DotA2 - Original Thread

The Mysterious Ticking Noise

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[MENTION=3175]IllegallySane[/MENTION] What's your steam id? Or add wordssp and we can play together

Doh ho ho, I sadly don't bother with TPs because I can't hold all these stat boosting items + bottle. With NP I just abuse his Teleport, and with Pudge I spam Phase Boots to get back into battle sooner. I see what you mean though, since I saw a friend of mines always buy a TP scroll whenever he could. That in itself means they are damn useful. Speaking of damn useful, wards are funny stuff. So far I pretty much was the only one putting them up. I learned some of the safer ward spots, which helps in keep track of when an opposing hero is nearing our 1st tower.

Even on nature's prophet TPs are invaluable, they are pretty much the best item in DotA2. For example, you can carry TP scrolls with you, push down a lane, enemy are on their way? TP to base and recover, then TP instantly to another lane to continue split-pushing, or TP back and finish item and then join a fight with full hp and mana again.
Being able to instantly back-up an ally in another lane, defend a tower and escape ganks is quite amazing. Also, ward spots:

 Spoiler

I'll give em a try as well. Which ones are late-game bloomers, and which ones kick ass from the get go?

Venomancer is a support that can kill pomegranate right off the bat, his level 1 ganks are amazing. He's a decently scaling support since most of his pomegranate can work through magic immunity.
Viper is a hero that can dominate his lane and carry somewhat in the mid-game. His lategame is meh but he's strong in lane.
Tidehunter is another support that has an amazing teamfight ultimate. He's great in both early and mid-game and works lategame too.

Venomancer can usually work as both 4th and 5th position, but he can also be put into 2nd position since he's quite strong in lane as well.
Viper is usually 2nd position in pub games, but can also work as a 1st position, it's just rarer to see him there.
Tidehunter can run anything from 3rd to 5th position, most common position for him is 4th though.

Venomancer is a support that can kill pomegranate right off the bat, his level 1 ganks are amazing. He's a decently scaling support since most of his pomegranate can work through magic immunity.
Viper is a hero that can dominate his lane and carry somewhat in the mid-game. His lategame is meh but he's strong in lane.
Tidehunter is another support that has an amazing teamfight ultimate. He's great in both early and mid-game and works lategame too.

Venomancer can usually work as both 4th and 5th position, but he can also be put into 2nd position since he's quite strong in lane as well.
Viper is usually 2nd position in pub games, but can also work as a 1st position, it's just rarer to see him there.
Tidehunter can run anything from 3rd to 5th position, most common position for him is 4th though.

How do you play Tidehunter, Malthe? I tried him once today and went 0/13. I was in safe lane against Lich and Phantom Lancer. Everytime I tried to save my lane partner, I ended up dead too. Lots of feeding going on. I feel like one problem is that I overestimate the tankiness of strength heroes (I'm terrible with Lifestealer, too), but I'm curious about how Tidehunter is played.

I tried Omniknight a couple days ago. I just crashed and burned with him.

Clinkz, it's like love at first sight. His Skeleton Walk is one heck of an escape tool, and his damage got crazy pretty fast.

Tinker is quite amazing as a lane destroyer (was just racking up the gold), and his heat-seeking missiles were just a huge way to repel carries away from me. But the best part was that I hadn't realized the true potential of his "Rearm" Ultimate + Travel Boots. Just reading about it was making me giddy.

Faceless Void took a while for me to actually feel his power, but even then I felt it's kinda okay. His burst wasn't super spectacular, and his ultimate was very high risk high reward due to also freezing my allies in place if they are caught in the area. Miss a ranged hero, and that can spell major trouble.

[MENTION=3175]IllegallySane[/MENTION] What's your steam id? Or add wordssp and we can play together

I'll add ya on Steam. Sorry for late reply, had been messing around on DoTA 2 as well as re-trying LoL a bit.

I tried Omniknight a couple days ago. I just crashed and burned with him.

Clinkz, it's like love at first sight. His Skeleton Walk is one heck of an escape tool, and his damage got crazy pretty fast.

Tinker is quite amazing as a lane destroyer (was just racking up the gold), and his heat-seeking missiles were just a huge way to repel carries away from me. But the best part was that I hadn't realized the true potential of his "Rearm" Ultimate + Travel Boots. Just reading about it was making me giddy.

Faceless Void took a while for me to actually feel his power, but even then I felt it's kinda okay. His burst wasn't super spectacular, and his ultimate was very high risk high reward due to also freezing my allies in place if they are caught in the area. Miss a ranged hero, and that can spell major trouble.

Omniknight has the same problems that other melee supports have, incredibly and utterly shitty laning-phase. They lack a lot of the things that make ranged supports good. But his skill-kit makes up for it by being absolutely ridic support in teamfights, just sucks that diffusal blade can purge all his buffs from a target and any hero with built in purge can pineapple omni up big time.

Clinkz just needs an orchid of malevolence to start rolling, it's his bread and butter by providing a silence, preventing enemies from fighting back and utilizes his massive damage output over a short time-span, the damage amplification just helps finish off enemies but the best part is the high mana regen because clinkz is VERY mana intensive. He also 'soft-counters' chen by being able to absorb the creeps chen has converted and given bonus HP which directly synergizes with death pact allowing clinkz to absorb chen's creep and then kill chen. It also allows for chen and clinkz to be best buddies ever by keeping a nice high-HP creep around for clinkz to take in fights.

Tinker is pretty much just an absolutely amazing hero at all points of the game. Without boots of travels he is just incredibly lack-luster and weak but lategame with BoT he can split-push like no other and when you have an item like scythe of vyse you can permanently disable a target. Soul-ring and bottle + boots of travel is tinker's bread and butter since soul ring allows you to use level 1 rearm which then takes soul ring off cooldown again, making level 1 rearm pretty much free. Which is why you keep rearm at level 1 for a long while till your mana regen is increased. And with boots of travel you'll be back at base very often which makes bottle so cost-effecient regen for tinker.

Oh and faceless void is the best 1v1 lategame carry in the game, nobody can beat him in an 1v1 and when fully farmed he destroys teams and is only really outcarried by medusa and possibly phantomlancer. He needs to farm 5ever but is quite amazing in teamfights because a good chronosphere pretty much wins you the fight. He does need a BKB to fight 95% of all teams due to as you mentioned, if you miss even 1 hero with a disable you're pretty screwed since your chronosphere is more or less negated.
Battlefury is more or less core on him since it gives him a farming tool.

How do you play Tidehunter, Malthe? I tried him once today and went 0/13. I was in safe lane against Lich and Phantom Lancer. Everytime I tried to save my lane partner, I ended up dead too. Lots of feeding going on. I feel like one problem is that I overestimate the tankiness of strength heroes (I'm terrible with Lifestealer, too), but I'm curious about how Tidehunter is played.

I usually play tide-hunter two ways myself.
One is to roam and get kills and gank lanes as much as possible. It's pretty simple, you just grab a few cheap stat boosting items and some clarities and tangos, then you just get gush and go kill pomegranate in lanes where kills are possible.
The second way is to be in a lane where kills are possible anytime an enemy enters the lane.

regardless of what type i play i'll usually get mana boots, urn of shadows(If nobody else gets it) and then build pipe or blink dagger, depending on if enemies are going to engage upon us or if we're going to engage upon them. I just want to have mana and survive fights while providing as much 'support' for my team.

Tidehunter is an excellent ganker. Roaming Tide is my favorite playstyle, but it requires good map awareness and the ability to be able to tell when a gank is possible. Gush is a huge 40% slow + armor reduction for 4 seconds, which is an easy kill if followed up on with autoattacks from your team. Make sure you let your team know when you're going to gank so they can get in position, then pop out of the jungle with a Gush. Skill build for this playstyle is max Gush with 1 point in all other skills, then max Kraken Shell for ganking, or Anchor Smash if you need to push/farm.

Once you hit 6, you're ready for teamfights. Your ult is very scary early game, so your team wants to play aggressively and try to take towers while your ult is up. Try to wait until a fight is guaranteed to happen before you pop it, and catch as many people in it as you can. You're not going to be very tanky since you're not getting farm, so avoid getting focused and stay back once you pop the ult. That's about it for the basics, really.

Can you guys go over Lifestealer too? He seems well equipped to be a counter to tanks, but I've never seen it work in a match, either with me or someone else playing.

N'aix has two ways to be played, generally.
He is either jungled or put in a lane to farm.
Jungling works but isn't the best, laning n'aix is a force to watch out for.
He has an incredibly good slow and is capable of simply killing any enemy that'd dare to step into his lane.
As far as items go, if you're doing well early on you can get a hand of midas to boost your exp and gold intake early on. Boots of choice are typically phase boots to help with lacking gap-closer, that or power treads. Drums of endurance is a great item for early aggression and armlet is one of the most core items on n'aix due to how good synergy it has with him.
Later on items you'll want are generally: Assault cuirass, mjolnir, heart, satanic, MKB and daedalus. Different item has different ups and downs.
Your slow has maximum effect at level 1, so you don't have to put more than 1 point in it early on, you can focus on maxing rage and feast.
An early maelstrom is also nice to speed up your farming if you're farming more than fighting.

N'aix is strongest in the mid-game with an items like Phase boots, drums, armlet and then just fight fight fight.

Also Black king bar isn't a bad item on n'aix if your enemies have ways to drag fights out and they all posses a lot of disables/have bought lots of scythes of vyse.
BKB+Rage= 20+ seconds of magic immunity at maximum BKB charges, and 15 seconds magic immunity at minimum. It's good, but not needed in all games, most of the time rage on its own is fine.

N'aix is best laned with other aggressive heroes that can follow up on what he does, like a support vengeful spirit, crystal maiden, rubick, ogre magi(Ogre and n'aix are surpisingly strong in lane together due to the high kill potential.
Anything that can get early kills together with n'aixs slow is great.
Anything that can let n'aix farm up is great too.

Oh and i just realized i used n'aix all along, n'aix is lifestealer's name. Hope i didn't confuse you.

Spectre is a rather scary solo laner. I can pretty much outlast the other hero if in a 1 on 1. Even better with her ultimate + dagger chasing.

:o Didn't know there was a DOTA2 thread.

Dotabuff profile: https://dotabuff.com/players/51205892

Feel free to add me on steam, don't really party with people much, but solo queue is kinda boring after a while.

Sorry if there's been an overload of these kinds of "I need help" posts but I figured it would be good to ask for help here. This post might end up kinda long so I'll try to format it as best as I can, but the bottom line is that I want to learn how to play/get good at DotA(2).

I'll just get it out of the way now that I have a background in LoL (average skill) and SC:BW/SC2 (gold - plat SC2), so ARTS/MOBAs aren't alien to me. I play games more for competition than for leisure, however, and after looking into DotA a bit I decided I'd probably enjoy it more than LoL if I had a firm grasp on it, and for several reasons (art style, pace, strategic variety, etc).

I'm not sure where to start learning however. I've done some research on game mechanics and watched a few gameplay videos from The International, but that's it. Things I know/have seen and probably won't have a big problem with:

- Farming/denying
- Eating trees
- Side shop/secret shop
- Courier/multi-unit management
- More complex micro in general
- Creep stacking
- Rune/jungle/area control
- STR, AGI, INT heroes
- most ARTS/MOBA basics, push/hold mechanic, etc.

Things that I understand in comparison to LoL:

- Progressive stats vs. pre-game runes/masteries for hero specing
- River runes/Roshan vs. jungle buffs/Dragon/Baron
- TP scroll vs. recall
- absence of summoner spells
- absence of ability power, magic resist, etc.
- different focal point for balancing heroes
- harsher death penalty
- hero availability
- hero roles? Might be a bit foggy on this, but I'm assuming there are carries, various flavors of supports, tanks, offtanks/tanky DPS, anti-carries, roamer, jungler, etc.

As expected though there are a lot of things I've seen that I don't understand and there probably will be more things to confuse me, but regardless I have more questions:

What is the significance of the day/night cycle? I'm assuming Radiant favors day and Dire favors night, but is there anything I'm missing other than that? Are there heroes with passives that are affected by day/night?

What happens when the game starts? Do teams fight over runes, try to deny the enemy jungler if there is one, try to snowball a lane right off the bat... In LoL it's usually either help the jungler get buffs or steal/deny the enemy team's buffs, but that process takes up most of the level 1 phase.

What do you do when you're behind? Do you just play passive until you can counter-play, or is it too punishing--do you have to fight your way back in?

How much does control over secondary objectives (Runes, Roshan) have an impact on the game? I know that runes respawn way more often than buffs in LoL (2 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes, 6-7 minutes for bigger objectives). Denying a buff to a laner gives his opponent and the opposing jungler much more presence, as an example, and later in the game the buff granted by Baron (Roshan's equivalent) can inhibit a team's ability to defend a push among other things. Does it work in a similar way in DotA?

What are the differences in the roles that carries of different stats have (AGI vs. INT etc)? The primary element that separates most carries in LoL is AP/spell damage vs. AD/AA damage, and then there are different ways the damage is applied, generally on a scale of high burst -> sustained. I would imagine that this is sort of how it works.

That's about all I can think of for now as far as questions go, but I'll probably have more later.

Anyway, I think I have an unused beta key so I may be able to hop on, but again I'm looking for some help with learning the basics, and after that someone to help me improve. I'm generally not fazed by something being too hard as long as I'll get something out of trying it. Thanks for the help!

I think Malthe and Dusk and others can cover your questions better than me, but one gets better at the game just practicing.
I spent 110+ hours in a month and I did get a little better but I still got a lot to learn. It helps a lot when you play with experienced people as they help you not mess up as much.

What is the significance of the day/night cycle? I'm assuming Radiant favors day and Dire favors night, but is there anything I'm missing other than that? Are there heroes with passives that are affected by day/night?

The greatest significance is vision. Some Day/night vision radii:

Unit	Day	Night
90% of heroes	1800	800
Towers	1900	800
Lane creeps	850	800

Basically, it's harder to gank during the day because enemy heroes have more time to react when you leave the lane, and you can be seen coming from further away. The first night is the most significant, because it coincides with when the strong gankers/mid-game carries get level 6-7 and get their chance to create momentum by getting kills and pushing towers. Don't extend as far in lane and expect ganks to happen.

What happens when the game starts? Do teams fight over runes, try to deny the enemy jungler if there is one, try to snowball a lane right off the bat... In LoL it's usually either help the jungler get buffs or steal/deny the enemy team's buffs, but that process takes up most of the level 1 phase.

In low level play, not much. There will usually be a couple heroes fighting over runes where convenient, but most people don't really capitalize on the 0-minute rune even when they can make something happen. In the level I play at, there will usually be some wards placed in the jungle + one of the ward spots and a bit of early scouting. In high level play and professional games, teams will often gather together to help place the wards and gank anyone they can catch alone.

There are no jungle buffs and no optimal paths for jungling in Dota, and the neutral creeps are significantly harder to kill unless you're a hero with summons/powerful AOEs. Jungle camp spawns can be denied by placing a ward in the spawn box. For these reasons, jungling is much less of a role and more of a way for a ganker to grab slower exp/gold while freeing up space in another lane.

What do you do when you're behind? Do you just play passive until you can counter-play, or is it too punishing--do you have to fight your way back in?

There are several options:

1. If you have a stronger lategame teamfight lineup and good anti-push, you can turtle and attempt to hold your towers for as long as possible, forcing your enemies to fight you in a disadvantageous position and getting your carries time to farm.
2. For 100g, you can purchase a Smoke of Deceit, which provides your team with 40s invisibility that dispels when you get close to enemy heroes. This allows you to sneak past wards and create ambushes. If you can pick off a lone hero or two, you swing map control back in your favor for about a minute, giving you time to push towers or kill Roshan.
3. If you've got a push oriented lineup with good mobility, you can try to split-push (push multiple lanes at once). If you can force your enemies to scatter to defend their towers, you may be able to force a teamfight when they're out of position, or take a tower for free, providing your entire team with a lot of gold.

How much does control over secondary objectives (Runes, Roshan) have an impact on the game? I know that runes respawn way more often than buffs in LoL (2 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes, 6-7 minutes for bigger objectives). Denying a buff to a laner gives his opponent and the opposing jungler much more presence, as an example, and later in the game the buff granted by Baron (Roshan's equivalent) can inhibit a team's ability to defend a push among other things. Does it work in a similar way in DotA?

Runes are huge. A Haste, Invis or DD buff can easily enable a gank that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Illusion runes are useful for lane control and scouting. DD runes are amazing in late game teamfights. Regen runes can make a huge difference for mid in the laning phase, and can even allow mobile heroes to recover quickly and come back into a teamfight at full health and mana.

Roshan drops an Aegis which gives an extra life, and is usually given to the hero that the enemies want to focus most, in order to draw fire and allow the rest of the team to clean up with impunity. It is often necessary to force a teamfight late game when the enemy team is turtling in base and wiping your incoming creep waves before you can push in. It's a very important objective.

What are the differences in the roles that carries of different stats have (AGI vs. INT etc)? The primary element that separates most carries in LoL is AP/spell damage vs. AD/AA damage, and then there are different ways the damage is applied, generally on a scale of high burst -> sustained. I would imagine that this is sort of how it works.

Spell damage doesn't scale in Dota for the most part, and heroes that rely heavily on spells tend to fall off in the late game. In general, STR carries tend to be melee and tanky, AGI carries are squishy but more mobile/higher DPS, and INT carries are spell-dependent, vary a lot in playstyle, and rely on winning the game by 35-40 minutes. Every hero is unique to a much greater extent than LoL, though, and there aren't hard and fast rules about what carries are able to do. All that the primary stat really does is affect which stat increases your base damage.

I'm not sure where to start learning however. I've done some research on game mechanics and watched a few gameplay videos from The International, but that's it. Things I know/have seen and probably won't have a big problem with: !

Well, as far as learning goes, you can ask all the questions you want here, i’m by no means a professional player but i am almost 100% certain i can answer any game related or mechanic related question there is. And playing is what improves your skill the most of course.

What is the significance of the day/night cycle? I'm assuming Radiant favors day and Dire favors night, but is there anything I'm missing other than that? Are there heroes with passives that are affected by day/night?

As pointed out by dusk, almost all heroes have the same day/night vision which is 1800/800. This makes night a lot more dangerous and the time where ganks become way easier. A hero like Nightstalker whom thrives in the night has a 1200/1800 day/night vision. He is the only hero to not have a 1800 day vision.
There’s a table of attributes here so you can check the day/night vision of all heroes: http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Table_of_Hero_attributes

What happens when the game starts? Do teams fight over runes, try to deny the enemy jungler if there is one, try to snowball a lane right off the bat... In LoL it's usually either help the jungler get buffs or steal/deny the enemy team's buffs, but that process takes up most of the level 1 phase.

Fights for runes aren’t super common, but they exist. You occasionally can mess with the enemy jungler by attempting to block their jungle camps from spawning. Generally speaking for for example the mid laner they’ll want to ’block’ their creeps and hinder their movements to make sure that they can force the creeps closer to their own tower, this gives you a slight edge in your lane. Sometimes teams also use a smoke of deceit instantly as the game starts to go as 5 and ward the enemy jungle/lane and if they catch an enemy they’ll kill him.

What do you do when you're behind? Do you just play passive until you can counter-play, or is it too punishing--do you have to fight your way back in?

It depends heavily on your team composition, if you think you can win by getting up a few more items, playing passive can work. But generally speaking, utilizing smoke of deceit is one of the best ways to get back into a game. Also vision with wards is key. Especially lategame in dota it only takes one bad fight for the enemy where they can not buy back into the game for them to lose most of their base.

How much does control over secondary objectives (Runes, Roshan) have an impact on the game? I know that runes respawn way more often than buffs in LoL (2 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes, 6-7 minutes for bigger objectives). Denying a buff to a laner gives his opponent and the opposing jungler much more presence, as an example, and later in the game the buff granted by Baron (Roshan's equivalent) can inhibit a team's ability to defend a push among other things. Does it work in a similar way in DotA?

Roshan can be attempted to be killed at any point of the game(Even before minute zero) but it’s very rare for this to happen, and certain junglers can also solo him fairly early. And controlling him is generally pretty important because it’s a lot of gold and experience. You’ll usually put up wards there if the enemy has a hero that is able to kill him early on. Obviously dire has an advantage as far as roshan goes, but radiant has other advantages that more than make up for it.
Runes are very, very important for the mid lane and they are generally what decide the lane, good rune control is a very important skill as a mid-player and having vision of the runes is key. Some mid heroes rely heavily on runes to refill their bottles to stay in lane, if you can deny them their runes you force them to bottle-crow(Using the flying courier to refill their bottles) which takes courier time from the rest of their team.

What are the differences in the roles that carries of different stats have (AGI vs. INT etc)? The primary element that separates most carries in LoL is AP/spell damage vs. AD/AA damage, and then there are different ways the damage is applied, generally on a scale of high burst -> sustained. I would imagine that this is sort of how it works.

The diference between carries in DotA is generally when they get ’online’ that’s the biggest difference i’d say. Some carries can be active early on with their teams and others need to sit back and farm 5ever. Then we have semi-carries, carries and hard carries which generally speaks of how early they come online.
Semi-carries are heroes such as mirana and wind-runner that can dish out decent damage and help a ton in the mid-game, but as far as carrying they fall off the later the game goes.
Carries generally come online later in the mid-game(25~30 minutes) and are able to join fights relatively quickly too.
Hard carries need to farm 5ever and are starting to become rare in dota since the developer is trying to push all hard carries into the category of getting online in the mid-game, because his goal is to shorten overall game-time. But some of the remaining hard-carries are spectre and medusa who need 4~5 high-tier items to fight but they demolish opposition once they have it.
As far as the stats goes, strength carries like Dragon knight and chaos knight generally speaking have a good disable and are tough to kill. Their lategame isn’t amazing but it isn’t bad, due to strength giving them high hp and damage.
Agility carries vary greatly but are generally very low in the HP department at the trade of having higher attack-speeds which results in higher damage outputs. A hero like phantom assasin has a crazy theoretical damage output, but is incredibly squishy and not very good.
And intelligence carries generally speaking have poor farming abilities but absolutely insane mid-game damage outputs. This include heroes like Outworld destroyer and silencer. There are also intelligence carries like queen of pain whom has good farming ability but her lategame damage isn't amazing, it's just decent.
It varies more from hero to hero than from stat to stat(N'aix is a hero that is a strength carry but the best attribute for him is attack-speed, this means he'd be broken if he was an agility hero since building agility would give attack speed AND damage, the stats are just another balancing tool like that), but i think this covers a lot.

Also, add me at Janggos goes with everything, you can always toss me a message on steam. (You can probably find me in the southperry steam group).

A bit more on carries:

 Spoiler

Carries in DotA are picked for very specific reasons and their teams should ideally be built around them.
There are a lot of different carries that bring a lot of different things on the table, they all have very distinct weaknesses and strengths. In DotA a hero is often balanced by either amplifying weaknesses or strengths instead of trying to tweak it, is their strength too much? Make their weak spot weaker. It's also how the main dev has developed the game all long, take an insane mechanic and put it into the game and force it to be balanced. DotA can be look at as this:

 Spoiler

But instead of trying to just make something fit in a pre-determined hole, it'll be hammered and bashed untill it fits, just because. It seems weird and at times it can be ridiculous, but the end result are very distinctively different heroes, especially carries.

As said, teams are built around carries.
A very popular carry currently would be Luna, when good teams pick up luna they do not pick her to outcarry another carry, they pick her for how good she is at grouping up as 5. Her lategame power is very meh, but her early to mid-game power is amazing, meaning you group up with your team and march down a lane and claim tower after tower, if the enemies try to fight you'll crush them with luna and your team, ideally, this obviously wont work in all games.
Another carry would be faceless void. He is an incredibly strong lategame carry, but his ulti makes him great for teamfighting too, he will usually be played in a role where his team protects him while he just farms up a few items and then wrecks face by being able to eliminate at least 1 enemy right off the bat.
Then we have carries that can carry by never fighting, theoretically. A carry like anti-mage will farm a quick battlefury(cleave item) and then he is able to farm at insane speeds, he's not really an amazing late-game carry at all, but his strengths are how fast he gets items, and an item advantage is often enough to win fights if it does indeed come down to a fight, but due to his mobility, if your 4 other heroes can defend their towers and base on their own, anti-mage can counter and split push like crazy being a menace for the enemy.
Then we have a carry like Outworld devourer, he has very limited ability to farm and doesn't rack up gold very fast, but his damage output is crazy with very few items. Him and silencer both fall into this category, the problem for both is that magic immunity messes them up badly.
Carries generally either excel in farming faster than enemies, pushing, being amazing lategame(many items), being amazing early game(few items) or by having great teamfighting related spells(Like naga siren). That's generally how you'll classify carries. And even then there are carries that can't be classified with this or carries that fall into multiple categories. The best thing is to learn how each and every carry works and what their weaknesses and strengths are, so you can use them to achieve something that they are good at through their skill-kit.

In DotA you don't need a carry though, nowadays carries are the norm but just a few months back some teams would build teams with no carries and just crush enemies by killing towers faster than the enemy could respond, and then using the tower gold to mow down enemies by simply having a huge advantage from gold.

I think i might've repeated myself a few times, but blargh, my mind's a mess. If you have more questions, just ask.

Thanks for all the help guys. I was right and I do have beta access, so I'll be able to hop on some time over this weekend and early next week. Would be nice to play some of you so I don't go off alone. I have watched a few more videos/guides, all that's left for me to do is to actually get used to the game and hop into PvP.

Well, i'll gladly join you for your first game. I'm about to go to sleep now though, but when i wake up i'll be more than happy to join you.

It'd probably be best if you played some bot-games to get the feel of the game though, the bots aren't bad, their AI is probably the best in the genre. It'll teach you a LOT of the basics.

That's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm saving the more in-depth things for later once I get a feel for the hero pool and know what each hero does. Mainly focusing on adjusting to the game's mechanics for now, because jesus christ everything feels different.

I'll be damned, had a loads of bad teams lately, then i get one where ES fissure blocks allies and pudge hooks allies into enemies.
Oh god this'll be horrible, right?
Wait what, i'm raping... with.. warlock?
Suddenly second most farmed hero in the game with necronomicon 3, aghanim's scepter and refresher.
https://dotabuff.com/matches/103023474
The pain train doesn't end. Also:
"Double double demon doublified!" and "Have you ever seen this many demons?" and "Can you believe this? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! " and last but not least Best Fiends Forever!
All very appropriate for the game at hand.

Also, very important:
https://dotabuff.com/polls/dotabuff-rating
For the love of god vote for this to be private information, making something like this public is a fucking horrible idea.

DENY


[video=youtube_share;Rznf8j0hTOA]http://youtu.be/Rznf8j0hTOA[/video]