DotA2 - Original Thread

I haven't had the time to play much at all myself, uni started up again. In around 2 months time i'm done with uni for another 4 months +/-.

Haven't been playing a ton either but it's mainly voluntary. Turns out my Dotaracers project involves me learning x86 assembly right now on top of a lot of other stuff. And I don't think Hammer editor works too well right now with Dota 2 so mainly what I'm doing is figuring out functionality and trying to figure out what I need. It's a pretty interesting project actually, there's some odd pomegranate in the server.dll.
The no-ban strat from Zenith was hilarious.

I played a few games with IllegallySane recently, but not much other than that. I'm spending less time gaming these days, not really because of a lack of time, but because other interests are taking over. Definitely up for games, though.

I have no idea what the hell is wrong with me these days. I've suddenly started sucking really hard. I probably had a good 4 wins, and about 8-10 losses with a 5-loss streak. I don't know if it's some form of DoTA's block, or I just need to take some time off playing the game since I've been recently obsessed over getting more wins, which ironically has been giving me so many losses I'm about to enter the 50% win rate, down from ~52~53% win rate.

[MENTION=1130]Dusk[/MENTION] I deeply apologize for having to go AWOL. I lost track of time obsessing over just getting one good win for the day. Last thing I knew it was 6 PM when I was on DoTA.

No problem. We weren't going to win that game anyway.

I just play Timbersaw or Nyx to break a losing streak and prove to myself that I can win.
Hell, playing either Nyx or KotL is a pretty easy way to carry a pub game. It may make you feel kinda terrible about yourself as a person if you do it too much, just as a warning.

I just play Timbersaw or Nyx to break a losing streak and prove to myself that I can win.
Hell, playing either Nyx or KotL is a pretty easy way to carry a pub game. It may make you feel kinda terrible about yourself as a person if you do it too much, just as a warning.

Know what's sad though? I can't play Keeper worth a damn. 3-4 games so far, lost all of them. My positioning with him is terrible, I keep shooting my horses too close or too far, and pretty much get too close to the enemies to focus me down. Also can't fully use his D and F abilities. I had far better luck playing Wisp for the 1st time. It's hilariously funny killing enemies with Spirits and abusing Tether heals.

Nyx I have more success in melting lone heroes because it's always much easier to make the game Gank City than being a hard support.

Is Timbersaw really a pub stomping hero? I always thought about playing him.

I really love Timbersaw and I'm much better with him than most other heroes, possibly because I'm just good at him or possibly because he's fun and so I've had more practice with him. He's a really strong hero with great burst damage and high mobility and his personality is great. He's somewhat of a pubstomp hero if you know how to play him since his early burst damage comes completely out of left field for most people.

 quick guide to timbersaw

There is a large emphasis on positioning with him that some other heroes don't have as much as he does because you have to be mindful of both where the trees are, where the enemy is relative to you and your allies as well as relative to the treeline, and where you'll end up if you timberchain. There are some really awesome things you can do with him though. You have a casual 640 pure damage in an AoE when you hit level 6 which is enough to burst down most heroes. Take Timberchain at level one and max it first, take Whirling Death at level 2 against a lane that you think is going to engage on you but take Reactive Armor at level 2 if they're more focused on harass. Take whichever one you didn't take at 2 when you hit 4. Usually max out Whirling Death after Timberchain (taking Chakram whenever possible of course) but a couple more points into Reactive Armor may be a decent idea if they've got a ton of physical damage and you're getting focused down very easily. While it may be tempting, don't forgo levels in Reactive Armor for stats to get your mana pool up. It really isn't worth it.
Get Magic Wand then Arcane Boots (ofc with consumables and TP's when necessary) and then your item build is relatively open. Valid items at this point include Bloodstone, Scepter of Divinity, Rod of Atos, Orchid Malevolence, and Linken's Sphere. You really need to get your mana pool and mana regen up. After that you can pick from any of the other above items, or you can get a Heart of Tarrasque, Shiva's Guard, Pipe of Insight, Mekanism, Drum of Endurance (this can actually come before the first big item if your team needs a drum carrier), or even a Force Staff. I wouldn't recommend Blademail because of your naturally high armor because of Reactive Armor. While you can disassemble your Arcane Boots for your Bloodstone if you want it, I really don't recommend doing so simply because you need all the mana you can humanly get. The only situation I would recommend it in would be if you're kinda behind and really need Bloodstone up for the next fight. I would then recommend getting a new Energy Booster and re-making your Arcane Boots.
Some tips on your skill combos:
If you get a force staff you can push enemy heroes right into the treeline for a quick Timberchain+Whirling Death combo (make sure to get a tree or two into your Whirling Death AoE so you get that precious, precious pure damage), otherwise you have to either target heroes by the treeline or simply deal with the damage from Whirling Death being magical which is sub-par but it's not the worst thing in the world. Use Chakram to lock heroes down for your Timberchain and for your allies if you can, otherwise just use it for the quick damage on the pass-through. Your Whirling Death reduces their primary stat by a percentage for a bit, this pierces BKB and is therefore super effective against str heroes (but also quite effective against int heroes, functioning as a manaburn in essence). Just basically zip across the enemy team in zig-zags dealing as much pure damage with your Timberchains as possible. Currently Timberchain is a bit glitchy in that if you get stunned or something while you're casting Timberchain, the chain will still keep going and you'll move with it. Abuse this if you can.
Keep in mind that Timbersaw does start falling off in relevancy as heroes get larger health pools to mitigate your damage and BKB's start popping up as you're pretty useless against magic-immune targets since you have no true disables, let alone BKB-piercing disables. This is why you consider Atos or Eul's so that you can actually keep even a very mobile target like AM, QoP, Puck, or Morphling under control but really any hero with any measure of mobility. Chakram prevents you from attacking and you have no real incentive to attack so you can't really transition yourself into a hyper-mobile melee carry with AoE lockdown.

Anyone saw tencent's new game? It more or less looks like a carbon copy of DotA2 to an extent.
But hey, they're chinese, and they're tencent. Not surprised at all, tencent is known to pull some serious plantain-moves.

 Spoiler

Anyone playing in the SEA server? I seem to be having a lot more latency than normal these 2 days

Anyone playing in the SEA server? I seem to be having a lot more latency than normal these 2 days

For SEA players:

 Spoiler

Also, a good read: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/16/ho...rtual-hats

Valve’s approach to everything is that you have to be really proactive on your own. You limit creativity if you tell people how to do it.

Is especially a nice quote.

If you've been feeling like spreading your wings lately, rejoice! Skywrath Mage is here to steal your women and make you feel bad about the size of your genitalia!
Rest of the patch notes:
http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=82418

Some other assorted goodies:


[spoiler=the saddest stripey blue cow-man you'll ever see][/spoiler]

 new gem model

edit: okay, eblade on skywrath is the funky pomegranate.

Faced a pretty good mirana today. Her ult is so hard to counter.

Went back to play a few games.

The bad: Having everyone on each side be full of Russians so I can't communicate anything, and laning with a Spirit Breaker wouldn't stop complaining about me taking his creep kills when I picked Phantom Lancer. He later ragequit due to sucking and not getting kills when he's charging from the other side of the map.

The good: Finally got in a good game as Lion to prove I don't suck that much. Noticed how hilarious it was to shut down the enemy Lich with a mere Pipe of Insight. A Lion with Blink Dagger is pretty cool stuff, double CCing all day and sucking mana from Skeleton King to try to deny his ult. Denying Skeleton's ult actually worked about 1/2 the time, which was more than enough to make my team more successful at winning the game.

The stupid: The game lagged out in the end due to a DoTA patch, and didn't record. It's like the match never existed. .-. Never mind, game showed up, but the game is lagging really hard now. Can't play more than one game at a time. I close game when it ends, and DoTA still think the match is going so I can't play a new game. Gotta restart DoTA to do a new match.

How good are the build/guides thing in steam?
I want to know more about Lion but guides are rather superficial and dotafire's says is outdated...don't know if it's really a big deal, though.
[MENTION=6211]Malthe[/MENTION]; when you have time could you please teach me stuff about him?

Also I just had so much fun in a game in which we were all sorta noobs and bad. So bad we managed to win 4vs5 haha :3

The steam guides can vary massively in quality. I wouldn't trust them as a general rule. I usually use these guides for quick build references on heroes I don't really know how to play.
Even though it says to get blink there, it's really more a tossup between blink and force staff. You just need mobility. That's the purpose of the phase boots as well. Although if you're playing more of a hard support role you can forgo the phase boots for arcane's and try to pick up a Eul's pretty soon for the extra movement speed. He's a fair bit like Pugna in his build choices. You can go arcanes mek drums force staff as a more utility build (buying support items like courier and wards along the way) as one option. The other option is phase urn blink eul's and then fun stuff like veil dagon or rod of atos. Oh, and don't get aghanim's. It's a bad item for Lion. And, like all nukers, eblade is hilarious on him. Although it is decidedly a luxury item and is only really something you should get specifically to shut down a hard-hitting carry when you've gotten a ghost scepter earlier in the game.

1st point: That break from DoTA-ing so much ended up helping, and my game is back to normal. Hopefully I'll soon break 50% again, and go higher from there.



2nd point: I'd trust Dotafire since their guides are most consistent in terms of quality. Some are old, so it's more about playing and developing a feel for the game in terms of what you need. For example. I helped my team win one game as Sand King by grabbing a Mek to go with my Arcane Boots, despite Mek not appearing on any typical item build. Another game I played Gyrocopter like a support by buying wards in order to keep Luna safe, and help Death Prophet mid get more runes. It ultimately led us to winning since having more map intelligence is always great. I was still able to build a Manta Style and Shadow Blade in the end, due to the enemy team constantly dying to us.

That's what I like a lot about DoTA, in that builds are never static. You can change up depending on what's going on, and that'll help you a lot in the end.




3rd point: DoTA fails of the week are hilarious stuff. Out of all the ones I watched so far, I think I like this collection the most

[video=youtube;S8IDoD77x2s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8IDoD77x2s[/video]

I'll be watching more soon, so my opinion can easily change. For now, the Spirit Breaker and Shadow Shaman fails make me smile every-time I watch them.

Gyro support is actually completely legitimate. It's like Alchemist support. At first it's kinda like "what the pineapple is going on here" if you're accustomed to seeing them as supports, but it works quite well for both of them. Both of them get run in competitive games successfully, it's one of the things that makes Gyro so strong. He's just so flexible in what he can do.

Just had my most awesome and exciting game.
Juggernaut feeds like hell (he died in every lane at least twice) and at 10min he quits. 4vs5, they're all fed and they get most our towers at 20mins.
Somehow we managed to fight back, got their bottom racks and a whole bunch of kills. We managed to survive for 40-45mins or so when a group fight went awful, everyone in my team died and they pushed down the little stuff we had left.
Despite losing after 50mins struggle I'm all excited and happy.

If you managed to last so long in a losing game, you should try to get your team to grab hilarious items like a Divine Rapier, or even attempt a smoke gank. Divine Rapier can turn the game into a hilarious case of hot potato, and successful smoke ganks at late game can possibly win you the game if the enemies can't respawn back in time. Of course if you lost all barracks might as well sit in the fountain and have a friendly chat while the enemy finishes.