As some of you may know, yesterday I wrote my first blog about DotA and my experience in the beta. Today I will try to bring light over parts of the more gameplay related things; roles, heroes, warding and something alike. I have a few things in mind as I'm starting to write this blog, but I haven't decided where it has to end yet, so let the fun begin. Oh yeah, so if you haven't read the previous blog. Go do that first! :-)
But before I'm starting with the DotA things, when I woke up this morning, I felt I wanted to give a little shoutout and say thanks to someone for a very special gift, I received only a few weeks ago. As some of you also may know before I joined Team Liquid acting as the manager taking care of the players, the tournaments, schedules and what may come my way, I was a part of mouz. During my stay in mouz, I got to know some of the guys very well and made great friends, but Strelok and I became great friends and talk to eachother a lot. It was sad to part ways with him back then, but things go and things come. Earlier this year one of the biggest transfers happened: HuK went to EG from being Liquid for almost a full year. Some of you might also remember that in the announcement of him leaving, it was mentioned that HuK bought had been out shopping and finding goodbye gifts for everybody. For this he teamed up with Strelok who wanted to say thanks and that he's appreciating my help. And my gift from them just came a few weeks ago. I was expecting my new Liquid shirts to arrive, but to my big surprise when I opened the package I found a San Diego Chargers Jersey with my number from when I played myself, #28, and my name above it. Amazing gift, it means a great deal. Thanks Chris and Ievgen!
What role does my hero serve?
In any lineup the five heroes on each team serves a different role. In order to win the game, you must strive to live up to the expectations of your role, whether it may be farming, babysitting or roaming. While it's important to fulfil your role, it's just as important to understand that there's not an absolute way of playing this role. There are tons of way to come about it and how you strategize your play. This is also the reason that you've sometimes seen on streams that top players are trashing each other and calling each other bad. One have a certain way of playing something and when the other guy plays it differently, and it doesn't work together, they just end up the other player is bad.
But before we get into what roles there are in the game, I want to determine that a lot of the heroes serve a multi-purpose and there is absolutely no way that I can come about everything or explain it perfectly in one blog; things like these come with experience.
A carry. A carry is the hero you rely on in the later stages of the game. Often times it's a hero that is very reliant on items and they're the ones, you want to protect and care about as much as if it was your own child. Usually the carries are weak without items and doesn't really have strong individual spells, but their carry potential will come through various items and how they scale into the lategame with those spells. Carries are often also agility heroes as they scale the best into the lategame statwise because agility gives you attack speed and armor, and if you're an agility hero, you also gain damage from it.
Within the group of carries, there is also different types of carries that excels at different times and what they carry through. In the common tongue they're mostly referred to as hard carries and carries. The hard carries are the ones that "beats" the other carries the later the game goes.
A classic example of a carry would be Antimage, Spectre, Razor, Sniper and Morphling. But they're very different types of carries. Antimage, Spectre and Razor often times end up carrying through tanking.
Antimage is a hero that have some amazing passive spells which makes him steal mana on hits and do extra damage depending on their mana. Also he has a blink ability which is amazing for mobility, escaping and hunting people down. Usually you'd start out with a Vanguard and follow it up with Manta, then Heart/Butterfly depending on the game.
Spectre's passive spells makes him reflect a percentage of the damage taken in an area around him. Also his ultimate creates illusions of himself at every enemy hero and he's able to teleport himself to either one of them as long as they're still alive. Again you'd most likely start with a Vanguard, but you will probably go into a Radiance to get some better farming ability and then into a heart. Blade Mail is a must have on this hero in the later stage of the game too.
Razor has a passive spell that makes him faster. He has a decent AoE nuke and he has a target spell that makes him steal the attack damage of the opposing hero as long as he's in the range of them. This is why you can build tanking items on him and he can still get an unbelievably amount of damage. His ultimate spits out small electricity jolts to the target with the lowest current health in an area around him reducing their armor. You'd probably build this guy as a full-on tank with Vanguard and Hood of Defiance, Manta and a Heart.
Morphling and Sniper are different from the three other carries. They carry through pure damage. Morphling has an ability that makes him morph all his strength into agility or the other way around. This spell makes him either do a lot of damage or have a lot of hp, or you can of course also go the middle way with a decent amount of damage and a decent amount of hp. The point being that you will mostly have a lot of damage, but when you're being focused or gank, you will turn it on and morph your agility into strength to gain more hp as they're attacking you and you can escape. His first spell is a great escape mechanism as it charges away or towards something with great speed. One of the things that make Morphling incredibly strong is his ultimate. His ultimate creates an illusion of one of the other teams heroes and it brings the orb effects with them, plus a lot of the damage. This means that if he creates an illusion of Antimage, then the illusion he created actually burns mana too. A great tool in any teamfight or 1v1 while getting ganked. On Morphling you'd most games build a Linkens Sphere and then go into a lot agility items to make him do more damage and gain attack speed (also you're able to morph agi into strength if needed).
I'm going to say it again: There's not only one item-build to each hero, they can be played in many ways and it's situational. But these suggestions are some common builds.
A ganker. A ganker is basically just a hero that in the early or mid stage of the game, walks around the map with 1-2 heroes and tries to keep the other heroes down; make them not have free reign in the game. But there's also something called a roamer which is kind of a subtitle to being a ganker. A roamer is a hero that is not very dependant on his items and can often times be sacrificed a bit in the early game to walk around the map and help the other lanes; make the opposing team uncomfortable and force them to not play too aggressive. It's important and a massive boost for your midhero, if you can help him get some early kills and a big advantage into the next stage of the game. Gankers n' roamers often time serves a multi-purpose in the game; being initiators, support or semi-carry heroes too.
Gankers/roamers could be Earthshaker, Pudge, Blood Seeker. These are 3 different types of gankers. Earthshaker is a roamer that uses his fissure to stun and block opponents off, so you can easily kill them. Pudge has an amazing hook that, funny enough, hooks people to him. He has a slow with magic damage in an area around him, and his ultimate is an immobilize that does a bit of damage too. His passive skill gains him strength and magic resistance the more kills he gets. He act as a roamer through the whole game and as a tank/crowd control guy in team fights.
Blood Seeker, which happens to be Liquid`Nazguls ultimately favorite hero, is a hunting hero. It seeks for blood. It's a hero that can become a carry in the mid and a part of the lategame if he gets really fat. He has a passive that makes him gain an insane amount of movement speed and vision of an opponent if they're beneath a certain percentage of health. He has a silence, but the silence also increases your attack damage, so it can be used both on yourself but also on the opponent depending on the situation. But where it becomes really fun is his ultimate. His ultimate is a rupture that is put on an enemy hero which inflicts some damage on hit, but the rupture does so that for X seconds, if the target moves, he will take a percentage of the distance moved as damage.
An initiator. An initiator is often times also one of those heroes who serves a multipurpose. Initiators are heroes that have great ways of making a good entrance to the fight, either dealing a lot of damage, picking off an important hero or stunning a great deal of them. A general item that you build on many initiators is the Blink Dagger. These heroes is a must-have in any team. If you don't have any initiation or counter-initiation, you will lose almost every decently set up teamfight by the other team.
Three of the most used and prominent initiators in the game are Sand King, Tidehunter and Earthshaker. All of them which you build a dagger on. Sand Kings ultimate is channeling and when it goes off, it goes off in waves around him and deals a ton of magic damage. What you do is you hide a little bit away from the where the fight is about to begin, when you see your shot, you channel your ultimate and the second it goes off, you blink into the middle of them and uses his first spell to stun multiple of their heroes. If this succeeds the team fight is almost already won because of the massive damage he will inflict to many heroes.
Tidehunter's ultimate is a big, very big, stun around him. One of the best initiating spells in the game with a dagger because it allows for the rest of your heroes to set themselves up in the positions the way to in the teamfight; maybe you can even get to nuke their important heroes down before the stun is over. A lot of people even call Tidehunter the walking ultimate.
Earthshaker is one of the most played heroes in this game because it has an amazing stun which is landed in front of him as a big fissure. His 3rd spell is a passive that makes all his other spells do a ministun and a little damage. This is why his 2nd also gives a little stun and do little damage. It's kind of a warstomp in a little area around him and he will do some extra damage on his autoattack. But his ultimate is where starts to get fun - and this is why the dagger is so essential on him. His ultimate is a big AoE nuke that scales with how many creeps/heroes it hits. The more people there, the more damage it does. It also stuns because of the 3rd. If you ever play against ES, don't clump up.
A pusher. A pusher is pretty straight forward and simple. It's a hero that has a strength in pushing towers in a phase of the game where it can be difficult for certain lineups to defend. Pushing heroes are often time heroes with strong nukes, you can get rid of creep waves fast, but also some that has spells that damages towers. For instance Shadow Shamans ultimate is a set of snakes that spawns and can hit the tower. Leshraqs second spell can focus down a tower very well with a constant, high damage. Furion the Nature's Prophet can spawn minions, so you have extra minions to take down towers. Chen can dominate creeps, so he can dominate some of the neutral creeps and have very powerful damage and pushing capability with them, also he has a global heal. In a pushing strategy, you generally want some good auras or aoe effects that your heroes can take advantage of. You can buy Arcane Boots which replenishes 135 mana for all the heroes around the hero that uses it every 35th second. You can buy a Ring of Basilius (common tongue Basi) which gives you a mana regen and armor increase aura and other things like that.
A support. A support hero is basically a hero that spends his whole game making the team happy and making sure, they get what they want. In the laning phase you babysit them, make sure they don't die and they get their farm. You buy a courier at the beginning of the game and another support hero buys the wards. It's important to keep having vision of the key points on the map through the whole game, such as Roshan access, runes and good pathingspots where people often run when they gank, etc. Vision is knowledge, knowledge is power, power is wins. Support heroes often time ends up playing the games without any real items; they may have upgraded boots and in the best case scenario they have a cheap item too, like Force Staff, Urn of Shadows or Drum of Endurance.
Classic support heroes are Vengeful Spirit, Crystal Maiden, Lion, Witch Doctor and Lich.
That's about it. In future blogs or in the discussion beneath, we can get into something more specific on the roles. I could imagine I would go through supporting in a blog and how you go about being a support hero.
What do I want implemented on short term?
..since yesterday! Haha. There's always things that you kind of forget and new things come to mind, so for every blog, I will make this little thing and write some of the things that I'd like to see in the not too distant future.
A forfeit button. Doesn't have to be 15 or 20 minutes as in Heroes of Newerth or League of Legends. It could be after 30 minutes. I just want it to be there, so we don't have to sit in these pro-longed games.
A more specified MMR and it to be official.
A remake function in the game if someone leaves within the first 5 minutes.
Interested in getting access to the DotA2 beta?
Congratulations to ruXxar and Nalesnik! Thanks for some good posts, they were all enjoyable. But don't worry, I will do another giveaway in the not too far distant future. Follow me on Twitter to see when!
I like to play ranger carry and my favorite hero is probably Razor because he is so fun to play I guess I like him because he is so fast and good at hunting down enemies.
My favourite role is probably support since no one plays it, and it makes a huge difference. Favourite hero would probably be Vengeful Spirit or Crystal Maiden.
On October 15 2011 22:41 MarCoon wrote: I heard you're really bad. What makes you so knowledgeable to write a guide like this?
rofl Marko! I'm TL, what do you expect? We're basically demigods and knows everything that is to know in this world. I owned you ezpz with Furion a few days ago, didn't I? ^_^ One man army!
I'm going to mention a HoN hero since I haven't played DotA for three years.
My favorite role is Support and especielly with a hero like f.ex. Empath that has a skillfull way to trap an enemy and really give them an "oh noes" feeling when my carry can easily punch him to death while hes stuck if he do the wrong moves.
I hope HoN names are fine too! Manly strength initation heroes like Glad/Kunkka or Legionnare/Axe are prob my favourites. Landing a good Q+R combo is super satisfying and often outright wins teamfights. Magmus/SK is fun too but you can't really initiate without blink, also he fits more of a support role most of the time.
I like support heroes. Especially support heroes with a heal. Omniknight who also works for push teams is a hero that I really enjoy. Being able to babysit a carry when needed, but also push when it counts is a big help. Plus ulting and giving everyone near-god mode is really game changing. I don't mind taking omniknight solo, but I don't do all that well when I do.
I like to play support/gank, the way you can controll early/mid game with your movement around the map is really alot of fun! It's also easier to navigate your own players and lead the game. My favorite hero is puck, but i also like es, sf, sandking and venge
My favorite role is support. It's extremely rewarding and if you play it well it often can be a big factor in winning games. My favorite support hero would have to be VS (vengeful spirit ). I love swapping people into the middle of my team xD, her stun, her aura, and her aoe debuff are really helpful in teamfights as well. Shes just an overall a good addition to the team and an excellent support
On October 15 2011 22:41 MarCoon wrote: I heard you're really bad. What makes you so knowledgeable to write a guide like this?
rofl Marko! I'm TL, what do you expect? We're basically demigods and knows everything that is to know in this world. I owned you ezpz with Furion a few days ago, didn't I? ^_^ One man army!
I was 4-0-2 with my VS and we OWNED you bottom when our guy disct like 10 mins in ... They really need to start giving out more keys so there is more people to play with :o
But yeah, we should stack some time :D You, Marcel, Me and tell Kennigit to start playing that game!
I love playing roaming gankers, I love the idea of being unpredictable and popping smoke and showing up where enemies have overextended themselves. I like making opponents feel uncomfortable, such a big mind game haha. It's like that sc player that will every so often 6 pool, just to put fear in your opponents and make them play extra safe with wards and what not.
Sadly, who i used to play with were so "elitists" that even a slight mistake would lead to massive rage or similar to that. So i chose pretty much every time a support hero, but i didn't mind it since i liked it anyway.
I also think that in general this is somewhat an issue, when those who aren't exactly top tier players play with players who are better than you - one mistake (even a little one) and you get called for it. Well, at least thats how i have seen and experienced it, not that often but still.
When i played Dota, i usually picked something that was good for the team obviously. I liked Vengeful Spirit in both Dota/HoN. Good stun and i liked to play with Nether swap. Also if HoN heroes count, Nymphora was one of my favorites too. No "endless" running when placing wards, heal and Grace of nymph were really great spells for the team and not to forget the stun.
Great read once again. Thanks for giving an opportunity to get/win a key! Appreciated.
On October 15 2011 22:41 MarCoon wrote: I heard you're really bad. What makes you so knowledgeable to write a guide like this?
rofl Marko! I'm TL, what do you expect? We're basically demigods and knows everything that is to know in this world. I owned you ezpz with Furion a few days ago, didn't I? ^_^ One man army!
I was 4-0-2 with my VS and we OWNED you bottom when our guy disct like 10 mins in ... They really need to start giving out more keys so there is more people to play with :o
But yeah, we should stack some time :D You, Marcel, Me and tell Kennigit to start playing that game!
It's about winning games, isn't it? I think I had 24 minutes Midas, Agha Scepter, Guinzoo and just raped every one of you singlehandedly! GG
Well tbh, I have never played DotA, but I have been watching the DotA2 beta a lot on streams, and I really want to learn! I love support roles. They are always my favorite. I think they more challenging than most roles, because on top of doing your job (which people tend to forget things like staying in range of you, or that you don't make them invincible), you might not seem like you are doing much in terms of stats, which can be discouraging. But when you have a big fight and you manage to keep everyone on your team from dying, even the stupid ones (lol), it's so satisfying! Plus, someone has to do it. A team needs to be balanced to be good.
My favorite role is ganker and my favourite hero is lion or maybe sniper. I really like the suprise effect when sudenly attacking from the fog of war in forrest. I also like to overextend sometimes and try to gank where they dont expect it deep into their side. It doesnt always work out nice but its great fun
My favourite role is playing the ganker. My favourite hero however is Meepo. I love Meepo because playing Meepo is so micro-intensive that the fact it is one of the toughest heroes to play gives me a sense of satisfaction when i win using Meepo
Edit: Can't wait for meepo to be added into dota 2
Initiator for the win baby, favourite hero deffo being Enigma. Just so much fun and diversity. Black hole + midnight pulse and you can easily be well on your way to winning a teamfight.
I love playing support Rhasta or Lion. Being able to completely stop ganks and to gank like crazy are prob some of the best moments while playing. You know you did good when you kill 3+ heroes without losing a single teammate. :D
My favorite role to play is a support pusher. And with that my favorite hero is Chen.
With the ability to create early lane control by ganking on level 1 with a good creep you'll always keep them on their toes. Making use of the jungle to level allows of a gpm that Chen can use to get his early pushing items/courier upgrades/wards. Chens APM requirement is what makes him a very fun and challenging support hero to play. Checking the map all the time to support with a heal, porting back allies, stacking ancient camps with a creep - scouting with a creep, you name it and Chen can do it! Chen also makes Lich a bit sad and Enchantress a bit happy.
Supporting a carry that knows how to maximize his GPM is one of the coolest things I like to do in DotA. Creep pulling for him, auto attacking allied creeps with one of Chens creeps to slow down a lane. Pushing lanes when I hit 7 to get some early tower kills/forced TPs allows my carry to farm even more relaxed - might even do a solo rosh attempt if the enemy does not ward correctly - this allows for a great gold advantage which can lead to a momentum.
These are some things I really like to do.
Read your first DotA post and this one - just now. Seems like your really going for it xD. Loveit. Also followed you on twitter my name there is scheefe aswell.
Favorite Ganker : Mirana. You ride a fucking white tiger. On good days, you hit all your arrows and get this feeling of being 1337. On bad days you get flamed to death by your teammates.
Favorite Support : Rylai. Because I love being the ward bitch, cutting my arms wide open for my team. I love to transform the minimap into a Christmas tree because of all my wards. And I feel like Rylai is perfect for that (imba aura) plus you can hide in the shadow with 10hp, start your ulti and kill the void who was chasing you.
My favourite Hero is the Tinker. Back in the days (v6.37 yayy) it was the Hero i started with. Still have the Replay of my first online win haha (v1.20) After having read the legendary Virot2 guide, i appreciated that Hero even more.
Thing is: you dont have to limit yourself to one Role with him, and you have high damage spells right from the start.
Want to be a Ganker ? Np, run arund and lazorrr them to death. Want to be a Pusher ? Np, tp around and push with March of the Machines and Shivas (any creepwave gone in less than 3 seconds anywhere on the map anyone ?). Want to be a Carry ? Np, farm yourself a double (or tripple) Manta and be an unstoppable force on the Battlefield. Want to be a Support ? Np, Hex & Rearm (aka Permahex) is more Support than any other Disabler can archive.
As the Game progresses, you often have Travels, Hex and either Manta or Shivas (or both) anyway, and the Enemy will throw everything they have to stop you :D Too bad BKB cant be refreshed anymore though, it was quite the literal definition of imba :D
Btw: i have backups of the best Tinker games ever (Tinker_Impossible_Victory.w3g, Tinker_with_Manta.w3g and Tinker_Epic.w3g, the Virot2 guide Replays) if someone wants them (needs WC3 v1.20 & Dota v6.20/v6.32b)
I really like playing carry heores. I find them so much fun, and raking up the kills is fun as heck.
Also because your playing carry sometimes people don't expect a lot in pubs from you. so you can essentially screw around and nobody is going to care. At least thats in my experince because I never really took the time to learn everything about dota. so I was always lost in the confusion
I like to play support, it really feels like you are actaully helping your team to victory. Too bad most often only the carry gets credit for the win :/
Favorite hero have to be Earthshaker, nothing is more satisfying than blocking an enemy in a trap with fissure or blink ulti right in a enemy group that annihilates them.
I play with some friends, we aren't very good or confident, but almost every night, we get on to ventrillo, and play a bit of Hon. My favourite role to play is the initiation, it requires that I take some sort of leadership role on the microphone, I have to make judgement calls of when the team as a whole should attack, some times its nerve racking, I just can't find the right opening, the right place to be, and when I charge into battle, headlong leading my band of chums, I'm the first to die, and then the rest of the team proceeds to shuffle off this mortal coil, but then there are sometimes, when everything works together, like a well oiled machine, I blink into the middle of their team, sandking's ulti pulsing with the magic glow of imminent death, everyone else on my side playing their part, slowing, stunning, disabling and attacking, and the entire enemy force disappears like a whisper in the wind. And like when I play SC2, when my build flows perfectly, everything running into the next action, as if my victory is fate, it is more beautiful in HoN, because I was the one, screaming on the mic, "GO NOW!", starting that chain of events which led to five people working in harmony, resulting in destruction and devastation.
So if it wasn't clear :D My favourite hero is Magmus/Sandking.
Favorite is ganker, although I'm often forced to play carry as there are so many noobs and I don't trust players I don't know from earlier games or from competitive gaming.
My favorite carry would probably be Razor, loves stacking up movement on him to be able to enter and escape combat quickly, depending on situation and especially HP
Favorite ganker would be sandking, I love that hero! Great initiate with ulti+blink and great stun for ganking early/mid game. As i've played a lot of times with Mania, I've firsthand experience with his awesome SK, so getting training from the best
I'm such a coward so I love playing heroes with stealth abilities. Like Riki and Gondar. Sure they are fragile - but your opponent never knows if you are missing from your lane. And that's when the ganking begins! I love getting a good start and making my opponents angry at eachothers.
I played alot of support back when Dota was on wc3. my favourite heroes are Slayer and Lich for their mindblowingly cool ultimates and their poweress during early - mid-game. Some times i would stray and play more focused support like Purist Thunderwrath.
Down the line i turned to Witch Doctor mass wards and heroes like Lion /Leshrac / zeus / Ezalor and Krobelius.
Later in my life when it got a tad more serious and some mates wanted to form a clan. I mainpicked DOOMBRINGER alot! Something very satisfying with devour, LVL? (usually we could kill anything as we dinged lvl 3) and an ultimate that silenced and did massive damage that attracted me immensely to the hero. It was like the first strength hero i felt was tailor made to suit me. It was everything i ever wanted in a hero. Supreme peed on demand, nice damage if your targets was on the correct levels and guaranteed gold in the early lane phase regardless of what you faced up against..
and for pubstomping it was Pudge, Nightstalker or Bone clinz, weaver, nerubian assassin and Rikimaru but that was mostly because the other team had lightweight heroes and my team had support already. I did play with other heroes too but support or tanky champions that might not get the kills have always been my mainpicks.
My answer will be in the form of a Haiku. Haikus are the shit.
My favorite role is the pusher so I can be in the heat of battle.
My favorite hero is BroodMother because it is a boss pusher.
Ok, for real now, I like BroodMother because I like the sort of game-spanning role that a pusher plays and the BroodMother is perfect for that. I can constantly be in the action and getting gold. It's partially because I'm not as experienced with DotA as some others, and this role is the easiest for me to fill while still being satisfying to play and useful to the team.
I like to play tanks and anything in the close area around tanks.
mostly because few things are as fun as owning your friends hard with a tank, so you never die either : ]
my favorite hero must be Tidehunter. oh hello, going somewhere? NOPE slowed. Trying to kill me? NOPE extra defense. Have defense? NOPE I have extra damage. Bringing friends? HUEHUE AoE Stun with knock up stun and dmg!
I played DotA like 10 games or even less so I'd take a shot with HoN hero - Fayde. I love to play gankers with stelth so this was a godsend to me :D. It's not that I'm super good with them but they are the most fun heroes to play (for me at least). Roaming around and crossing lanes whenever I feel like it fits perfectly my playstile. I'm looking forward to playing Antimage in Dota2 ^^.
I played a fucktonne of dota, always playing either carry or support-ish
favorite champs being spectre and earthshaker by a mile. Also tiny because throwing people is fun :D I cant wait till dota 2 comes out, gonna play the crap out of that
On October 15 2011 23:05 Soulmate wrote: I like to play Ganker or support.
Favorite Ganker : Mirana. You ride a fucking white tiger. On good days, you hit all your arrows and get this feeling of being 1337. On bad days you get flamed to death by your teammates.
Favorite Support : Rylai. Because I love being the ward bitch, cutting my arms wide open for my team. I love to transform the minimap into a Christmas tree because of all my wards. And I feel like Rylai is perfect for that (imba aura) plus you can hide in the shadow with 10hp, start your ulti and kill the void who was chasing you.
My favourite role is ganker and i LOVE to play tinker. He was so fun and easy too! espcially if you get boots of travel he basically controls the ebb and flow of the whole game!
I do like playing Crystal Maiden as a support, the constant ward fights with the other support hero tend to be very exciting and she also got pretty nice ganking spells, keeping the enemy heroes in place and then slowing them. 50 minutes into the game, you look at ur inventory, you maybe have boots, 1-2 bracers a tp and a set of wards and partly thanks to me the carry in our team is all set and just finished taking down the whole enemy team, feels good man :p
I loveeeee playing gankers. Tiny was the first hero I really fell in love with. Just this cute small rock dude that can put out one of the highest burst damages in the game with his stun and toss (and stun again), so fun. And once you get blink dagger...... watch out.
My favourite heroes to play are support heroes. It's not the most competitive mindset but I tend to like support heroes because they fly under the radar (I've been a pub player mostly) and even when I screw up it doesn't usually mean the end of the game.
The hero I tend to like the most is Crystal Maiden as she fits right into the mindset I just described. Even when doing poorly I'm still helping the team with mana regeneration auras. I've also found that for some reason a part of me actually likes the slow/poor attack animation as it gives me more sense of accomplishment when I do actually manage to last hit or deny creeps. Being a pub player I also find that people tend to underestimate Crystal Maiden's harassment capabilities and I can quite often do a good job in the laning phase because of it.
All that being said there are support heroes that do have extremely important make or break abilities (most often ultimates) such as Earth Shaker that I don't really like to play as much. I guess at the moment I'm just not competitive enough--I hate when people on my team single me out for losses--to have those types of responsibilities put on me when I play is not fun in a pub environment. When I used to play with TL on Garena in inhouse games I did tend to enjoy playing some of the more game changing support type of heroes because everyone was friendly.
For myself i played Dota for 6 Years now. And I ended up playing support heroes. So why support? Its simple, because im a teamplayer (except for sc2 :D ). I dont like playing carries due to the fact that you have to farm ALLGAME long. Sure it can be a nice feeling in the late game when you own up a whole team with your fat and farmed carry. But guess what, there is a better feeling. The feeling that your carry only got fat and owns up everybody because of YOU.The feeling that you have when you are involved in 70% of your teams kills. the feeling of roaming from lane to lane devastating the enemies presence at certain lanes.The feeling of ruining the enemys carrys farm.I dont care if i have have only 4 kills and 10 deaths at the end, when i have 30 kill assists.
I know people like me are very rare, but that makes us so precious.An elite group of people who resist the desire for good stats, items and cheers. A group of people who dont give a shit when when they are flamed for not having items in public games. (everytime this happens i think to myself "they probably never played a single clanwar in their lifes, so let this poor guys having fun talking nonesense").
So thats why i play support. I just want to be your good fairy on the battlefield, ganking the shit out of the lanes, porting at the last sec to a tower to save my precious carry from nasty ganks!
My favorite Heroes are therefore Crystal Maiden and Lion, altough my earthshaker is well known and feared :D.
So thats it for now. I will start praying for a beta key, because im very desperate, when you see more and more friends gettting keys and start playing the game you loved for 6 years.I want this key so badly that i just started writing and i dont know if this here is good enough. But if you think im worthy of this key i promise you to play some games with you, and i will always be there for you with my stuns,slows or hexes, saving you from every evil gank!!
Favorite hero of mine is by faaaar the earthshaker! No other hero replaces that great feeling for me when you teleport in and blast the shit out of everyone. Also the Fissure blocking ability gives you a lot of room to be pro :D You can save your team mates and at the same time, you can be a real horror to the other team. Gotta love when they're running to their base happily thinking that they're safe. NOPE Chuck testa.
Good write up for those who are new to the whole DotA scene.
My favourite role is playing carry as Terrorblade and hearing the cries of OP from the noobs on the enemy team as you murder them one by one slowly snowballing into a unstoppable force and eventually gaining enough power to take on the enemy team on your own! Alas even the mighty shall fall and as you are waiting to respawn (because you spent your money on a MKB instead of saving for buybacks) all you can do is watch in terror as tower after tower gets destroyed by the enemy team eventually reaching the barracks. The 4 remaining members of your team makes a valiant stand but have to concede the melee rax.
Seconds before the ranged rax falls as well you step back onto the field hungering for vengeance. Due to a brilliant teamfight your team manages to kill every single enemy hero without losing and of your own. And thus the beginning of the end starts. With the help of your team you push back the lane and claims 2 lanes of barracks before being forced to fall back.
The match culminates as your team attempts to claim Roshan. The enemy team arrives in full force and after a glorious battle the sole survivor is a the crystal maiden belonging on your team. She just manages to push the last lane and securing the victory for her team before the enemy Doombringer claims her life. And thus this story ends yet the war is not over and these brave heroes will see countless of battles in a timeless war which will have changed the world forever regardless of the outcome!
(sorry for any obnoxious grammatical errors I may have done english is not as you may have guessed my native language) Best of luck to everyone!
I love ganking. My favorite champ might be anti-mage because of the blades. He reminds me of a stalker + a DT mixed together (go figure a stalker is just a dead dt in a machine xD) anyways. Creeping through the jungle and completely taking an opponent by surprise is always the best thing. Best of luck to everyone with the beta keys ^^ awesome write ups Robin :3
I have always enjoyed playing either the role of a carry or a semi-carry in games, especially when I'm with mates. That role seems to fit me quite well. My favorite heroes for that role have always been naix and shadowfiend
Been a while, but favourite hero is definitely Storm Spirit.
(Not my work but totally awesome!)
BlinkVortexRemenentOverloadBlink! Wheehehehe can't catch me! I love the no-cd blink, I love the grab, I love that he's a badass panda. Most of all though, I think I just like the hat!
my favorite role is support/ganker. i find it much more exciting than ricing all game. besides knowing i'm (plus other supports i guess.. nah credit is all mine!) the reason our team won the game is very satisfying. as for my favorite support, it'd have to be VS since she adds so much to team fights, stays relevant all game, and has potential for game changing saves.
my favorite hero, however, would be bounty hunter 'cause who doesn't like money in the bankkkkkkkkkkkkk
Nice blog man I'm getting more and more excited to drop my other mobas and start in on DotA2 This answer may not win me any points towards your favour but I love playing a carry character. I enjoy the fact of having to play intelligently during the early and mid-game, and it seems to suit my style of obsessively watching the mini-map and knowing where the other team is on the map at all times. Then all of a sudden in the mid-game you have timings to attack behind item upgrades that will put your dps into overdrive and catch the other players off-guard ezpz. Also that jersey is hot shit dood!
My personal favorite has to be Puck. That fragile little guy is so much fun to play as a ganker / roamer. I especially like the versatility of the hero: you can initiate, you can roam, you can help push, you can ward... there are as many ways to play Puck as there are players. Also Puck has the particularity of remaining a fairly strong hero later in the game as well, he will carry through nicely if he gets a decent early to mid game.
But what seals the deal for me is Puck's escape mechanisms and mobility. Nothing matches the thrill of orbing in, tossing all your spells at the opponent, timing that Phase Shift perfectly to dodge a nasty ulti, and daggering out. Veni, vidi, vici!
Love how everyone in this thread says their favorite role is support and how it's sad that no one else plays that role... lol.
On topic, my favorite role is initiator. The type of initiators I really like are heroes that can both gank early game and serve as initiators later in teamfights. I'm mainly talking about heroes like Devourer, Magmus, Pebbles etc. It's hard to say which role requires the most skill, but this one definitely puts alot of pressure on you, because if you do it wrong, you can put your team behind so much, especially late game. At the same time you can carry people to victory by allowing them to enter fights after you and use their damage and abilities on priority targets that you initiated upon, as well as preventing the enemy team from doing the same to you - with all things equal, the team that starts a fight wins. This is unless they focus heroes that can tank alot of dmg and are supposed to bait initiations (f.e. Armadon) or heroes that aren't that important to a teamfight.
Despite, in general, prefering these types of heroes, my favorite hero is actually the old Kraken. While he isn't that good for ganking, I really liked his old ulti (I heard they remade him a bit). Pooling 2-3 or even their whole team if they somehow bunch up and bringing them inbetween your teammates was really fun. It was great how you could combine that ulti with a whole bunch of AoE ultis from other heroes, like KotF, Plague Rider, Slither and a host of others. It was tricky to pull off, but the reward was great. This is why I found it intense to use his ulti, the whole team would depend upon you to pull it off and failing (which wasn't that hard, especially if the enemy team had good positioning, or had Thunderbringer ) would leave you with a bitter taste.
Since playing HoN for two years, since beta I was pretty much always playing the carry with 4 friends. So the carry role has stuck with me. That and mid. I guess I would have to say that my favourite role would be carry, just getting ultra farmed and 4 shotting people is always fun to do.
Hero wise.... I guess it would be Storm Spirit? Has that semi-carry potential while being a mid roaming ganker you can easily control the outcome of the game.(if of course your team aren't feeding!) Also the amount of big plays that can happen through disjointing with his ulti, really changing the tide of fights through simply being able to react to situations like a Lina ult coming at your face. Massive nuke damage completely nullified through skill. Plus the fact that Storm Spirit looks amazing in DotA 2. Little fat man flying around the map dominating people is brilliant.
Another thing that really makes me look forward to playing the mid ganker role is the Reliable/Unreliable Gold, which totally rewards you for being active and not sitting there farming all game. Another nice blog entry by the way!
I have played HoN since the beta stage and I have followed and learned every new moment of the game. The role that I'm enjoying the most, is to play the sololane and initiator. Because when you'r playing sololane there is only you against the opponent and that's where you can show your individual skills and If you fail you can only blame yourself. When you see their weakness you can pretty much use their weakness to your advantage and take over the lane.
My favourite heroes is Bubbles/Puck or Clockwerk/Pharaoh because when you hit lvl 6 you can tp to the other lanes and if your playing with a trilane or midlane that's loosing you can easily help them recover from their mistakes. I like to have control over the lanes and to be the kind of a team leader.
Magmus/Sandking is also fun to play but he needs good team coordination to be played correctly with his initiation/ulti.
I've played DotA for like 4-5 years. I didn't make any hiatus till the SC2 Official Sell. My first ever hero was Techies. Well I didn't have any experience so, instead of suiciding and being bad, my friends told me to play this hero and suicide purposely (for you who don't play dota: techies has a kaboom skill which suicide and deal a bunch of damage, really good for early game and early-mid game). I then later practiced more of my personal skills (deny, last hit, jukes, ect) I liked to play potm, puck, sometimes butcher (he isn't mobile so I didnt really into him). I played almost everytime the semi carries, hard carries. But since I got into my team (not in anymore), I got the role of ganking/semi carry. My favorite heroes (which are still true till today) become the gankers/semi, namely: ES, SK, Potm, Puck, CM, Storm, SS.
My advice for new players is: Play the following heroes in PUB as you learn to play: 1. Intel nukers (Lina, Zeus, Lion) (you have many manas, can spam anytime you want (don't abuse though or you wont have enough mana )). Legend: Do not ks other people's kills blatantly. Ks is an art and you need to master it, because it matters! 2. Strength/tankers (centaurs, BB, Axe, Doom): You need a bit of personal skills to survive, but when you have enough items: some bracers, wand, vanguard. If they ever see you, they'll run like hell (not in case they're hunting someone lol) 3. Agi heroes (mostly semi carries like potm, PA,...): By now, you'll already know how to survive, know how to farm, but you'll need a bit more careful coz agi heroes are weaker than strength heroes. But they're more powerful mid/lategame. Potm can be strong at any time if you are good ^^. With these heroes you can get awesome streaks like beyond godlike :D (well with nukers already but you'll more likely to die). Legend: This type of heroes is NOT just farming then owning. You need to cooperate with others and helping them. But since you're a carry (most of the agi are carries) you'll need kills, so the KS skill will be used now. KS nicely. Don't do stuff like not participating then just last hit. They'll flame the shit out of you (I actually will) 4. Freestyle with random heroes (you can now random and at a pretty good level). Well you only need to improve your general game knowledges like jukes, mechanics, some new stuff that you haven't discovered yet. 5. Choose a specific type of heroes that you want to play. Good lck and have fun ^^
Nice writeup, one of my friends just got a beta key so I played a couple of games today after getting back into dota via dotalicious over the past few weeks and I've got to say the overall feel of the game is odd - its not that its bad but its just different and I can't quite put my finger on why.
Because I'm desperate for a betakey of my own I'll now write up a little bit about my two favourite hero types, initation tankers are probably my favourite as they thrive in the midgame and are an awful lot of fun to play once youve got a BD. My obvious choice of hero in this type is Axe who has the awesomeness of being able to woods from level 1 as well as gank the bottom/top lane throughout the early game and if necessary assist getting/defending runes for whoevers mid. He really comes into his once he has a BD and a tanking item and those two factors make him (imo) the most fun hero to play at this point in the game. Rolling into outnumbered fights with waves of creeps and setting up massive team fights is just awesome, a good axe can really make or break a game. Can't wait to try him out in D2 (hopefully hes as fun as I remember).
Woops forgot my second type. I love to play the squishy support ints, dazzle/frost maiden/rhasta off the top of my head - though whether you class rhasta as support or pusher is a bit subjective. These guys are just awesome when playing with friends, esspecially dazzle. Dazzle has been a favourite for me since the beginning of HoN (I never played him much in the year or so I played dota before HoN) but since having so much fun with their demented shaman, dazzle has been in my top3 heroes. His ability to slow, heal and save makes him the ultimate traditional carry support and his ultimate when mixed with other negative armor heroes is amazing. Dazzle / Slardar / glaci is a tri lane me and my friends love to use when we get the opportunity.
Anyways I just wanted to say even though I didn't post in your last dota blog its really great to see some quality content about beginners dota on TL.
Ganking with an earthshaker is the most satisfying feeling in the game for me. For some reason, when I manage to land a perfect fissure that splits a target from their support and manages to strand them on my side makes me smile every time.
Earthshaker is also has an incredibly high skill cap, most of the times the stun is not as powerful as the 8 second terrain block so deciding between the two can sometimes be difficult. Of course you can be perfect and do both but sometimes it is just safer to block and guarantee a kill instead of screwing your team over with a really terrible block.
He is one of those heroes that can single handedly win a team fight for your team and really screw up the enemies early game while transitioning very well into the mid-game with a quick dagger. Of course, having such a high skill cap also makes him very fun to play since you get to watch the enemy team be like "wtf this hero is overpowered as shit." Likewise it is equally as frustrating watching a really bad earthshaker mistime/ misplace all his abilities. I am no where near perfect but calling him an ezpz hero is just not true
Many people might say that earthshaker is also an initiator, however i would argue that he is far stronger as a counter initiator like enigma. While their abilities can be strong as an opener, they can be so much stronger. even game changing, after the enemy team has blown their cooldowns to get the jump. I think that counter initiating is pretty difficult since you have to time the abilities before your damage dies but after they clump up. A sensible team will usually spread out before a fight so initiating well is not really the best scenario for you.
Now Earthshaker may not snowball like Pudge but whenever he does manage to get a creep kill raigor is closer to his dagger. The dagger is probably the scariest items that you can get for earthshaker since your third ability relies solely on your positioning.Getting the dagger also allows you to unleash your ultimate which is called echo slam! It allows you to absolutely level an entire team given that there are enough creeps. Watching the echo slam implode on the enemy team is pretty awesome since its like 20 bajillion shockwaves going everywhere. you blink and you die
I am sorta disappointed though, echo slam in dota 2 is pretty nondescript and it doesn't look as awesome as it does in classic. However the impact on the fight can be seen in sheer amount of damage that it causes.
Also I cant be the only one that has ever tried battlefuryx2+buriza+2xrapier+blink on ES. If you blink and enchant your totem you can kunkka the entire team, its pretty sick! The jumping animation itself makes it almost worth getting a battle fury every game :DD Well I tried to find it on YouTube but you will just have to trust me when i say it was awesome. Jump on it ANYWAY ES = cockslammin champion
My favourite role is Meepo. My favourite hero is Meepo.
Why Meepo you ask? I just like playing 10 vs. 5
Disable? Just throw your net and shovel the enemy. Up to FIVE times. Teleport? Poof, for free.
Meepo is the best hero because he is skill dependent. The better you are, the better Meepo is. More XP. More gold. Up to 5 times of a normal hero. It's fun shoveling level 6 enemies when you are level 12.
I haven't played since 2008, but my favorite role is roaming/initiating. The thrill of getting early kills and screwing up your opponent's solo lanes is just too fun to pass up, especially with my favorite hero.
Favorite hero has to be Earthshaker. Everything about this hero is just too good to pass up. Fissure by itself makes this possibly the most fun hero in DotA because of its high risk, high reward chances in some scenarios. Nothing can beat the feeling you get when you land the perfect fissure; that is, if your team can follow up.
His initiating would be a close second to landing perfect fissures. Blinking in at the perfect 1200 range, and chaining off your spells (echo/enchant/fissure) is just an awe. Catching their team and watching their HP drop as you initiate on them or observing them desperately try to push without getting caught just makes the Earthshaker player feel good about him/herself.
I love playing Kunnka simply because of the somewhat difficulty that lies within his skillshots i.e torrent and the amazing ult.And ye in general pushers,gankers or even hard carries like spectre are my favourite roles.
On October 16 2011 00:07 Sulla wrote: Love how everyone in this thread says their favorite role is support and how it's sad that no one else plays that role... lol.
its because most just think they do, but they play it with a horrible public style, most are no true supporters or just too bad at farming
My favorite role is the tank. I like to play a DPS Tankish style. My favorite hero is Slardar. I usually rush armlet on him then straight into heart so i can keep armlet on forever and start ganking people by themselves with my stride. The ult increases my damage a lot more. And my stomp works as a great aoe stun. Not to mention my bash with 25% chance of hitting.
My favorite role is carry; I just don't trust the role to be played by anyone else besides me. I currently am getting into playing Spectre; the hardcarry-ness of spectre and her late game dominance seems very interesting to me. In the past, my favorite hero was earthshaker because of his role in deciding teambattles.
Pretty solid guide. Wish I had this around when I started out.
It's great to have friends to play with because it can be really frustrating at the start. Also, (as in sc2 too) try to play with better players than yourself if you want to improve quicker. Dota is such a deep game that it really helps to have someone hold your hand and point out your mistakes.
There are bunch of similarities that transition from sc to dota. Couple of examples.
Timings: Just as you get a critical item, ultimate or some other skill it might be a good time to take advantage of it and push or gank. Also reversely, it is often a good timing to gank or push right before an enemy hero finishes his expensive item (radiance, blink dagger).
Expanding/farming: This might not be as obvious but farming = expanding. If the enemy team is turtling in their base, you usually shouldn't force an attack into their defense but rather farm (expand) and deny opponents' farm (expansion). If you win a big fight , you shouldn't try to end the game right there but rather take what you can get without risking and go back to farming (take an expansion).
Also, don't take hero kills as the truth about which team is ahead. Depending on hero lineups one team might start with a disadvantage and even if they get 5-0 kills they might still be merely even or at a disadvantage.
I really love support. It does suck not getting kills, but its always cool being the clutch heal from Chen or a clutch shallow grave from Dazzle is amazing. Dazzle has to be one of my favorites (although I don't like how he looks in Dota 2). His heal is hilarious, and this slow/stun is so good. I wish I saw him more in games!
my favorite type of heroes are semi-carries, but with early game ganking potential.
my favorite hero would be nerubian weaver, i get a tangoes and ring of basilius and i have no problem farming and counter harassing against annoying lanes, and dodging disables from heroes like skeleton king. When a hero with a slow or disable comes along to gank its fairly easy for me to use swarm and get a kill
I'm usually playing support/semi-support heroes, but my all time favourite is Storm Spirit. I just love the fact I can (in the noob games I play at least) escape pretty easily when things start to look grim. The farming capabilities are second to none and he has a built-in disable. What else can one look for? Also, his model is really cool. The Mexican look in dota2 isn't that bad either, lol.
I prefer carry because for me it's always fun to stay away from the enemy and farm up my core item. My favorite hero is mirana bacause she deals a lot of damages, you can always be aggressive with her and it's always a fun moment to kill your enemy with a blind arrow
I love playing some kinds of roles, support and roamer mainly.
One is support, be it Venge, CM or Earthshaker, however truth be spoken I do not take this role very often in pubs due to the fact that you are so reliant on your teammates to carry your way to victory. This is one of the things I dislike(or well I don't dislike) but I find less appealing is the fact that as a hardcarry you basically farm for about 30min before you can do anything in the game(granted you destroy everyone by then if done correctly) I just want to jump right in the action, so roamers, gankers and support are my hero's of choice.
My favorite heroes are Lich and Lion, one is very very aggressive in the lane while the other can CC and also oneshot stuff(always fun to do), all the while supporting or helping the team.
I also like playing semi-carries such as Mirana, basically you can do tons of damage yet still be very usefull to your team outside of the hardcore farming phase, and I like that.
Ow yeah my pubstomp hero of choice is either Anti-Mage or Spectre.
My favorite hero is Lanaya. Being able to succesfully gank nearly any hero after lvl 6 while at the same time maintaining vision and slow support for the other lanes and jungle feels very powerful and rewarding. I like to play the ganking role so I normally lane until the ultimate gets ready to start hunting down enemies fulltime afterwards.
The Ganking role is very fast paced and action heavy. You always fight directly, head to head with your enemies. Even after many years, I still love to rush out of the fog with them instantly thinking "Oh shit I'm so dead".
Lastly I like this style of play because I get to take a lot of responsibility for my team. If we lose, I would have to admit that it was mostly my fault but if we win i would get the awesome feeling of being the one that turned the tide.
Well I like to play Vengeful Spirit because a good support can really do a lot for a team especially one that has so much to offer throughout the entire game. Vengeful Spirit is one of my favorites because there are so many things you can do to drastically change any fight or gank.
First off I would like to say it was a good read. =)
I started with HoN never played DotA, since I was more into the console games like Halo at the time. So I got to say my favorite hero is basically Witch Slayer/Demon Witch. Now the main reason I love this hero is because of the simple fact that he is a very easy hero to play, especially for newer players.
I started playing with friends who were in the 1700-1800 range (idk why they let a noob like me in their games) so I played support most of the time, since I knew I could not carry or farm correctly. Now not only did I learn the simple stuff like ward spots, stacking/pulling, and baby sitting my carry. I also learned how to harass aggressively in lane to the point my carry gets free farm. I also learned that I do not have to stay in my lane the entire game, but roam to other lanes and help gank.
I hate the elitist players who think if you lost your lane it is your fault. Sure I can understand that sometimes, but the fact of the matter is sometimes people get lucky/unlucky or just get out-played, it happens. So now I always try to roam to any lane that is having trouble, and I always try to help gank.
I went from a sub 1500 noob, to a 1700+ player. It was really all because of Witch Slayer. He isn't a difficult hero to play, but the simplicity of the hero let me learn the more advance tactics of the game, and molded me into a better player.
I've been playing a ton of HoN recently in preparation for DotA 2 and I'm trying to experiment with all the different heroes. I've just been solo queuing (up to 1700 so far) since I'd rather not learn all the HoN drafting right before I switch games, but i've still improved quite a bit.
According to my stats, my top 5 most played are Plague(Lich), Tempest(Enigma), Empath, Slither(Venomancer), Hag(QoP). Support seems to be my most played, but thats also because its hard to get a balanced team in solo queue. I'm not sure I have a favorite role, I tend to fall in love with specific heroes, not their roles.
My all-time favorite hero is probably Slither though. Being able to play him so many ways really clicks with me. You can succeed solo, trilane, babysitter. You can be a pusher or a ganker, even a semi-carry if you do well early game.
Mirana is a close runner up as she is also a very versatile hero. The one thing I try to avoid in DotA/HoN is playing boring matches using the exact same strategies.
I really love playing as a Huskar (Sacred Warrior). Dont know why, but he really fits my style when playing on pub. And late game with tons of HP he is a truly unstoppable. Not so much in the team games, i usually go Rexxar or Earthshaker there, but Huskar is just my guilty pleasure.
I don't have a particular favorite role, I just love heroes with pets/summons. Enigma, PL, Warlock, Chen, Lycan, Furion, Veno, etc.. NOT MEEPO - I am so bad with meepo. I (try to) fill whatever role each of these heroes are best at.
However, my favorite hero has always been Clinkz. Run really fast. Shoot really fast. Buy manta style and orchid for more running and shooting really fast. Skip out on TP scrolls because you run so fast. Devour the souls of Furbolgs and Wildkin. *disclaimer: I am a terrible carry, which is why I usually stick to Enigma
The proper mindset for lane phase Clinkz Eastwood is to have this scene playing in your head:
You are the (Bone Fletcher) With No Name. Who will get the (first blood) gold? SO TENSE.
I love playing support/ganker initiation for a good team. One of my favorite roles has to be earthshaker just an all around well rounded fun hero that can do good ganks and initiate.
I'd say furion. In any game, furion can play as (nearly) any of the roles you require above.
1. Carry Furion has the ability to farm with a relatively easy attack animation. His force of nature also allows him to jungle, if he is so inclined. With a perfect tree to eliminate LOS and teleport, he has a fairly probability in avoiding ganks while farming out his all important MKB, Buriza, or what have you for carry. His downside in carrying would be he isn't really a HARD carry, but I've seen Furions farm enough to smash.
2. Ganker Teleport + trees makes for an excellent ganker. At level 4, he can teleport for a quick gank, and go back to his initial lane all within the span of one creep span.
3. Initiator Furion is not the best initiator. However, he could very easily teleport in from behind, make 4 trees to cause disarray in the opponent or pull their creep wave, whilst the rest of his team jumps in. His ulti also barely scraps him as an initiator, although I would not advise using this tactic against an earthshaker.
4. Pusher Teleport, trees, arguably the only other pusher better than furion would be tinker. I didn't put broodmother here as her lack of mobility somewhat disqualifies her from taking the top 2 spots.
5. Support Furion can be used to babysit, although he does not have a heal. His int base attribute makes most support items suitable for him, and treeing an ally/enemy from danger/attacking can normally buy enough time for a TP.
Although you could find a hero to specialise in each of the roles above, I would argue that on the WHOLE, furion would score the highest. (I.e. if you took every hero, gave them a rating out of 10 for each of the roles above, totalling 50, furion would have the highest total.)
But that's just me, and the beauty of dota is that there are no '5 best heroes'.
I actually love playing all the roles and heroes, i'll play anything my team need(except Davion, i really really REALLY hate Davion), but if i had to pick one role/hero right now that i enjoy the absolute most i would probably pick Clockwerk because i love the lanning strength of the clock, you can really lane against everything, and then you can go around ganking all the time like a fucking madman, plus later on in the game clock transforms in a kind of neat initiator (if you have enough farm) to single one hero out of teamfights.
I love playing support. I never really played support in DotA, but when I moved on to LoL and HoN I became enamored with the role. It feels really good to know you're making a difference even when other people only noticed the 24/1/13 carry that only lived through the last 3 teamfights because you healed/stunned/sacrificed yourself for him to do so.
My favorite supports are Sona/Taric in LoL, Dsham (Dazzle), WS (Lion), and PR (Lich), though I can really play them all well.
The only problems that I have supporting pub games are the fact that if your team is behind in the early game, you get no money (no assists and you're letting your carries get creeps) and can't afford the wards that your team is bitching at you to get, but they refuse to buy them for you; people laughing at your kdr without checking your played heroes; and having bad carries that refuse to take advantage of you.
It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it, and I'm more than happy filling that role. Being a carry is fun and all, with all the good KDR, items, and chicks, but I've always liked being the guy in the shadows that makes everything work
Is it weird that I like to play carry and support D I like carries because I like to do nothing but last hit creeps all game, but this makes me a bad carry and is why I typically stay away from them LOL. Supporting is fun because they really dictate the flow of the game early on and how good your supports are compared to the other teams will determine whether you go into the midgame with a advantage or not. My favorite hero is by far Lich. The lane control he provides is just retardedly good, free denies on full hp creeps means your opponents are automatically gonna get behind in xp, and the longer they just try to straightforward lane vs you the more they will fall behind. Getting free denies also means the lane should always be in a favorable position by your tower, if not you are doing it wrong :D. When you get your nuke + deny, you get even more lane control because you are then able to freely harass enemy heroes by nuking them and then denying a creep to get your mana back.
AND DONT FORGET ABOUT THE HUGE ULTIMATE THAT KILLS EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES!!!
Lich is often said to be an easy hero to play, which i think is somewhat true, I mean you dont have to know much to be effective with him, but if you really know what you are doing he just facerolls whatever lane you put him in.
I usually played a pusher furion, or a carry solo mid luna. I also dabbled in crystal maiden, sand king, lion, and vengeful spirit.
I'd have to say my favorite role is that of a pusher. I just love the feeling of winning the game strategically with them instead of with my "l33t skilz man!".
I love going manta on just about every hero. Of course, that assumes I get a decent lane and good amount of early farming. The extra images are not only useful to supplement your damage output, but also for scouting and initiating. The passive bonus you get from the yasha component of manta is of course a very welcome bonus.
I think that the motivation for playing a role depends, as many things in life, on situation you're in. Do you specialize in certain roles, or do you simply fill that one role that no one wants to take? It can also change over time, as you gain new experience in the field.
As a beginner in HoN, I was often pressured into the role of a support. People with better MMR than me picked the carries while advising me to pick support. At the time, I didn't think much of it. I was the newbie. As a good apprentice I took the advise of those better players. Who was I to question the people with higher MMR than me? Certainly they would be giving me the most suited role for winning the game, considering my skill level.
To be honest, I quite enjoyed it in the beginning. No, not the dying(which there was plenty of!), but the freedom. No pressure to last hit, worrying about if my farm was strong enough, or taking great care not to die. All I had to do was go to lane, harass a bit, get xp and put up wards whenever requested to do so.
The game seemed simple and fun back then.
After exploring the game as support for some 2-300 games, finding new ways to be beneficial to the game, and MMR slowly increasing, I developed a different view of the game. I got curious about the "forbidden" heroes. The mid heroes, the carry heroes, the gank heroes. (some support heroes are also decent gank heroes, but I'm talking about dedicated gank heroes like pebbles) I had this imaginary perception in my mind(real to me though!) that I would utterly fail with these heroes in a serious game. That their skillcap was way beyond anything I could ever reach. I feared I would be flamed to oblivion, then votekicked out of the game(which honestly happened a few times).
In the beginning, as with trying anything new, it was really hard. The dynamic of the other roles was totally different from what I was used to. Last hitting timing/tactics, map awareness in particular, where people were likely to be farming, which routes to take to avoid wards, when to commit to a fight, when to break off the farming and tp to help the team.
So many new variables I had to juggle in my head, and always something seemed to slip. It was a terrible experience, but I figured I had to fight through it, after all, I had seen how much I had improved over the games as a support.
Sure enough, bit by bit, I was getting there, I was starting to feel empowered. I felt like I had a considerable impact on the game. Actually it was more like the game rested more and more on my performance. It was scary at first, but after a while it became addictive. I always looked for ways to optimize and get kills and farm without dying. How to position in teamfight and dish out all that you had and still make it out alive.
The feeling after making a really big play, where you just sit there with a banana grin and nerdchills down your back are what makes these kinds of games worth playing.
I've now logged over 2500 games in HoN, and I still feel like there's tons of improvements to make. There's always the one decision in the long chain of decisions that dota/hon is that can be optimized.
After playing all these games, and finally reaching 1900+ MMR, I can honestly and truly say, that playing any role can be very rewarding and enjoyable. From personal experience, what matters most, is that you have a competent and friendly team around you, that are around the same skill level as you.
-Supporting is fun if you know that the carry can farm and knows what to do. -Carrying is fun if the support is stacking and warding to protect you, not fighting you for farm. They chase the enemy away, giving you room to farm. -Ganking is fun when you have great team coordination. When you've played so much with a person that you just click and know what the other person is going to do. Ganking also relies on good wards to spot the right opportunities, and counterwards to prevent the enemy from seeing you coming.
What role do I enjoy the most to play?
Now that I became proficient in many different roles, my focus has over time shifted yet again. It is now the strategy that appeals to me. The creative thinking behind drafting. Making a plan and executing it. Getting the right picks and counter picks. I've moved from being self centered to becoming team oriented, a team asset. How can I increase our chances of winning to the maximum before the game even begins. As for the role that I enjoy the most? I enjoy filling the spot that I see best fit to help the team. Helping the team win now gives me the most joy, no matter what role I play!
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After that segment, I almost made it sound like I have no favorite hero. This is not true however. I love aggressive play, and I love the game of positioning, be it in lane, or in battles. To get the best position, often high mobility is required, and nothing offers higher mobility than a blink. I love the thrill of being able to be in a teamfight, throw all your abilities and then escape with a slither of health, not wasting any potential. I also enjoy popping in and out of battle, losing focus and regening up with a bottle or what have you, and then come in again when you spot opportunities to deal damage, even if you're low hp.(the art of low hp fighting is so exciting).
As such, I enjoy heroes with blinks or pseudo-blinks: Valkyrie, Bubbles, Magebane and Wretched Hag, to mention a few. Of the above, one stands out to me in particular and here's why:
My favorite hero is Wretched Hag.
-The mobility to traverse the map incredibly fast, get runes, switch lanes, pop in and out of teamfights, chase heroes down. -The magic damage output, the farming capability to turn her into a hard carry, into a hard disabler, or whatever best suits the situation. -The slow to make escaping her all but an impossibility(It's even an AoE slow on her ulti!) She is a beast of a teamfighter, ganker, chaser, carry, anything!
I consider her the most versatile hero in HoN, and also the most enjoyable hero to play!
Wow.. that took a lot longer than I expected, gj if you read all of it!
I read all the stories and I love the different views people have. Good luck everyone and keep the comments flowing, I want to read moar!
My favorite role is to play Crystal Maiden because I love to be the one who saves a team-member from a gank with a well placed spell (slow or immobilize), and then follows up with an ult that (if well placed) can turn a team fight around! Support heroes 4life. =D
Ever since I started taking DotA serious and started my own team with some of my friends from school (One of them being StrinterN, who I still play with in SC2 now) I always took the role of the hero with the most presence on the map. At first I always played heroes such as storm and mirana because that's two heroes that I knew from my time playing public games on DotA league and what not. Fast heroes that can move all over the map.
Then once we started getting a bit more serious and we began to get really good as a team I started playing a lot of solo mid. This was also the time I really started to follow the scene closely, I started talking with some of the best danish DotA players at the time such as Zrr, Blazic, Ryze, Mazanti (Ryze now plays for monkey and represented NEVO at DotA 2 International). At this time I fell in love with the russian style of DotA at the time. Aggressive play focusing on a lot of map awareness and team coordinated ganks. I found that style the most fun you could play in DotA and started playing Beastmaster solo mid almost exclusively. It is still my favorite hero in DotA, Nightstalker being a close 2nd. It requires a lot of map awareness and sets up your team for an aggressive playstyle. The hawk is the best ability to set up ganks as well as protect your carry from being ganked, makes sure you never lose a rune in mid, making your ganks even stronger. The pig give you such a strong control of your lane, as well as constant slow with long range for ganks. And finally, his ulti is such a strong early game nuke with low cooldown and low mana cost. Perfect for a gank on the 6 min rune. First time you play against a good BM you will fear the hero forever. A ganker with map hack, imba nuke and starts out with sick hp and base armor as well as scales nicely into the lategame with his aura and str gain.
Alright! Another key giveaway... hopefully I can win O_O! I've never played much DotA but I'm quite familiar with the heroes and have played alot of HoN.
I really enjoy playing the heroes that are semi-carry/gankers because they're obviously, strong early game and carry quite well late game if you got some farm and did a decent job mid-game. With that my favorite hero is probably PotM, she doesn't have much actual scaling but is so strong early game with her burst from starfall/arrow and with farm carries so well. I have not played viper yet but by the looks of it, can't wait to try the hero out.
The reason I like to play these heroes that tend to be good throughout the game is because there was a time I really only played alone and I learned the best way to win those games were just simply destroy the other team with ganks early and then carry with the lead you've got :D Obviously with playing heroes like PotM I got very accustomed to the mid lane. And with that I just learned to play the majority of the common mid heroes :D
Edit: btw you forgot to go over semi-carries in the op
if you have an inferiority complex you should really play him, because you can safe your mates so often in dire situations that the thank yous will give your ego a stronger boost than any of sharlie sheen's favourite courtesans. Your skills are wonderful for fragile carries,
the heal heals(no really it does!) and can be used as a VERY good nuke(awesome range, dmg etc.), the only bad thing about it is that it damages you, but the damage isn't that bad and makes your buddies even more thankfull for getting healed and sometimes it can be even used to your advantage.
The shield makes attacking the shielded person dangerous, can be used together with your coil for a sudden burst of damage and has synergies with several different heroes(axe,pudge...), because it swallows a nice amount of damage done to you or your mates and lets it all out on your foes when it breaks. (and something that many people don't know is that it stops hex, which can be huge lateron and save a whole clash because the carry didn't lose valuable seconds of ownage).
The buffplacer/orb effect... oh that skill, we experienced so much together... it slowes enemies down AND enhances movement- AND attackspeed, a chaser like Riki or Magina will love you for it.
And of course his ulti, it autoactivates itself when you're about to die and only has a cooldown of 60 seconds, although it's sometimes much smarter to activate it manually to suprise your enemies, but what does it do? It transforms damage into hp! This, together with the shield and the orb give Abbadon excellent juking abilities, especially if you have phase boots for the speedboost and to move through your enemies(don't forget this when you want to feel like a real man, there's nothing better than to survive it when 5 guys focus you and run after you through the whole jungle).
And even if everything is lost and you know that you will die you can still deny the satisfaction (and the gold) to your enemies and commit suicide with the help of your coil(and heal/damage an enemy/foe at the same time as a farewell present) and make them rage, because they didn't manage to kill you after investing so much in it. If you want your fellow teammates to love you, play him, be a nice person and always support your fellow teammates and especially your carry.
As you may have noticed by now, I play abbadon as a supporter, although I usually like to play all of the roles, except some of the carries, because I don't like it to stay somewhere(on a lane, in the jungle) for long after the early to farm creeps. I usually play sigs on dota-league.com and there I always random(when the mode permits it), just because I really like the diversity (the great thing about not liking to play some of the very farm focussed carries is that there's nearly always somebody who wants to swap that hero with you^^) and it also makes it a bit more challenging(but it's very important that you random as soon as possible, because if you wait your teammates can't pick accordingly). So I don't really have a favourite role... it always depends on my teammates, there are some players I know, with whom I always play supporters, because I know that they play good carries and that they prefer heroes which have a good synergy with my favourite supporters. For example a guy who likes to play Riki and Never, I love playing abbadon together with him, even if we have a bad early he doesn't just die in clashes or ganks because his hp is so low, because his farm was bad, I can keep him alive with my spells and he can still do his damage and even more of it thanks to my orb effect.
For me, I've always loved playing roaming gankers. Right from the start you're going to be part of the action, rather than sitting in lane ricing for 30 minutes. The teamplay needed to chain stuns/predict escapes means that you always have to be on your toes. Games rely on your ability to keep the enemy's carry down and underfarmed, and I love being able to play hyper-aggressive and forcing people into mistakes. Playing well as a ganker requires fast reaction times and pinpoint accuracy with targeting spells, which I much prefer to the rote lasthitting that playing a hard carry requires.
Despite this, my favorite hero is tinker, a hero which requires an inordinate amount of farm. I like him because his playstyle is so unique due to his ult, Rearm. Once you get Boots of Travel, you instantly become a dominant force with the ability to gank, push, and farm anywhere on the map and then quickly TP back to the safety of your fountain with one rearm.
Late game with him is a button-mashing heaven: Force staff, Manta, Sheep, Shivas, Laser, March of the Machines, Rocket, Rearm, Rinse, Repeat. So many buttons, so little time.
You want me to write what my favourite role is? I wish I knew that :/, I go with random more than I should, and if I don't, I usually wait with my pick to see the others' first, so i can counter/combo up accordingly. I can play any role, any hero(few exceptions, some coming from simply lack of practice due to
my friends always picking them(mirana, pudge...) and ultimately being so good with them I am afraid to even try them not to seem stupid)
I am a pubber, for like 4 years already(since dota 6.51) and I play pub style hardcore. My favourite hero is Abbadon, the Lord of Avernus with whom I go
totaly insane heal build focused on keeping my dps alive up to 2 times longer than normal :D Works best on "RIGHT CLICK'EM" style Ursa
Let me write my miniguide to Abba, the agressive support
1.Skills
a)Death coil-heal/nuke, depending on target, low mana cost and cd, costs hp and can't self heal => we need a way to heal ourselfs and will level whis skill
up first on agressive lanes against low hp heroes, or with an agressive lane partner
Important note! You can deny yourself with a well timed death coil! Nothing better in Dota than a suicide xD(it allways amuses me)
b)Aphotic shield-damageprotection that goes HUGE aoe nuke if broken, with a negative buff removal. One of the sickest ass saving skills in the game IMO,
Especialy if used on a hero that gets disabled for longer than 2 seconds, and even more if it is by a channeling spell as the enemy will still channel it
:D(standing around with his cast animation on, looking like a total moron) The skill has suprisingly many uses, high damage potential and, when maxed,
pretty low cd. How not love it Leveled up always on lvl one and later if you are the defender(or solo, which happend to me a few times).
c)Frostmourne- Effin frost sword, slows enemies, refreshes allies :D As good as it is, I never get it early tbh, the spells I find more useful. This skills
lets you scale nicely in later stages of the game, where your skills get less powerful(aphotics debuff never gets weaker though)
d) them ultz- Borrowed time- A debuff, damage protection and heal for damage taken within duration? Activated automatically(you never die from doom, as it
debuffs it)? NO MANA AND 60 SECONDS COOLDOWN?! This makes sure you don't get focused to death in teamfights , allowing you to spam your live saving
abbilities on your team.
1.1skill order: I'll go short- Ult when you can, aphotic level one, death coil/ shield depending on lane situation, than froustmourne, no early stats.
Starting:components for urn or ring of protection for Basi, chick if noone else buys it, you need it urself. Fill up with consumables.
2.ITEMS Something like => Boots of mana(arcane boots),urn of shadows, mekasm, vlads(if there's no better carier of this) , whatev ur team needs!(You can add in
stick, I rarely manage to use it with that load out due to lack of hotkeys )
The nature of dota is that you can ignore your skills and become support or carry no matter what(no true for other roles thou)(lategame only ofc) I ussualy
play Abba as support, so I keep supporting later on with guinsoo for hex, but you can go dps, froustmorne already givs you somewhat skadi and the ult makes
you unfocusable.
3.Playstyle Agressively support while farming urn. How? Abuse the fact your line is unkillable early as long as you have mana, play ballsy. If the enemy has low hp and
your lanemate is not Troll(the old one), you should be able to be really agressive since your skills can both heal and deal damage, all you need is a bit
of help. Once you have urn, start being a roaming support, you need those chares to heal self, while usuing death coil on teamates(did I mention urn can
heal or damage too?) Arcane boots for mana and no more need to fall back, ever, sometimes till the end of the game(I onced had my team on full hp for 5
minutes , 2 teamfights and 2 towers pushed, nobody died on our side, all died there)
I mentioned a chrging forward ursa on the beggining. Later in the game, I was able to keep him alive FOREVER with my meck, death coil, shield combo(no urn
inside fights :/), especially that I dispelled disables with shield.
That's it for my favourite style, nothing better for me than keeping people alive I also very often play VS and dodge shit with Swap xD
Nice write up, should definitely help people new to the genre (or even those used to the fuzzy roles of LoL).
My favorite role is definitely the ganker role, especially solo mid. When you go solo mid as a powerful ganker, you are essentially the point guard for your team (basketball term xD). It's up to you to not only win your lane, but control the runes and gank side lanes when you see the opportunity. Losing the rune war mid is a surefire way to make your team fall behind! Then when midgame rolls around and the laning phase begins to die down, you take on a new position of leadership as the leader of your teams ganking squad. My favorite gankers are heros like Puck and Clockwerk who can be amazing initiators AND gankers all in one. Unlike support and carry, the ganker role requires the most interaction with the enemy team instead of mindless farming and ward wars / creep stacking.
My favorite hero from DotA is Broodmother. She is able to fill many different roles on a team (good ganking toolset, totally bonkers laning abilities, amazing pusher with spiders, and semi-carry late game). I enjoy popping the ult for massive lifesteal and winning fights the enemy doesn't expect me too, but most of all I just like the webs. Leaving webs around the map to make your enemy nervous is one heck of a unique pleasure, and setting up webs in your lane early makes laning a nightmare for your enemy. Combined with her passive for hit and run shenanigans, makes her one of the most unique and powerful laners in the game!
My favorite kind of heroes are solo heroes such as QoP, Puck, Tiny, and Storm Spirit. I like the whole 1v1 duel aspect of soloing and my success or failure is mostly dependent on myself. If I do well while laning I can start to take of over the mid game by instagibbing lower level heroes and set up a winning position for my team.
My favourite role definitely is support. Somehow I came to realise overtime, that support is really an integral and important role. They are the one that make or breaks the game especially because they pave the way for the carries to be effective mid/late game. If they fail to play their role accordingly, their carries might suffer a lot early game thus become very ineffective later on in the game. Without a really good support player, your team can really falter easily, especially more apparent when you are fighting stronger/higher level teams.
Even in other sports, it is the same case. In soccer, you can have all the superstar, top scorer strikers in the world, but without proper players who can pass/feed them the ball nicely, they won't ever get to score. And if your defenders/goalkeeper are crappy, you will bring your team morale down very easily once you start conceding a lot of goals. Similarly in basketball, without nice passes from the guards, your center and forwards won't be able to easily score. And to achieve all of these, the players have to have certain qualities - able to read the game from a different perspective, possesses extraordinary vision and also must be very unselfish (having high teamwork/always thinking about his team, instead of himself).
So, I willingly sacrificed myself to adopt this role within my team and find that it really suits me, because I always read a DotA game in a much larger, longer-termed perspective than most others. I may not be that good, but I'm always trying my best to learn from every mistake that I can each game, and being a support, you will really learn A LOT about the game itself - how to gank, how to save your carry from dying easily, where to ward, how to initiate, how to not die so much, to TP or not to TP, when to TP to help your friend in need, etc. etc. - and all of these things, a support have to willingly learn to improve upon in order to achieve the main goal for a team, which is to WIN!
Basically, it is my favourite role because of the diversity/potential of learning that I can get compared to any other roles...
... it really is either that, or that I am just NOT THAT GOOD AT PLAYING CARRY lol lol !
My favourite hero changes from version to version, and for the current version I am really fond of Invoker because of how much diversity he can bring into a team - he can lay destruction as well as support the team quite well with his variety of spells. If used correctly, he really can become gamebreaking. But my all-time favourite usually is Juggernaught. Why? I just looooove slicing and dicing people to death. He's just too awesome at doing that.
In order to pick a hero and role, I require the following: 1 dota 2 beta key. Upon receiving it, a reply will be sent to you via private message thus closing our transaction.
Serious Answer: My favorite role is the ganker/picker role. It is essential in most games to pick off 1-2 heroes before a push because of the chance of losing a team fight. This is why Beastmaster, is my favorite hero in dota. His skills scale from beginning to late game without fail. In the beginning stages of the game, his axes do great damage as well as change the terrain of the map by cutting down trees. This allows easy picks and tower dives to kill the enemy heroes without being juked around trees while getting hit by enemy creeps and towers. His minions allow him to easily catch up to his enemies with the quill minion or easily find his prey in FoW. His axes while allow early ganks is also useful during mid/end game situations where you can push lanes and kill most creep waves with 2 nukes. His minions are useful throughout the game for easy ganks and picks on people farming in the jungle. Beastmasters third skill, increases his dps late game which allow for him to play the role as a carry as he pleases. His ulti is self explanatory and great for either ganking a hero or locking down that carry or aoer that is bkb'd. tl;dr Beastmaster is imba.
Thanks for this opportunity of obtaining a beta Key. My favorite role is solo middle since it is the most influential role in the game. It gives one the opportunity to work and improve on every aspects that is in Dota. One needs to have good last hitting skill, map awareness, and full knowledge of all heroes in the game to be successful at middle. The solo mid has the ability to control the flow of the game by controlling runes, ganking other lanes with level advantage, or even just winning mid to get the fast tower. It is full of action since level 1 to be in middle and your presence is pervasive throughout the remainder of the game unlike late game carry role or early support.
My favorite hero both in Dota and Hon is Queen of Pain (Wretched Hag). There are several reasons why she makes an extremely effective solo mid hero. Her skills: 1/ Blink - Rune control as well as good ganking and good positioning skill 2/ Slow - ganking 3/ Scream - amazing farming ability as well as spammable nuke during a fight if you position correctly. 4/ Ult - Aoe nuke for team battle (also aoe slow in Hon) Her utilities: Due to her amazing farming ability and escaping mechanism, she is able to perform any role successfully. 1/ Sacrifice lane - with blink she can survive a sacrificial lane to win other lanes. 2/ Gank - Blink is such an amazing skills and she has nukes and slows 3/ Carry - with her farming ability, she is capable of farming effective items such as guinsoo or even damaging items to be strong late game.
She is a very rewarding and high skill cap hero to play due to her versatility as a hero.
I like to play support heroes because I never feel like I get good support when I go carry. Plus with support you are not a high priority target so you aren't getting stun locked the whole time.
Probably my favorite hero is Lion because he is ezpz. Two disables, a mana drain for early game, and a high burst damage ult. Me gusta Lion was one of the first heroes I played when I was a noob so I have an emotional connection with him as well. I remember I got lifesteal for him one game and people were bashing me as a nub. I was really confused because lifesteal sounded like such a great item to me.
Hey! Unlike my friends, I'm not good with ALL heroes, but quite decent for my friends to let me play with them if I pick certain heroes, which are my favorites anyways.
These are, but not necessarily in order of preference, batrider, silencer, tuskar.
I don't know anyone who doesn't like to play silencer. Seriously, I feel so evil and it's so rewarding when I see the little blue orb fly to you with a +1/+2 int!
My favorite hero in general, but necessarily for playing is drow. Drow is the first hero I played because when i started playing 3-4 years ago, my friends told me she was noob-friendly. So I probably played my first 10-15 games with her only. Like the poster above me, I have a little spot in my heart for her.
I like to play support and initator heroes. I like to take care of my beloved mates, and if i can't then i prefer just go die first initiating fights like a kamikaze.
I definitely enjoy the initiator role. I played some dota, but have played a lot more HON, so I'll use my experience there to answer. By far my favorite hero is amun-ra because of his ability to jump in a fight and just throw down. I would say he is very similar to tidehunter in that aspect. He has a meteor that stuns heroes and then just runs around beating down people. I also definitely enjoy being sneaky as an initiator and nailing every single opponent with a stun. There is nothing more rewarding than stunning their entire team and then having your carries and nukers just clean up without a single loss on your side.
I used to only play carries/gankers, but the last month before I quit I played pure support and initiators, which is what re-invigorated my interest in the game for the month. Rhasta would be my fav support, but Lion comes a close second. As for initiators, I spent a good chunk of my time playing with sandking, particularly after watching really gosu sandking youtube vids (hey, what can I say, gosu dota youtube clips got me pumped to play certain heroes). Can't wait for this game seriously.
If I would choose a role, I would be an initiator. My favorite hero is Enigma, easy to farm through jungling not so stressful to play. His clones will help you farm easy without last hitting which I find it wonderful, even though I can last hit very well. You can help ganking on lanes too as well. So it serves both roles well. But my playstyle is to get the dagger ASAP. When going to midgame you can initiate some clashes, by creating eidolons before landing your black hole for extra DPS. While the hero escape cast malifice for finishing blow with autoattack, I really love that sequence of skills. On late game clashes your team will rely on your perfect initiation to defeat the opposing team. Speaking of that nothing feels good landing a perfect midnight pulse and black hole on top of 5 heroes while watching them slaughtered by your teammates. Yeah enigma FTW!
Suggestion to you Bumblebee: Make it so there is a join date slash post requirement to enter this contest, as once a place like playdota or reddit or something hear word of this contest there'll be a million dummy accounts made.
To answer your question though, I've always enjoyed playing a semi-carry/ganker, support ganker, or initiator. I know this may sound fairly braod but one hero I don't think has been mentioned yet in this whole thread, which is my favorite, is Necrolyte. I enjoy his versatility with arcane boots, non stop mana and healing, can get good farm in jungles mid game but can fare well in lanes early game. The ultimate solidly shuts down an opponent and with Mekanism you can provide a lot in team fights.
I wish I were better at early game farming so that I could play a hard carry for my team but that never works out too well.
My other favorite hero is Sand King, fantastic initiate and very strong melee hits to farm up a dagger and BKB once you get a level 2 caustic especially. Early game his initiate is situationally better than ES's since he immediately gets in with the stun and then can provide 2-3 melee strikes which REALLY helps the babysitted carry get in even more dps for first blood.
I really like playing bat rider as a ganker and initiator, mostly because I like to go on power trips and love watching people be helpless.
Blink dagger in and Eul scepter someone that can stop me (or bkb but that's boring) from lassoing and watch them float above me helplessly watching their ally suffer a fate they will soon face in mere seconds is very satisfying.
Dragging someone behind me and flying through trees or cliffs (whether towards my team or not it doesn't really matter, when you're literally leaving a trial of fire behind you it's all about showing off) makes me giddy and laugh for no reason.
If/when I get that full stacked tar bomb on 2 heroes and watch them waddle around like ducks coming out of an oil spill (a terrible scenario irl ofc) I can't help taking my hands off the keyboard and mouse (it's not like they're going anywhere), moving a little bit back away from my screen and admiring my handy work as if I just painted the mona lisa... before I go back in to set them on fire and blow them up with rockets.
Everyone has a bat rider in them, and letting it loose in games is far better than going crazy in real life. Everyone should try bat rider at least once, it's a great way to destress and lower blood pressure.
I generally enjoy heroes that are effective without items. So heroes that either are extremely effective with exp, or don't need levels. Roamers, gankers, and support heroes are my gist.
Out of that group, I'd have to say Crystal Maiden is my most familiar support hero. Great mana generation passive for the whole team, and a really offensive spells that are useful for roaming and lane domination. I also enjoy the warding/counterwarding aspect of the game and value positioning and clutch ultimates in foggy areas.
I find that the majority of people aren't well suited to support roles, and only play support simply because they're expected to. I see the support role as something fun. People don't optimize their time in game enough as a support in terms of stacking creeps, warding/counterwarding and tp-ing into counter gank/gank. Too often do you see support heroes go carry items and it's really frustrating seeing it played improperly.
My favorite hero is Kunkka, because no one knows how to handle me on a good day. I've come to the conclusion that I can play any role as this hero, but it fits usually in the role of semi carry. I don't need to tell you anything else, really. However, I am willing to show you what I'm made of, so PM me and we'll have a good time
There is little doubt about which type of hero I both like to play and play well: support. Whether babysitting a Medusa (or another carry) or harassing the other team's carry (especially melee heroes), supporters have an enjoyable, albeit difficult job. Supporters have to spend their money for the greater good of their team, often sacrificing their stats for the only stat that matters: wins. Whether that means buying the chicken, crow, wards, and dust, being "bait," or blocking an enemy hero, allowing your carry to escape while dying in the process, the goal behind each sacrifice is to improve your team's chance of winning.
Due to the limited amount of farm available in any given game, not every hero is capable of farming to victory. At most, 4 heroes can get decent farm, with 3 to each lane and 1 "jungler" taking some. That leaves 1-2 heroes who must survive on very little. Often, I finish games with little more than treads/arcane boots, jangoes, and maybe one middle tier item (e.g. a force staff). The rest of my money goes into TPs, often used to save my carry during a gank, and wards, giving sight of the other team and helping my carry avoid ganks.
As much as I wish I could farm well enough to carry a team to victory, I do not last hit as well as I want to. Therefore, I make it my job to ensure that the other team's heroes have just as hard a time last hitting. There is nothing better than sitting in a lane, protecting your hard carry while denying the enemy heroes both gold and experience. It is the support's version of last hitting: deny every creep you can. It is easily my favorite part of playing support. When I come to a lane and find dual melee heroes on the other team, I instantly become overjoyed. When I leave that lane ~10 mins later with nearly 30 denies, I am filled with euphoria. The way I look at it, I just ruined that PA's (or Void's or any other melee or even ranged carries) day. The job is even more enjoyable with something like a Doom in the lane. With his 0 (or negative) armor, Doom simply cannot take harassment. Therefore, when I'm not denying, I'm busily forcing the enemy hero to use his consumables (if he has any) or sending him back to the fountain to heal. As a result, my carry essentially gets to free farm. On top of the gold bonus from last-hitting virtually unopposed, we also receive a level bonus since the enemy hero has to spend time both traveling to and from the fountain as well as healing.
Beyond the laning phase, supporters also have to know when and where to place the correct ward. For instance, when laning with a harder carry in the bottom lane as the Sentinel, I like to place a ward that gives vision of the bottom rune (thus helping my team's hero mid, especially if he has a bottle) as well as vision of any incoming ganks (a good ward is the difference between a successful and failed gank). Furthermore, wards are especially important in terms of Roshan. Roshan's pit is a notoriously dangerous place to fight, especially if the other team happens to be an AoE team. A ward grants the knowledge that the enemies are walking into the Rosh pit, allowing your team to swoop in, team wipe, and take the Roshan, an obviously game-changing set of events. All because I was willing to spend 200 of my precious gold to purchase sight of two 1600 AoE areas of the map.
In terms of my favorite hero to play, I'm not sure I can decide. I play quite a few supports, and they all have their pro and cons. I originally started playing DotA as Witch Doctor, whose high early game damage, stun, and nasty damage over time spell (maledict) combine to make him a fearsome laner. He can deny, harass, and even kill very early on. In a more passive lane, voodoo allows him to heal his carry, letting him stay in the lane longer to farm and gain EXP. My two favorite moments as WD are: (1) going beyond godlike in one of my first games and (2) solo killing a spiritbreaker (who was admittedly very bad).
Next, I learned to play Lich. Lich has a very annoying nuke on short cooldown, a spell that grants him mana for an allied creep while denying enemy heroes any EXP or gold, and a painful AoE ultimate. His frost armor skill allows him to be useful if for no other reason than keeping his carries alive. A personal favorite moment of mine as Lich came while playing a game with a Dark Seer. I casted chain frost just as the DS vaccuumed three enemy heroes, who instantaneously exploded.
The final supporter with whom I consistantly play is Vengeful Spirit. Although I am probably least skilled with her, she is almost certainly my favorite. Wave of terror not only gives cheap sight, but it also allows her to wipe out waves of enemy creeps very easily, and combined with command aura, she can become a pretty strong pusher. Laned with a Drow Ranger and her own trueshot aura, the two create a very strong buff in damage. She also has a stun which does decent damage. Swap, however, is one of the most useful skills in the game. Whether used to destroy an enemy team's positioning or to save one of your teammates, a well-timed swap can be game-changing. Combined with an Aghanim's Sceptar (if you're ever lucky enough to farm that much), VS becomes quite vengeful, swapping all over the place.
In the end, I support other players not only because I am not yet good enough to carry a team, but also due to the fact that I like to be a jackass to the other team, taking first their gold and EXP, then their life, and eventually their ancient.
Like in every sports I ever played the defensive dutys are my favourites. They are often underappreciated and yet they can make the biggest differences. When I play soccer I play defender or defensive midfield. From there you have a good overview and can help your teammates with positioning and give orders. That also transfers to the world of Dota. As a support, I am defending my carries farm and his live with my own. My biggest role is positioning: positioning myself so the lane is not that easy gankable and i can harass the other heroes if they try to get near the creeps. Also one of my biggest pleasures in game is managing the creep waves through pulling, denying, blocking. The creeps decide where the game takes place, especially in the farming and laneing stages of the game. It's kind of a hidden art of playing dota for me´. Warding is more like a duty to me, like folding cloth, taking out the trash. You don't do it, because you like it, you have to do it, otherwise your quality of life/gaming would suffer. In Jon Snows words: "I know where to put it."
I mostly played dota in pubs or lower ranked levels on Dotalicious. No one wants to play support, because as soon as the 25-30 minute mark passes, you're dead in 4 hits from the other carry. You never get any farm, spend a lot of time only running around or reviving. Not exactly what you are looking for, if you want to have fun in a game. Often times you dont even get recognition if you are playing good, but on the other side it's so much more rewarding to juke the big carry for 20 seconds in the fog with your little measely support hero than just 5 hit anybody with a big carry.
My favourite hero to paly would be Dazzle. He is the ultimate support hero. He has a heal, which can also damage the enemy and destroys waves quickly if needed. He can save you from death for 5 seconds. Shallow Grave alone can bring the enemy team down to their knees. But beware if you ever fail with it, your team will flame you to hell, and when you succesfully pull it off a short 'ty' has to be enough for your ego to nurture from. The posion is a neat little stun ad harass skill to keep enemy heroes on their toes. It can also be good in a gank to slow the target. The ultimate of Dazzle is ready for every team fight and at the same time has the power to change the outcome of it without risking his life every time like CM. With his high base damage harassing enemy heroes or last hitting is better managable, even for more unexperienced players.
My favourite player is Puppy. He takes support play to a new level. It's common that the captain/picker plays support. Oftentimes they are the ones with the biggest game knowledge and senses. And like in modern soccer, it is the easiest to give orders from behind for the captain, because he has the best overview.
I hope I can earn some respect for good support play in the Dota2 Beta.
My favorite role would have to be carry. I love sticking to a lane and ricing away and then being a powerhouse in the late game. A support/roam just isn't my style, and I'd be bad at it. Initiators can be fun as well, I like being able to blink in and get fights started.
My favorite heroes would have to be TA and Drow. TA would be a runner up but she is a lot of fun with a Blink Dagger. Traps are fun to use, with Meld and Refraction shes very enjoyable to play.
Drow would have to be my alltime favorite though. Sitting in that lane and farming up while still being able to harass with the cold arrows. Orb walking was a lot of fun to do, I'm not sure why but it was very satisfying. She can hit those clutch silences and can be built with some variety. Definitely a lot of fun to play.
My favorite role would have to be hard carry for a few reasons. As a hard carry, your team is depending on you in the late game; however, you must depend on your team in the early game to help you farm. I like the idea that hard carries are supposed to be strong and nigh untouchable in the late game (in some ways, choosing a hard carry that is weak in the early game but strong in the late game is like playing a macro game in SC :D.) I think that while the early game can be exciting, the late game is when DotA gets really exciting. Playing a hard carry means that the outcome of the late game is essentially in your hands, and I really like having that responsibility. This might be because I'm selfish or just because I don't trust other people to properly carry =P.
I could go on about how exciting it is to carry for hours, but now I'll start talking about my favorite hero - Dwarven Sniper. The fun thing about dwarven sniper is that at the beginning of the game, he starts out as a hero that is good at last hitting, but essentially very weak in terms of HP. As dwarven sniper, you really have to rely on your ability to out-lasthit your opponent in order to gain any advantage. A dwarven sniper with no farm is possibly the weakest hero in the entire game, but a dwarven sniper with sufficient farm is possibly the deadliest hero in the game. I like that aspect of the hero. The fact that your success is directly dependent on how well you can outfarm and outplay your opponents is really appealing to me.
Ok ok ok, the real reason I love dwarven sniper is because of his wonderful wonderful attack animation. But still, you get the point ^^.
I love to play all roles. Logically from that, my favorite hero is Invoker. A very good, flexible hero that can cover many roles. Being able to build many different things with a ton of options for any situation and utility. Sun Strike for glorious across map kills, EMP for amazing harass, Forge Spirits for pushing(Or armor reduction, one of my favorite builds was Forge Spirit/Ice Wall with Stygian Desolator, killed people so fast), Ghost Walk for escape/chase(at higher levels with the slow), Chaos Meteor for DPS. And that is only half of his abilities.
Being one of the most complex heroes, not just learning his roles but also memorizing all the spell combinations is what made me enjoy him so much. It makes me very glad to hear that he is on high priority for being added to Dota 2.
My favorite hero is shadow fiend. The reason for this being is that i love the mid/ ganking role. Although SF isnt a ganker, hes more of a carry, actually. Although he is great in the mid game, he kind of just gets rolled over by carries in the late game. I love the mid role because its 1v1 and if you can win you can win the mid lane you can almost shutout that hero completely. Being the mid player gives is an incredibly hard role to play because not only do you have to beat the hero, you have to have rune control which can set you up for ganks and kills in mid but you also have to help out the sidelanes. The mid player has an incredible amount of things to worry about and losing mid can certainly lose you the game if you feed the other player at mid. SF is my favorite hero because i feel like there is no other hero who can control the mid lane better. Due to his raze ability he can have complete control over the lane and the runes if you used at the proper time. His ultimate is probably my favorite combined with a blink dagger because you can completely one-shot heroes with it if placed correctly. I WOULD ALSO LOVE TO HAVE A BETA KEY, JUSSS SAYINNN
Thanks for the great guide to new players into MOBA games. As a long time Dota/Hon player, I've always paid much attention to "noobie" guides out there so I may teach some tips to my friends who want to play with me.
My favorite role in Dota is initiator/ganker/support. There are few excellent heroes that can fulfill all 3 roles and those are vengeful spirit/earthshaker/Lich(debatable). Excellent from laning phase to the late game and none of the three needs heavy farm to be useful to the team. Often times, people would pick supports such as crystal maiden and be a strong presence in early game, but their usefulness decreases exponentially over time to the point they just end up being the "ward bitch" I personally like to be a good support who can buy wards, be a great ganker (even solo), and also be a threat in the late game.
My favorite hero is Earthshaker. His first skill is incredibly useful if placed well and he is one of the best midgame gankers in the game. He never really have to get close to the target of his stun and also his target usually can't even see him because of fog of war and the range of his fissure. I've personally never lost the laning phase with a ranged hero (usually a carry) as my laning partner in my 300-400 games over the last 3-4 years. Despite the myriad of advantages he can provide to the team upto the midgame, his late game potential especially with dagger is astonishing. I've seen/played ES singlehandedly win the teamfight in the late game. It takes a great amount of game sense and good positioning to make the most out of his ult, but if well placed, can take out multiple heroes in the opposing team to the red health if not dead already. Not to mention, his fissure can still cut off their entire army into two, similar to the FORCEFIELDS protoss sentries can use. It is always uneasy to play against a good earthshaker late game, whether you are farming near the creep or trying to push into the rax, just like it is uneasy to go up the ramp of pro protoss players.
Those are my favorite role/hero to play. I've been wanting to get into Dota2 beta for awhile :/ Hopefully it's gonna be a blast when it comes out. Will wait for your next posts on Dota2.
On October 16 2011 05:20 kERAD wrote: My favorite hero is shadow fiend. The reason for this being is that i love the mid/ ganking role. Although SF isnt a ganker, hes more of a carry, actually. Although he is great in the mid game, he kind of just gets rolled over by carries in the late game. I love the mid role because its 1v1 and if you can win you can win the mid lane you can almost shutout that hero completely. Being the mid player gives is an incredibly hard role to play because not only do you have to beat the hero, you have to have rune control which can set you up for ganks and kills in mid but you also have to help out the sidelanes. The mid player has an incredible amount of things to worry about and losing mid can certainly lose you the game if you feed the other player at mid. SF is my favorite hero because i feel like there is no other hero who can control the mid lane better. Due to his raze ability he can have complete control over the lane and the runes if you used at the proper time. His ultimate is probably my favorite combined with a blink dagger because you can completely one-shot heroes with it if placed correctly. I WOULD ALSO LOVE TO HAVE A BETA KEY, JUSSS SAYINNN
I hate it when never players don't gank so thumbs up
I think my favorite role is also the most underrated, the solo sidelane. I mostly play the ganker in this position and it's very challenging. In a 1v1 situation it can be more difficult if you end up in the long lane, especially when you're put against the trilane. In a 1v3 sidelane your main job is to not die. The sad thing is in this case your team doesn't expect much out of you but it's fun and challenging to make yourself useful in those situations and it oftentimes is a great measurement of a good player.
My favorite heroes in that position are usually puck and queen. They both have great escape mechanisms which are essential in a solo sidelane and can still keep a decent gpm with their amazing nukes. The great thing about them is they need levels more than farm, and once you hit level 8-9 you have free reign on the map. Their skillsets have so much synergy and they can quickly turn the tide of any battle.
I really enjoy the heroes that are strong initiators, strong gankers or strong roamers, often together. Earthshaker and Sand King comes to mind as my favourite heroes, well placed ultis that can completely turn around games that look like they are going down the drain, or secure victories in even games. Although rare in public games, the times you get a really capable soloer in your lane, going away and doing some really powerful ganks on mid or the other lane can really set a huge tone for the rest of the match, as well as laning with heroes that have amazing combo potential with ES and SK such as Mirana is super fun.
Going along the same lines, my favourite hero has to be Clockwerk, he really has amazing initiation and ganking abilities, especially satisfying is managing to catch heroes that blink away with your ulti, chasing down Anti-Mage or other hard to catch carries/heroes to really put a wrench in his machinery.
Tidehunter is really also an amazing hero to play, always a force to be reckoned with along these parallells, with great initiating power, great ganking ability and being a real tough nut to crack to boot. And he's played a bit more similar to Sand King and Earthshaker than Clockwerk I'd say.
I really like a support/damage dealer kind of role. I like to heal and protect my friends, but I haven't found a hero that suits me and these requirements yet (I'm new to the game, only 2 weeks).
Right now, my favourite hero is Zeus, because I like how I have to handle my mana and my skills, and also my position on the map.
Not so much because I enjoy the role, but because a lot of times when i play pubs with friends, nobody on my team plays the role as correctly as I would want them to. They'd pick VS but decide to get every single last hit that they can, no roam, to purchase their lothar's/desolator combination >_>. They'd pick CM but refuse to buy wards with the excuse that they "don't know where to put them". And... Most of the time they pick carries anyway, so I HAVE to pick some sort of support with early game strength, or we'd end up with a 5 carry team and lose in the first 10 minutes.
Of course, I don't want to be an asshole and tell my friends how they should be playing, since, after all, we're all just pub players and I'm none the better... But I decided to take it upon myself to continuously pick the support/ganker role every game, make sure my lanemate gets all the last hits that he can if he's using a carry hero, purchase wards at least every now and then (although my ward placement is... average to say the least), and just roam the map a lot to try and score some early kills.
It feels awesome when my ward catches us a free gank and kill, and when I see my carry lane partner get farmed up super fast, etc. Basically I feel like my role has the potential to set a good momentum in my team if I succeed at my tasks early on in the game. And on the plus side, after using the support/ganker role so much and doing stuff that's rarely done in pubs (like buying wards), my friends have started to learn the benefits of it and have slowly started to chip in every game for ward purchase as well! (although they still force me to place the wards around since they don't know where to put em LOL).
As i love fastpaced and actionpacked games, I usually prefer playing support heroes that are perfectly suitable with my gankheavy style of play. While it may often be pretty sad in public games, playing disable heroes with friends and voicechat is the most enjoyable situation I can be in when playing MOBAs. That said, I'd pick Vengeful/Andro, Alistar for LoL or even Electrician. While I've been playing no DotA for like 4years now because I do not like the engine of it as a funmap in WC3, I started playing HoN within its beta and prefer it over LoL which I just recently jumped into when friends asked me about it. Basically when playing Alistar or Electrician, I have the possibilty of going for a more tanky build or even damageheavy if I pick up AP-items in LoL or play SoloMid with Elec just for fun(it is not a ganking support role mostly then^^). However, I usually have high priority on fast movement speed to move over the map quickly and help out my mates with hopefully successful ganks. Keeping mapcontrol with Andro or Alistar makes my role even more enjoyable as it gives a slightly strategic touch to my thoughts. However, if the game doesn't allow any ganks within the first minutes, I can make sure that my lanepartner gets his farm up. With Alistar, I even have the possibilty of healing, while both Elec and Andro are more useful at harrassing. As only the favourite is asked and I have been talking about three heroes by now, I choose Alistar as my favourite even though I have been playing way more games of HoN and DotA. On a sidenote, I prefer disablers over everything else :d
On October 16 2011 04:40 kellymilkies wrote: Seen you online plenty of times on the Teamliquid chat channel on dota2 but you never actually wrote there. hfhf :D
hey~~
yeah, i usually dont use the in game chats too much.. never really did, but we used to play some hon me, you and chris if you remember =)
My favorite hero in DotA is Sand King, the mobility, initiation, ranking and the skill required to play that hero fascinates me. The hero is good ALL game, he is great at ganking at level 1 and counter initiating on that earthshaker once he comes in and pummels your team. I have played DotA since around 2007 and he has been my top played ever since. Siting behind him is my Two ranged carries Nevermore and Storm Spirit. They are two totally different heroes but both take an immense amount of game sense and knowledge, to be played correctly. Storm Spirit like Sand King is my #2 because you can use his ult like Sand King's stun/sandstorm to avoid moves and ganks. The Satisfaction I get from avoiding a Lion ult with ROFLBALL(Storm's ult) is only beat by when I get a rampage with Nevermore's ult combined with Engima's Blackhole Though Nevermore has not been used in competitive play as much as SandKing or storm, he has seen a lot of action pre 6.50 era and he is making a showing every now and then like the International even though he was bugged at that time and the team did not know.
I could go on about DotA and these heroes but I honestly would love a DotA 2 beta key. I am even already apart of the DotA 2 TL group on steam, have been for awhile
Also thank you bumblebee for giving away beta keys, even though a lot of people are doing it the more the better.
My favourite role is the little known role of "Techies Player." The Techies player picks Techies and is a huge dick to the other team all game. The pillars of the Techies role include prescient placement of remote traps for the most unexpected instant death situations possible, a commitment to a healthy spread of standard mine traps across the map to convince the other team that death is inevitable should they leave their base and it would be easier to simply stay inside the fence, and most importantly, a dedication to being a terrible human being who lives off the anger and misery of other game-playing peers.
Unfortunately, one of the major faults of the games Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is that they failed to accurately recreate the "Techies Player" role. This is why I look forward to Dota 2, in the hopes that Valve will continue their long tradition of making hillariously bad gameplay choices and bring back Techies in all their glory, or, inshallah, will actually buff them in their implementation.
On October 16 2011 06:40 Beagle23 wrote: My favourite role is the little known role of "Techies Player." The Techies player picks Techies and is a huge dick to the other team all game. The pillars of the Techies role include prescient placement of remote traps for the most unexpected instant death situations possible, a commitment to a healthy spread of standard mine traps across the map to convince the other team that death is inevitable should they leave their base and it would be easier to simply stay inside the fence, and most importantly, a dedication to being a terrible human being who lives off the anger and misery of other game-playing peers.
Unfortunately, one of the major faults of the games Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is that they failed to accurately recreate the "Techies Player" role. This is why I look forward to Dota 2, in the hopes that Valve will continue their long tradition of making hillariously bad gameplay choices and bring back Techies in all their glory, or, inshallah, will actually buff them in their implementation.
Oh, and my favourite hero is Techies.
Try playing the blink suicide techie, Isometimes do it for fun and it's always hilarious
My all time favorite Hero in both HoN and DotA is my beloved Chen / Ophelia. Simply because i like that you can be aggresive on the lane from Level 1 constantly and that she is so different from all the other heroes. I also like that she is one of the least played heroes and showing people what this Hero is capable of is real fun! For a general Hero role im more of a supporter. Crystal Maiden or Lion come to mind that i really like because of the control they can offer. ♥♥♥
My favorite roles to play in DotA are initiator and support. My favorite hero is Clockwerk.
Although he's not quite as popular as he was competitively just a month ago, he's still a strong, versatile pick. Clockwerk is one of the best solo picks, even against a trilane, without much risk of dying while still being able to get some farm using his rocket ability for last hits. During the mid game he can begin ganking other lanes to help his teammates with his ultimate hook ability, which is one of the most fun in the game - similar to Pudge's hook, except that you go to the enemy instead of bringing them to you. Usually, you want to let your other non-support teammates get the kill when ganking, but Clockwerk actually requires a bit of farm himself as he's somewhat item dependent. Further from ganking, his ability to initiate fights in the late game fills a necessary role. In pub games, the team with an initiator has a distinct advantage in team fights and usually wins.
Some say that clockwerk is not a true initiator, however, as he is quite vulnerable once he uses his ultimate to hook into melee range of the enemy team, and without farm he has relatively low health. If he was able to get his needed core items, though, he is at his best in the middle of the enemy team, disrupting them with cogs and mini-stuns (which can completely shut down heroes such as earthshaker who have long spell animations).
Ultimately, clockwerk's success depends upon his teammates. When his team is doing poorly, Clockwerk can be nearly useless. He is not a hero who can win the game on his own, but is a large aid to his team.
Playing DotA is an amazing rollercoaster ride. Looking back I find it hilarious because the learning curve is so steep but everyone thinks they are the next merlini or something and I was no exception. Even when I sucked I thought I was amazing because I owned some random pubs with bloodseeker :D
My favorite heroes are, without a doubt, gankers that can instagib squishies like nerubian assasin. Sneaking up behind a sniper always got the adrenaline pumping. I also really loved semicarries that were viable at all stages of the game like nevermore and viper because they were so strong in lane. Im kinda ADD though and never played the same hero for very long. That was never a problem though because of the massive hero pool. <3 dota. dota 2 come soon!
My favourite heroes are carries, in HoN my favourite would be Amun-Ra, even though he is more of a tank, though his dps can make him a decent carry too.
i always played supporters because its very frustrating to play carry heros in public games. if you play carrys in those you often times end up without chicken and without wards (but 4 other carry heros in your team).
also my playing style is very agressive which works better on a sitter hero as i can use that agression to harass the opposing carry players, while my lanemate can farm. in addition, my agressive style sometimes turns suicidal and it is just less horrible to suicide with a supporter in the mid to lategame than with a carry.
playing rts games for over a decade, my mapawareness is quite good as well which suits supporter heros, because it can be used to decide when your carry needs you as safety net or when you can go for some gangs. it obviously also helps to decide when wards are needed where and similarly for town portals.
very quickly the cristal maiden became my favorite hero because of her unique abilities. i even made my team try a strategy based on solo mid maiden (overrunning both other lanes with pure spellspam including lanes like witchdoc siren and shaker puck). thats how much i love her. in standard games i always felt like her agressive potential was underrated. the slowing effect of the frostnova allows for very easy and effective harassment. frostbite is another crowd control spell which makes the maiden very strong in chasing down heros in the early game. in addition those two spells are very effective in hurting enemy heros very hard but the dmg is not too high to take kills in accident, so you can often times comfort your carry hero with some early kills. furthermore the aura of the maiden conforts the whole team which pretty much means that you should win every single lane because of the maiden (!!) . this also means, that the maiden is one of the very few heros that has 3 very usefull spells in the early game.
the ultimate of the maiden is very underrated as well. similarly to the rest of her abilities you wont get as many kills as with a lich ult or something. but you slow down everything and can deal a sick amount of damage so your riki or jugger can finish them up really easy. all you need for that is a slightly suicidal maiden
I think the most fun heroes to play are dependent on the team. When playing with a team who knows what they are doing, I prefer playing disablers/initiatiors, especially those with AoE effects like ES, Enigma, and KotF. I get the best feeling when I land a perfect ult and we wipe out the entire opposing team. With teams who don't have as much teamwork like in pub games, I prefer playing carries that don't require much babysitting like sniper or spectre, since they can generally farm quite well early game and pubs often don't have the teamwork to gank well.
Support is definitely the most fun for me to play. Completely dominating a game is pretty hard these days, but a solid support hero can make that possible. Warding the entire map, babysitting in lane, etc.
I've only ever played HoN, but my favorite heroes are vindicator (silencer in dota?) and pollywog. Both are great great heroes to support with and I can't wait to try out their equivalents whenever dota 2 comes out.
I love playing tinker. I love playing him because after he get BT's he becomes a great pusher and farmer. I love pushing lanes and supporting ganks with my overpowered nukes >=D. Also if i become farmed enough I can pick up a dagon and blink dagger and become carry tinker =D.
I usually like to support my team, because most teams seem to not have enough supports, and i actually like to win
My favorite hero is enigma, mostly because people seem to think he is just a walking ultimate. Enigma has a surprisingly crazy gank potential with his stun, that often goes unnoticed. It is also always fun when you catch a support hero and solo him down yourself with eidolons which do tons of damage earlier on. Eidolons are also such a great tool to push towers early, and makes enigma fit into any push team. Sometimes stalemates happen within the game, where neither team wants to commit 100%. However when you see a black hole, everyone on your team is sure to follow up. You can never quit a game with enigma on your team, as one great black hole and you crush a team fight.
Overall enigma is so good because he is not just an initiator, he is also a ganker, and a pusher, and maybe with the right items a carry
I LOVE playing as a aggressive type of hero especially ones that seem badass. Which means my favorite hero's (and I can't decide between either of them) Axe and Juggernaut. Also my favorites because they were both blademasters in Dota 1
My favorite role to play by far is support. Favorite heroes are something of a tossup between Rylai and Witch Doctor.
Rylai provides an amazingly long range nuke/slow, one of the longest in the game. (It's 700 range but extends out a good deal past that due to the range being in the center of the radius). Icebite (frostbite? can't remember the exact name) provides surprising versatility. Most neutrals are frozen for 10 seconds at all levels from it, letting her psuedo jungle with ease if need be. With proper awareness of the opposing team's skills and cooldowns her ult can also be absolutely devastating, even when underleveled. The global aura helps out the entire team and is frequently a reason for picking her, on top of being such a strong hero in early levels. She's also something of a versatile pick - she can roam, dual jungle, trilane support, mid (mostly only in pubs) and thus becomes a fairly safe early pick that doesn't give away much about the team's gameplan. She fits into gank lineups, push lineups, and defensive lineups all very well.
Rylai's incredible range is the key to understanding how to play the hero - basically, abuse superior positioning whenever possible. The extremely powerful nova can be thrown out in a teamfight or in a gank from a relatively safe distance and can be tideturning in either (especially the teamfight- slowing the movement speed and attackspeed of the majority of an enemy team really limits a lot of their utility).
Oh, one last thing- The graphical look of the hero is very aesthetically pleasing to my eye. Even the female hon version is nice. The dota 2 one could use a liiittle work in my opinion, but I'm sure they'll get there eventually.
She's by far my most played hero, with the rest being basically even in how often I play them. WD I like as well, but he doesn't fit into lineups quite as well as Rylai and is based more around timing which I'm not as good at. (Time his stun right and it's one of the longest in the game. Time his ult right and it can completely turn a teamfight)
I like playing carry or support - I can take the pressure!! Looking forward to DotA2 release, looking great to me, watching linklink's stream and such. Oh and my favorite hero.. Drow Ranger! Cause she's my bro and creates danger!! Oh yeah bringin dem rhymes all up in here! ^^)
Roaming/Ganking is my favorite role to play in DotA, mostly it's the role that gives you team the chance to come out ahead in the early/mid game which in turn makes your lategame stronger. Roaming is probably the most active way to play DotA, as you will need to be smart with your smokes, cunning with the way you initiate a gank, and intelligent with the way you communicate with your team. Fail with any of those three point then you are a lost for levels/gold/exp as you get none of those luxuries as a roamer.
There are a ton of great roaming characters such as veng, earthshaker, AA, etc. However my favorite is Venomlancer. It may be because he is a huge freaking hydralisk, but there is something about him that just makes me want to play. He is a great ganker with a very good active and passive slow. He has free wards that can be summoned from a long distance giving you map awareness. Most importantly, having Veno roam means that the other hero is almost always dead. Whether it be a stun+slow combo or some sort of slow+dps(jugg spin), veno has a lot of utility. Although he becomes quite useless in the lategame, his presence in the early/mid game may be just what your team/carry needs to dominate the end game. Seriously who wouldn't love a hero that is built to pk other heros 24/7. Screw farming, killing shit all day ftw!
I'm the team support, no doubt! It's really rewarding to help your mates to victory, and you can always blame your bad k/d on it. My favorite hero would probably be Crystal Maiden. She has very good supporting abillity, but can still AoE down the enemy team.
My favourite role to play is Tank as there are often many ways to play it as opposed to just soaking damage - gank assists, tower diving, status effects and the likes - its pretty much explained in my description of Leona below ^_^
I will mention LoL for my hero and it's Leona.
She can play so many different roles as opposed to just "tanking".
She (in my hands) is often the heart of a gank, using zenith blade to get in close and stun with shield of daybreak also doing a nice amount of moderate damage, then hit the ulti to stun again while your team mate (if lanning) DPS's down the opponent. I find it to be absolutely exhilerating to be able to land a 4 second stun if pulled off correctly - Almost always resulting in a kill. Her passive also allows for a teammate to do additional damage during a gank.
She has the ability to farm extremely well, as with her zenith blade technique can hit the first 4 in a train of creeps and has such a large hit that she can practically 1 hit a creep at 1/4 HP at level 6. Her eclipse does lovely AoE damage as well as increasing her defence at the same time.
In terms of tanking ability she can tower dive extremely well with Eclipse and tank for extended periods of time often being able of using Zenith blade for the escape on a ranged hero. The simple fact that if it hits anything Eclipse is increased by another 3 seconds allows for more time pummeling stuff!
In terms of item builds she tends to favor full tank or CDR, although abysall sceptre can be thrown in for an added punch to the party as it adds AP and reduces magic resist which leona benefits from. I often start out with heart of gold first for the added gold boost to speed the build process.
I favor the CDR twist on leona as she can tower dive just as well with the setup while being able to assist alot more in the ganking moments or all out fights - Stuns for all every 5 seconds tyvm!
My final item build often looks like -> Mercury treads, Warmogs armor, Frozen Heart, Force of nature, Shurelya's Reverie. I tend to favor the more aggressive Leona ^_^.
Other items i include in builds are: Sunfire cape (mid to late game for the added dps), Abyssal Scepter (In favor of force of nature to be aggressive), Spirit Visage (If suffering from magic users) or a Thornmail if the opposite.
Ive also used frozen mallet over Abyssal scepter or Force of nature just to provide that slow for teammates along with the stuns as it can be a nice addition to the team if we lack slows and the added HP is nice.
Being quite a low player myself ive often gone for the guardian angel as it offers me a failsafe due to being outmatched.
Thats all for my submission to this beta contest ! :D Hope you enjoyed the read - Im not the most expert of players but it tends to work quite a bit for me, Leona is so diverse in how she can be played
Awesome blog post. I played DotA for a long time at a competitive level so I know the stuff you're posting about already, but it's a great read anyway - you write quite well, and posts are always nicely structured.
I'm pretty versatile and can play most roles well, but I typically play a carry best (and it's my favourite role to play) - most of my friends who I play the game with casually aren't that great so I have to carry for them anyway, and it's just the role I enjoy. I like the pressure of the team's end game success being on me It's the way I play games best, heh.
My favourite character to carry with is Luna. It's more by chance that I landed upon her as a good carry - she's actually the third character I learned how to play, and I've loved her for years and years. I love that while she can be insane with items, she also does okay without them, and can be played as a ganker/roamer as well as a carry if necessary. She always has usefulness throughout the game.. I just find her quite versatile (which helps me adapt to the situations that my friends who play casually get me into ) while still being a sick carry once the items are there.
My favorite role to play is ganking semi carry. The hero that best fits this in my opinion is wind runner. I've absolutely adored her since DotA 1, a relatively low skill shot nuke, with immense farming / killing power, a shackle shot that just devastates people that aren't exact with their positioning, and an escape that makes you nigh unkillable. From an outsider perspective this may seem imbalanced, but anyone in the know is aware that a relatively high amount of skill is used to push Windrunners potential to the max. Amazing hero all around, with the ability to carry and gank.
His Overpowered in night!! No one can touch him at night!! Balanar grants : 75% IAS 35% IMS 4 sec slow spell 8 sec silence spell 40% to miss an attack spell
What more do you need than above thing?? Just dont stay close to him on night!!
On October 16 2011 10:23 BrTarolg wrote: My favourite hero type is BALANAR
His Overpowered in night!! No one can touch him at night!! Balanar grants : 75% IAS 35% IMS 4 sec slow spell 8 sec silence spell 40% to miss an attack spell
What more do you need than above thing?? Just dont stay close to him on night!!
Nobody fears the Nightstalker during the day.
favorite heroes are micro heroes that arent named meepo.
My favorite hero is Dota was Huskar for sure. I never played the game too competitively only in a few clans and such but his play style was so much fun. Balancing your health to how much damage you need to put out was always such an intense situation. He also filled the role of tanking damage, dealing damage, and with the new addition (I played the game a ton 2 years ago and recently have gotten back into it since HoN and LoL are worse then Dota in my eyes) he can also initiate very well without blink dagger. Being able to tank and dish out tons of damage while trying to balance your health especially after getting armlet was so much fun.
Favourite role has to be playing as an initiator since you control the flow of the battle
Favorite hero would have to be techies. Although thought of as a joke hero, if you play him with thought and experience. He could be a really great support hero.
The ability to place mines allow you secure runes and map control. Playing mind games with your opponent with the possibility to feign minefields to punish players not carrying a gem. Strategically placed stun wards can allow for swift escapes or even grant a huge advantage in a team battle.
It requires a lot of skill to use, but it feels amazing to downright outplay your opponents using your brain. You literally feel like Lelouch from Code Geass.
She ducked inside the grove of bushes, and threw her body to the floor of the forest as fast as she could. Her hyper-sensitive ears informed her of a set of heavy, plodding footsteps approaching her position. A low, guttural sound echoed around the trees. “Frrrresh meeeeat.” She clenched her bow in her hand. There is no escaping it. Violence is the only option left. She held her breath, not because she wanted that extra bit of quietness. No, she couldn’t stand the pungent odour of the creature worming its way into her nostrils. Thud, thud, thud. The sickening, moist noise of the footsteps sent shivers down her spine. It made the noise of a butcher throwing down a raw chunk of meat onto the table about ready to be chopped up into tinier pieces. Cringing, she forced the unfortunate analogy out of her head. Focus. You can’t go down now, not after all that has happened. Rely on your training.
She reached behind her back, and pulled a single, silver arrow from her quiver. Holding it close to her lips, she mouthed the ancient words only a select few of her kind knew. As she reached the end of her enchantment, the air around her became crisper, colder. Her breath became visible in the dark night and flowed elegantly around the arrow. Ice already starting to form on it. All of a sudden, the footsteps stopped, and the creature began breathing heavily. Moans of blood-lust erupted from his mouth. The hairs on the back of the fearful woman’s neck stood on attention. Adrenaline surged through her blood vessels, wildly activating every sense receptor on her body. Has she been discovered? Has she already lost the element of surprise? Before she could fumble the arrow into her bow, a long, mournfully howl penetrated the woods. This was not the sound of the creature stalking her though. It was a very different, distinct sound. The creature, hearing the same howl, shuffled his feet, and ran off into the direction of its source.
A deep sigh escaped her lips, and she loosened her grip on her weapon. Her body still trembling, she clutched her breast, trying to steady her heart. Apart from the natural sounds of the woods; silence engulfed her. When she got a hold of herself, she leaned her back against a nearby tree, and closed her eyes. The rough bark clashed against her smooth, cerulean skin, but she did not care. To her, the organic textures were a reassuring touch. Reassuring her that the past will stay the past. Yet she could not stop the sudden flood of childhood memories. She could not stop her mind from travelling back down that dark hell-hole deep underground. Where her kin lavished in their wickedness. The prejudices, the corporeal punishments, the witch hunts... the other acts too unspeakable to mention. She felt a lump in her throat, and tears began to well up in her eyes. no...NO. I must remember why I fled that place in the first place. She brushed away a single tear caught on her eyelash. I must... She firmly gripped her bow, and stood up. I must press on.
TL;DR: I like to play glass-cannon carries that run away and hide at the first sign of trouble. My favourite hero is the lovely Drow.
My favorite would have to be Support. My favorite hero was Abbadon because with the right item build I could keep anyone alive forever. When 5 heroes appeared out of nowhere to gank me and my friend, my support hero would save us both and leave the other team in the dust. In more competitive games I would mass ward the whole map and we pretty much had maphacks. Support heroes are the best because they can provide your team with maphacks and piss the enemy team off as much as possible.
My favorite role to play has got to be a hard core carry. Why? Well I tend to play with a group of friends, a couple of which are complete noobs. I'm Chinese and I love farming... its in my blood . I maximize my farm as much as possible to make up for the feeding of my friends and the occasional pubbies. The satisfaction i experience from winning a 60 minute game is unreal. My favorite win of all time was coming back after getting double raxed. When I want to carry, i go h.a.m. I stop talking and redirect all my attention away from rage at my teammates to maximizing the time to farm. With a carry comes sounds like "GODLIKE" and "HOLY SHIT". It fuels me to play DotA.
My favorite hero would have to be Drow Ranger. What's not to like about her? shes hot. In dota language, she has a high agi gain especially with her ultimate. One of my favorite items in the game is manta, and i believe that drow uses it the best. i also love denying the haters of HotD on Drow. The orgasmic feeling of killing someone by switching from frost to lifesteal is the best.
I played a lot of Dota back in the days. Man, I was so young then and fucking sucked. My favorite hero was phantom lancer. I mean, look at him; he's a monkey with a spear longer than a colossus's lance (ok, that is an overstatement ) His windwalk can keep me alive and confuse the fuck out of my opponent. Seeing a hero wastes his or her nuke of an illusion brings smile to my face. The best thing about him is, of course, his mass illusion. Farming, pushing, and mana burning can never be sweater. As I watched pro plays, however, I realized how much he is overshadow by better hero, such as furion and enigma. But, phantom lancer will always have a spot in my heart
Since I sucked at Dota, I tried to be as useful as possible by taking a support role and still failed at that. I remember when I played Centaur and suicide in as I tried to get a stun and when I stole all the carry's last shot with Dazzle. With Dota 2 coming up, I can practice more and finally get better at the game like what I did when I got SCII.
I play support pretty much exclusively. I love being able to change games without being obvious about it and save your carry's life. In the end, when you win, everybody is impressed by the carry's numbers but the carry knows that those numbers only came from how often you came up with a clutch shield or heal.
My favorite role is the support because it has the highest learning curve IMO. Sure, semi carrys are always fun to play but what makes the difference in early, mid, and even late games are supports. Support heroes like CM and VS always have some kind of slow, stun, heal, or nuke. Although they are fragile, they affect the game tremendously. ANYONE can be a decent carry player in few weeks/months but I believe it takes months and years of practice for support to be really good. The reason is that supports are always expected to help out the team through TP scrolls, Wards, ganks, counterganks, counter wards, etc. They rarely get EXP and Gold so they usually die in couple of hits. They dont appear in the scoreboard which can turn off people but really, in the end, ES, VS, CM, Lina make Carry's time so much easier. Also, back in Tri-lane days, it was beautiful to watch tri lanes go against each other with supports playing absolutely perfect through chain stuns and good focus target.
My favorite hero is the Earthshaker because he can swing a teamfight around so quickly with blink ult, enchant totem, fissure. He can set up ganks perfectly with fissure blocks and can also save allies with long range of the stun. His ability to chain stun is great, as well.
My favorite role to play are mid semi-carries/gankers, like QoP, Mirana, Tiny, Storm Spirit. What I like about it is how active this role need to be, and whether if the game is short or long, your role always play an important and active part. I play carries often as well, and one thing I know I dislike about it is when games end before late game even comes in and I feel like I didn't do anything useful. This pretty much never happen with a ganker. Keeping the opposing carries down is quite a gamechanger, most people say how important it is to protect your carry with good support/vision/etc, but a very good way to protect and give room to your carry is also keeping theirs down and keeping them on their toes.
For my favorite hero, it's pretty hard to choose between PotM and QoP, but I will have to go for QoP (Wretched Hag in HoN) on this lately. I can't wait to see her introduced in the DotA 2 beta. I'm getting a bit used to the HoN version, where I feel she's slightly better (no blink range limitation, instant scream, utimate applies her first skill's slow and DoT), but her overall playstyle is what I like about QoP. A very agressive mid hero or solo laner, she has a single target slow and DoT, an AoE nuke around herself, a short CD blink, and an huge AoE ultimate (in a cone). Since her abilities are very spammable, shes an awesome ganker, has a very lasting presence in teamfights, and is also a pretty good chaser with a slow and a blink. She scales very well with levels and farm, and can usually play a semi-carry role from mid to late game, and push lanes very fast as well. Im a very big fan of linkens, and it always seemed to me that this item was made for QoP. She can use a varety of items after a linkens, which ranges from Sheep/orchid to skadi or aganims to even some DPS items like desolator or mkb (having a very decent agi growth for an intel and a blink allows her to get a lot of autoattacks in).
So that's if for favorite role and hero, hopefully QoP's model in DotA 2 will not disappoint (I can't stand her model in HoN, fortunately she has an alternate avatar)
Always glad to follow another liquid twitter @theqat here
My favorite hero role is definitely support, though it wasn't always that way. Most of my time playing DOTA I've been playing non-IH pubs with RL friends or just by myself, and for me the most frustrating thing by far is not having a good support on the team. So a couple of years ago, I resolved to get good at playing support and be able to fill the role myself.
I read every warding guide I could get my eyes on (including DOTA ones even when I was playing HON), watched replays to improve my babysitting/supporting trilane skills, and focused on remembering little things like passing Tangos to my lane partner and always carrying a TP scroll to be able to counter-gank.
After a month or two of playing support I started to get really uncomfortable when playing non-supports and having no courier/flying courier or seeing the minimap without wards for any time at all. Having other items compete with courier upgrade/ward/smoke/TP costs also started to feel pretty weird, so eventually I got to this place where I mostly play support!
My main HON account had more than 4 average wards per game when I stopped playing that game, and I'm blasting through the warding and courier-sharing achievements on Dotalicious. There's no better feeling for me than being thanked for buying the courier or knowing that a teammate avoided a gank--or scored a gank--because of my ward, though saving teammates by TPing in to ruin some tower-diver's day comes close. The biggest flaw in my game today is probably putting off buying survivability for too long to get more wards/smoke/TPs and eventually feeding some extra deaths per game as a result. Of course I'm working on improving that with each game I play
My favorite hero is definitely Crystal Maiden/Glacius, who was my most-played hero on my main HON account. I love the flexibility of her skill builds and being able to choose between hard aura 1/1/4 or more damaging builds like nova then aura=bite>ult>nova depending on what the lane situation and the team makeup calls for. Her attack animation, while sometimes frustrating, is very gratifying to do well with, and she's one of my favorite heroes for orbwalking.
Whether I'm getting exp quickly to level aura and feed a spammy hero mana to harass his lane mercilessly or avoiding creep exp while ganking in a trilane, I'm almost always able to find a comfortable role on a team when playing CM. Plus, I'm free to spend most of my gold on wards/smoke/TPs to keep up the kind of map awareness and counter-ganking that wins games (and keeps me from feeling claustrophobic when looking at the minimap ).
CM also lets you do some truly fun/funny builds when you get into a very one-sided game, since virtually any combat item is totally non-standard for her. Game turned one-sided some time after you got Force Staff? Grab a Dagon and slide->lightning your way to victory! Or if it got one-sided before you even finished the Force Staff, turn the Quarterstaff into Lothar's for some comedy ganking/ultimate action. She's just a great all-around pure support who is fun to play whether the game is closely contested or a total smash. Add to that the fact that she's appreciated in so many team makeups and you've got my favorite hero!
I played suicide lane style heroes in HoN. Mostly Phara and Bubbles, so I guess thats Clockwerk and Puck, so yah, Gankers/Initiators.
When I first started playing CW was my first hero, and I thought he sucked cos just from reading his skills its not really that apparent how useful he can be. Once I got more interested in the game and learnt about the competitive side he pretty quickly became my favorite hero. His abilities can be used in so many interesting ways. Even his Cogs can be used to harass off mana and a little health. Having that super long-range skillshot is so much fun too. Puck good fun too, small health pool but so much survivability.
I love to play semi-carries. Since I play a lot with my noob friends it's the perfect role for me, I can be effective all game long and carry those fat buddies of mine Great example is for this is Mirana, my favourite hero. With her nuke and stun (awesome fun ability) she can be a great ganker, with leap and starfall you can farm very safely and fast. Her ultimate is the icing on the cake, it's so versatile you can use it for initiation or help a teammate who's getting ganked. She can be viable in so many different laning situations, shes almost never a bad pick.
My favourite role is jungling. My favourite hero (for the lolz) is a jungling, initiating Centaur-assassin.
I would jungle with Centaur (have they implemented him yet?) from the start and try to rush Dagger + Dagon as core items. Once you get both items, just initiate on the other team and burst their carry down. Since you gain decent HP from your Ulti, you don't have to worry as much about getting instagibbed before getting your spells off like Earthshaker. So much more fun than the usual Vanguard + Radiance build.
Edit: Nice write-up. Just wanted to add that Morphling is more of a Pusher than an oldschool Carry. With Boots of Travel and your Ulti you have 2 global teleports. Let your team mates push mid while you push the side lanes. When the other team comes for you just teleport out and continue to push another lane.
Also, Bloodseeker is beastly in the jungle and mid lane. Don't really bother ganking, getting that fast Radiance is more important.
Desperate Edit: Want to trade a Beta-Key for a 2k ELO LoL account? Anyways, have fun in the Beta!
When playing with my team, I typically play utility. Even though it's not mentioned in your post, I think it's one of the most important roles in this current meta-game. There is no "true" definition of an utility, since I guess it fits into multiple categories that you mentioned above. As a utility player, you must be flexible, have the ability to read the game and adapt accordingly.
Heroes that fit this role would be Invoker, Windrunner, Puck and (my favorite) Tormented Soul. All these heroes have a dominant laning phase, an unprecedented mid game and a significant late game. They also end up having like 10 actives (4 spells + 6 items) which is always fun
Common items for utility heroes would be items such as Forcestaff, Blink Dagger as well as the newer items introduced by IceFrog like Ancient Janggo of Endurance and Veil of Discord (which is heavily underrated). Emerging items as a result of the meta game include Necronomicon and Ghost Scepter.
My favorite role is support because I in guild wars I played a monk and when my guildies switched from guild wars to dota it seemed like the perfect fit. Also support is the least played role in pubs and no support is basically gg, so I usually took up that role to make sure that didn't happen. I also play HoN.
My favorite support heroes: Omniknight/Jeriziah: I love this hero. He is the closest thing you get to a guild wars monk. I like keeping heroes from dieing that are getting wailed on by 4-5 heroes and keeping the team alive in general, it is such a rush when no one died because you did your job.
Lich/ Plague Rider: I like this hero because he combines 2 of my favorite things, nuking and support. Early game he is such a great babysitter for any carry hero and items give you the ability to help out the team in team fights. Lich/Plague also has the ability to dish out massive amounts of damage with his ult and nuke. Nothing is better than seeing your ult bounce between 2 heroes like they are playing ping-pong and killing them both at the end.
Favorite non-support:
Like I said I love nuking, and no hero is a better nuker than, Slayer/Pyro: This hero is so fun to play because early-mid game you can kill almost any hero on the map if you hit your skills right and you can also save teammates in need by throwing down a clutch stun, letting him get away. The stuns are by far the most rewarding thing about this hero. Hitting a crucial stun so your team can finish off a fleeing hero or getting the kill yourself when an opponent is fleeing in the fog of war is so exciting.
Well that's about it! Enjoyed the post, keep up the good work!
On October 16 2011 10:23 BrTarolg wrote: My favourite hero type is BALANAR
His Overpowered in night!! No one can touch him at night!! Balanar grants : 75% IAS 35% IMS 4 sec slow spell 8 sec silence spell 40% to miss an attack spell
What more do you need than above thing?? Just dont stay close to him on night!!
My favourite role to play would be Semi-carry with the favourite hero being PotM (:.
There is just something satisfying about doing well in a one on one lane and then hustling over to another lane to gank. oh and hitting a 5 second arrow is also quite satisfying :D. PotM's range of skills can serve all purposes and imo one of the best heroes out there, with one good stun, a good aoe, leap for awesome mobility and invis to help you or your team get away.
i honestly like playing support since quite frankly, im not very good at carrying. Maybe it's because i dont want to be blamed for being not farmed enough and cant win or make some crucial mistake in fight. I normally play -ar but i guess I am most partial to support champs. It feels good when you save someone with a sliver of hp. Many support heroes are mages, which I lean towards in preference in comparison to ranged or melee.
My fav hero of all time is definetly techies. Techies is the most underrated hero in the game. People think he's garbage. True, in unorganized games. I think he has HUGE push potential early game with the land mines and superb turtle skills with remote+mines+stuns. Team fights, stun trap is the most satisfying when u land a 6 second stun (too bad the trigger aoe is PUNY and takes a full TWO seconds -.-). Most importantly, techies is a hero i use my knowledge to outwit my opponent. I would mine ramps and common walking areas and it feels SO GOOD when a hero walks over mines and just instadie. Besides, who doesn't feel good when you last hit or deny creeps with your pro dmg?
My favourite role for this game would be the carry and the semi carry, these roles aren't exactly the easiest to play at the extremely competitive mode.
What makes semi carry heroes fascinating is the amount of knowledge the player is required to fully utilize the hero and the surrounding. Semi carries are the head and toe of the team during the whole stage, as they are the one who normally solo a lane, gank with the supports, enhance the carry's fighting capabilities, controlling the game pace, and sometimes, outcarry everyone in the game. Huge amount of knowledge on the opposing hero's capabilities, your own hero's capability, item choices, time of gank, position to gank. All these and lots of other small details can turn the tides of any small fights, ganks, teamfights, pushes.
Carry, on the other hand requires efficiency by the player to get as many gold or levels as he can. A very good example is a player playing Lycanthrope. Lycanthrope(wolf from here onwards) is a very damn good carry in this version due to the high dps of his summons, his howl which gives good amount of damage not only to himself, but to the team at a very cheap cost, passive which is good all around, and his ultimate which places him as one of the deadliest assassin or damage dealer in the game. Lategame, he can deal damage comparable to a fat Phantom Assassin, Anti Mage, or the stats crazy Drow Ranger. Here, the wolf can either opt for lots of farm, or kill + less farm. By farming alot, he is guaranteed to have items really quickly really fast, but by killing, he stands to gain more level, eventually to his strongest point at level 16 where his ultimate's cooldown drop to a crazy level. And in a 20 minute game, a level 16 wolf is surely going to wreck the team really quick, crazy, and fast.
My favourite hero is probably Slardar, but played as a support to semi carry.
From past competitive DotA, Slardar was played as a semi carry, but it was a huge failure later on. Slardar came as the heroes with the most lose rate during then.
Now, I argue Slardar is a really good hero played as a support, due to his extremely low cost skill and the effectiveness of each skill. Sprint: Makes Slardar runs so fast any blink hero cannot run away from him. Slithereen Crush: has a surprisingly huge area that is surprisingly surprising to anyone. On top of the huge area, it has a slow too, which makes not only Slardar, but Slardar's teamate able to catch up. Bash: Makes him annoying to anyone, especially carry as even a cheapass support like Slardar can momentarily stuns the carry, even when he has a Black King Bar! Amplify Damage: Slardar's signature skill, and one that has been buffed in the recent version! With an amplifiy damage, it turns any support or even semi carries into tofu. But with the relatively new item called Medallion of Courage(reduce any target by 5 armor, while reducing your own by 5. Cheap item too, at 1075 gold), it can turn even fat carries into tofu. Unlike Sven's Gods Strength which only applies to himself, Amplify Damage applies to the whole team!
Combine all these, and you get a really efficient support with good physical dps which the team can benefit from, and the ability to handle on its own lategame with his various skillsets.
My favourite hero to play in the ganking role is Queen of Pain. She isn't played too much (or at all, really) in high-level matches but in a ganking heavy line up she can be deadly. Her skills synergize perfectly she's a very tactical hero. The ideal situation involves starting as the solo mid hero, favouring scream of pain and blink as the initial skills. Solo mid lane and blink ensures you can have complete rune control, while scream of pain is deadly in the start of the game. I like to play her in a highly mobile/versatile build, which means I go for a fast bottle + boots of travel. This will allow me to quickly gank wherever I wish and secure as much farm as possible.
If everything goes well in terms of kills and creep score, I'll have a guinsoo's by the 25-30ish minute mark, and by this moment you can just nuke pretty much any solo hero you can find. If you have a good warder and good map awareness, no one can escape you.
In team battles, the usefulness of a skilled QoP is insane. You can control space with Blink and single out weaker enemies, and you can use your ulti either to initiate or to finish off a weakened enemy team. There's truly nothing better than walking in quickly with BoT for a quick scream, blink to the most convenient position and unleash a well placed sonic wave.
Overall, an extremely fun hero to play with, she's also incredibly versatile. I like to play her as a ganker but she can be an extremely solid semi-carry as well. She's also a very skill dependent hero, I remember thinking she was horrible 5 years ago, but then I found out just how great a hero she is.
I like to play support, an active agressive support to help out carry to get where it is needed. CM for example, play it right and its awesome (specially against defensive players).
i play lol nowadays and i like to play casters because they are fun and scale well into lategame too.... not in dota sadly ;( so i used to play carry panda a lot because he could do so many things, especially if his ulti was used well .
ah vengeful spirit the way she moves makes me go ooh, and to just right click with her in beta would make me go ooh ooh, hot damn its happening again. brb
As the game timer counted down and the heroes got ready to creep-block their fellow warriors, some "glhf"s were exchanged between team mates and enemies. Little did I know that it was truly going to be a great game.
The laning phase was absolutely terrifying the moment our solo mid called "miss". An enemy Witch Slayer, several levels higher than us, was on the loose. Luckily for us, the enemy heroes in our lane pushed the waves towards our bottom tower, meaning myself and my laning partner were safe under the protection of our massive magic blasting tower. My unsuspecting Magebane went out of the safety of the tower to last hit a creep, and then SWISH!!! Huge spikes zoomed out of the ground, summoned from an evil figure lurking in the woods. My figure was impaled as 3 grinning enemy heroes advanced. I watched helplessly as my hero was bombarded with nukes and a painful "FIRST BLOOD" reached my ears.
Determined to carry our team to victory, I tped back to my lane as quickly as I could. My heart sunk as our solo mid, Master of Arms, once again called "miss", but by then it was too late. The moment my Magebane teleported to the lane, a line of spikes ripped through the trees. My teammate bubbles tried his best to save me, but to no avail. We stood no chance against 3 enemy heroes higher levelled than we were. A loud "DOUBLE TAP" echoed through the room.
Several minutes into the game and my items were extremely poor for a carry. My good creep stats were negated by both my deaths. The enemy team started to build up in mid lane, preparing to push our weakened first tower. I blinked as many times as I could to get to mid lane to help my team mates, but the moment my hero arrived, the enemy team's carry, Nighthound, and my biggest rival in that game, casted a brilliant smoke screen, covering our supports and gankers. A ferocious but extremely one-sided battle erupted on the screen. Our team's hopes disappeared as the word GENOCIDE screamed to us. I was utterly disappointed, all other thoughts zoned out. 0-3 with a hero with an escape skill, 0-3 with a carry which should be leading the team to victory. Failed. That single word echoed all over my mind. Failed. One of our team members called concede, and all of us clicked the thumbs up button, except for the Master of Arms, our other potential carry. He was the only one on the team with a positive kd ratio. Yet his words amazed me. I still wonder how some words said in a video game, from some player I didn't know on the other side of the world, touched me.
"We can still win this. Magebane, you farm, while the rest of our team try to hold out. k?" I couldn't believe the Master of Arms, a ranged carry, was giving up his chance to carry because he believed I had a better chance. Even I thought the situation was hopeless. But those few words, gave me determination. Determination to win that game, not to let the team down. I moved efficiently between lanes, last hitting the best I could, playing as safe as I can, as battles roared between my team mates and the enemies. I finally built my core: Helm of the Black Legion, Steamboots and a Runed Cleaver. I blinked around the Forests of Caldavar, frantically swiping at all the neutrals as my team mates barely protect our towers from utter destruction. As my magebane zoomed back to base, I thought "Now or never". I didn't have time to farm more than the frostburn, my team mates couldn't hold out much longer.
The attack signal on the Lion started our charge. Spells blasted everywhere, a mess of creeps and heroes fighting, casting and escaping from the battle. "Double tap, HAT-TRICK!" My heart leapt as I saw my Magebane take heroes down 1 by one. Master of Arms pinged the enemy mid tower, and we all ran to it with our eyes set on our goal: The Sacrificial Shrine. Evil heroes seemed to pour out from all sides, but we fought valiantly, until "DOUBLE KILL". The farmed Nighthound gave me a look of pure evil before disappearing into the shadows.
As time progressed, my Magebane became more and more dominant, but so did the Nighthound. "CHAMPION OF NEWERTH!!! BLOODBATH!!!" Then, all of a sudden, a purple cloud appeared over my head and a painful stab penetrated my back. I turned around to face my rival: The dreaded Nighthound. We enganged in a furious but simple battle; whoever had more DPS would win. He soon realised he had no chance and tried to disappear, but a brilliantly placed Ward of Relevation by a support meant the end for the other team's carry, and my first ever immortal, a 15 kill-streak. We somehow managed to prevail against all the odds. That one game is why I love farming with carries so much, and is the sole reason why my favourite hero is, and will always be Magebane.
Thanks Bumblebee for the opportunity to win a key to an awesome game! :D Good luck to all other entries! :D
Knowing that the success or failure of a team is completely reliant on the fact that you play perfectly throughout the length of the game and the hard work of last hitting every possible creep leads to the culmination of complete domination later in the game keeps me excited and motivated to play to my full potential at all times. For this reason i often choose Morphling because i love finding the perfect balance in subtly adjusting my strength and agility to be the fastest strongest hero on the map at any moment and then sensing danger escape with far higher life regeneration and health than any tank could dream of. The fact that adaptive strike is exactly as it sounds and adapts to every move i make in regards to my stats it is very important pick and choose whether to use the stun or the knockback and engage perfectly with waveform. Then the ultimate provides even more control over team engagements choosing an important hero to be able and switch places with the image is crucial to keeping squishy heroes alive. My favorite build is to stack strength with a quick heart and BKB and morph almost all of my strength to agility then go for an eye to ensure no hero will escape from me with waveform and a slow. This ensures domination throughout the game and the BKB keeps from being locked down in important team battles. The best part of morphling though is on the off chance that you are caught alone you can quickly move as much agility to strength as you can and have upwards of 6k life and insane health regeneration making you almost invulnerable.
I'm a support player, through and through. After the game, the team will fawn over the carry, giving him praise and thanks but I can sit there contently knowing that I won our team the game.
Warding, ganking, saving teammates. It always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at the scoreboard and see my 20 assists, along with looking at the map and seeing everything warded. If I had to pick a favorite support, it would be Omniknight. To me he is the essence of the support role. Simply by being in a fight, you are tilting the odds of winning the fight into your team's favor. You make your carry nigh invincible with your Repel and Guardian Angel. Relying on your MS to escape from ganks? Not so fast now, are you?
His heal however is probably my favorite spell in all of DotA. It can be used to harass, to save lives, to turn the tides of teamfights, to bait enemies into attacking you. It's won me games, throwing down that heal and giving my carry an even larger damage as the opposing hero will be down health while he gains more.
So yes, while getting those 25 kills and 400 creeps is a beautiful thing and I will always appreciate my carries, I'm happy watching the enemy throne go down knowing that while I didn't kill a single hero by my own hand, I put my entire team in the position to do so.
Write a comment to this blog post and tell me what you're favorite role is to play and what your favorite hero is. Good posts will be awarded!
Alright! Finally made an account after over a year of just lurking because of how badly I want this. I've been playing DotA for a very long time, and some HoN.
I have to say, my favorite role is Utility. Basically, Utility heroes have a role combination of support and carry. Support in the sense that usually I get the Mekansm and keep my team alive, and carry because I also dish out some serious damage with some low cooldown nukes and short duration disables.
Windrunner is the most popular Utility right now, but my favorite hero to play is Puck the Faerie Dragon. Aside from being a gay dragon, Puck is a very mobile hero with very good AOE damage and disable spells. Illusory orb damages all enemy units in its path and gives me the ability to teleport to the orb any time I want, which is very good for chasing AND/OR running AND/OR surprise attacks. Phase shift makes Puck virtually unkillable, because with 3 seconds of invulnerability and a Dagger of Attack and Illusory orb I can be anywhere I want in no time at all and it makes for insane jukes and movie-worthy scenes. To top it all up, Waning Rift and Dream Coil - an AOE silence and AOE stun make for amazing crowd control and paves the road for the Initiators to clean up and wipe out the enemy team, like Tidehunter and Earthshaker.
Just my entry. Thanks for reading and keeping my fingers crossed for the DotA 2 Beta Key. Followed you on twitter (@bubbyski), and just for a good laugh I'm adding a short clip on a video I made of me with my favorite hero in action, PUCK! My scene starts at about 2:40. Thanks again!
I like to play ganking heroes, specifically Nerub Assassin, or his HoN counterpart Fayde. In both cases, these heroes have outstanding burst potential, even more so when coupled with a Dagon or a Necrominicon.
With their ulties, both also have a very assassiny feel to them and can to some extent pick their battles more strategically than most visible gankers. Positioning is key to deal as much damage and put as many heroes out of action with stuns etc. Manaburn is also great for completely shutting down the skills of agi carries and str heroes.
As for why I love the gameplay of these heroes is that it's so fast paced, you always gotta be on your feet, looking for un-pushed lanes where ganking will be most effective, and line it up with power-ups. And if you get a good start, get travel boots, and go to town. When you get to this point and you are able to effectively shutting down their carries you probably just won the game
What's more, you have quite a few item builds you can do, and all of them come with changes to your play style, which means when you get tired of one way, you can always chose the other way and still get to Rome. Customization for the win.
Fast paced and crazy amounts of burst damage, leaving little to be said for your opponents!
(Wonder how they will implement Nerub Assassin, seeing as most of this hero, save the Assassin part, is copyrighted by Blizzard ;_; )
Ganker's my favorite role, no question about it. So much more fast-paced and exciting to play than the other roles since you're constantly moving around on the map trying to make something happen, and it really allows you to set the pace of the game and make your opponents think twice about going too far away from their tower early on.
And my favorite hero would have to be Puck. He's just such a good hero (probably one of the best heroes in the entire game, imo) from start to finish in a game, starting out as a very strong solo mid, with excellent harassment and rune control, and he quickly turns into a fearsome ganker as his illusory orb starts to gain a few levels, and thanks to phase shift, you can be super mega aggressive without putting yourself at too much risk if you play it right.
Going into the midgame is where I think Puck really shines, you've just picked up your blink dagger, and you've gotten level 2 of your ult. With the ability to just blink on top of someone to silence, preventing any retaliation, and then the illusory orb follow up makes escaping a very hard thing to do, and that's just for solo ganking. In teamfights your ult can easily turn the tide of a battle and then some, especially if paired with other strong ults, heroes like lich and sand king come to mind.
And unlike a lot of other heroes, Puck never really fades off in the lategame, he actually turns into quite a strong support hero, just due to the sheer power of his ult, as well as his ability to stay alive with phase shift, and because of his very dominant midgame, he'll probably have a guinsoo, or be close to completing it as well, but even then, he's not item dependant in any regard, and can help your support heroes out with warding for a large portion of the game, which in turn leads to them having a much easier time being able to afford very important items like a force staff or an aghanim's.
My favourite role is support, favourite heroes are those from/trained in Winterspring. Of those heroes Rylai sticks out as the one I like the most. Its usefulness in support is so high since it needs so little.
As long as you position yourself properly and get off nova/bite you can then proceed into melee to soak stuns/silences with the ulti and promptly die. Since that is the role only farm worth ~5k would help to stop her from dying, since a carry could use it better there is no way to reach that tier of items. Which means I get to get boots and then wards all game long, maybe a bracer or two if it goes well.
Along the same idea of needing little is the level requirement. Level one of all her skills (except aura) is enough for most situations. Which means that at level 7 you have what you need for the mid game level wise and can ward/roam/screen/counter-gank or whatever else that causes the opponent to lose xp just as much as you do, while coming out ahead.
The downside with Rylai is that she is a semi poor babysitter due to no heal and being squishy (the carry can't protect her). This means Rylai is only really suited for tri lanes or offensive dual lanes instead of passive farming ones. Rylai + Spectre is an example of a lane that will fail since Rylai will get killed if she steps forward just a tad too much. While Rylai + Juggernaut is an example of an offensive lane where Yurnero can kill the enemies being agressive towards Rylai.
Then as mentioned above, mid game just use your spells and try to get them to kill you instead of somebody more useful in a team clash. Outside of team clashes, don't die, only die if that is what is needed to save a carry. In mid game reading the flow of the game is very important for rylai since most gankers/carries can solo kill her, forcing you to play passive or near allies. Or read it well enough that you don't die.
Downside with Rylai is that it is easy to feed, something to always avoid as any class of hero. Since a series of nerfs hit it it hasn't been as popular due to slow ms and lacklustre endgame.
My favorite role to play is support and I used to play Lion. Being support isn't easy but the team doesn't rely on the support as much in the late game which makes it easier for me just to ward and sacrifice myself.
My favorite hero is Techies, but for a real game, my favorite role is carry. I'm very meticulous in last hitting and enjoy building up into a powerhouse. I feel the greatest control over the game this way, knowing I cant win it in the end.
I have two favorite roles or rather the only roles that I play in games: support and carry.
Support - You don't need items. Let your skills do the talking.
Mostly I use int heroes like Rhasta, Warlock, Dazzle, WD, CM; heroes that babysit and ward to be more specific. When I getting to know more about DotA, I started with supports. Because I ward so much, I know the map in and out like blind spots, neutral camps and trees, and that's essential in DotA.
My favorite support hero is Rhasta. There's nothing prettier than trapping an enemy with serpent wards. (Be patient for a bit. Use your surroundings. Target your ulti on or near the hero and BOOM he's trapped.)
Carry Heroes like Balanar, BS, Lycan and Storm Spirit; what do they have in common? They have good mobility and excellent presence during the mid-late game. This is where your map knowledge really comes in to play because in the mid game you'll be farming, ganking and escaping ganks. I like playing carries because it contrasts the mundane play style of supports.
My favorite carry is Balanar. His mobility during night is excellent in forcing your enemy to be less aggressive.
Congratulations to ruXxar and Nalesnik! Thanks for some good posts, they were all enjoyable. But don't worry, I will do another giveaway in the not too far distant future. Follow me on Twitter to see when!
I fell in love with Lol a couplemonths back, after being forced to watch some games in IEM, it spiced up my interest. I have liked Vayne/Ashe/Miss Fortune, so I guess I like that carry aspect of the game, if the game went well the ammount of kills you get is absurd. But there is 1 character I have the MOST fun playing, that that is my beloved Gangplank in a jungler role. I simply get nerdchills anytime I use my e from a bush to jump on an unsuspecting victim that has overextended himself, I can imagine their "ohshit" face. And never to forget that playing GP makes my map awareness much better, always looking for victims for my ultimate. What you gonna do when GP comes for you! Also, critplank ftw, q in your face and you die!
On October 16 2011 19:22 monie wrote: Pretty sure it said last date was 17:th of October, did you change that?
Yeah, because I'll keep doing other ones. I regret that I put it "so far" in the future. I just want people to get going and then do some more giveaways. :-) I'll announce the next one on Twitter.
i started out playing public APEM, so i played carry, but eventually i stopped playing dota and after a break i started playing hon "seriously" and i decide to play support, and my favorite hero by fra is Plague(Lich King) of course its not like the most difficult support hero but still i love to play him.
I read a bit of it and most of the items/heroes you linked to each paragraph just screams pub bash :<
I havent read the replies so im not sure if this has been said/pointed out.
Bloodseeker wouldn't classify as a "ganker" in most cases, it will primarily be used as a carry (killing creep gives hp back giving it insane farming capabilities, then when there is a hero to kill icefrog kindly shows u where it is on the map).
And since u did mention gankers and roamers, i'd probably add in that the main difference between them is the laning phase. A good example of a ganker would be venge or sven, they will have a dedicated lane to sit in, but will move around the map to help get some kills early in the game. A roamer on the other hand would be someone like potm (if u plan on playing it as a roamer, obviously) or ES. Where they arent given a dedicated lane and just run around all game helping other lanes and get kills.
Im not sure if you pointed it out in your original post but a lot of heroes have over lapping roles. Initiators being gankers, roamers being semi carries etcetc.
On October 16 2011 19:06 Bumblebee wrote: Congratulations to ruXxar and Nalesnik! Thanks for some good posts, they were all enjoyable. But don't worry, I will do another giveaway in the not too far distant future. Follow me on Twitter to see when!
On October 16 2011 19:06 Bumblebee wrote: Congratulations to ruXxar and Nalesnik! Thanks for some good posts, they were all enjoyable. But don't worry, I will do another giveaway in the not too far distant future. Follow me on Twitter to see when!
Thanks you doing all of this :D And those posts are, indeed, epic. Hopefully I will get more lucky on the next one >.<
I'm playing dota since the last version of Eul in 2003(I think it was in 2003) and been waiting for an actual dota game since a year or so after icefrog replaced Guinsoo, so although it makes me sad that I didnt get the key I guess I can wait a bit longer. :/
I like to play pushing roles, if I roll SS, my mate will pick Lesh, and we will either have a Chen or some other fairly strong late game anchor to rely upon, depending on the structural damage we can do. My team always worked hard, and were fortunate enough to rise to B+ on the iccup ladder. I feel that the reason our strategy was so strong was because we would always have a strong ganking hero mid, along with a strong cc attack to clear creeps quickly. Once we saw a leak in their defense, we were able to push the towers, take at least two, if not all of the outers by the 17-20mark, giving our carry the ability to farm safely with the cushion that is the lack of the enemies' towers.
I really miss the activity that DotA had back in the day, and I would give anything to be able to compete at a high level in the game again, starting fresh in DotA2; I just can't deal with the inadequacies that are LoL and HoN... Here's to the memories.
On October 16 2011 19:06 Bumblebee wrote: Congratulations to ruXxar and Nalesnik! Thanks for some good posts, they were all enjoyable. But don't worry, I will do another giveaway in the not too far distant future. Follow me on Twitter to see when!
Same, I thought it was tomorrow been putting together a video answer. Ah well, maybe next time. Nalesnik definitely deserved it, I remember going "oooo, that's awesome" when I read it.
Well I already trawled through and located timestamps for the videos so I'll post this anyway. Enjoy.
Meepo, Meepo, Meepo, Meepo (and with Aghanim, Meepo again!) My favourite hero by far.
Meepo is undoubtedly one of the most fiddly heroes to play. At level 16 with aghanim and the correct items, you have 5 meepos to control with 2 abilities each, a blink dagger and a mechanism meaning 12 buttons to press. If any of the Meepos die, it’s all over and you’re a spectator for the next one and a half minutes.
However, as someone once said, with great fiddliness comes great power and to me, Meepo is one of the most versatile heroes in the game. There are certain heroes which hard counter him so he’s not a top tier pick in competitive games but when he has the chance to shine, boy can he shine!
As befitting a hero which is actually 4 (or 5) heroes, Meepo can play almost every role in the game. Let me introduce you to his many names:
Meepo the Carry: I notice you didn’t include Meepo in your venerable list of Carry heroes and he isn’t traditionally what you would consider a Hard Carry but he is definitely a Semi Carry that can end the game before the Hard Carry has a chance to get his required farm. His secret sauce: combined experience from every single Meepo. This feature means that from level 6 onwards, he can gain experience and farm from multiple sources, laning, ganking and jungling, all at the same time. If played correctly, he should be the highest level hero going into the midgame with his core items ready.
What makes a Semi Carry? I like to think of a Semi Carry as one which requires less farm and cheaper core items before he can fulfil his role. Mirana and Windrunner are good examples. They tend to have decent attack damage and strong spells. Meepo has all of those. With strength treads and mechanism, he’s almost ready for primetime. Throw in a Vladimir and he can solo Roshan. A blink dagger and no lanes are safe.
He has the attributes but can he really Carry? To me, the hallmark of the Carry hero is the ability to decimate a team. To be the source of most damage while not dieing. Let’s see how it’s done:
Meepo the Ganker What makes a Ganker? Usually, we think of heroes with good burst damage and some sort of disable or slow. They try to catch enemies out of position either in lane or in the jungle and take them out before their allies have time to react and assist. Meepo’s earthbind can be used to lock down a hero almost completely, poof is great burst and he even has passive slow! However, what makes Meepo scary is that he can be roaming and ganking while still farming away so he be a threat without sacrificing income or experience. A great example of this is the Meepo played by TakinBackMyLove of Malaysian team MUFC. Here he goes on an unsuspecting Syllabear:
Meepo the Initiator What makes an Initiator? Initiators dictate the terms of fights and can determine the outcome before they even begin. They force the enemy to engage on your terms. They usually have a strong aoe spell, stun or the ability to isolate heroes. Great initiators include the Batrider, Puck, Sandking and Earthshaker. Meepo can be played in this style. With a blink dagger, he has huge aoe damage, earthbind everywhere to lock enemies down and force them to fight. In some ways, he’s even better than these other heroes because with mechanism, he has decent survivability and can then proceed to hit for significant damage. TakinBackMyLove shows how it’s done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpZf-ypuq-k#t=19m50s
Meepo the Pusher Pushers need to be able to clear creep waves fast and two level 4 poofs are enough for every creep. Meepos core items are also great for pushing: mechanism and Vladimir. Most importantly though, he can have a presence in multiple lanes so he can be played almost like a Furion or Tinker, pressuring everywhere and poofing out if any danger materialises. Meepo the Fearsome Finally, I think Meepo has so much scope for ‘pimp plays’. I’ll leave you with one of the top Dota moments of 2010:
The aim is to use the least amount of effort(ie: mana/health) to do the most amount of damage to the enemy, if not kill them. Learning the absolutes of a tower's range, hero movespeed, cast time, attack speed, damage, creep AI and your reflex is what is required to perform an attack of opportunity.
A simple magic missile level 1 (125 damage, 1.1 second stun) may not seem much, but if used at the right opportunity it can potentially lead to over 400 damage in the early game. Example: the enemy deciding to last hit a creep just in tower range, but his last creep is being attacked by a tower and is about to die, casting a stun on the hero at that point will deal severe damage.
In Dota, especially the early game, treat it like martial arts. If you see your opponent drop in defense for that split second, thats when it will hurt them the most. It could be simply walking a step too far or catching their skill on cooldown.
I have to disagree on the concede button. Valve themselves iterated how Dota is known for those impossible comebacks. Putting a concede button just shows your commitment on giving up and starting over..because you felt you lost due to your teammates or your own ability.
My favorite roll is the carry. Don't mind shouldering some responsibilities for the team, and also enjoy the feeling of dominating when you're fed. Definitely a roll where if your team played well, you will see the rewards fast.