Dota 2

Huh. I had no idea that Visage could take his Ult's third level at lvl. 13. You learn something new every day.

Actually, that's because he leveled up so much in one successful engagement that he went from level 13 to at least level 16 in little time. It's confusing when that happens.

The BKB wasn't enough?

Although CM's ult is really powerful right now. Maybe even OP.

Build survival, provide aura, make Windranger, Visage and Venge do all the DPS!

I gotta say though, after half a hour of being hounded by Spirit Breaker and being his top priority target (I guess he didn't want me to swap Crystal Maiden out of her ults), it was cathartic to wreck him at one point in super-lategame together with Nyx.

In other news, time to start trying Butterfly Bristleback.

Don't you just hate it when you use Spirit Breaker and charge to another lane, only to have Roshan Bash you on the way, causing you to stop in his cave? Because that happened to me once today.

Sometimes you have bad games, bad days. You're feeding, team is feeding, misplays and bad calls left and right. Your teammates are flaming you, and it hurts more because you know you're playing badly. Mistakes were made.

Sometimes you should just call it a night on those days. But sometimes you play one more game. A game where there are no flames, even when you screw up. Team communicates properly. Even if you're not on point, your team is, and you're carrying enough weight to push your team forward. Game ends in high spirits, the kind of game where your whole team gets a commendation. And that's when I remember why I play this game.

Oh... and this too.

Hm. I'm thinking about item stuffs, and I'm wondering if Rod of Atos would be a good item on Necrophos. It gives him a load of health and mana, which is good for tanking, right?

Rod of Atos is one of those items that are good, but has a bad habit of falling off way too fast. There are also items you'd simply rather have sooner, like Ethereal Blade, Aghanim's, Shiva's, or Heart, which pushes Atos aside.

Another way of looking at it, is that Rod of Atos is the weakest the disables, since the target can do anything that isn't running away. Blink, cast spells, even sight back. Comparatively, Euls Scepter is a proper disable, and cancels Blink Dagger, for less.

That said, Rod of Atos' biggest draw on Necrophos is that it makes it easier to land Death Pulses, and to a lesser extent, Reaper's Scythe.

Here's some good stuff on playing Necrophos.

edited 5th Feb '15 8:42:55 PM by MetaSkipper

This thread was dropped from my watchlist for seemingly no reason -.-' I hate it when that happens.

I just had an all bot match as Undying, because I'm trying to learn how to play as him. And holy shit, that match took one hour to end, and I had something like 11/12/39. Early game was good. I'm still not sure what is the best item combination at the beginning of the game for Undying, but I managed to score some early kills (first one to die was Earthshaker). I suffered from not having mana a lot. Mid game inverted that situation, as my skills and teammates allowed us to quickly score kills with pauses in between that were enough for me to regenerate my mana, but that ruined my HP all the times. The late game was just bullshit. We killed them, then we killed them again, then we died. Rinse and repeat for half an hour.

My teammates were Axe, Chaos Knight, Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor. Looking back, I was Radiant top with Witch Doctor... Which meant I wasn't supposed to be the support of the team... In the late game Axe and Chaos Knight had more raw HP than I did, but I still think I was tankier because of my items. Enemies had Windranger, Pudge, Luna, a shitty Earthshaker and Bristleback. With the exception of Earthshaker, each one was a problem in its own way. Specially Luna, with her ultimate.

I was using a build that maxed Tombstone and then Decay, with one level of Soul Rip at level 10, in which I take Flesh Golem. I didn't even know what was the skill order for the build I was using, thus I decided to follow it to learn it. The first things I bought were Tango, Clarity, Stout Shield and two Branches. Soon I sold my Tangos, bought three more Clarities, Magic Stick and finished a Soul Ring (Mask first). I usually left warding and buying courier to matches without bots on my team. Mid game I had Vanguard and Arcane Boots, and from there onwards I made my items seeing what I died for, and which one would make me die less. I finished the game with Pipe of Insight, Crimson Guard, Blade Mail, Heart of Tarrasque, Bloodstone and Boots of Travel. I have no idea how to use Blade Mail and Bloodstone appropriately. Most of the time I died I was stunned anyways, which meant if I hadn't activated my items already I couldn't do much. I did kill myself with Bloodstone successfully once, maybe twice.

Another reason I couldn't use Bloodstone properly - nor Soul Rip, by the way -, is that most fights were 5vs5 teamfights in lane. Zombies, Illusions and blinks everywhere, from my side of the team alone. More than once I was about to Soul Rip an enemy hero when Axe or Chaos Knight blinked in front of my pointer and got healed. I can't do much about camera angles and the size of the characters' models, though. Now that I know how to use Decay, I love it early game. Tombstone is moderately good for farming (though that means I'm pushing, and then I can't use it against enemies that come defend their lanes). I'd complain about Soul Rip, but it's true I didn't level it up early as usual. Flesh Golem always seemed to be ready right when I needed it, which is good.

Any tips or comments?

I once had a ridiculously good game, here. I'm the Sniper, and I have no idea how I got that many kills. I'm pretty proud of using the Shadow Blade to catch enemies off-guard, rather than to run away when things go south... prouder than I should be, since that seems to be the way you're supposed to use the weapon.

I once had a match where I played as Slardar and got about as many kills, maybe slightly more, but connection problems means it never got recorded.

Truthfully, though I have played Undying a couple of times, I could never figure which skills to level when. Tombstone is a fairly obvious choice for the first ability to max, but I always get tripped up by heroes with neither nukes nor abilities that scale with levels/items. I once got chewed out for maxing Soul Rip before Decay... or maybe it was the other way around, I can't tell. I heard that Vanguard and Crimson Guard are not worth the gold or item slot, so I make it a point to never buy them, even when they (okay, Vanguard) are part of the recommended items.

EDIT: From the Dota 2 website:

- Fixed a rare bug that could cause Reaper's Scythe to not credit Necrolyte for the kill

I don't believe it.

edited 6th Feb '15 4:28:40 PM by MightyMatilda

I don't believe it too o.o

All the guides I saw online told me to make Vanguard, and I was gaining enough gold I didn't worry about making Crimson Guard. Even bought Heart of Tarrasque, multiple times described as a "Holy shit, why has nobody won yet!?" Tier item for him. Vanguard gives health regen and good defenses for a tanky Undying. Which was what I trying to be, even alongside the equally tanky Axe and Chaos Knight. The thing about Undying is that, for a support, only the really expensive items that are good for him have some kind of effect that help your teammates. I mean, I could make Mekansm for him, I suppose, if it really came to it...

edited 6th Feb '15 5:32:40 PM by Victin

/ On Undying:

Undying is one of the best early game heroes. You want to make that defensive tri-lane sad? Pick Undying. (A defensive tri-lane is a tri-lane in the safe lane, with the carry and two supports, designed to make sure the carry gets farm.) Few heroes pressure in the early game like Undying. Undying's next power spike comes around after maxing out Tombstone, for that teamfight utility.

Around the twenty or so minute mark, you might as well be playing as 4v5. Undying is one of the heroes that falls off the hardest, for a few reasons.

• Tombstone is your best skill. It probably dies in one or two whacks from the enemy carry as the game goes late.
• Your skills don't really scale well with items. For example, attack modifiers like Time Lock are more effective with more attack speed or attack damage, depending on what kind of modifier. Many disables like Earth Spike or Ravage benefit greatly from things like Blink Dagger. Auras work better as a hero becomes harder to bring down. None of these concepts really apply to any of Undying's skills.

Some of the few tips I remember (I'll add later after some digging.):

• Spam Decay in teamfights. This is actually your biggest contribution.
• It's more efficient to use Soul Rip to heal rather than deal damage, since you're working against resistances when you deal damage. That said, it's still a nuke if you need to finish something off.
• You are not the tank. Don't try to be the tank. (Yeah, that one surprised me too.)
• You can Soul Rip the Tombstone to heal it.
• Please don't play Undying against Earthshaker. Each zombie spawned by the tombstone counts as a unit for Echo Slam. This kills the Undying and all your teammates as well.

On Shadow Blade:

Yeah, while Shadow Blade is useful as a pocket escape, it really is better used as an initiation tool. This is because, while you can dust in reaction to someone going invis to escape, you really need very good sentry coverage and/or a Gem to catch someone who's invis to get the jump on you. Some heroes and players prefer Blink Dagger for initation, others Shadow Blade. That said, Blink Dagger offers a bit more general mobility, while Shadow Blade is better for sneaking around Observer Wards and scouting.

On Vanguard: Vanguard is an item that is really good on some heroes... but falls off, especially if you don't get it early enough. Crimson Guard sort of alleviates this, but the damage block of the active falls off as well, harder than Mek's healing does. That said, Vanguard (and to an extent Crimson Guard) is very good on a small set of heroes like Bristleback and Axe, especially if gotten fast enough.

edited 6th Feb '15 6:38:22 PM by MetaSkipper

Hey, while we're talking about Sniper games...

Well, it isn't MY sniper game, but I am responsible for giving a Sniper a good game.

See my hero healing? That's from me spamming Bloodrage on Sniper. Seriously, Bloodseeker and Sniper are great lane partners. Bloodseeker's bloodrage gives Sniper bonus damage and healing, allowing Sniper to actually get last hits in a safelane and shrug off harass. And then, as the game progresses, Sniper's damage output becomes outright insane with the Bloodrage buff. This results in Sniper getting an insane amount of hero damage. Seriously, you should have seen it when Sniper picked up a DD about ten seconds before a teamfight began. It's a new meta combo just waiting to be popular.

Oh right, I had actually forgotten one of the guides I read said Undying wasn't supposed to be a tank. I think it's due to his poor agility gain?

I still have to practice in matches with actual teammates instead of bots, and then in matches without bots at all to see how far I can go with Undying. Do illusions count as units for Undying abilities? If they do, whenever my team picks up an illusion hero I'll consider picking up Undying.

Oh, one last Undying thing: I heard Sage's Mask is only strictly better than Basilius when you have 33 intelligence or more. Seeing as Undying starts with almost that amount of intelligence, specially after buying items, I want to be sure that is true.

See, the way I look at Rod of Atos is that it has undoubtedly the worst crowd control of the stick stuff. If you get it, you get it more for the health and Intelligence (and thus larger mana pool).

Well, as someone who has decided to try the game, does anyone have any tips? Or how stats/items work, because I'm completely lost there.

What I did was to play the in-game tutorial, then choose one of the beginner heroes to learn how to play, reading tutorials online about that hero and the game in general. There are many videos and text guides all over the internet, I could link you to some of them if you want me to. Some of them might be a little outdated, but I assume it's still roughly the same.

That'd be nice.

I kind of know what the three main stats do and you can use skill points to increase stats, but that's as far as I know past general MOBA things.

Because I played once on my old laptop, and decided why not try it with my new computer.

Here's a collection of Dota 2 resources for beginners. This bot's posts include a few extra sources. Out of those, this is my personal favorite for getting your feet wet. I will say that guide is looking to get updated relatively soon, but the material is still very good. Even if you don't have a lot of League of Legends background, this post also explains concepts rather well.

Spoiler: The tutorial, last I checked, is currently bugged. At some point, the game asks you get 190 gold for an item, but its price was relatively recently increased to 210 gold, leaving you unable to continue.

Here are my personal tips for getting into the game.

• There are a select number of simple heroes that are suggested for new players. The point, in my opinion, of giving you these heroes to play is that they are mechanically and conceptually relatively simple to execute in game plan, letting you focus more on more general mechanics, such as last-hitting and itemization. They are a fine place to start.
• That said, if a hero catches your fancy, don't let difficulty of execution stop you from trying that hero out, at least in a bot game.
• This game is HARD. Truth be told, while this is subjective, this game is hard to enjoy until you reach at least a passing understanding of how to play. When you do, though, this is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding games to play.
• This game is DEEP. There are a lot of deep concepts like farm priority, map control, map awareness, and drafting that you will not grasp right away. There are a lot of interactions that are inconsistent or just plain strange. You will see a lot of different item choices and playstyles across even one hero.
• Got your butt wrecked by that OP hero? After practicing that hero in a few bot games, try him/her/it out and see how other real players deal with you.
• Have fun. We aren't all cut out for climbing to 7k MMR. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy the personal climb to get better.

GL HF. Do post your steam community profile here, so that one of us can friend you and then invite you into the TV Tropes Guild.

edited 6th Feb '15 9:34:57 PM by MetaSkipper

Spoiler: The tutorial, last I checked, is currently bugged. At some point, the game asks you get 190 gold for an item, but its price was relatively recently increased to 210 gold, leaving you unable to continue.

Wow. There are some things in this game that just cross straight over into They Just Didn't Care territory.

edited 6th Feb '15 9:40:50 PM by MightyMatilda

Steam community profile? Sorry for the stupid question, relatively inexperienced with Steam.

Considering I play Lo L, that might help me pass the bare essential ideas about mechanics. Maybe.

By the way, my Steam profile is called MightyMatilda. Is there anything else you need to know?

Is it just your username.

...I ell like an idiot right now for some reason.