Life Outside PLT1

Random stuff we see

Well in my travels around this world we see some random things. and i have pxted to prove it. The first one was kinda funny. they are like twice the size of normal.

Now this one is just crazy. this was on the motorway doing 100km. OMG

And yes the it is true im a LVl 15 orc, hunter now. i cant believe it either but dota was getting crap.

Assault

Reactionary play is for losers. You are smart, it is your job to be causing situations not reacting to them. You shouldn’t be wandering into ganks, you should be causing them.

Fear will kill you and as soon as you are afraid you have lost. Embrace it and fight to the bitter end. The major advantage the higher tier players have over the rest is primarily fear. Case in point: There is no physical difference in my ability to play chess, we are all equally capable of moving the pieces and understand the rules (well maybe not En Passant, but that’s not important), yet I know when playing some people they are afraid. They make mistakes, further compounding the situation. They lose not due to lack of ability, but because they cannot master their own emotions. They subconsciously give up, before the game has even started.

Example:

—-

Mathew with Morphling ( Level 12 ) blinks into the middle of three heroes ( Level 8 ) using waveform. Suppose they’re Rhasta, Clinkz and Silencer.

What do you think happens? Often I see you going “ARGH MATHEW”, splitting up and running away, in which case Mathew will probably kill Rhasta and maybe Clinkz, before escaping on low health.

Here’s what should happen: Rhasta holds Morphling. Clinkz and Silencer lay the smack down. And just before Rhasta’s hold finishes, Silence casts global silence or similar to make sure that Morphling can’t blink out. Then all three heroes cover each other to make their escape.

—-

Not only that, but you need to be more objective in identifying threats. The biggest threat is probably not the best player on the other team, it will probably be the second best if they have a carry hero, and you’re wasting your time nullifying their best player, but not the carry. I’ve been in a number of games where you’ve wasted time killing me, but not the person with Phantom Assassin who successfully farmed a complete item set and was a far greater threat.

Situational awareness. What you can’t see, can kill you. Wards are 200 gold. That’s four creeps. Go buy some. Put them where you can’t see, and people could come towards you from. It will make a huge difference. Wards are your friends. You love wards.

Tower defense. Kill the catapult first, it auto targets the tower and does a lot of damage. So make sure you position yourself in front of the tower so it aims for you first. Towers don’t really regen, you do. Ideally you want to kill the creeps before they even get within range of your tower, if you’ve got some sort of AoE attack that’s spammable then use it. Fighting just creeps and those supported by a hero is different. So if a hero is there, than it may be more worthwhile saving your spells to deal with the hero. Use your own judgment.

Final base defense. The barracks is rather important. Don’t let them get anywhere near it. Defend at the top of the ramp, so that their attacks tend to miss. And clear away the creeps as fast as possible. Unless you’re very certain you can beat their heroes while outside your base, then don’t wander into them from behind or the side. Go into your base via a different entrance and then go defend. Otherwise if they have enough disables you could find you entire team dead outside your own base, unable to defend.

Have a look at this replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/replay/12916/index.html

It shows the difference that teamwork can make, not only that but it also shows the difference that a item that gives your entire team a buff makes.

Girls like swarms of DOTA!?! Right?

First pub game were I’ve remembered and felt the need to watch the replay. I was Enigma, I did Good. (Double kill at about 5:45mins)

Enigmatime.

Don’t let me play ap games.

Because I might choose Spectre.

SAVE ME AS…

The Battle.net archives Part 2: A summary of game modes (bonus replay at the end)

Staying up till the wee hours of the morning hammering away at the keyboard. That’s correct. I have a keyboard. Apologies to those people who were under the assumption that I click up letters in charmap or draw letters with eye movements like Stephen Hawking does.

Here’s a quick summary of DoTA game modes. And somehow there will be a reasoning behind why I hate apem games.

-apem
Ok, let’s start off with the most popular game mode in public DoTA games. This is the most popular because it surpasses all other game modes by way of number of games. “Why is that?” You may ask; well I have to tell you I have no fucking clue. If you want a good game with at the most 1 leaver per side and competent teammates and skillful opponents, stay away from apem.
apem games tend to attract retards because it is by it’s very description; “easy mode”. You don’t have to wait for items and levels, which works great for ADHD sufferers and due to the huge disparity in experience and gold gains as compared to non em games; game hosts and their friends love to cheese people for easy wins by
waiting to see which heroes your team picks, picking heroes to counter and ganking in teams all throughout the early game - while you’re waiting to revive and missing out on huge amounts of gold and experience, they will simply ride their lead to victory.
I don’t play apem games anymore and you shouldn’t either. They’re complete crap.

-arem
arem games are bearable. Often i’ll have to settle for arem games rather than wait for someone to host an ar, ap or ardm games. arem is a decent mode, it’s more skillful than apem since teams can’t counter-pick but luck plays a large role since late game killers will always dominate with a good player; for instance, if I get ganked early in my lane as a late game hero; i’ll just plant observer wards and farm neutrals to catch up.
These games attract a few retards, but less than apem. The amount of good players in arem games is decent and games will often go on to completion.
Please note that repicking is frowned upon in -arem games since you’re more likely to get a good hero if you repick a crap one (defeating the purpose of an all random game), it’s not outright banned but sore losers will complain about it if you kick their asses too much(backdooring on the other hand, is always banned by implication in public or friendly games).
arem is probably my most played mode, tied with -ap (non em).

-ap
ap games are interesting. First of all, -ap games have the least amount of retards out of any public game mode and hero balance is often alot better, good players will usually -random since there are no useless heroes in a non em game; poorer players will pick heroes they’re good with. Counter-picking can be a problem, but smart players will aim for a good mix of heroes on their side, so they will be more difficult to defeat with a counter-picking strategy.

-ar
ar games are good. Good players populate ar games and if you’re tired of bad teammates, leavers, hero imbalance and counter-picking strategies; play ar.
Once again; please note that repicking is frowned upon in -ar games. It’s less about getting a good hero (as it is in arem) than it is about getting a good hero for the matchup. Not outright banned, but it does go against the spirit of “all random”, so sore losers will complain if you kick their asses.

-ardm
ardm games are my absolute favourite. It’s a very rare game mode nowadays and when one does pop up, it takes a long time to fill.
This makes me sad in the pants; since the nature of ardm adds new game dynamics such as item balancing and placing higher priority on ganking strong players until they random something crap.
The relative rarity of ardm makes it so that most players who play should have experience, or are guys who have no idea what dm is and simply thought the host misspelt “arem”.

Now that’s done. I leave you now with a replay (If you’re wondering why every replay has myself owning, it’s because I keep the replays where I suck ass and get yelled at away from prying eyes).

There are lots of good things to learn from in this replay, i’ll be discussing them in detail in a day or two.

IT’S HERE! NO WAIT, IT’S HERE

The Battle.net archives part 1: Screwing around with techies.

I really liked this game. Got second highest in kills using techies.

Techies is perhaps the most fun hero to play if you have the patience. In this game, I screwed around putting regular mines (remote mines are for noobs) on areas which to my experience, would likely have weak heroes walking past.

At around 24 minutes, I claimed my first victim.

Replay coming soon.

Replay coming here: no wait, it’s here.

Teamwork, communication and building a better future

So you’ve been playing DotA for a bit, and you’re no longer dying having read Simon’s guide. However that guide will keep you alive, it will not make you a useful member of the team.

You want to win. If you don’t, you can be on the other team.

First thing. Starting items.

• Ring of Regeneration (375)
• Sobi Mask (325)
• Ring of Protection (175)

This is my primary build for all heroes, some people will disagree with me, but it is my belief that this will offer the most utility to you in the majority of cases. It increases your health and mana regeneration rates, allowing you to recover from damage faster and to use your abilities to hold your lane. If you can argue why these aren’t good starting items for the hero you’re playing than reading this guide is pointless…
From now on there are three things you need to focus on

1. Communication
2. Teamwork
3. Building items

Communication
The first topic will be rather brief. There’s a Ventrilo server. Even if you aren’t going to talk then login just to listen. People can yell at you a lot faster than they can type about incoming ganks. If you know something that your team doesn’t then tell them, the ping tool is your friend.

A final note on typing that should be obvious. If you’re typing and enemy heroes come up to you just hit enter and deal with that first. Don’t die to your own typing, that’s just retarded.

Teamwork

Now that the game has begun from this point on everything revolves around teamwork. Discuss which lanes you are going to take.

The middle lane is both difficult to hold and to push. You have to worry about being attacked from all sides. Both teams tend to put their best players in this lane. Also in case you hadn’t noticed the map isn’t square. The horizontal lanes are longer, than the vertical lanes! This means you’ll have a longer walk back to the fountain if you choose a horizontal lane, also you’ll need to be careful as it is relatively easy to get behind your first tower from the forest so be careful how much damage you take.
Early game the only thing you need to worry about is harassing people in your own lane, and accumulating the gold you require for your mid-game items. Unless you are completely certain that you can kill the opposing hero(es) in your lane do not take the risk of doing so. This can easily backfire. Potentially badly enough to cause a irreversible cascade effect. Supposing you’re holding the top lane for scourge against two heroes on the left. You get greedy and die, and don’t respawn for thirty seconds. Due to your death they gain both money and level up further than you do, take out your first and partially damage the second tower. Now they only bother keeping one hero in your lane as due to the additional resources that hero can easily counter you. Thus they send a third hero to the middle lane. Which is now under the brunt of three heroes and crumbles, and so forth. You may never be able to stabilize from this situation, so don’t cause it.

Mid-game you’ll start to organize ganks, the key to these is to be discreet so the other team doesn’t notice. You usually do not need to use all five players on your side to kill someone at this stage so don’t bother. Keep a hero in each of your lanes so that you appear to be busy, and the remaining two heroes AND the hero in the lane you are trying to perform the gank will do the job. You need to think about your skills when choosing who do this. If you’re going against Sandking or any hero which can cause high damage to all of you make sure you’re packing disablers. If the gankers get ganked I will laugh .
During the gank worry about the hero, the creeps aren’t important. You should be able to do enough damage to kill the enemy and escape relatively unscathed. Note you should also be looking out for this yourself, if you notice that a set of heroes that can kill you is missing than be extremely cautious (if you can’t be, than run).
Avoiding ganks.

Venomancer can use wards to increase the area visible (yes I know Vlad’s doesn’t work on Veno).

Broodmother is particularly useful for team members with her webs, as the enemy team cannot even get rid of them. Great for giving visibility of the river to protect against back ambushes while pushing mid.

Obviously not all heroes have built in protection, but there’s nothing stopping you from buying the cheap wards as they last for ages, or acquiring Lothar’s Edge for windwalk.

If you’re on the sentinel side here is where you worry. Red is worse then yellow. And gray/white splotches are where they will come from. If you have some way of making the gray areas visible than you’ll have far more warning. Note the yellow spots on your own side! Especially the bottom right tower, once that is gone it is is exceptionally unsafe to be there, as for all you know their entire team is in the forest above you. Also don’t dawdle in the secret shops of either side you never know who else is going shopping. Notice the grayed out icon that looks similar to a dartboard or a flag stuck in the ground. It’s the ping tool if you didn’t know where it was.
Obviously for Scourge the danger spots are similar, there’s a few slight differences for either side but roughly speaking it’s about a mirror image.

There is one interesting thing to note, I’m unsure why but it seems that scourge doesn’t notice top being pushed as much as sentinel does bottom, possibly because it’s at the top of the mini-map.

Pushing requires teamwork!

Unless the game has gone haywire and players have been fed it should be impossible for a single player to push mid. Your average life expectancy near the second tower is about 2 seconds by yourself.

It’s significantly harder to push than it is to defend. Don’t do it alone, either take a trout or a couple of mates with you. If you have escape methods the minimum number of heroes needed to push each lane is two for the sides and at least three for middle, more likely four once you hit the second tower.

You can use this to your advantage though, while the opposing team is all mid if your team is competent you should be able to hold with only three or four. So while they’re wasting time you can be clearing the towers top. There’s a high chance that you can see all of their heroes while you’re doing this, giving you ample warning of when they’re coming to get you. Not only that but if any of their guys teleport back you’re relieving some of the pressure mid.

Only do this if you have an escape mechanism for the five pissed off heroes coming to get you, and if your team has agreed to it. This is solely because the most precious thing in the game is the barracks (rax) in each lane. Once the difference in number of barracks becomes more than one it’s extremely unlikely you can make a comeback. As you will end up having to dedicate a hero to each lane just to hold it.

Build orders
By popular demand and so I don’t have to type it out each match.

I like to use Tangos to eat trees early game, they’re tasty and let me stay in my lane for longer. Argue about my builds all you want, people on the DotA forums don’t agree so I certainly don’t expect we will either. If you want some more ideas go read some of the premium guides, just remember that nothing is absolute. Finally I believe that blink dagger is an exceptionally useful item for escaping ganks, more so than Boots of Travel. So if you’ve got the cash and slots for both and have to go rambo than get it.

If you’ve learnt just one thing from this guide than it has fulfilled it’s purpose, feel free to rant in the comments.

STOP SUCKING AT DOTA (attn nubs)

Ok, ok…

I notice a lot of you a-holes like to play DotA, but guess what… You’re all (mostly) crap.

Here’s a small amount of advice for you shitsticks so that someday you can stop pissing off the good players who have to put up with your shit.

Basics:

STOP. FUCKING. DYING.
When you die, you lose some gold and your assailant gets gold and experience. Sounds fairly inert right? Well guess what… You can’t gain experience while you’re dead. And you can’t gain gold while you’re dead. That’s a bit more than you bargained for isn’t it? But hey, that only comes into consideration when you actually die; which you shouldn’t be doing a lot of anyway.
PS. Fuck you.

USE CHICKENS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IF YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT THAT GOOD, BUY A CHICKEN.
Seriously, if you’re the kind that can’t avoid dying or if you’re up against a strong team, buy a chicken. IT’S ONLY 225 FUCKING GOLD, PEOPLE! You can quickly buy items as soon as you get the gold, rather than staying in your lane waiting to get killed, or retreating and letting your enemy have their way with your tower. If you die at all, the chicken will pay for itself over time. YOU CAN’T LOSE GOLD WHICH YOU’VE ALREADY SPENT.
PS. Fuck you.

RELYING ON YOUR TEAM MATES… WILL GET YOU KILLED.
(AKA. Oh, Pedro’s almost respawned, he’ll defend base while I push this last tower…
Pedro respawns, goes to a lane and gets killed
Shit…)
Self explanatory, self-preservation should be high on your list. Good players may take calculated risks to help you out or sacrifice themselves for some reason or another; but good players don’t need my advice.
PS. Fuck you.

Advanced:

Calculating risks.
Ok, picture this… You’re on the scourge side pushing the bottom lane far away from base, you’ve almost reached the second tower and there’s been no sign of enemy heroes in the lane so far, WHAT DO YOU DO?

If you answered “keep pushing”, you’re a fucking idiot and you should have your rectum prolapsed by a pool filter.

The correct answer is “wait”; you’re far from base and in the process of pushing the lane, your enemies know where you are and so far, you have no idea where the enemies are. Just waiting in the lane, out of sight range while your creep wave heads up to the tower is the thing to do, if you’re against someone with half a brain, enemy heroes will probably rush out from behind the tower and from side lanes to intercept you, if you kept on pushing, you would’ve just scored yourself a death.

WHEN IS IT SAFE TO KEEP PUSHING?
Eventually, you’ll need to make the push. It’s safe to push when you can see just about all enemy blips on the minimap and they’re not close enough to endanger you. ALWAYS CHECK THE MINIMAP FOR YOURSELF. Some idiots I’ve played with on battle.net would push, get killed and then complain that their teammates never warned them that an enemy hero was missing; well… They’re idiots. Refer to the first part of this guide where it says “RELYING ON YOUR TEAM MATES… WILL GET YOU KILLED.”

Constructing a hero.
Well geez, we can pick heroes at the start of the game and blah blah blah… Something unimportant.
What I mean by constructing a hero is to customise your hero within the game’s restrictions with items, skill selection and other crap.

The cardinal rule is to know your base hero. Heroes can be divided into 3 skeleton categories; early game, mid game and late game.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just list what I believe to be the BEST heroes of each category:

Early game(levels 1-6): Keeper of the Light, Goblin Techies, Warlock
Mid game(levels 7-15): Spectre, Spiritbreaker, Skeleton King
Late game(levels 16 onward): Naix, Bounty hunter, Antimage
Heroes that need a nerf: Bloodseeker (seriously, he was good enough WITHOUT semi-permanent haste and truesight)

Generally, early game heroes need to deal damage with their low leveled skills early in the game to get a small lead on the enemy, they pretty much need to ride that advantage to victory or just stay alive until their team mates are strong enough to pick up the slack left by an early game hero’s characteristic SEVERE drop in usefulness in the later game.

Late game heroes generally need to stay alive for as long as possible and buy as many strong items as they can afford. They will generally rely on their strong high level skillsets or unusually high endgame stats while using strong items to mask their few BLARING weaknesses. Due to this reliance on items, they need to stay alive and draw the game (ideally to level 16, when they get the third level of their ultimate) out to win consistently.

Mid game heroes are a rarely-discussed category. Some people would argue that they don’t exist, but I maintain that they do. Level 7 is the ideal level for a midgame hero to shine, assuming it lived through the early levels completely fine. Level 7 is when you typically have level 1 of your ultimate and a level 4 regular skill. Midgame heroes typically come online when their ultimate is available, in very general terms; not all level 1 ultimates are equal. Midgame heroes will use their low level ultimates to pick off late game heroes while they’re still laning, or pick off early game heroes when their skills start to wane in effectiveness. If a mid game hero is played well to all of it’s advantages and to the enemy’s disadvantages, they typically have enough gas left to play a strong late game.

Specific hero roles are harder to categorise, since there are 80-something heroes and their roles will change as the game state changes. For example, I’ll give the role progression of the Keeper of the Light;

Early game role = Farming, nuking
Mid game role = Casting Chakra on allies (mana me plz)
Late game role = Piece of shit

That’s the end of this guide. Stay tuned for part 2… Am I gonna make a part 2? Probably not.