1. you need to farm (splash damage)
2. your team composition requires you to win earlier (bonus dmg to towers, plus splash is good for pushing/teamfights).
DK also can carry, he's pretty much invincible late game if farmed properly. My favorite build usually involves curiass/linkens/phase boots/sangeyasha/heart/any dmg item, order varies.
How does DK's lvl 2 ult do more damage to towers than lvl 1? The acid on lvl 1 ult is friggin deadly to towers, and I think it even ignores the super armor.
Etiowsa on
0
Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
Get 5 friends together. Play an AP game. Wait for the other team to pick at least 4 heroes, if not 5.
Everyone picks a mega nuker. Lich, Lina, Krob, Lesh is okay, Ezalor is pretty fun (but not the greatest), Tinker, and Puck are my favorites.
2 people go for fast (FAAAST) arcane rings. One or two go mek. Get a couple Basillius', etc.
Everyone gets their nukes, and farms hard until you reach level 5, maybe 6. Once you hit that, EVERYONE pushes mid. There is nothing the other team can really do against that much nukage - if they get close enough to nuke or stun one of your heroes, 4 others nuke and kill them. If they try to stay away, you move up and nuke them and kill them. You push right up through the raxes, then go for another lane. Usually the other team has left by the time you reach their base though.
If they stop your nuke-push, you're boned. If the game progresses into a mid-late game, you're boned. The game needs to be ended early. It's totally an all-in, total douchebag strategy. It's also really fun to do.
He has a ranged, 100% damage splash attack and a passive that's meant to make him hard to kill. He is nothing but a carry.
Yeah, because being hard to kill doesn't make you a tank or anything. Unless you're going to try to build as a damage dealer all game so that by the time you hit 16 you think you can tank when it's pretty much impossible if the other team has one disable ... then sure.
I'm somewhat amused by this statement, considering that those two are about the purest, hardest 100% carry heroes that have ever been used in any regular fashion in competetive DotA.
There is so much to think about when you first start DotA, am I right in thinking that the official website and forums mixed with replays is the best way to grab some information or am I missing some amazing site or other resource?
The sheer amount of information needed for a basic game is putting me off playing online for fear of messing up a game.
What exactly is Luna supposed to do if she's not going carry? Support? It would be submoronic to not play her as a carry. And DK is an established carry hero. He's been used as a hard carry in competitive dota for a long time now. The notion of a character that just tanks is also archaic; nobody is going to focus on a beefy hero just because, they'll just walk right past you to rape all your DPS and then deal with you later. You need to be both extremely dangerous AND beefy if you want to tank, or be Axe.
There is so much to think about when you first start DotA, am I right in thinking that the official website and forums mixed with replays is the best way to grab some information or am I missing some amazing site or other resource?
The sheer amount of information needed for a basic game is putting me off playing online for fear of messing up a game.
Don't worry about it so much. Public games are always going to have several people who don't really know what they're doing (even if they like to act like they do), so even having knowledge of the basics of DotA really puts you ahead of the pack in most games.
There is so much to think about when you first start DotA, am I right in thinking that the official website and forums mixed with replays is the best way to grab some information or am I missing some amazing site or other resource?
The sheer amount of information needed for a basic game is putting me off playing online for fear of messing up a game.
Dude just go ahead and play lots of public games but be prepared to be called names by assholes. Ignore them; they're assholes.
You will get better over time and will have an edge if you keep your cool. don't sweat it.
Oh that's good to hear, it seemed like a really hard community to crack!
Think I'm just going to jump into the deep end once I find a hero I'm comfortable with!
Thanks S. and Funguy McAids!
Snare on
0
Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
Yeah Snare, just ignore the folks that yell and bitch, especially teammates. Usually they are the first to leave or feed and will just drag you down. The people you really want to listen to are the guys that don't get all emotional and are willing to be civilized. As bad as the community can get, sometimes you'll meet folks that will try to help out even if you're on the other team. Sometimes you'll even meet opponents that will congratulate you on a job well done or try to help you out with your build or tell you what you did wrong. It's rare but I've run into my share of mature players.
As for Luna, you'd be doing a huge disservice to your team if you didn't play her as a carry. You can always tell the newer Luna players because they waste early growth points on lunar blessing and go for a scepter instead of moon glaive plus lifesteal and a butterfly. They are still too caught up in the fact that they can solo kill heroes instead of realizing they can become an absolute wrecking machine.
krapst78 on
Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father prepare to die!
Looking for a Hardcore Fantasy Extraction Shooter? - Dark and Darker
I'm well hyped to play now lol. Thanks all!
Did anyone say they were from Europe? I've not even logged on bnet yet so can't give a name, but let me know if anyone wants to play with an utter noob in EU...
If you're rushing Helm of Dominator on Davion, be sure to dominate a centaur or something and use it to stack your side's ancient creep camp, you can easily clear 3-4 creepspawns at once with level 2 ulti, and even more with lvl 3 ulti (though by level 16 you'll probably have your core items ready and should go for the finish). MKB probably isn't optimal, though, since bash can't be splashed but crit can be.
What do you mean stack my side's ancient creep camp? I usually dominate a centaur for double stun, but whatever this is sounds way cooler! And I like to go for MKB first because the awesome attack speed plus orb-free slow at level 16 is just amazing. After an MKB I get Satanic for survivability and usually by then its game over. I suppose I would go for an armlet or a Buriza next, not quite sure.
Stacking a creep camp is something you do a lot for heros with aoe. Luna gets away with it too, and I do it with Rhasta, to put his wards to use.
Basically, ancients respawn every minute, and the way dota detects to spawn them, is if there is none in that little spawn area. So at like, 53 seconds into the minute, you attack once(with your cent), and run away (towards your base) they follow, and as 00 hits, another spawn is there. So they run back, and theres now 6 ancients there. Keep doing this until you wanna harvest them yourself.
iusehappymod on
Hamlet will be Hamlet An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
I'm somewhat amused by this statement, considering that those two are about the purest, hardest 100% carry heroes that have ever been used in any regular fashion in competetive DotA.
Pretty much.
DK's level 3 ult is just too good. Massive movespeed buff, ranged cleave, aoe slow. And a long duration stun to discourage melee counterattackers. With treads and a cuirass he's firing off attacks brutally fast, he doesn't need high-damage items (mkb or buriza) to burst heroes down because he's one of the top chasers and has the hp, armor, and attack slow to outlast anyone who fights back.
There are few heroes in the game that can stand up to DK 1 on 1 during his ult with equivalent gear. There are few team builds that he won't wreck with some half-decent disables or support on his side.
And yeah, Luna may be the best carrying hero there is. A ranged cleave plus an ult you can fire off after your glaives have eliminated nearby creeps. Her abilities combo extremely well and she's difficult to catch off guard because her ult is a perfect gank counter. Since the most effective method of neutralizing a carry is to gank early and gank often, this makes it tough to keep her from getting strong. You need in-lane ganks and lots of disables, and after the HoD+bfly combo is done she can go for either BKB or Lothars to shore up her weaknesses since she doesn't need much else in the way of damage items. Most carries need to stack two damage items (radiance/bfury, mjolnir/bfly, or mkb/buriza) to be effective in the late game; Luna only needs survivability items.
As with all carries, your three late game counters are (1) end the game before it gets there (2) suppress them early and keep them weak (3) stack disables. Luna and DK have strengths against all of those strategies and don't have very many natural counter heroes; the counters they do have are poor choices in high-level play for other reasons.
I'm somewhat amused by this statement, considering that those two are about the purest, hardest 100% carry heroes that have ever been used in any regular fashion in competetive DotA.
Pretty much.
DK's level 3 ult is just too good. Massive movespeed buff, ranged cleave, aoe slow. And a long duration stun to discourage melee counterattackers. With treads and a cuirass he's firing off attacks brutally fast, he doesn't need high-damage items (mkb or buriza) to burst heroes down because he's one of the top chasers and has the hp, armor, and attack slow to outlast anyone who fights back.
There are few heroes in the game that can stand up to DK 1 on 1 during his ult with equivalent gear. There are few team builds that he won't wreck with some half-decent disables or support on his side.
And yeah, Luna may be the best carrying hero there is. A ranged cleave plus an ult you can fire off after your glaives have eliminated nearby creeps. Her abilities combo extremely well and she's difficult to catch off guard because her ult is a perfect gank counter. Since the most effective method of neutralizing a carry is to gank early and gank often, this makes it tough to keep her from getting strong. You need in-lane ganks and lots of disables, and after the HoD+bfly combo is done she can go for either BKB or Lothars to shore up her weaknesses since she doesn't need much else in the way of damage items. Most carries need to stack two damage items (radiance/bfury, mjolnir/bfly, or mkb/buriza) to be effective in the late game; Luna only needs survivability items.
As with all carries, your three late game counters are (1) end the game before it gets there (2) suppress them early and keep them weak (3) stack disables. Luna and DK have strengths against all of those strategies and don't have very many natural counter heroes; the counters they do have are poor choices in high-level play for other reasons.
Luna doesn't have shit against those strategies. She starts with no health, has no escape mechanism and is easily bullied by any ranged hero right out of a lane. I laugh at all this mention of "high level play" - CEVO is not high level play. EPD is not high level play.
You can end a game between 25-35 minutes. Easily. By that time, you aren't even sixteen yet. DK's level 3 ult is a fine skill. He, however, is not built to be a carry. He has a stun and a life-prolonging skill. He's support. He has very mediocre killing power aside from fire spam up until 16. Animation cancelling his level 1 ult on towers demolishes the things.
If you don't get strength on DK, he is a paperweight. Yeah, you have 8 extra armor but a team will still level you in moments. In a lane early game, if you aren't dedicating yourself to stunning and breathing fire, the person you're in a lane with might as well quit. Even if you're creep pulling, fire spam lets you finish all of the neutrals in question so you actually manage to get money out of it.
Luna's a terrible carry. Glaives pushes a lane. Aura pushes a lane. Good luck last hitting with that terrible build. She's among the squishiest heroes. Anybody that doesn't harass her straight out of the lane has a terrible lane matchup or just doesn't know what they're doing. If the first thing a Luna gets is a helm of dom, you can ensure that it's free kills on Luna for the next five minutes because the person playing her is mentally retarded.
Wait what? I don't think you understand the concept of a carry. A carry is what wins the game AFTER 40 minutes. A hero that is generally stronger and significantly better at farming than all the others once everyone is high level. If the game ends before then, no one is really a "carry" in the sense that the word is usually used in dota.
Luna is a fantastic carry. She is one of the most unstoppable heroes late game with that glaive attack and her ult, along with PA, Void, Razor, etc. and yes, DK.
Wait what? I don't think you understand the concept of a carry. A carry is what wins the game AFTER 40 minutes. A hero that is generally stronger and significantly better at farming than all the others once everyone is high level. If the game ends before then, no one is really a "carry" in the sense that the word is usually used in dota.
Luna is a fantastic carry. She is one of the most unstoppable heroes late game with that glaive attack and her ult, along with PA, Void, Razor, etc. and yes, DK.
Because you can really farm at all at any point during the game with Luna because people can't harass you to death forever. If you want to keep playing Carry Luna - continue, by all means. I enjoy the free wins. There's a difference between a 'late game' hero and a 'carry' hero. Good lord.
The way I see it, a good carry is a carry that can farm well enough to get to the point where carrying matters. Luna has a really difficult time doing that due to her tendency to push, her short attack range and no escape method.
Who do you define as a good carry Ronaldo? PA? Lycan? SK?
iusehappymod on
Hamlet will be Hamlet An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
Where can I buy a cheap War3/FT cdkey? I wanna play with joo guys! The game is hard on noobs but a PA playgroup would make the learning curve that much more manageable.
Where can I buy a cheap War3/FT cdkey? I wanna play with joo guys! The game is hard on noobs but a PA playgroup would make the learning curve that much more manageable.
Last week Amazon had the WC3 battlechest for $19.99. It's $5 off today though.
Wait what? I don't think you understand the concept of a carry. A carry is what wins the game AFTER 40 minutes. A hero that is generally stronger and significantly better at farming than all the others once everyone is high level. If the game ends before then, no one is really a "carry" in the sense that the word is usually used in dota.
Luna is a fantastic carry. She is one of the most unstoppable heroes late game with that glaive attack and her ult, along with PA, Void, Razor, etc. and yes, DK.
Because you can really farm at all at any point during the game with Luna because people can't harass you to death forever. If you want to keep playing Carry Luna - continue, by all means. I enjoy the free wins. There's a difference between a 'late game' hero and a 'carry' hero. Good lord.
Most carry heroes are inherently weak early (DK being one of a few exceptions). They need to be. If carries were good in the early game, everyone would just always pick carries... That's kind of the logic behind them. Razor is very soft early, but he becomes very good at farming mid game and ridiculous once geared. Likewise with most agi carries.
As such, in order for a carry to be successful, the team needs to be good enough to allow them to farm. If you couldn't carry with luna, it's probably because your team was generally failing to hold its own in the early/mid game. Really, though, once you have treads and a HoD, you can farm in the woods pretty easily and watch the minimap for potential ganks (lots MIA, etc). If one enemy hero encounters you in the woods, just ult them.
Luna doesn't have shit against those strategies. She starts with no health, has no escape mechanism and is easily bullied by any ranged hero right out of a lane. I laugh at all this mention of "high level play" - CEVO is not high level play. EPD is not high level play.
That's probably why back when Luna was still picked (you know, in DotA Allstars 6.52: The Carry Edition) she was laned with a babysitter. As for high level play: you don't consider the ESWC, MYM PDL, F4F, EEDC, etc, to be high level DotA? 'Cause the way I recall, DK/Luna/TB picks were pretty common in those games when they played 6.52. As far as carry heroes go, those were really the top picks so really what the hell are you talking about?
You can end a game between 25-35 minutes. Easily. By that time, you aren't even sixteen yet. DK's level 3 ult is a fine skill. He, however, is not built to be a carry. He has a stun and a life-prolonging skill. He's support. He has very mediocre killing power aside from fire spam up until 16. Animation cancelling his level 1 ult on towers demolishes the things.
You can end a game in 25-35 minutes if the enemy team got horribly outpicked/outplayed. Yeah, nowadays that the gank and push strats have been buffed while turtle strats have been nerfed you're probably going with a losing strat if you plan your strategy around any lategame carry, but that doesn't mean you should instead play your item and level dependant hero as a support who ends up with no gold and no XP! What kind of messed up strategy is that? Do you seriously go "well, my hero has potential to become a lategame powerhouse if I farm gold and get fast 16, but I also have a melee range stun and a mediocre AoE nuke, I GUESS I BETTER PRETEND I'M CRIXALIS/LINA/CM/VENO AND GANK LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER AND NEVER FARM"?
If you don't get strength on DK, he is a paperweight. Yeah, you have 8 extra armor but a team will still level you in moments. In a lane early game, if you aren't dedicating yourself to stunning and breathing fire, the person you're in a lane with might as well quit. Even if you're creep pulling, fire spam lets you finish all of the neutrals in question so you actually manage to get money out of it.
Yeah it's a pretty lucky coincidence that his main stat is strenght so he can just get items like BKB, STR Treads, Armlet and Bracers and fix both his damage AND survivability at the same time. Of course, those cost money you can't farm for because apparently you'll have to play support for the allied warlock in lane OR SOMETHING.
Luna's a terrible carry. Glaives pushes a lane. Aura pushes a lane. Good luck last hitting with that terrible build. She's among the squishiest heroes. Anybody that doesn't harass her straight out of the lane has a terrible lane matchup or just doesn't know what they're doing. If the first thing a Luna gets is a helm of dom, you can ensure that it's free kills on Luna for the next five minutes because the person playing her is mentally retarded.
Nuke/stats until eight, problem solved! Yeah, it's not the super sexy lasthitting build of aura+stats from 48b, but you gotta work with what you got. Well, at least you're right on not rushing Domi, 9/10 it's smarter to get a bunch of wraiths, str treads and maybe a BKB before, that way you can contribute hell of a lot better in teamfights so your friends don't get crushed fighting 4v5 while you go "sry gaiz i cant fite i got 3k gold i must farmzzz 4 bfly".
Razor is a harasser hero. He can be played as a carry. I generally get bloodstone and phase boots on him early because all he needs to do is spam chain and shove people out of lanes. With phase boots, you can catch up to any hero and use storm seeker to wipe out pretty much any opposition to a lane. Lycan is a decent hero who can carry under the right circumstances. Generally, I forest with lycan until about 7-9 then solo Rosh and after that it's all about neutral/ganking with his ult. Alternatively, you can backdoor about 2-4 towers with the aegis until people do something about it (they usually just quit) but I just don't see DK or Luna as carries. With Luna, I play her as a spellcast/ganker. With DK, I tend to just try tanking. He has potential late game, but I don't feel late game and carry are the same thing.
PA is a late game. Faceless Void is a lategame. They're alright early and mid if they're used as support, but they are no THD early game, that's for sure. PA can at least reliably farm with stifling and these heroes generally need to forest a bit before they can jump into team battles and wipe out a few. I think it's mainly a semantics issue, here.
Fair enough, but by any definition Luna's optimal role is "carry". She is as bad a ganker as Jugg (reliant on a long-CD, high-cost ult that can be nullified by your opponent not being dumb) and a terrible support (no disable, no slow, no heal, tiny mana pool for items like Mek). You can build her to suit either of those roles, but equivalent gold put toward an optimal carry build (wraiths, treads, HoD, bfly) will make her a far stronger force in the late game.
Her nuke exists to give herself breathing room, force harassers to keep their distance, and to finish off enemies who can escape her due to a lack of a slow or stun. Her ult exists to discourage gankers and chasers, and bait overly aggressive players into getting themselves killed. Her glaive and aura are both dependent on stacking damage and having a decent attack speed, which are happy side effects of getting wraiths, treads, HoD and Butterfly and then possibly a Lothars.
Early game nuke/stats build will lane just fine. Mid-game glaive gets a ton of gold from the larger creep waves that pile up after a tower's down. Late game glaive allows you to damage multiple heroes at once and maintain a push at a base tower by bouncing off to the creeps. Every point of damage on Luna is worth about 50% more than on any other hero, because of the way glaive and aura work.
DK can be a tank, yes, but again he's got skills that make him more suited to being a hero-killing lane-pushing machine. Which is a carry's role: push hard enough late to break a rax, threaten heroes enough late to keep them from doing the same. You can stack two vangaurds and a heart and he'll be next to impossible to kill, but you have one of the top melee chase heroes in the game, and going for damage/IAS items is going to synergize your movespeed/slow advantage.
That he's tough to kill early only makes it easier for him to get to 16 quickly and not get harassed right out of a lane.
And Razor is a textbook carry. Spamming chain isn't going to get you kills against anyone but the most retarded pubbies. Like Luna's nuke, it exists to give you breathing space and two or three uses for burst damage. With his stat growth, attack animation, and two passives he (just like Luna with her passives) is best equipped with damage items and, in his case, something with a slow.
Your philosophy seems to be that you should play around a hero's weaknesses, when you really ought to be playing to their strengths. It's a team game, you can't be good at every role and if you have a decent matchup then the better team will be the one where heroes are itemized toward their skill synergies and stat growths; a team built around not being weak in a particular area will still get beat by stacked opponents.
Fair enough, but by any definition Luna's optimal role is "carry". She is as bad a ganker as Jugg (reliant on a long-CD, high-cost ult that can be nullified by your opponent not being dumb) and a terrible support (no disable, no slow, no heal, tiny mana pool for items like Mek). You can build her to suit either of those roles, but equivalent gold put toward an optimal carry build (wraiths, treads, HoD, bfly) will make her a far stronger force in the late game.
Her nuke exists to give herself breathing room, force harassers to keep their distance, and to finish off enemies who can escape her due to a lack of a slow or stun. Her ult exists to discourage gankers and chasers, and bait overly aggressive players into getting themselves killed. Her glaive and aura are both dependent on stacking damage and having a decent attack speed, which are happy side effects of getting wraiths, treads, HoD and Butterfly and then possibly a Lothars.
Early game nuke/stats build will lane just fine. Mid-game glaive gets a ton of gold from the larger creep waves that pile up after a tower's down. Late game glaive allows you to damage multiple heroes at once and maintain a push at a base tower by bouncing off to the creeps. Every point of damage on Luna is worth about 50% more than on any other hero, because of the way glaive and aura work.
DK can be a tank, yes, but again he's got skills that make him more suited to being a hero-killing lane-pushing machine. Which is a carry's role: push hard enough late to break a rax, threaten heroes enough late to keep them from doing the same. You can stack two vangaurds and a heart and he'll be next to impossible to kill, but you have one of the top melee chase heroes in the game, and going for damage/IAS items is going to synergize your movespeed/slow advantage.
That he's tough to kill early only makes it easier for him to get to 16 quickly and not get harassed right out of a lane.
And Razor is a textbook carry. Spamming chain isn't going to get you kills against anyone but the most retarded pubbies. Like Luna's nuke, it exists to give you breathing space and two or three uses for burst damage. With his stat growth, attack animation, and two passives he (just like Luna with her passives) is best equipped with damage items and, in his case, something with a slow.
Your philosophy seems to be that you should play around a hero's weaknesses, when you really ought to be playing to their strengths. It's a team game, you can't be good at every role and if you have a decent matchup then the better team will be the one where heroes are itemized toward their skill synergies and stat growths; a team built around not being weak in a particular area will still get beat by stacked opponents.
Don't pigeonhole my 'philosophy' as something so simple. I've stated many times in this thread my distaste for playing certain heroes as carries, but I don't begin to insult the people in this thread themselves. You can play the game however you want, but it must be played fluidly and with regard for the team you are playing with and against. The reason I left dota metagame a while ago was because every hero had a cookie cutter routine and you were expected to minmax every aspect or do terribly - this was in the age of full denies and when the map was more difficult as a whole.
I don't care how people play - they play however they want to play. If they think Razor will magically do more damage by building as a textbook carry then they're free to do it. My 'strategy' is not a tiny list of premises, I am not a strategic player - I am a mechanical player. I understand how much everything costs, what it does and how it affects the game around it.
My 'strategy' is not a tiny list of premises, I am not a strategic player - I am a mechanical player. I understand how much everything costs, what it does and how it affects the game around it.
My 'strategy' is not a tiny list of premises, I am not a strategic player - I am a mechanical player. I understand how much everything costs, what it does and how it affects the game around it.
What does this even mean?
It's simple. I meet a lot of different kinds of players. There are people who focus only on CS and are not aggressive in a lane even if they understand how to play their hero/what their enemy does, they'll just focus on last hit/deny and not aggressively pursue the enemy at all. There are people who will get bottle on just about any hero and be obsessed with ganking. There are people who think SA is any good at all. There are people who too often run into battles and get themselves killed. There are people who are good at leaving every fight with like ten hitpoints. There are people who never play solo. There are people who can micro six chens, thirty centaurs, four necrobooks and fifteen meepos at the same time. I'm just the kind of person who focuses mostly on game mechanics, and knowing that you can town portal while blade furying or what goes through bkb/rage, or to aphotic shield someone affected by tree ult to free them immediately, etc.
You know, a lot of heroes can be played in more than one way. It's just that, why would you want to? If you're going to play Luna as a nuker or whatever, there are better nukers already. If you want to use Razor to spam people out of lanes with chain lighting, there are better heroes for that already. If you want to play NA and not gank, why the hell wouldn't you just play Sand King instead? And SA isn't a good hero? It's fine if you want to think outside of the box, but some of the things you're saying are just patently inaccurate, especially if you say you're so into the mechanics of the game.
You're not describing legitimate styles of play, you're describing people who favor one set of skills exclusively over others so much that it is hurting their overall play. Knowing a lot about mechanics is no excuse for not knowing strategy, the whole point of mechanics knowledge is to help you make better strategic and tactical decisions!
ps: SA had a short period of being a pretty rigged hero back in .57 when he received several buffs, metagame shifted in his favor and sentry wards were nerfed. With sentry wards being buffed and backstab and smoke cloud nerfed, he's now a good-mediocre hero that'll still rape teams too lazy to bother to try and counter him with picks/wards.
You know, a lot of heroes can be played in more than one way. It's just that, why would you want to? If you're going to play Luna as a nuker or whatever, there are better nukers already. If you want to use Razor to spam people out of lanes with chain lighting, there are better heroes for that already. If you want to play NA and not gank, why the hell wouldn't you just play Sand King instead? And SA isn't a good hero? It's fine if you want to think outside of the box, but some of the things you're saying are just patently inaccurate, especially if you say you're so into the mechanics of the game.
Posts
How does DK's lvl 2 ult do more damage to towers than lvl 1? The acid on lvl 1 ult is friggin deadly to towers, and I think it even ignores the super armor.
Get 5 friends together. Play an AP game. Wait for the other team to pick at least 4 heroes, if not 5.
Everyone picks a mega nuker. Lich, Lina, Krob, Lesh is okay, Ezalor is pretty fun (but not the greatest), Tinker, and Puck are my favorites.
2 people go for fast (FAAAST) arcane rings. One or two go mek. Get a couple Basillius', etc.
Everyone gets their nukes, and farms hard until you reach level 5, maybe 6. Once you hit that, EVERYONE pushes mid. There is nothing the other team can really do against that much nukage - if they get close enough to nuke or stun one of your heroes, 4 others nuke and kill them. If they try to stay away, you move up and nuke them and kill them. You push right up through the raxes, then go for another lane. Usually the other team has left by the time you reach their base though.
If they stop your nuke-push, you're boned. If the game progresses into a mid-late game, you're boned. The game needs to be ended early. It's totally an all-in, total douchebag strategy. It's also really fun to do.
Yeah, because being hard to kill doesn't make you a tank or anything. Unless you're going to try to build as a damage dealer all game so that by the time you hit 16 you think you can tank when it's pretty much impossible if the other team has one disable ... then sure.
Carry DK = sad. Just as carry Luna = sad.
but I guess I've always played DK as a Tank/Carry.
Hamlet will be Hamlet
An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
The sheer amount of information needed for a basic game is putting me off playing online for fear of messing up a game.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Dude just go ahead and play lots of public games but be prepared to be called names by assholes. Ignore them; they're assholes.
You will get better over time and will have an edge if you keep your cool. don't sweat it.
Think I'm just going to jump into the deep end once I find a hero I'm comfortable with!
Thanks S. and Funguy McAids!
As for Luna, you'd be doing a huge disservice to your team if you didn't play her as a carry. You can always tell the newer Luna players because they waste early growth points on lunar blessing and go for a scepter instead of moon glaive plus lifesteal and a butterfly. They are still too caught up in the fact that they can solo kill heroes instead of realizing they can become an absolute wrecking machine.
Looking for a Hardcore Fantasy Extraction Shooter? - Dark and Darker
Did anyone say they were from Europe? I've not even logged on bnet yet so can't give a name, but let me know if anyone wants to play with an utter noob in EU...
What do you mean stack my side's ancient creep camp? I usually dominate a centaur for double stun, but whatever this is sounds way cooler! And I like to go for MKB first because the awesome attack speed plus orb-free slow at level 16 is just amazing. After an MKB I get Satanic for survivability and usually by then its game over. I suppose I would go for an armlet or a Buriza next, not quite sure.
PSN: rlinkmanl
Basically, ancients respawn every minute, and the way dota detects to spawn them, is if there is none in that little spawn area. So at like, 53 seconds into the minute, you attack once(with your cent), and run away (towards your base) they follow, and as 00 hits, another spawn is there. So they run back, and theres now 6 ancients there. Keep doing this until you wanna harvest them yourself.
Hamlet will be Hamlet
An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
Pretty much.
DK's level 3 ult is just too good. Massive movespeed buff, ranged cleave, aoe slow. And a long duration stun to discourage melee counterattackers. With treads and a cuirass he's firing off attacks brutally fast, he doesn't need high-damage items (mkb or buriza) to burst heroes down because he's one of the top chasers and has the hp, armor, and attack slow to outlast anyone who fights back.
There are few heroes in the game that can stand up to DK 1 on 1 during his ult with equivalent gear. There are few team builds that he won't wreck with some half-decent disables or support on his side.
And yeah, Luna may be the best carrying hero there is. A ranged cleave plus an ult you can fire off after your glaives have eliminated nearby creeps. Her abilities combo extremely well and she's difficult to catch off guard because her ult is a perfect gank counter. Since the most effective method of neutralizing a carry is to gank early and gank often, this makes it tough to keep her from getting strong. You need in-lane ganks and lots of disables, and after the HoD+bfly combo is done she can go for either BKB or Lothars to shore up her weaknesses since she doesn't need much else in the way of damage items. Most carries need to stack two damage items (radiance/bfury, mjolnir/bfly, or mkb/buriza) to be effective in the late game; Luna only needs survivability items.
As with all carries, your three late game counters are (1) end the game before it gets there (2) suppress them early and keep them weak (3) stack disables. Luna and DK have strengths against all of those strategies and don't have very many natural counter heroes; the counters they do have are poor choices in high-level play for other reasons.
Luna doesn't have shit against those strategies. She starts with no health, has no escape mechanism and is easily bullied by any ranged hero right out of a lane. I laugh at all this mention of "high level play" - CEVO is not high level play. EPD is not high level play.
You can end a game between 25-35 minutes. Easily. By that time, you aren't even sixteen yet. DK's level 3 ult is a fine skill. He, however, is not built to be a carry. He has a stun and a life-prolonging skill. He's support. He has very mediocre killing power aside from fire spam up until 16. Animation cancelling his level 1 ult on towers demolishes the things.
If you don't get strength on DK, he is a paperweight. Yeah, you have 8 extra armor but a team will still level you in moments. In a lane early game, if you aren't dedicating yourself to stunning and breathing fire, the person you're in a lane with might as well quit. Even if you're creep pulling, fire spam lets you finish all of the neutrals in question so you actually manage to get money out of it.
Luna's a terrible carry. Glaives pushes a lane. Aura pushes a lane. Good luck last hitting with that terrible build. She's among the squishiest heroes. Anybody that doesn't harass her straight out of the lane has a terrible lane matchup or just doesn't know what they're doing. If the first thing a Luna gets is a helm of dom, you can ensure that it's free kills on Luna for the next five minutes because the person playing her is mentally retarded.
Luna is a fantastic carry. She is one of the most unstoppable heroes late game with that glaive attack and her ult, along with PA, Void, Razor, etc. and yes, DK.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Because you can really farm at all at any point during the game with Luna because people can't harass you to death forever. If you want to keep playing Carry Luna - continue, by all means. I enjoy the free wins. There's a difference between a 'late game' hero and a 'carry' hero. Good lord.
Who do you define as a good carry Ronaldo? PA? Lycan? SK?
Hamlet will be Hamlet
An ineffable tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today.
Last week Amazon had the WC3 battlechest for $19.99. It's $5 off today though.
Most carry heroes are inherently weak early (DK being one of a few exceptions). They need to be. If carries were good in the early game, everyone would just always pick carries... That's kind of the logic behind them. Razor is very soft early, but he becomes very good at farming mid game and ridiculous once geared. Likewise with most agi carries.
As such, in order for a carry to be successful, the team needs to be good enough to allow them to farm. If you couldn't carry with luna, it's probably because your team was generally failing to hold its own in the early/mid game. Really, though, once you have treads and a HoD, you can farm in the woods pretty easily and watch the minimap for potential ganks (lots MIA, etc). If one enemy hero encounters you in the woods, just ult them.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
You can end a game in 25-35 minutes if the enemy team got horribly outpicked/outplayed. Yeah, nowadays that the gank and push strats have been buffed while turtle strats have been nerfed you're probably going with a losing strat if you plan your strategy around any lategame carry, but that doesn't mean you should instead play your item and level dependant hero as a support who ends up with no gold and no XP! What kind of messed up strategy is that? Do you seriously go "well, my hero has potential to become a lategame powerhouse if I farm gold and get fast 16, but I also have a melee range stun and a mediocre AoE nuke, I GUESS I BETTER PRETEND I'M CRIXALIS/LINA/CM/VENO AND GANK LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER AND NEVER FARM"?
Yeah it's a pretty lucky coincidence that his main stat is strenght so he can just get items like BKB, STR Treads, Armlet and Bracers and fix both his damage AND survivability at the same time. Of course, those cost money you can't farm for because apparently you'll have to play support for the allied warlock in lane OR SOMETHING.
Nuke/stats until eight, problem solved! Yeah, it's not the super sexy lasthitting build of aura+stats from 48b, but you gotta work with what you got. Well, at least you're right on not rushing Domi, 9/10 it's smarter to get a bunch of wraiths, str treads and maybe a BKB before, that way you can contribute hell of a lot better in teamfights so your friends don't get crushed fighting 4v5 while you go "sry gaiz i cant fite i got 3k gold i must farmzzz 4 bfly".
http://www.cdkeyheaven.com/wc3%20roc%20and%20tft.html
I think they're a trustworthy site. I'm heavily considering buying that and registering them on Battle.Net so that I may play with you fine chaps.
I'll sleep on it, though.
PA is a late game. Faceless Void is a lategame. They're alright early and mid if they're used as support, but they are no THD early game, that's for sure. PA can at least reliably farm with stifling and these heroes generally need to forest a bit before they can jump into team battles and wipe out a few. I think it's mainly a semantics issue, here.
Fair enough, but by any definition Luna's optimal role is "carry". She is as bad a ganker as Jugg (reliant on a long-CD, high-cost ult that can be nullified by your opponent not being dumb) and a terrible support (no disable, no slow, no heal, tiny mana pool for items like Mek). You can build her to suit either of those roles, but equivalent gold put toward an optimal carry build (wraiths, treads, HoD, bfly) will make her a far stronger force in the late game.
Her nuke exists to give herself breathing room, force harassers to keep their distance, and to finish off enemies who can escape her due to a lack of a slow or stun. Her ult exists to discourage gankers and chasers, and bait overly aggressive players into getting themselves killed. Her glaive and aura are both dependent on stacking damage and having a decent attack speed, which are happy side effects of getting wraiths, treads, HoD and Butterfly and then possibly a Lothars.
Early game nuke/stats build will lane just fine. Mid-game glaive gets a ton of gold from the larger creep waves that pile up after a tower's down. Late game glaive allows you to damage multiple heroes at once and maintain a push at a base tower by bouncing off to the creeps. Every point of damage on Luna is worth about 50% more than on any other hero, because of the way glaive and aura work.
DK can be a tank, yes, but again he's got skills that make him more suited to being a hero-killing lane-pushing machine. Which is a carry's role: push hard enough late to break a rax, threaten heroes enough late to keep them from doing the same. You can stack two vangaurds and a heart and he'll be next to impossible to kill, but you have one of the top melee chase heroes in the game, and going for damage/IAS items is going to synergize your movespeed/slow advantage.
That he's tough to kill early only makes it easier for him to get to 16 quickly and not get harassed right out of a lane.
And Razor is a textbook carry. Spamming chain isn't going to get you kills against anyone but the most retarded pubbies. Like Luna's nuke, it exists to give you breathing space and two or three uses for burst damage. With his stat growth, attack animation, and two passives he (just like Luna with her passives) is best equipped with damage items and, in his case, something with a slow.
Your philosophy seems to be that you should play around a hero's weaknesses, when you really ought to be playing to their strengths. It's a team game, you can't be good at every role and if you have a decent matchup then the better team will be the one where heroes are itemized toward their skill synergies and stat growths; a team built around not being weak in a particular area will still get beat by stacked opponents.
Don't pigeonhole my 'philosophy' as something so simple. I've stated many times in this thread my distaste for playing certain heroes as carries, but I don't begin to insult the people in this thread themselves. You can play the game however you want, but it must be played fluidly and with regard for the team you are playing with and against. The reason I left dota metagame a while ago was because every hero had a cookie cutter routine and you were expected to minmax every aspect or do terribly - this was in the age of full denies and when the map was more difficult as a whole.
I don't care how people play - they play however they want to play. If they think Razor will magically do more damage by building as a textbook carry then they're free to do it. My 'strategy' is not a tiny list of premises, I am not a strategic player - I am a mechanical player. I understand how much everything costs, what it does and how it affects the game around it.
It's simple. I meet a lot of different kinds of players. There are people who focus only on CS and are not aggressive in a lane even if they understand how to play their hero/what their enemy does, they'll just focus on last hit/deny and not aggressively pursue the enemy at all. There are people who will get bottle on just about any hero and be obsessed with ganking. There are people who think SA is any good at all. There are people who too often run into battles and get themselves killed. There are people who are good at leaving every fight with like ten hitpoints. There are people who never play solo. There are people who can micro six chens, thirty centaurs, four necrobooks and fifteen meepos at the same time. I'm just the kind of person who focuses mostly on game mechanics, and knowing that you can town portal while blade furying or what goes through bkb/rage, or to aphotic shield someone affected by tree ult to free them immediately, etc.
I've been playing for several years and actually did not know that one.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
ps: SA had a short period of being a pretty rigged hero back in .57 when he received several buffs, metagame shifted in his favor and sentry wards were nerfed. With sentry wards being buffed and backstab and smoke cloud nerfed, he's now a good-mediocre hero that'll still rape teams too lazy to bother to try and counter him with picks/wards.
I only play SD.