[Megathread] DotA 2

[PizzaSHARK]

How many people do you know that can instantly tell which is real? If you go phase MKB daedalus manta you won't have greater speed than your illusions so that method is right out.

Manta also helps you dodge abyssal blades when the game gets to that point, and more than once I have clicked right as someone split and used it on their illusion.

They don't have to know, they could just get lucky. With a hero as squishy as Sniper though, you can easily tell after one swing whether or not it's the real one because the illusions will take like 1/3 of their HP in the first hit.

And I'm not disputing manta as a late game item, but I don't see how it's better than SnY or just straight BKB for the mid game. You can always disassemble and sell the Sange once SnY is no longer ideal.

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The trick I've found is heroes that are very straight forward and can lane very well. Ease of execution is king.
I've been playing lich lately and its worked pretty well and I haven't dropped a game. You just win the laning phase and very few carrys know how to come back from that. In addition to this its not uncommon for me to be the only support, or if I am the only support I'm 9 times out of 10 the ward bitch, all of which Lich does well with.

Lich is definitely good for that. I'd probably add Crystal Maiden, too, since Frostbite makes it easy for you to get a little gold and XP from creeps and her aura means she doesn't really have any need for MP regen, just straight INT. Both heroes are really good for learning zoning on, too.

[minteK917]

Lets just settle this in a simple way, the amount of games where Manta is a good item on a ranged agility hero, is greater then the amount of time its not. Its also greater to the amount of time where SnY is strong. Its funny that you snob the "35 damage" your illusions will be doing early, when thats alot considering it also holds good stats for you? Considering how quick you can get both these items, one is clearly stronger in more situation and gets better as the game progresses.

[Sorcereria]

Guys, try Skull Basher on Sniper. It is damn amazing with MoM.

MoM, Skull basher, SnY, Skadi + Crit / Mjolnir all the way and most of the time blink dagger.

That build is OMF vs melee carries.

Only issue is farming at least 3 items in timely manner unless your enemies suck ;/
And for the love of god they should increase sniper base dmg by at least 4-6 too.

[PizzaSHARK]

Watched a game on BTS's channel... apparently Troll's trending now or something. I think it's funny how fucking long that hero went without being picked when he's been so strong for like 2-3 patches. Even if he doesn't dominate his lane, Battle Trance is fucking disgusting.

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Lets just settle this in a simple way, the amount of games where Manta is a good item on a ranged agility hero, is greater then the amount of time its not. Its also greater to the amount of time where SnY is strong. Its funny that you snob the "35 damage" your illusions will be doing early, when thats alot considering it also holds good stats for you? Considering how quick you can get both these items, one is clearly stronger in more situation and gets better as the game progresses.

35 damage vs melee stout or PMS?

You're dramatically underestimating how strong SnY's slow is, along with the superior stats. Yes, manta is better late, but SnY can be disassembled so there's no real reason to get manta early.

[LiiLoSNK]

he went from saying manta is useless to now saying it's ok but only very lategame because you should have a bkb early game on sniper if you want survivability, which you before said is useless on sniper (survivability), and that you should definitely take your yasha and just go the SNY route because you can sell sange anyways and lose 1k gold if you want manta later cause who cares about 1k gold and theres no possible way to survive or do well as sniper with yasha/ultimate orb until you can farm 700 more gold for manta, an item that is completely useless on sniper because "ranged illusions are weaker than melee illusions" and it in no way benefits a hero like sniper in a 50 minute long game against a team with a blink dagon tinker and you should just keep the SNY because of the "dramatically underestimated" gamebreaking power of the slow from the sange, cause sniper is a chasing ganking hero with no other long range abilities used to finish off runners.

The trench life is so much more complicated and advanced than mine. i must be playing dota wrong.

[EqualWin]

I realized i have a legit invoker to play in the trench. boots->midas->euls->travels->refresher/sheep/blink/force 2good. I'd buy aghs but i barely can use my spells every 5 sec lamo







sniper best build: 5 mjol + blink and win game

[PizzaSHARK]

The trench life is so much more complicated and advanced than mine. i must be playing dota wrong.

You probably feel that way because douchebags tend to be pretty stupid and have trouble understanding simple concepts unless they're guided through them step-by-step. It's okay, one day you'll overcome your disadvantages and reach the level that most of humanity operates at if you work hard for it.

[LiiLoSNK]

Don't worry. I'll always be here to chime in every time you say something that's just a little too stupid.

[Deleted]

The trick I've found is heroes that are very straight forward and can lane very well. Ease of execution is king.
I've been playing lich lately and its worked pretty well and I haven't dropped a game. You just win the laning phase and very few carrys know how to come back from that. In addition to this its not uncommon for me to be the only support, or if I am the only support I'm 9 times out of 10 the ward bitch, all of which Lich does well with.

I honestly feel it makes a world of difference. I'm currently 3.75k which I'm happy with as I've gone up 250 mmr in the space of only a few days with minimal effort. What really hit home about ease of execution was when I had a look at my younger brother's games with him and talked about his rating, which is 4.2k. He considers his rating down to dumb luck and will tell me that I'm better than him, at least mechanically and in other areas such as map awareness. But the fact is that he's been playing the same simple heroes for ages (Lich, Ogre, WK and Necro) and its worked.

I find heroes that can easily gank is the trick, people like Disruptor, CM, Earthshaker, even Lina because of her ulti, don't even need to hit the stun 90% of the time to get a kill early.

[PizzaSHARK]

I find heroes that can easily gank is the trick, people like Disruptor, CM, Earthshaker, even Lina because of her ulti, don't even need to hit the stun 90% of the time to get a kill early.

Thrall is really good but I feel like a lot of the time he's reliant on your teammates realizing that you just used glimpse. I'd rather play a support with more solo kill potential like Dubstep or Lion (or Lina, like you said.) I guess Thrall has a lot of solo kill potential with an Agh's but he's not the best at farming that Agh's up.

AA can also be really good since you don't even need to be present, just land the ice blast.

[Deleted]

Thrall is really good but I feel like a lot of the time he's reliant on your teammates realizing that you just used glimpse. I'd rather play a support with more solo kill potential like Dubstep or Lion (or Lina, like you said.) I guess Thrall has a lot of solo kill potential with an Agh's but he's not the best at farming that Agh's up.

AA can also be really good since you don't even need to be present, just land the ice blast.

Also AA is one of the best first blood heroes in the game, i find it win a lot of the time we my team gets first blood, seems to be a morale thing i guess.

[PizzaSHARK]

Also AA is one of the best first blood heroes in the game, i find it win a lot of the time we my team gets first blood, seems to be a morale thing i guess.

I'll have to check recent pro games to see if they've figured out how ridiculous AA+Troll is. It's amazing how much damage your team can put out in a few seconds if you get 3+ heroes with Chilling Touch and then give them Battle Trance.

First blood is definitely a morale thing more than anything else. It's pretty common to hear some dumbass call gg when his team doesn't get first blood

[Deleted]

I'll have to check recent pro games to see if they've figured out how ridiculous AA+Troll is. It's amazing how much damage your team can put out in a few seconds if you get 3+ heroes with Chilling Touch and then give them Battle Trance.

First blood is definitely a morale thing more than anything else. It's pretty common to hear some dumbass call gg when his team doesn't get first blood

I think getting first blood on mid is always nice, I remember watching a pro player stream once (can't remember who) but he said " if you get the first kill mid then there is no way you should then get killed mid" - Ofc he meant get killed 1v1 but I find the point has some truth.

[PizzaSHARK]

I think getting first blood on mid is always nice, I remember watching a pro player stream once (can't remember who) but he said " if you get the first kill mid then there is no way you should then get killed mid" - Ofc he meant get killed 1v1 but I find the point has some truth.

Getting solo kill in mid, whether or not it's fb, is huge if you're a good mid. With the gold and XP lead (you can easily be 1-2 lvls ahead of the other mid) you can probably turn that into even more kills on them or just force them to hide by their tower and miss out on tons of XP and gold, plus it means you can roam/TP to gank earlier, etc etc etc.

I think that's part of why a lot of people say playing solo mid (and being good at it) is the "best" way to push your MMR... in pubs, a good mid can practically hand the game to the rest of their team on a silver platter.

Of course, they can still drop that goddamn platter...

[StrawberryZebra]

The trick I've found is heroes that are very straight forward and can lane very well. Ease of execution is king.
I've been playing lich lately and its worked pretty well and I haven't dropped a game. You just win the laning phase and very few carrys know how to come back from that. In addition to this its not uncommon for me to be the only support, or if I am the only support I'm 9 times out of 10 the ward bitch, all of which Lich does well with.

I honestly feel it makes a world of difference. I'm currently 3.75k which I'm happy with as I've gone up 250 mmr in the space of only a few days with minimal effort. What really hit home about ease of execution was when I had a look at my younger brother's games with him and talked about his rating, which is 4.2k. He considers his rating down to dumb luck and will tell me that I'm better than him, at least mechanically and in other areas such as map awareness. But the fact is that he's been playing the same simple heroes for ages (Lich, Ogre, WK and Necro) and its worked.

Lich is one of those Heroes that's great all round. There is a reason he's been consistently gracing the top spots of Dota buffs win rates after all. I don't think I've ever seen him drop below 50% there, which is very telling. He can give your team some very solid early advantages which, with a little push in the right place can quickly turn into a huge lead. He's also strong when it comes to team fights later in the game, and is even decent enough at ganking if he's got an ally around who can capitalise on the slows.

When it comes to winning pub games, execution is always king. Its quite simply less things that can go wrong. You can easilly mess things up with Earth Spirit or Oracle, but there's practically no way you can get things catastrophically wrong when playing Sven or Viper. It counts for a lot when you've got no guarantees of how good someone is with their chosen Hero.

Lich is definitely good for that. I'd probably add Crystal Maiden, too, since Frostbite makes it easy for you to get a little gold and XP from creeps and her aura means she doesn't really have any need for MP regen, just straight INT. Both heroes are really good for learning zoning on, too.

I cringe every time I see someone pick CM. She is probably the only Hero in the game than can be outright considered to be under par at the moment. She's slow, incredibly squishy and her ult is practically a death sentence, but the rest of her kit doesn't quite make up for all her disadvantages. When she ends up on the other team I make farming her an absolute priority, its a relatively simple way to start snowballing your team out of control while also ensuring that you're able to strangle the other teams vision, which makes taking total control of the map very easy.
Quite simply, she's been hit with the nerf bat a few too many times and the buffs to her ult and frostbite have, in no way, made up for it.

I find heroes that can easily gank is the trick, people like Disruptor, CM, Earthshaker, even Lina because of her ulti, don't even need to hit the stun 90% of the time to get a kill early.

When it comes to ganking supports, Venge and Veno have to be at the top of the pile really. Unlike Disruptor or Earthshaker, there's very little that can actually go wrong with their ganks even if your aim is absolutely abysmal. Their ganks are very easy to execute and have, in my experience, an extremely high kill rate. When it comes to closing out a game, pub games especially, ganking at every opportunity has usually worked out well for me provided at least some of those ganks were successful. If, for whatever reason, they fail then you've wasted time not earning XP and have gotten nothing to show for it. You can very fall behind extremely quickly if you're not careful, doubly so if you're playing against a communicative premade.

[Lysah]

CM ult is so broken now, 3300 damage in 2 seconds. It's just a matter of time before you see teams start using her as lane support and combining her with an initiator like enigma/magnus/tide. Even if you stun her the second the initiaton is over she will have already done 1000 damage to your entire team AND she's forced you to blow your CCs on her, giving even more space to her team. If you have a team coordinated enough to take advantage of that window, CM is in a position where she cannot be buffed. She is still one of the best pre6 supports in the game and she enables a lot of junglers.

I agree she is weak in pubs, but if she were buffed she would be first ban material in competitive instantly in my opinion. She's in a bad spot because of her inherent design. If people want her to be a "better" support, they're probably going to have to rework her ultimate completely to make it less rampagey.

[Sorcereria]

Can confirm. CM ult hurts like never before and if you dont interrupt almost instantly you know what happens.

[StrawberryZebra]

I would argue that the damage was never really the issue with CM's ult. The damage may have been buffed from outrageously high to stupidly over the top high, but it did nothing to impact how usable the skill is. If we're getting the to point where the damage is getting too high to really ignore anymore then its hard to argue that its not been overbuffed, and given that the theoretical max damage is 31k per person the damage is too high. Its probably enough to kill most teams outright if you can get the channel off fully even without having to look at best case scenarios.

I do think you are right though Lysah, its hard to justify giving CM much more in the way of buffs provided she has an ally who can help set her up a good Ult. Without someone to help her out though she struggles to get much, if any, use from it at all. It swings wildly from being far too risky to use to far too rewarding to use. The only way to really fix it is to rework it, and perhaps even the Hero as a whole.

[minteK917]

Lich power is always viewed as better then it really is, both by pubs and pros when its in fashion. Just like the aghs power was overplayed. Hes an ok support, but he does not bring enough pressence to be a power pick support. Id say hes more in the middle, his early game gimick to suck some xp is neat, but the effect is not that strong long term.

[Lysah]

I would argue that the damage was never really the issue with CM's ult. The damage may have been buffed from outrageously high to stupidly over the top high, but it did nothing to impact how usable the skill is. If we're getting the to point where the damage is getting too high to really ignore anymore then its hard to argue that its not been overbuffed, and given that the theoretical max damage is 31k per person the damage is too high. Its probably enough to kill most teams outright if you can get the channel off fully even without having to look at best case scenarios.

I do think you are right though Lysah, its hard to justify giving CM much more in the way of buffs provided she has an ally who can help set her up a good Ult. Without someone to help her out though she struggles to get much, if any, use from it at all. It swings wildly from being far too risky to use to far too rewarding to use. The only way to really fix it is to rework it, and perhaps even the Hero as a whole.

The issue with her ult pre-buff was that it was unreliable, you could stand in it and beat on her and not take any damage at all. They increased the size of the explosions, though, which means you are much more likely to get hit. Add to that the fact that it does huge damage, lasts forever, and also slows everyone to a crawl regardless of whether they are actually being hit or not, and her ult pretty much forces people to focus her. That in itself is pretty strong, in my opinion, it's kind of like battle call in a way. You just don't often see big CM ults because she is too busy getting mek and wards and couriers and doesn't have the blink/force staff necessary to get herself where it matters when it matters, people prefer to sit back and just spam frostbite on enemy carry.