Dota 2

October 2nd's patch notes.

edited 2nd Oct '14 9:38:07 PM by MetaSkipper

Ah, Reddit. I simply checked the official website and never thought to check elsewhere.

Has Oracle's portrait been updated before? I know Valve announced Big Things next year, but... okay, maybe I'm just afraid of getting my hopes up.

Of course, we had a new hero just a month ago. Tried the Techies a few days ago and did terribly. Mostly, it was nearly impossible for me to last-hit anything during the laning phase. Alas, he's next on my All-Hero Challenge, and right after the surprisingly fun to play Windranger.

There's apparently an Oracle model in the test client, so while it may not necessarily be soon, I have a hunch on who the next hero is....

So MVP Phoenix won a tournament game with Riki. That's something.

As Techies, you're supposed to last hit by placing land mines on top of creeps during the laning phase. He's never going to last hit anything with his low base damage.

Pfft. As Techies you don't last hit. As techies you farm heroes!

I disagree. Creep waves are a reliable source of gold while the enemy heroes kinda has to walk into your mines in the first place. Plus, Techies is a hero that's hungry for both gold and experience points, which is why it's baffling that people still try to play Techies as a hard support.

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:41:59 AM by Eldrake

Even by Dota standards, it would seem quite difficult to use abilities to get last hits with Techies. Those spells are expensive! Still, it might be worth it next time I try them.

Maybe people play Techies as Support because they have a stun, explosives to act as area denials, and are both slow and incredibly weak. Not helping things is that Valve never gave them a suggested Role to give new players a basic idea of them.

A level 1 land mine deals 225 physical damage with a mana cost of 125, and Techies are gonna get clarities anyway. If your timing is good enough, it's impossible to miss even one last hit with it (plus if your lane opponent(s) is/are melee, they're gonna risk taking a chunk of damage). Plus Techies can get Soul Ring or Bottle quick enough that the increase in the mana cost won't be that bad (though I recommend getting boots first). If the mana costs for level 3/4 land mines are that big of a problem, you can just max Suicide Squad first.

When you put it like that, it makes sense. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.

edited 3rd Oct '14 8:41:40 AM by doctrainAUM

To be fair, a guy whose skills revolve around laying mines might revolve around laying mines. The skills usually give away how to play a hero.

.....

Anyway, my mistake was overestimating both the health of creeps and the importance of saving mana for fighting heroes. I don't know why they still don't have official roles, since there's a difference between "doesn't tell you everything" and "completely worthless".

Techies is a very strange beast that can't easily be defined. Let us look at Valve's suggested roles.

• Carry - Techies doesn't scale that well with farm.
• Disabler - You have the Stasis Trap, but that probably won't help you in a team fight.
• Lane Support - I guess you can lay mines, but you should be laying mines all over the map.
• Initiator - Uhhh.....
• Jungler - Uhhh.....
• Support - Closest role, but you won't be playing Techies the way you play most other suppports.
• Durable - Anyone with "Suicide Squad, Attack!" is not durable.
• Nuker - Bomb jokes aside, Techies' burst damage is hardly instant.
• Pusher - Not really.
• Escape - Denying yourself with "Suicide Squad, Attack!" does not count.

Techies' job is to provide map vision and create space for the other members of his team to farm, in a far more passive manner than other supports do. Trying to classify him would probably make him harder to understand.

Speaking of Valve's roles, there need to be a "Ganker".

On that note, is there a meaningful distinction between Gankers and Roamers? They seem to be basically the same thing.

Roamers refer to supports that rotate around the map, looking to set up ganks.

Gankers refer to heroes that have kits especially tuned to ganking.

Actually, Techies' mines do plenty of damage to towers. Pusher might be applicable.

edited 3rd Oct '14 5:59:44 PM by Pannic

But their (his?) Land Mines are only triggered when an enemy walks near them, which might limit their pushing power. Note that their ultimate, which requires you to manually detonate it, does not damage structures.

Towers also trigger the land mines, creeps or heroes nearby or not. Just place it at the towers.

Techies landmines got nerfed HARD with the last patch though. Their damage got reduced by 25%. While they no longer deal composite, but physical damage that means their damage on heroes is in general unchanged, but creeps and towers don't have any magic resistance, which means they take 25% less damage than before.

Just had my first techies game vs other players in dota 2. Played ranked, and the game lasted 90 minutes. Due to some carelessness they managed to get mega creeps, but we did a final push and won :D
Playing a six slotted techies with lots of gold to spare felt weird. :)
But having infinite mana was fun.

Is steam down? I can't connect to it or to steam support.

Believe it or not, that's actually common enough that there's an entire website for it.

http://www.issteamdown.com/

It's not perfect, obviously, but usually it'll at least give you an idea of whether it's an issue on your end or theirs. On that note, at the time of this post Steam was up.

EDIT: That being said, something happened around 2 AM. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ Wonder what that was.

edited 6th Oct '14 8:24:58 AM by Lionrider

After two failed games as Position 1 Wraith King, I decided to roll a Position 5. It went... pretty well. Got a good couple of early ganks off. Didn't stack once that game, though. Have to work on that.

Time to climb out of the trench playing support Wraith King.

Yeah, seems to be the only way to play him competitively. He's easily counter-picked/itemized against and is near useless when his ultimate is down. He's like the TI 3 Naga - although his skills aren't quite as good early game.

I have seen core Wraith King used well in competitive play. They almost always go Hand of Midas first, though.