All pick is the most played by a pretty big margin. It's a shame because I think you can make an argument for almost all of the other game modes... but there is nothing more classic "DOTA" than All-Pick.
Someone took a count of all the game modes played for the first week of September last year. Note the percent of games graph starts at ~77% since that's around the minimum percent of games which are All Pick. http://imgur.com/a/3IKs9
I watched the longest dota 2 pro game today and it was kinda interesting. It wasn't your typical asian style farming game. Dire kept trying to kill radiant in their base. Dire would lose 2-3 heroes but not enough for radiant to push into dire's base.
All pick is the most played by a pretty big margin. It's a shame because I think you can make an argument for almost all of the other game modes... but there is nothing more classic "DOTA" than All-Pick.
Yeah, I don't play All Pick. Like, at all. I don't have any clear favorites, and I can't make decisions. I also don't want to go up against the 5 hottest hands every damn game.
Single Draft, Random Draft, and All Random, is what I run in my queue all the time. Single Draft seems to be the gametype more than the other two, so my anecdotal guess is that it's the most popular of the three.
The change to showing ranked mmr has made solo queue even more unplayable. Now the other team knows that our best player is offlane and not mid, so they never leave the safelane ever. I've had like 3 games in a row where the entire enemy team is in my lane at like 8 minutes.
The change to showing ranked mmr has made solo queue even more unplayable. Now the other team knows that our best player is offlane and not mid, so they never leave the safelane ever. I've had like 3 games in a row where the entire enemy team is in my lane at like 8 minutes.
Jesus, what? It's never good in any ranked game to show everyone's ranks. What you're describing is the best case scenario, to say nothing of "omg only 4.9k player gg [afk fountain]"
What is the intent with the mmr change? Like what behavior are they expecting it to encourage? I just don't understand the decision.
I think it's for 7k player being paired with a 5k team vs 6k team. If the team's average MMR and top MMR are both within 100 units, there is no point. If I queue and there's a party of 2 and one of them is 3k the other 5k, it's good to know in advance. If 5k is in mid maybe I'll try a smoke gank more often.
I've used the mmr to tell me which player to listen to, and which player to give mid even though I was sorta hoping to try Pugna out that game. It's worked pretty well for that. I'm also planning to use that to tell me which carry is definitely worth supporting and which players still have to prove themselves. It's still a bit weird though.
So I really like winter wyvern's playstyle, but I feel like she's gotta be one of the weakest early game heroes around. No attack damage, no escape, super slow. It could also be I don't think there's very good guides out yet. Most effective build I've done so far is sage mask, brown boots, into soul ring, claymore, arcane boots, shadowblade, euls. But, very rarely can I get enough farm as a support to get that build rolling.
As for early, she's all about efficiency. Don't expect to trade hits or burst someone down, that's definitely not her bag. Arctic burn is an amazing skill. It does a lot of harass damage from a safe distance, the slow is decent and you can abuse flying to chase, escape, or initiate from unexpected places. The ice shield spell (can't remember the name), situationally is very useful because you can cast it on a creep to let it tank tower shots, or save your farmer if they go for a gank and the burst didn't kill them.
Item-wise she needs mana and help with positioning. I think arcanes are core, and euls is great. I think blink or force staff are better than shadow blade personally for her but she definitely needs one of the three. Force has a lot more utility and blink is more reliable for getting into a team fight from a safe place and dropping your ult on the right person. It costs a lot more and the damage and attack speed of SB are totally wasted, not to mention that wards and dust diminish its usefulness in team fights, which is where you want to be as wyvern.
The thing about dota though is it's all flexible. These are just my thoughts I'd be curious to hear what other people are doing.
I play Wyvern alot and have been fairly..(~65% winrate) successful with her. If I'll be spending time in the jungle I'll level the ice shard, otherwise for laning as a support, I only take a utility level of it at 3, or often not at all. Wyvern's Q is a potent lane harass tool early on. (Remember! You only have to hit them once!) You're probably not going to kill anyone with it, but you can easily keep the opposing laners sub 50% health, which will make life a lot easier for your carry. You can also severely punish laners who get aggressive with their positioning.
Often I'm having to go 4 or 5 position on her which means my early builds are severely gimped, as I'm spending most of my money on wards. If you do have a good lane phase, rush a medallion, it solves her armor problem and makes the Q even more devastating. Other than that it's really up in the air, both Drum and Urn are great on her. But I do find a timely blink dagger is pretty important, otherwise you will struggle mightily to land effective ults.
Heroes that give me the most trouble are Pudge and Sniper. Pudge because he can and will hook people that are tombed. And he can also easily kill wyvern early on because she's so slow. Sniper because most players go Mjollnir and late game the lightning procs will wreck people who are tombed. Also because you'll never manage to effectively ult him because he'll always be far away from his team and you'll have to get through shrapnel spam to even get close.
Does anyone else feel that sniper is really strong right now? It's situational, like everything in dota, BUT if they have no good gap closer and/or your team has good crowd control/disruption he's great DPS, and shrapnel... is so freaking good early. Max shrapnel makes laning in mid a nightmare for the other guy, and really punishes dives. It may also be at 3k MMR people just don't have the discipline to focus him?
Does anyone else feel that sniper is really strong right now? It's situational, like everything in dota, BUT if they have no good gap closer and/or your team has good crowd control/disruption he's great DPS, and shrapnel... is so freaking good early. Max shrapnel makes laning in mid a nightmare for the other guy, and really punishes dives. It may also be at 3k MMR people just don't have the discipline to focus him?
Does anyone else feel that sniper is really strong right now? It's situational, like everything in dota, BUT if they have no good gap closer and/or your team has good crowd control/disruption he's great DPS, and shrapnel... is so freaking good early. Max shrapnel makes laning in mid a nightmare for the other guy, and really punishes dives. It may also be at 3k MMR people just don't have the discipline to focus him?
He's first pick/ban in every pro game.
It's not you.
I figure it's partly a problem with the ridiculousness of Mask of Madness, which is especially problematic on ranged auto attackers that effectively get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks when using the item. Sniper doubly so since his passive and shrapnel already give him a large safety buffer to begin with. It's pretty comical to gank an out position drow or sniper in a sidelane only to have them scuttle away on 50 health with mom and phase boots popped. The movespeed buff needs to go. The other issue is that players are routinely building skadi's now. Used to be even if Sniper got farmed, you could kill him late, but with Skadi, shrapnel, and the headshot attack slow, he can just turn around and man fight you like he was a melee hero.
BUT if they have no good gap closer
Players have figured out that with the new headshot/shrapnel you can just manfight any gap closers that go on you.
Does anyone else feel that sniper is really strong right now? It's situational, like everything in dota, BUT if they have no good gap closer and/or your team has good crowd control/disruption he's great DPS, and shrapnel... is so freaking good early. Max shrapnel makes laning in mid a nightmare for the other guy, and really punishes dives. It may also be at 3k MMR people just don't have the discipline to focus him?
He's first pick/ban in every pro game.
It's not you.
Ha! whoops! I haven't been watching any games lately
Yeah i think MoM is just too good right now. It also accelerates early farm, and costs less than a bfury or maelstrom. I would love to see the move speed removed from it entirely as I agree it basically negates the damage amp. Alternatively make the damage amp on ranged heroes higher, so they can't just pop it without consequence.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
Bad timing for tickets, I really want to go but I just bought a plane ticket/hotel and whatnot for a friend's wedding. So if they sell another group of tickets at some point I might be able to!
Grr, I know those feels. Damn buddies are all getting hitched, it's always gotta be across the country for some reason. My group of friends managed to get 7 tickets. I have a feeling at least one of them will drop out by the time the international happens, I'll let people know if that happens.
Finally got back into playing real games against real people again, after two weeks of pansying about with bot matches.
Played Zeus for the first time in ages, laned against Broodmother in mid. That was an unhappy brood. I ended up with Aghs and Refresher Orb for the first time, and that was just great. Enemy team didn't bother with spell resistance....
Ended up with Nyx in all random and single draft multiple times this weekend. I like him, but damn I don't know how to do his item builds. I like to build Dagon's and all, but if you follow any of his buiilds, he's 6-slotted with activation items, and I'm just not good enough to handle all those activations. I can see how a better player would. If someone can point me to a Nyx build that uses some right-click boosting (I'm not looking to turn him into a Carry, I just need him to be able to finish once he's burst someone down), but still keeps Dagon's, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'll likely play a few bot matches with him and make my own build. I do like the Hero quite a bit, and played what I felt were impressive games, but I was 4-slotted both times and had trouble finishing enemy Heroes. EDIT: I also think better right-click would help with farming. Impaling creep waves rarely results in gold for me, and I had zero jungling potential, even in the late game.
Played Tinker and did my best Sumail impression. It was pretty nasty, I have to admit. I kept pushing all the lanes, but my team took forever to get 'racks on any front. Other team started getting really irritated once I had Blink Dagger and started blinking into forests and TP'ing out, then came back again on the other lane. I also laned in mid against a Viper who didn't harass me. Which I don't really get. I harassed him with rockets during the entire laning phase, even killed him with one because he didn't heal.
I'm not even sure how you counter the consta-porting Tinker. I remember watching Sumail do this at the DAC and liking the strategy, but didn't like that there was fuckall that any of them could do about it.
We've discussed this before, but how are others doing their mappings? I'm still using QWER for spells, and ZXCVBN for items, but the last three item keys may as well be non-existent, as I have to think for too long before using them properly. Does anyone use ASDZXC for items?
QWER - standard abilities (default)
1 - hero
2 - all other units
3 - hero + units
ZXC - items 1-3 (default)
SPACE - item 4
Mouse 4 - item 5
Mouse 5 - item 6
A - attack (default)
S - stop/halt (default)
D - used for some heros with more abilities (default)
F5 - Buy queued item (default)
F8 - Quick buy (default)
QWER - standard abilities (default)
1 - hero
2 - all other units
3 - hero + units
ZXC - items 1-3 (default)
SPACE - item 4
Mouse 4 - item 5
Mouse 5 - item 6
A - attack (default)
S - stop/halt (default)
D - used for some heros with more abilities (default)
F5 - Buy queued item (default)
F8 - Quick buy (default)
I like the space bar usage, hadn't thought of that. I'll have to figure something out with the mouse buttons, though. I use Mouse4 for my mic in all games. Mouse5 sits there uselessly, though.
I use the tilda 1,2,3,etc
I always keep my healing in the first two spots and the stat stuff/non actives in the last. I think it is pretty rare to have 6 active items that need a button press
I use the tilda 1,2,3,etc
I always keep my healing in the first two spots and the stat stuff/non actives in the last. I think it is pretty rare to have 6 active items that need a button press
That's what I usually do as well (in terms of placement of items), but in the case of Nyx, whose builds seem to 6-slot actives for bursting and positioning reasons, or in the case of Tinker, where actives with long cooldowns are more powerful, I'd like to have more access.
I usually find that I have an activation item in the 4th slot on a lot of Heroes, and TP Scrolls sit in 5. Which isn't the worst thing, but that 4th slot is underused in a lot of games, and I hate seeing un-activated items when I'm dead, especially when and if they could have saved my ass ("BKB, goddammit why didn't I activate it?").
I've also started to build Eul's on a lot of Heroes lately, so I want to be able to use it effectively. I went with Eul's instead of Bottle on Zeus and really didn't regret it at all (I used it on myself about 10 times and escaped death 5 of those times, when it gave my teammates time to help out).
Then again, I don't go Bottle often because I can't handle the courier bottle micro, much less get my teammates to work with me on it (Much less steal runes right in front of me, even when I'm Alt-clicking my empty bottle). In a recent game, I didn't have access to the courier for the first 10 minutes, because they refused to use side-shops. It's really given me perspective on how helpful it is to the team, to use them.
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
The only bind switching I've done is putting items 1 and 2 on Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 (having those extra buttons on the mouse helps a lot). Probably going to bound item 3 to mouse 3 (that's clicking in the mousewheel, right?), since I don't think I'm using that for anything and I sure as heck ain't pressing b to activate an item. ZXC does work fine for the bottom row for me, usually. I keep activatable boots on Z (unless I get BKB, which then goes to Z and boots go to X), and keep blink/force staff/euls/wand on the mouse buttons, and then if I have like crimson guard or shiva's or something I put that on X/C and TPs on C otherwise.
Oh, and I keep voice on V, because iirc that was the default in TF2 so I got used to it.
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http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I do not regret leaving.
http://imgur.com/a/3IKs9
Yeah, I don't play All Pick. Like, at all. I don't have any clear favorites, and I can't make decisions. I also don't want to go up against the 5 hottest hands every damn game.
Single Draft, Random Draft, and All Random, is what I run in my queue all the time. Single Draft seems to be the gametype more than the other two, so my anecdotal guess is that it's the most popular of the three.
Jesus, what? It's never good in any ranked game to show everyone's ranks. What you're describing is the best case scenario, to say nothing of "omg only 4.9k player gg [afk fountain]"
I think it's for 7k player being paired with a 5k team vs 6k team. If the team's average MMR and top MMR are both within 100 units, there is no point. If I queue and there's a party of 2 and one of them is 3k the other 5k, it's good to know in advance. If 5k is in mid maybe I'll try a smoke gank more often.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Match ID: 1344433129
From 23:50 to 24:30 watch the Lina.
I'm the Clockwerk.
I submitted to fails of the week, so we'll see how that goes.
Anyone have any other recommendations?
My Portfolio Site
Item-wise she needs mana and help with positioning. I think arcanes are core, and euls is great. I think blink or force staff are better than shadow blade personally for her but she definitely needs one of the three. Force has a lot more utility and blink is more reliable for getting into a team fight from a safe place and dropping your ult on the right person. It costs a lot more and the damage and attack speed of SB are totally wasted, not to mention that wards and dust diminish its usefulness in team fights, which is where you want to be as wyvern.
The thing about dota though is it's all flexible. These are just my thoughts I'd be curious to hear what other people are doing.
Often I'm having to go 4 or 5 position on her which means my early builds are severely gimped, as I'm spending most of my money on wards. If you do have a good lane phase, rush a medallion, it solves her armor problem and makes the Q even more devastating. Other than that it's really up in the air, both Drum and Urn are great on her. But I do find a timely blink dagger is pretty important, otherwise you will struggle mightily to land effective ults.
Heroes that give me the most trouble are Pudge and Sniper. Pudge because he can and will hook people that are tombed. And he can also easily kill wyvern early on because she's so slow. Sniper because most players go Mjollnir and late game the lightning procs will wreck people who are tombed. Also because you'll never manage to effectively ult him because he'll always be far away from his team and you'll have to get through shrapnel spam to even get close.
He's first pick/ban in every pro game.
It's not you.
I figure it's partly a problem with the ridiculousness of Mask of Madness, which is especially problematic on ranged auto attackers that effectively get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks when using the item. Sniper doubly so since his passive and shrapnel already give him a large safety buffer to begin with. It's pretty comical to gank an out position drow or sniper in a sidelane only to have them scuttle away on 50 health with mom and phase boots popped. The movespeed buff needs to go. The other issue is that players are routinely building skadi's now. Used to be even if Sniper got farmed, you could kill him late, but with Skadi, shrapnel, and the headshot attack slow, he can just turn around and man fight you like he was a melee hero.
Players have figured out that with the new headshot/shrapnel you can just manfight any gap closers that go on you.
Ha! whoops! I haven't been watching any games lately
Yeah i think MoM is just too good right now. It also accelerates early farm, and costs less than a bfury or maelstrom. I would love to see the move speed removed from it entirely as I agree it basically negates the damage amp. Alternatively make the damage amp on ranged heroes higher, so they can't just pop it without consequence.
Or the speed buff affects ranged and melee heroes differently.
Anyone else going?
My Portfolio Site
Played Zeus for the first time in ages, laned against Broodmother in mid. That was an unhappy brood. I ended up with Aghs and Refresher Orb for the first time, and that was just great. Enemy team didn't bother with spell resistance....
Ended up with Nyx in all random and single draft multiple times this weekend. I like him, but damn I don't know how to do his item builds. I like to build Dagon's and all, but if you follow any of his buiilds, he's 6-slotted with activation items, and I'm just not good enough to handle all those activations. I can see how a better player would. If someone can point me to a Nyx build that uses some right-click boosting (I'm not looking to turn him into a Carry, I just need him to be able to finish once he's burst someone down), but still keeps Dagon's, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'll likely play a few bot matches with him and make my own build. I do like the Hero quite a bit, and played what I felt were impressive games, but I was 4-slotted both times and had trouble finishing enemy Heroes. EDIT: I also think better right-click would help with farming. Impaling creep waves rarely results in gold for me, and I had zero jungling potential, even in the late game.
Played Tinker and did my best Sumail impression. It was pretty nasty, I have to admit. I kept pushing all the lanes, but my team took forever to get 'racks on any front. Other team started getting really irritated once I had Blink Dagger and started blinking into forests and TP'ing out, then came back again on the other lane. I also laned in mid against a Viper who didn't harass me. Which I don't really get. I harassed him with rockets during the entire laning phase, even killed him with one because he didn't heal.
I'm not even sure how you counter the consta-porting Tinker. I remember watching Sumail do this at the DAC and liking the strategy, but didn't like that there was fuckall that any of them could do about it.
1 - hero
2 - all other units
3 - hero + units
ZXC - items 1-3 (default)
SPACE - item 4
Mouse 4 - item 5
Mouse 5 - item 6
A - attack (default)
S - stop/halt (default)
D - used for some heros with more abilities (default)
F5 - Buy queued item (default)
F8 - Quick buy (default)
I like the space bar usage, hadn't thought of that. I'll have to figure something out with the mouse buttons, though. I use Mouse4 for my mic in all games. Mouse5 sits there uselessly, though.
Maybe something like:
ZXC - Items 1-3
Caps Lock - Item 4
Space - Item 5
Mouse 5 - Item 6
I always keep my healing in the first two spots and the stat stuff/non actives in the last. I think it is pretty rare to have 6 active items that need a button press
That's what I usually do as well (in terms of placement of items), but in the case of Nyx, whose builds seem to 6-slot actives for bursting and positioning reasons, or in the case of Tinker, where actives with long cooldowns are more powerful, I'd like to have more access.
I usually find that I have an activation item in the 4th slot on a lot of Heroes, and TP Scrolls sit in 5. Which isn't the worst thing, but that 4th slot is underused in a lot of games, and I hate seeing un-activated items when I'm dead, especially when and if they could have saved my ass ("BKB, goddammit why didn't I activate it?").
I've also started to build Eul's on a lot of Heroes lately, so I want to be able to use it effectively. I went with Eul's instead of Bottle on Zeus and really didn't regret it at all (I used it on myself about 10 times and escaped death 5 of those times, when it gave my teammates time to help out).
Then again, I don't go Bottle often because I can't handle the courier bottle micro, much less get my teammates to work with me on it (Much less steal runes right in front of me, even when I'm Alt-clicking my empty bottle). In a recent game, I didn't have access to the courier for the first 10 minutes, because they refused to use side-shops. It's really given me perspective on how helpful it is to the team, to use them.
Oh, and I keep voice on V, because iirc that was the default in TF2 so I got used to it.