blink in then die cause she's squishy and slow.
Still top tier.
A CM will never get enough money to make a stick though. She's better off with better initiation with Blink, options with Force Staff, uninterruptable freezing field with BKB or just upgrading to Jango. A dagger costs pretty much the same as an orb. Hell a bkb lets you start off with an ogre club (yet it looks like an axe) which gives you the same amount of str, the stat CM really wants late game.
The new Orchid and the Rod of Atos also look like they would work well as luxury items.
I'm not saying sheep isnt a great choice if you are rolling in dough but its parts are very expensive and she already has some disabling power.
The new Orchid and the Rod of Atos also look like they would work well as luxury items.
I'm not saying sheep isnt a great choice if you are rolling in dough but its parts are very expensive and she already has some disabling power.
CM doesn't work exceedingly well as initiation because she only has slows and a single-target immobilise that doesn't prevent item use or spells. The ult can do a lot of damage, yes, but if she blinks in first odds are she will be stunned immediately or killed outright within a few seconds. Bonus there: the ult is channelling, so she can't even use her other spells. I find CM is most useful when she uses the spells from a distance, then she can walk in when enemies get lower health and have blown many of their spells.
I tend to just use CM's Ult as Areal Denial. Enemies tend to just run rather then try to fight or run though it. And if they do run though it, usually they will take enough damage that they can then be killed. Though I do try to use it when there is something to gain, likely having someone else get away, or try to lay on the hurt in a team fight, or else they tend all just jump me.
Blink Dagger was just one option I was mentioning. Blink Nova or Frostbite isnt that great, certainly not the same as a Lion or an ES with blink.
Eh, I think I'd take a CM with a blink dagger over a probably incomplete sheepstick. Better positioning for ganks and fights, better escape, will probably tend to hang onto more of her money over time. Windrunner with a Scythe is awesome in part because she has her own ways to safely enter and exit a fight to get the Hex off, but CM has none. Even if she gets the Scythe, she may not live long enough to use it effectively. All a Blink Dagger needs is an instant, and CM can provide.
hullostranger
Member
I have to repeat what haRson said, how do you get in to In-House games? Just played a random game with 2 Gaffers and it was the nicest matchmade game I've played so far. Already in the NeoGAF steam group and Dota 2 chat channel, am I missing something?
You kind of just have to figure out when people are playing. Go to practice games, search "neogaf" for the password, and if you find one, then you can get in.
hullostranger
Member
Will do, thanks!
Hang around the Neogaf channel, we usually start talking and asking if people want to IH.
The thing is that HyunA, while a good player, is a terrible leader in my experience. He makes a lot of poor choices and does much better with guidance. I don't mind playing against him, it's just that it'd be better if we had another player who could round up his team and direct them firmly but kindly. I'm glad I'm not the only person here who has way more fun in inhouses than in tmm though. Why don't you play more Dota 2? And yes, I almost always put the newer players on my team and let the more experienced players stack up against me, unless we have an overwhelming amount of new people on.
The thing is that HyunA, while a good player, is a terrible leader in my experience. He makes a lot of poor choices and does much better with guidance. I don't mind playing against him, it's just that it'd be better if we had another player who could round up his team and direct them firmly but kindly. I'm glad I'm not the only person here who has way more fun in inhouses than in tmm though. Why don't you play more Dota 2? And yes, I almost always put the newer players on my team and let the more experienced players stack up against me, unless we have an overwhelming amount of new people on.
By Auto-attacking, I mean just constantly attacking creeps. You do this by default I think, but also using the 'attack' (normally A) would cause you to auto-attack. But generally its just the process of constantly attacking.
Its pretty much one of the first things new people (again VERY new) do; get in lane - start killing creeps. You should only ever last hit unless you specifically need to kill the creep/wave.
I mean its even something more experienced players still do. If you have an empty lane, doesnt mean you should just plough through the creeps. Good players will do just denying, and then only last hit the creeps for gold. This means you can keep the lane in its place, or help push it to your side of the map. And thus you have a comfortable lane for free farming in.
Its frustrates me when the carries coming running into a lane and just kill all the creeps when they would do better to keep the lane still and just last hit/deny. Since doing so is the best way to get money in the game (besides insane big killing sprees).
For wanting to find GAFfers to play with:
Start hanging out on Mumble. We have a lot of people around these days and theirs always someone around to help. I wouldn't mind playing a practice bot game with any who needs a basic introduction to the game.
You should play with HyunA more, Skadi, Sheepstick, Ghost Sceptre CM build or Solace is Ethereal Blade, Skadi, Sheepstick CM. Also just because you have a disable doesn't mean that adding more is a bad thing, otherwise why would Storm Spirit ever want to get Sheep, I mean just Grip everyone!
You don't have to be ganking all of the time, maximise your time and go and go clear the jungle. Wards are 200 gold every 2 and a half minutes, don't waste sentries unless you know your killing a ward, only use smoke when it's most efficient.
Just use it for the free 30% AoE slow.
The thing with Blink Dagger is you have to think about the long term, you get this blink dagger, and you may be able to set-up a fight easier, but you'll probably die because CM has no escapes and low hp / movement speed resulting in being easily bursted down, so your chance to die goes up somewhat because you'll be the first or second person in. Compared to getting a Sheep around 40~ minutes and being instantly more threatening because you have an actual disable and not a root.
I've found the most effective way to play CM in a fight, is using spells then hiding and using them again when their off CD, her autos are pretty shit so is her MS, so if you get disabled chances are your going to die, and death is far worse then losing 4-5 autos.
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