Dota 2

TA needs some mobility, so a Blink Dagger is good and synergizes well with Meld. You may want to consult Templar Assassin guides though.

Also, Arc Warden hype

Not so much attack speed as pure attack damage. TA's combination of Refraction and Meld make for huge burst damage when combined with Blink, Daedalus and Desolator.

Solo will never outlive 322

Much happier now than the last time I posted in this thread, after a Single Draft game where I wasn't crazy about any of my three choices but picked Juggernaut and ended up doing well, winning, and having a lot of fun.

As for TA, dopatwo's "5 Reasons To Pick" on her showed you one cool trick you can use. As with most video game stealth attacks, hitting somebody after using Meld deals bonus damage. So do that, then Meld again and hit them again. Since your first stealth-breaking attack will reduce their armor for 10 seconds, your second one will do even more damage than the first!

Also yes, you will want to buy a Blink Dagger since you can then Meld and blink away from your pursuers without breaking invisibility.

You won't see how this is related until the end, but:

edited 30th Sep '15 2:43:18 PM by KilgoreTrout

Or Blink then Meld then attack.

Also you can place a trap then immediately activate it to slow down an enemy. If it sounds obvious to you it didn't for me the first time I tried TA

The last time I played her I knew that it took several seconds after placing a trap for it to reach maximum effectiveness, but I never found myself in a situation where I could afford to wait that long; the enemy would have gotten away if I did.

Still, even if you detonate it immediately after dropping it that's a 30% slow, and that's certainly better than nothing.

Competitive 6.85 tiers

Nightstalker is looking quite strong. 75% winrate in professional Dota 2. Thoughts?

edited 30th Sep '15 5:18:00 PM by Eldrake

Gyah, Nightstalker. I wanna like and use that hero but...

It's like if I see someone pick that hero, it's cue the opposing team to say "Hey guys, keep 5-manning mid-late. Will make Nightstalker useless!". And it always happened. Nightstalker thrives at early game when teams are still farming and disarray, but if they can keep themselves together and 5-man, he's rendered useless (I mean, really, all he does is single out target and try to slam on them while others just pound on him for free)... as far as my game experience goes. And yes, that happened to me using NS as well.

Any tips to improve plays as Night Stalker? And in case a 5-man breaks out, what can NS contribute? Should he face the threat head on or try ambushing?

edited 30th Sep '15 6:35:04 PM by ChrisX

Nightstalker participates with his team in teamfights when they cluster up. Remember that in TI3, Nightstalker won one of the grand final matches for Alliance when Navi five manned in the first night because Alliance got Gyrocopter too.

Remember that when they're five manning, that means that most of them will get less farm, and the other lanes can be pushed. So if they're five manning, just push one of the other lanes. Either one or two will be forced away from them to defend the lane, or they have to accept that creeps will be hitting their towers and maybe barracks soon.

Also, NYX NYX NYX NYX NYX NYX NYX

edited 2nd Oct '15 8:14:24 AM by Eldrake

Funny stuff, although I'd have enjoyed seeing some of Nyx's backstory.

As it happens, the latest Nerf NOW!! also features Nyx.

The Fall Season 2015 Compendium

OGRE MAGI'S WAY!

edited 3rd Oct '15 5:42:30 PM by Eldrake

So I was wondering some thing. If you're facing against Sniper now, do you still hear him saying "SHRAPNEL" or "HO HO HA HA" when he casts his Q against you?

Good thing they fixed that tower-potion bug. Healing towers was literally the only reason I ever played Treant Protector. His other skills are nice, but Living Armor is really what makes me take notice of him, you know?

Speaking of potions!

This is a rather meaningful short story, even if the meta says otherwise...

.... Okay, fine, it's a parody of something else, but still!

edited 6th Oct '15 5:56:27 AM by ChrisX

Oh yeah, I just remembered now. The invitations for the Frankfurt Major has been revealed. I am surprised that Team Secret got an invite despite the massive roster change, but I suppose the new Team Secret has proved to be quite strong.

DAZZLE!

Man, the Dota 2 thread has been slow lately.

Not much to talk about really. Only thing I've got is Na'vi seems to be having communication issues (which I remember was a thing that happened when Funn1k and Kuroky had joined them, so nothing new there). Their games vs Monkey Business in The Summit were pretty bad.

EGM charges Bulldog

Spirit Breaker jukes

You guys could at least discuss the qualifiers. Check out as AdmiralBulldog turns Dota 2 into a strange hybrid of Starcraft II and a generic tower defense game.

For what's just qualifiers, they're really entertaining.

Just today, Dota 2 refuses to launch, even though my other Steam games seem to work fine. I tried installing the Windows Open GL support, but that didn't fix anything. It's very weird.

Alliance making a big comeback against MEGA CREEPS!

Qualifiers are over.

edited 14th Oct '15 4:23:00 AM by Eldrake

If you guys haven't already signed up for yasp.co, you should give it a try. It gives so much more information about your matches than Dotabuff, it's incredible. For example, take a look at this. It shows where the teamfights took place, and each one of the killstreaks. It's cool.

It takes waaay too long to parse matches. Besides, I mostly go to Dotabuff for the blog posts.

I don't really think that parsing takes long, but I guess that's fair enough.

Bulldog playing Dota Imba.