It's of course not just pro gamers. (Tyler the Creator built a huge part of his rap image out of being a homophobe, and had plenty of dipshit bloggers defending him for it.) But since we're talking about a video game it seems germane to bring up that it is an annoying problem that seems to be dismissed out of hand most of the time.
Short of a massive re-education campaign aimed at changing the mindset of millions of teenaged boys, it is a fairly intractable one. They'll find some other way to get entertainment from being crude and getting on people's nerves; it's the nature of the adolescent mindset.
Yeah, for sure. I'll never waste much time getting after pre-teens and teenagers, but college aged kids have pretty much no excuse. Which is what the majority of pro gamers are.
And with Dota, at least you can report it every time someone uses the term. I'm pretty sure they act on those reports, so eventually we should be able to weed out the word from common use in all chat at least...
I rarely bother with this discussion these days. Things are in such a transitional flux that it doesn't even seem relevant most of the time.
My main thought on it is still that context is everything, which works both ways. It's also unfortunate that all these people who have been doing this for years are getting thrust further and further into the (ever more intrusive) public eye at such a rapid pace that it's clearly taken most of them by surprise. Things that they were doing casually just a few years ago are now cause for internet hissy fits. This pretty much goes for every competitive scene. I don't mean to apologize for anyone, but sometimes it's as if what was once casual jokes between a small group of peers is now being blasted from every half-assed gaming website and forum, not to mention stream monsters always looking for the next thing to bitch about or new meme to propagate. Speaking personally, I have said some incredibly horrible things in competitive settings. It's what I like to do, and the people I do it with know that and have no problem with it. They think it's funny even. If even 1/10th of the stuff I said was suddenly up for scrutiny by every forum lurker on the net I'd probably be just as bewildered.
Anyway, dagon SD was a legit build back when he could still solo effectively. Same with dagon AA. It's too bad all these half-decent and pretty fun mid solos had to be nerfed just because they're supposed to be supports.
Anyway, dagon SD was a legit build back when he could still solo effectively. Same with dagon AA. It's too bad all these half-decent and pretty fun mid solos had to be nerfed just because they're supposed to be supports.
What happened to him that he's no longer viable as a solo? His mana efficiency is still pretty good and he's got a pretty decent AA for a support. I ended up doing it due to the usual PUG lane-grabbery a while ago and it went all right, though some potential matchups, a lot of them the ones you see in pro games, surely wouldn't favor SD.
Ancient Apparition: armour nerfed, cold feet mana cost flat 150 instead of scaling from 90, ult cd flat 45 instead of scaling down to 20. He can no longer push people out of lane to win 1v1 matchups, can't trade hits, and getting fast 11 doesn't mean as much.
Shadow Demon: disruption cast range lowered, cd increased, and mana cost nearly doubled, while soul catcher mana cost also went up. Can't really poison spam people out of the lane and still have mana to do anything else, plus all the better mids got buffed.
AA would be so much more fun to play with 20 sec cd ult. Right now he just feels kinda weak pre 6, and not that strong once you get ult. I might just play him horribly though.
AA would be so much more fun to play with 20 sec cd ult. Right now he just feels kinda weak pre 6, and not that strong once you get ult. I might just play him horribly though.
He's pretty low powered right now, although the magic damage on chilling touch can be good.
Shadow demon definitely lost the ability to poison spam people out of lane. And he's so paper thin that most mids would eat him alive.
I think there's a lot better things to build on him than Dagon, but that item is good on most any caster that wants to go pure damage. I've seen plenty of pub stomp KotL's do it with hilarious results.
Man, my team just threw a game so hard it makes me not ever want to play anymore
I had a friend quit HoN over a 70+min game where their carry (scout for those HoN players keeping track) refused to push the last rax, and instead kept buying divine rapiers (and was selling other items like BKB to get them). He got up to 3 divines, ran into the enemy base, and promptly died, giving the other team 3 rapiers and losing the game.
This is my fear any time a Divine Rapier hits the board, although kind of a lame reason to quit a game. If anything just laugh and shrug it off. Gotta remove that ego when doing Pugs.
I just recently won a game because of this happening. Our enemy already broke mid and the tier 3 tower up top, then their QoP bought a divine. We managed to kill him and steal it. Funny thing is, I was the one who picked up the divine, and I was playing Skywrath as support. I picked it up in panic cause I thought the other team might get it back. I just stayed next to our carry the whole time so that when I die, he can get the divine
And I don't think people hate pinoys because of their style of play, but mostly because of their attitude. Apparently, a lot of people have played with pinoys who were assholes. But then again, all other nationalities also have assholes. Maybe it's cause pinoys are fluent in english, so when they trashtalk a lot more people are affected?
Man, solo Q has been such a nice change of pace. For once I had the nicest team ever. Everyone was supportive, friendly, and communicated well. It will probably never happen again, but that's the first time i've ever felt the need to commend a whole team.
So, I have a question for the pro-Dota players here, since I wouldn't be good enough to pull this off even remotely.
But basically the premise is:
Last hitting is pretty important, so making sure a carry doesn't last hit is also important.
Also, Carries tend to have relatively low attack in the beginning, making it hard for them to last hit.
So, why doesn't the opposite team buy a ring of Basilicus and turn it on / off just as the carry is about to last hit?
The 2 armor in the beginning will be the difference between "needing 1 more hit, thus last hitting" and "needs a little bit more"
By the time the carries next swing is ready, you already turned off the ring, and the wave creeps get to kill your sides creep.
And if the carry catches on and decides "well, I'll just wait longer before attacking" you DON'T turn on the ring just before your creeps die, and they miss a last hit because the HP is going down faster then anticipated.
The ring doesn't have an aura effect on creeps, so it's not like you can see if it's on unless you're clicking on the enemy hero.
This sounds like something an offlane could be doing since they're not concentrating on last-hitting.
but I've never seen this tactic used, is it just too much hassle, or is 2 armor just not enough of a difference?
edit: spelling, a bit
final edit: if this does work, and it's just not been part of meta yet, I propose that in the fine tradition of this board, it'll be known as "wanging"
Ring of Basillus has a radius of about 900. 2 armor adds up to about 12% damage reduction. It is possible that you could use this to make last hitting harder. However, 12% is a very small margin. You need to force the opponent into a situation where they're competing with your denies heavily. When they're competing with denies they attack as early as possible which means the 12% happens to matter.
So what circumstances can you contest that? Most carries farm in safe Tri-lanes. Most off-lane solo heroes (Dark Seer, Windrunner, Weaver, etc.) don't have the luxury when facing three enemy heroes to deny, let alone fiddle with a ring while they're near the creep wave and thus in danger of three heroes collapsing upon them. Most heroes in this role survive with just gathering experience or push the lane with their abilities to give them enough space/money to survive. They don't have direct control over the lane with their auto-attacks.
In a tri-lane versus tri-lane scenario you might get something out of this strategy. Where would the ring go though? The ring could go on your farming character. However, spending 500 gold on a ring for this strategy would need to pay off unless it is a carry hero that will get some use out of a Ring of Aquilia. Additionally, the carry needs to focus on his own last hits in lane. It's hard to say. Throwing it on a support could work but most supports are gold starved and need to spend every cent they get on bare essentials: wards, boots, wand.
Solo versus Solo, like in mid lane, you could maybe get some use out of this. The last-hit/deny war is at a peak in mid. Every point of damage can count, and thus armor can count. However, most mids rush a bottle and bottle crow it for lane superiority. A ring of Basillus would be extraneous mana-wise and they could lose lane/rune control not getting that bottle earlier. Seems risky when you could just rush like Phase Boots and then have +24 damage to deny with.
So I guess I'd say it seems like a lot of work and practice getting good at that toggle. In most lane scenarios it would have to pay off to invest in the item. The hero needs to get some long term use out of the ring. Current lane dynamics seem to have moved away from Ring of Basillius except on folks like Gyrocopter. I dunno. Seems to me to be just too much effort for the possible payoff. Denying with two armor is soooooooo razor thin I don't think it will happen much.
sure, but
1) not every carry carries one
2) while you increase your damage by an impressive 30%, that's only like 15 damage extra.
3) the whole point of the exercise is that you make the "range of hp" where you can Last hit a creep unpredictable, and thus smaller, the smaller this is, the more precise you have to be, this means you have to be more on the ball, closer to the creeps and less aware of what's happening.
Ring of Basillus has a radius of about 900. 2 armor adds up to about 12% damage reduction. It is possible that you could use this to make last hitting harder. However, 12% is a very small margin. You need to force the opponent into a situation where they're competing with your denies heavily. When they're competing with denies they attack as early as possible which means the 12% happens to matter.
So what circumstances can you contest that? Most carries farm in safe Tri-lanes. Most off-lane solo heroes (Dark Seer, Windrunner, Weaver, etc.) don't have the luxury when facing three enemy heroes to deny, let alone fiddle with a ring while they're near the creep wave and thus in danger of three heroes collapsing upon them. Most heroes in this role survive with just gathering experience or push the lane with their abilities to give them enough space/money to survive. They don't have direct control over the lane with their auto-attacks.
In a tri-lane versus tri-lane scenario you might get something out of this strategy. Where would the ring go though? The ring could go on your farming character. However, spending 500 gold on a ring for this strategy would need to pay off unless it is a carry hero that will get some use out of a Ring of Aquilia. Additionally, the carry needs to focus on his own last hits in lane. It's hard to say. Throwing it on a support could work but most supports are gold starved and need to spend every cent they get on bare essentials: wards, boots, wand.
Solo versus Solo, like in mid lane, you could maybe get some use out of this. The last-hit/deny war is at a peak in mid. Every point of damage can count, and thus armor can count. However, most mids rush a bottle and bottle crow it for lane superiority. A ring of Basillus would be extraneous mana-wise and they could lose lane/rune control not getting that bottle earlier. Seems risky when you could just rush like Phase Boots and then have +24 damage to deny with.
So I guess I'd say it seems like a lot of work and practice getting good at that toggle. In most lane scenarios it would have to pay off to invest in the item. The hero needs to get some long term use out of the ring. Current lane dynamics seem to have moved away from Ring of Basillius except on folks like Gyrocopter. I dunno. Seems to me to be just too much effort for the possible payoff. Denying with two armor is soooooooo razor thin I don't think it will happen much.
Yeah, put it like that, it does sound too fiddly with too little of an effect to work effectively.
edit: Don't know if it's worth trying out though, one of the things I noticed is that you kinda get a feel about "how fast a particular creep is dying" and the ring would mess that up too even if you just randomly turn it on / off every 15 seconds or so (with no thought, so not that fiddly) Especially since some heroes have pretty crappy animation, so alot of "lead up time" is needed.
If you are good enough to consistently toggle basillus to interfere with last hits as well as everything else you should be doing, you are probably good enough to see tri-lanes most of the time. And it messes with your denies as much as their last hits. Why not just increase your base damage so you can get more denies and deprive the carry of not only gold, but experience as well.
* that said, it could be good on Weaver. Early Basillius/Aquila is pretty good on him, but his projectile is so slow that its tricky to get denies.
In the circumstances where it would even be feasible it wouldn't be effective. There is not a giant window for proper last hitting. It's supposed to be done to coincide with the creep attack that would be putting the target creep in range for a last hit anyway. With damage ranges the way they are getting +2 armour for either of those attacks might make a difference at level 1 vs a ranged carry with garbage base damage, after that it isn't going to matter at all. It would also mess with your denies, which is a silly thing to do. They'd be getting more from creeps doing the killing than they would if you were denying, and all they'd have to do to mess up all the timings would be to right click a hero and draw creep aggro.
As a practical matter it would have uses in 2 situations, both under towers. Before they get their first minor damage item either the carry or the support has to add an extra hit to a creep when it is being targeted by the tower or the creep won't get low enough to last hit. If the armour aura could be applied to a ranged creep between tower shots to mess with their timing it might work for a couple of waves. The other is more random, which is siege units, which will randomly take 3 or 4 shots from the tower to kill, because of the damage range. If it takes 3 shots it will die, if it takes 3 shots and doesn't die it will have just enough hp left over for a hero to take the kill. Applying armour for just the siege creep might get it up to 4 shots but still high enough that the carry needs 2 hits to kill it, but that's rolling dice just to roll dice.
Alternatively, instead of all this toggling, you could just punch the stupid bastard in the head.
The Idea was that you're doing both, but I think Ring toggling has been shown in this thread as weak, small and flacid.
I'm kinda glad the math doesn't work out, though, because if it did, it would just mean that pro-players needed to up their APM and turn Dota more into a click-fest, not something I was looking forward to.
the only lane that really contests last hits consistently anyway is midlane and buying RoB in mid is foolish. if you buy it before bottle you've slowed down your bottle and will lose, if you buy it after bottle it doesn't matter b/c bottle crow makes mid a wash anyway.
vlads is mad underrated tho RoB->Vlads every game for supports
the only lane that really contests last hits consistently anyway is midlane and buying RoB in mid is foolish. if you buy it before bottle you've slowed down your bottle and will lose, if you buy it after bottle it doesn't matter b/c bottle crow makes mid a wash anyway.
vlads is mad underrated tho RoB->Vlads every game for supports
Vlads is good, but I feel that extra 1550 gold could get you closer to a force staff and there is plenty room for AC with a couple of the common carries at the moment.
Haven't kept up with watching any of the Eastern scene teams since the last international (maybe because there isn't much coverage). Some good games in the TI3 Eastern qualifers going on.
Starting to do much better with Nature's Prophet. So much fun to bounce around the map and push towers. After midas and boots would you guys go shadow blade right away or maelstrom? Or should I start building up to orchid?
Starting to do much better with Nature's Prophet. So much fun to bounce around the map and push towers. After midas and boots would you guys go shadow blade right away or maelstrom? Or should I start building up to orchid?
Disclaimer: I loathe Prophet and avoid playing him.
However, as with pretty much every actually successful item build, it's a context-specific thing. You want the Shadow Blade if you think the other team will respond quickly enough that you'll need to get away. You want the Maelstrom if you're planning longer pushes so you need to clear creeps faster, and you want the Orchid if you plan to teleport in, tree-cage dudes, and blast them with your druidic wizardry. That's a game-by-game decision, not something you want to hard-plan.
Merlini had a good little bit of exposition about this re: Templar Assassin in one of the games this morning, in fact!
Starting to do much better with Nature's Prophet. So much fun to bounce around the map and push towers. After midas and boots would you guys go shadow blade right away or maelstrom? Or should I start building up to orchid?
Disclaimer: I loathe Prophet and avoid playing him.
However, as with pretty much every actually successful item build, it's a context-specific thing. You want the Shadow Blade if you think the other team will respond quickly enough that you'll need to get away. You want the Maelstrom if you're planning longer pushes so you need to clear creeps faster, and you want the Orchid if you plan to teleport in, tree-cage dudes, and blast them with your druidic wizardry. That's a game-by-game decision, not something you want to hard-plan.
Merlini had a good little bit of exposition about this re: Templar Assassin in one of the games this morning, in fact!
Obviously you need some flexibility. With NP I usually have scrooge Mcduck money by the end of the game if everything goes well so I can get all the toys.
Starting to do much better with Nature's Prophet. So much fun to bounce around the map and push towers. After midas and boots would you guys go shadow blade right away or maelstrom? Or should I start building up to orchid?
I like midas -> treads > hex and orchid -> void talisman -> DPS items (deso and daedalus usually)
You can get tons of farm on NP, but you're not a real carry. I'd rather invest that gold in CC for the enemy carry or silence for the enemy casters.
I like NP as the guy who fills in when your team needs a _____. Whether its DPS, or an early mek, or more splitpush, or more CC, or a necrobook, or a diffusal for an omniknight or a warlock, NP is gonna have the farm, and he's super flexible, so it's his responsibility to fill in those blanks.
SB is popular these days, as it does give bunches of damage and IAS in addition to inivs, but I've always disliked it, and I especially dislike it on NP. It has utility in allowing you to splitpush with relative impunity, but all it takes it dust, sentries, or a gem to counter the main benefit of your 3000 gold item. I'd rather have my mystic staff or most of my orchid, but depending on how often you expect your enemies to punish SB with detection, YMMV.
deciding your np build is a personal process. it goes like this.
You lock yourself in a small room with a mirror and a single 80 watt bulb. Gaze deeply into the mirror, probing the eyes of the creature you see. After about 25 minutes you will start to discern the darkness of the soul hidden behind those eyes, and the blacker the soul the less attention you will pay to the minimap and the more dps you will build. If you are one of the lucky chosen few you will find a soul only briefly touched by darkness, and in that case you can try to offlane or rush a mek or something else that will actually help your team.
Next step is to turn off the light, close your eyes, and listen to your heart. Depending on how vile the rhythm is you will either spam your ult whenever it's off cd just to steal cs from your team and wreck all the creep equilibrium your team has been working on, or you will save it for team fights where it will actually do damage and help.
If that all seems like too much thought or work then you're probably a born np player anyway and should go no boots dagon rush.
to be fair fast mek on np is a waste of his stupid gpm. if you just let a support get mek they'll have it before you want to go highground because every team plays slow now
NP is one of my favorite heroes, I have tried a lot of things, but what works best for me is this:
First I rush a Refresher Orb. Turns me into a sort of pseudo-Zeus, popping two ults whenever I see a teamfight is starting, it make sure that teamfights go in our favor, which is great because afterwards all our lanes are pushed and the survivors can take down towers. Because of the Refresher it takes a while longer until I can actually kill people by myself, so that period I mostly refrain from pushing lanes (this depends on the flow of the game of course, but generally I use my Treants to defend friendly towers instead). I am able to farm lanes and fights teamfights at the same time because of my ults. I have learnt that if I push too agressively too early, my team pays the price, because they will lack farm.
Anyway, the next item I get every time these days is a desolator. First off, at this point I am able to kill people one on one, so this is where I start pushing agressively. Always sending Treants behind enemy towers, so they block incoming enemy creeps the towers go down really fast thanks to the desolator.
Aaaand that usually wins the game. Haven't found another hero that works so often for me.
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I have been playing him as a really aggressive pusher. Most pub games seem to have no idea how to counter or lock him down. I save his ult for teamfights or for a rare burst my team push.
The problem I have with pushing agressively from the start is that NP is not really well equipped to handle confrontations. His escape is great, but can be countered with a cheap Quelling blade, so if people really want to stop you, they will.
Also in my earlier games I sometimes ended up with all the farm, but I was simply not having enough bite because NP is not a real carry.
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Yeah, for sure. I'll never waste much time getting after pre-teens and teenagers, but college aged kids have pretty much no excuse. Which is what the majority of pro gamers are.
And with Dota, at least you can report it every time someone uses the term. I'm pretty sure they act on those reports, so eventually we should be able to weed out the word from common use in all chat at least...
My main thought on it is still that context is everything, which works both ways. It's also unfortunate that all these people who have been doing this for years are getting thrust further and further into the (ever more intrusive) public eye at such a rapid pace that it's clearly taken most of them by surprise. Things that they were doing casually just a few years ago are now cause for internet hissy fits. This pretty much goes for every competitive scene. I don't mean to apologize for anyone, but sometimes it's as if what was once casual jokes between a small group of peers is now being blasted from every half-assed gaming website and forum, not to mention stream monsters always looking for the next thing to bitch about or new meme to propagate. Speaking personally, I have said some incredibly horrible things in competitive settings. It's what I like to do, and the people I do it with know that and have no problem with it. They think it's funny even. If even 1/10th of the stuff I said was suddenly up for scrutiny by every forum lurker on the net I'd probably be just as bewildered.
Anyway, dagon SD was a legit build back when he could still solo effectively. Same with dagon AA. It's too bad all these half-decent and pretty fun mid solos had to be nerfed just because they're supposed to be supports.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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What happened to him that he's no longer viable as a solo? His mana efficiency is still pretty good and he's got a pretty decent AA for a support. I ended up doing it due to the usual PUG lane-grabbery a while ago and it went all right, though some potential matchups, a lot of them the ones you see in pro games, surely wouldn't favor SD.
Shadow Demon: disruption cast range lowered, cd increased, and mana cost nearly doubled, while soul catcher mana cost also went up. Can't really poison spam people out of the lane and still have mana to do anything else, plus all the better mids got buffed.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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He's pretty low powered right now, although the magic damage on chilling touch can be good.
Shadow demon definitely lost the ability to poison spam people out of lane. And he's so paper thin that most mids would eat him alive.
I think there's a lot better things to build on him than Dagon, but that item is good on most any caster that wants to go pure damage. I've seen plenty of pub stomp KotL's do it with hilarious results.
So, were there any standout games I should watch today?
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I just recently won a game because of this happening. Our enemy already broke mid and the tier 3 tower up top, then their QoP bought a divine. We managed to kill him and steal it. Funny thing is, I was the one who picked up the divine, and I was playing Skywrath as support. I picked it up in panic cause I thought the other team might get it back. I just stayed next to our carry the whole time so that when I die, he can get the divine
PSN: jrrl_absent
PSN: jrrl_absent
But basically the premise is:
Last hitting is pretty important, so making sure a carry doesn't last hit is also important.
Also, Carries tend to have relatively low attack in the beginning, making it hard for them to last hit.
So, why doesn't the opposite team buy a ring of Basilicus and turn it on / off just as the carry is about to last hit?
The 2 armor in the beginning will be the difference between "needing 1 more hit, thus last hitting" and "needs a little bit more"
By the time the carries next swing is ready, you already turned off the ring, and the wave creeps get to kill your sides creep.
And if the carry catches on and decides "well, I'll just wait longer before attacking" you DON'T turn on the ring just before your creeps die, and they miss a last hit because the HP is going down faster then anticipated.
The ring doesn't have an aura effect on creeps, so it's not like you can see if it's on unless you're clicking on the enemy hero.
This sounds like something an offlane could be doing since they're not concentrating on last-hitting.
but I've never seen this tactic used, is it just too much hassle, or is 2 armor just not enough of a difference?
edit: spelling, a bit
final edit: if this does work, and it's just not been part of meta yet, I propose that in the fine tradition of this board, it'll be known as "wanging"
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Ring of Basillus has a radius of about 900. 2 armor adds up to about 12% damage reduction. It is possible that you could use this to make last hitting harder. However, 12% is a very small margin. You need to force the opponent into a situation where they're competing with your denies heavily. When they're competing with denies they attack as early as possible which means the 12% happens to matter.
So what circumstances can you contest that? Most carries farm in safe Tri-lanes. Most off-lane solo heroes (Dark Seer, Windrunner, Weaver, etc.) don't have the luxury when facing three enemy heroes to deny, let alone fiddle with a ring while they're near the creep wave and thus in danger of three heroes collapsing upon them. Most heroes in this role survive with just gathering experience or push the lane with their abilities to give them enough space/money to survive. They don't have direct control over the lane with their auto-attacks.
In a tri-lane versus tri-lane scenario you might get something out of this strategy. Where would the ring go though? The ring could go on your farming character. However, spending 500 gold on a ring for this strategy would need to pay off unless it is a carry hero that will get some use out of a Ring of Aquilia. Additionally, the carry needs to focus on his own last hits in lane. It's hard to say. Throwing it on a support could work but most supports are gold starved and need to spend every cent they get on bare essentials: wards, boots, wand.
Solo versus Solo, like in mid lane, you could maybe get some use out of this. The last-hit/deny war is at a peak in mid. Every point of damage can count, and thus armor can count. However, most mids rush a bottle and bottle crow it for lane superiority. A ring of Basillus would be extraneous mana-wise and they could lose lane/rune control not getting that bottle earlier. Seems risky when you could just rush like Phase Boots and then have +24 damage to deny with.
So I guess I'd say it seems like a lot of work and practice getting good at that toggle. In most lane scenarios it would have to pay off to invest in the item. The hero needs to get some long term use out of the ring. Current lane dynamics seem to have moved away from Ring of Basillius except on folks like Gyrocopter. I dunno. Seems to me to be just too much effort for the possible payoff. Denying with two armor is soooooooo razor thin I don't think it will happen much.
sure, but
1) not every carry carries one
2) while you increase your damage by an impressive 30%, that's only like 15 damage extra.
3) the whole point of the exercise is that you make the "range of hp" where you can Last hit a creep unpredictable, and thus smaller, the smaller this is, the more precise you have to be, this means you have to be more on the ball, closer to the creeps and less aware of what's happening.
Yeah, put it like that, it does sound too fiddly with too little of an effect to work effectively.
edit: Don't know if it's worth trying out though, one of the things I noticed is that you kinda get a feel about "how fast a particular creep is dying" and the ring would mess that up too even if you just randomly turn it on / off every 15 seconds or so (with no thought, so not that fiddly) Especially since some heroes have pretty crappy animation, so alot of "lead up time" is needed.
* that said, it could be good on Weaver. Early Basillius/Aquila is pretty good on him, but his projectile is so slow that its tricky to get denies.
As a practical matter it would have uses in 2 situations, both under towers. Before they get their first minor damage item either the carry or the support has to add an extra hit to a creep when it is being targeted by the tower or the creep won't get low enough to last hit. If the armour aura could be applied to a ranged creep between tower shots to mess with their timing it might work for a couple of waves. The other is more random, which is siege units, which will randomly take 3 or 4 shots from the tower to kill, because of the damage range. If it takes 3 shots it will die, if it takes 3 shots and doesn't die it will have just enough hp left over for a hero to take the kill. Applying armour for just the siege creep might get it up to 4 shots but still high enough that the carry needs 2 hits to kill it, but that's rolling dice just to roll dice.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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Bane's spell costs a lot of mana, though.
In short, always be Razoring!
I'm kinda glad the math doesn't work out, though, because if it did, it would just mean that pro-players needed to up their APM and turn Dota more into a click-fest, not something I was looking forward to.
vlads is mad underrated tho RoB->Vlads every game for supports
Vlads is good, but I feel that extra 1550 gold could get you closer to a force staff and there is plenty room for AC with a couple of the common carries at the moment.
They're on at odd times so I don't catch them live; but I want to watch some of them.
Disclaimer: I loathe Prophet and avoid playing him.
However, as with pretty much every actually successful item build, it's a context-specific thing. You want the Shadow Blade if you think the other team will respond quickly enough that you'll need to get away. You want the Maelstrom if you're planning longer pushes so you need to clear creeps faster, and you want the Orchid if you plan to teleport in, tree-cage dudes, and blast them with your druidic wizardry. That's a game-by-game decision, not something you want to hard-plan.
Merlini had a good little bit of exposition about this re: Templar Assassin in one of the games this morning, in fact!
Obviously you need some flexibility. With NP I usually have scrooge Mcduck money by the end of the game if everything goes well so I can get all the toys.
I like midas -> treads > hex and orchid -> void talisman -> DPS items (deso and daedalus usually)
You can get tons of farm on NP, but you're not a real carry. I'd rather invest that gold in CC for the enemy carry or silence for the enemy casters.
I like NP as the guy who fills in when your team needs a _____. Whether its DPS, or an early mek, or more splitpush, or more CC, or a necrobook, or a diffusal for an omniknight or a warlock, NP is gonna have the farm, and he's super flexible, so it's his responsibility to fill in those blanks.
SB is popular these days, as it does give bunches of damage and IAS in addition to inivs, but I've always disliked it, and I especially dislike it on NP. It has utility in allowing you to splitpush with relative impunity, but all it takes it dust, sentries, or a gem to counter the main benefit of your 3000 gold item. I'd rather have my mystic staff or most of my orchid, but depending on how often you expect your enemies to punish SB with detection, YMMV.
You lock yourself in a small room with a mirror and a single 80 watt bulb. Gaze deeply into the mirror, probing the eyes of the creature you see. After about 25 minutes you will start to discern the darkness of the soul hidden behind those eyes, and the blacker the soul the less attention you will pay to the minimap and the more dps you will build. If you are one of the lucky chosen few you will find a soul only briefly touched by darkness, and in that case you can try to offlane or rush a mek or something else that will actually help your team.
Next step is to turn off the light, close your eyes, and listen to your heart. Depending on how vile the rhythm is you will either spam your ult whenever it's off cd just to steal cs from your team and wreck all the creep equilibrium your team has been working on, or you will save it for team fights where it will actually do damage and help.
If that all seems like too much thought or work then you're probably a born np player anyway and should go no boots dagon rush.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
First I rush a Refresher Orb. Turns me into a sort of pseudo-Zeus, popping two ults whenever I see a teamfight is starting, it make sure that teamfights go in our favor, which is great because afterwards all our lanes are pushed and the survivors can take down towers. Because of the Refresher it takes a while longer until I can actually kill people by myself, so that period I mostly refrain from pushing lanes (this depends on the flow of the game of course, but generally I use my Treants to defend friendly towers instead). I am able to farm lanes and fights teamfights at the same time because of my ults. I have learnt that if I push too agressively too early, my team pays the price, because they will lack farm.
Anyway, the next item I get every time these days is a desolator. First off, at this point I am able to kill people one on one, so this is where I start pushing agressively. Always sending Treants behind enemy towers, so they block incoming enemy creeps the towers go down really fast thanks to the desolator.
Aaaand that usually wins the game. Haven't found another hero that works so often for me.
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NNID: carmofin
3DS: 2852 6971 9745
Throw me a PM if you add me
Also in my earlier games I sometimes ended up with all the farm, but I was simply not having enough bite because NP is not a real carry.
___
NNID: carmofin
3DS: 2852 6971 9745
Throw me a PM if you add me