[Megathread] DotA 2

[Drunkenvalley]

Again, buy a flipping veil. The illusions don't last very long and the veil cannot be purged. Thus, it will stick on the real PL. If he's as much of a problem as you say he is, this alone should cover your ass a lot.

[Charge me Doctor]

Idd but out of any hero axe is the best at it, i find sven to be really weak vs late game PL tbh, armor is just way too high and PL is very mobile.

Sven can always crit off support to cleave PL to death, while also posesing hugeass armour by himself

[Kralljin]

Idd but out of any hero axe is the best at it, i find sven to be really weak vs late game PL tbh, armor is just way too high and PL is very mobile.

Point is that Sven can keep PL illusions down for a long time, which greatly reduce the damage done by PL and increase damage done to PL.

No Illusions = Bad for PL.

Your Axe thing might work out in theory but you're dancing on Razors Edge, if anything goes wrong, you're fucked.

They need just have to initiate on you and Axe probably won't be able to jump on PL, let alone get the preperation from your entire team to kill him.

The same thing you plan with Axe could be done with Earthshaker as well, let him jump into Illusions, use Echo Slam, Real PL is the one with most HP and then stun him until the cavalary arrives, probably even more effective because Illusions might even die from that, nullifying the need to search for PL.

[Charge me Doctor]

I would also consider Dusa being good PL counter in late game, but he melts through her mana so fast that her Gaze doesn't really matter

[Jester Joe]

Sven can always crit off support to cleave PL to death, while also posesing hugeass armour by himself

I kinda feel like it's two different situations. Like, Sven would be better against mid game PL, but Axe would be able to shut down PL early game, since Axe is one of those strong early game heroes while PLs only thing really is his spear throw, at least last I've played him.

Or go veil and echo slam!

[PizzaSHARK]

People are so dumb. They still insist standard PA build is aquila treads hotd bfury even though with 6.84 it's more clear than ever that she's not a late-game hero.

Build is properly basilius treads/phase (I like phase!) vlad's deso. Deso is OP as fuck at 3500 gold, unquestionably the most cost efficient and slot efficient damage item in the game now, really should cost more like 3750-3900. Some games will demand something else instead of Deso (Diffusal Blade is actually really good on PA, great for dealing with stuff you need to purge or prevent people from ever kiting you), but for most games vlads->deso is by far the best choice you can make.

But, nope, let's blow a fuckton of gold on a subpar item like Bfury and pretend we're a shitty version of Anti-Mage because the pros do it! Idiots.

[Jester Joe]

Why the hell isn't there an Ogre Magi announcer pack

[Lysah]

The pros don't even bfury PA much, that's the best part. They rush Abyssal just as often.

[Deleted]

ITT: People equating buying Battlefury with being a late-game hero. Can we stop spouting this nonsense already, please? It's literally the OPPOSITE of what Battlefury does for a hero. Like holy shit I actually have no words for how out-of-touch saying Battlefury is anything that belongs on a late-game hero is. It's just objectively wrong.

Here's a fun fact - Anti Mage is literally the exact opposite of a lategamer. You get BF on AM because combined with Blink, it allows you to hit a 6-slotted power peak in the 35-45 minute window, well ahead of where any other carry can realistically hit a similar peak. If you haven't ended the game when this peak ends, or at least created an advantage that's almost impossible to reverse, you're fucking done for, because as soon as the other team's 1 position catches up on items he's going to knock your skull in.

Likewise with Battlefury on PA. If you can get Treads-Aquila-BF, BKB follows roughly 4-5 minutes afterwards with good farming patterns. Couple that with lvl 11 ult and you're jumping around, impossible to lock down, 1-shotting people at 25 minutes because you've got a fuck-ton more farm than they have and you crit for 800-1k already. The real problem with Battlefury PA is that people:

A. Get it in games where you're under enough pressure that your Battlefury timing is either going to be late, or you need a BKB at around the same timing you'd normally get your Battlefury even with relatively uncontested farm. You don't fucking play BF PA against a Pugna/Lesh/Tide lineup that just walks at your towers from minute 10 - that's when you get a BKB as your first major item and pray to fucking God it works out.

B. Can't lane or farm if their lives depended on it, get Battlefury at 25 minutes and think that's an even remotely acceptable timing, and then proceed to do absolutely nothing with said Battlefury because their farming patterns look like an epileptic having a stroke while strapped into an electric chair.

There's a time and a place for PA Battlefury, and the better you are at utilizing the absolutely massive farm disparity it creates in the hands of a player who gets it early and has good farming patterns even under pressure, the more often that time and place is. PA is almost exactly like AM in terms of why Battlefury is an amazing item on her, except instead of fucking up your towers with a massive farm advantage she fucks YOU up, THEN your towers.

And for the record, you know what happens when you go Vlad's Deso instead of getting a BKB and try to fight with that build against players who aren't idiots? The inevitable, ever-present Lina/Lion/etc gives you one mean glare and you're stuck waiting 45 seconds to respawn because you have 900 HP and no magic immunity.

Like I mostly lurk and don't post here a lot, but this thread just consistently and criminally underrates the value of farm. Just raw gold. For basically everyone that isn't Lysah in this thread, the answer to the question "why am I stuck at my current MMR" isn't bad teammates, or bad item choices, or bad decisions in fights.

It's that you fucking suck at hitting creeps in large amounts. That's what's holding you back. Like I see people who can't understand why they can't break 4k with 150 CS at 40 minutes and it just makes me want to take a knife to my eyes, man. HIT. THE FUCKING. CREEPS. And then hit them some more.

[Charge me Doctor]

The only (major) reason to build BF over other damage items is to farm stacks. For less moniez you can get Desolator, which allows you to 1 shot people, or for 1k more gold you can get abyssal that allows you to duel and 1 shot people.
Arguably it's a good item when enemy have problematic heroes like DK, you don't want to hit DK (aka - waste crits) and even Deso won't help you to burst him faster. But with BF single crit on Solar Crested Dazzle can cleave DK into serious troubles.

I personally think that treads + basil is all PA needs for early game, then vlad/helm for sustain, deso/abyssal for fighting and bkb for late/mid game fighting

[Lysah]

AM works with bfury because he has blink and because he has fast attack speed and lower BAT. PA has neither, she's actually pretty slow for an agility hero. I see buying bfury on her pretty much the same as buying bfury on CK - he also crits 10% of the time, so does that make it a good idea on him? In fact, his crit is only slightly worse than hers before 16, and his isn't an ultimate.

I don't see PA as a mid game hero, and that's what bfury is good for. PA loses the game the second the enemy carry gets a MKB, which means she has to end it before then. AM can fight enemy carrys with items, he just can't fight enemy carrys with the same amount of items that he has. PA can flat out ignore towers and pretty much all forms of right click for the first 20 minutes of the game, and even without her ultimate she can kill most heroes around level 7-10. She should be winning the game and going 10-0 long before standard bfury + 10 minutes afk farm timing.

The only thing I'd buy bfury for is if you know you need to be able to push creep waves solo, but not many people below 7k mmr have the foresight to know which games require them to be a pusher and which games require them to be a slayer.

Deso is a pretty good item on PA, I still don't know if I'd get it. I usually go phase aquila HoD yasha basher standard. It's all about buying quick damage so that you never stop one shotting people, and then upgrading those items to their late game versions once you start getting real gold. I managed to rush a like 8 minute deso (and that was pre-buff) in a game once and lose anyway, not as good as expected.

[Deleted]

People are so dumb. They still insist standard PA build is aquila treads hotd bfury even though with 6.84 it's more clear than ever that she's not a late-game hero.

Build is properly basilius treads/phase (I like phase!) vlad's deso. Deso is OP as fuck at 3500 gold, unquestionably the most cost efficient and slot efficient damage item in the game now, really should cost more like 3750-3900. Some games will demand something else instead of Deso (Diffusal Blade is actually really good on PA, great for dealing with stuff you need to purge or prevent people from ever kiting you), but for most games vlads->deso is by far the best choice you can make.

But, nope, let's blow a fuckton of gold on a subpar item like Bfury and pretend we're a shitty version of Anti-Mage because the pros do it! Idiots.

I almost always go Treads into Aquila (dagger spam) into helm, yasha and bkb, then go basher. I have lost once doing this build out of 13 times and that was only because of an adbandon on our team.

I don't understand Bfury, its gives PA nothing but farming speed, but why just go and 2 shot supports instead.

[Longview]

Like I mostly lurk and don't post here a lot, but this thread just consistently and criminally underrates the value of farm. Just raw gold. For basically everyone that isn't Lysah in this thread, the answer to the question "why am I stuck at my current MMR" isn't bad teammates, or bad item choices, or bad decisions in fights.

It's that you fucking suck at hitting creeps in large amounts. That's what's holding you back. Like I see people who can't understand why they can't break 4k with 150 CS at 40 minutes and it just makes me want to take a knife to my eyes, man. HIT. THE FUCKING. CREEPS. And then hit them some more.

this is very important and cannot be stressed enough

its hard to play bad when you have more items than your opponent

early on in a game, the jungle is usually underutilized. even if you can't clear the camps as a support hero, stacking camps is literally free gold. see: no tidehunter when they still had eternalenvy, that guy spent half of his games running around stacking.
when the jungle starts getting cleared every minute, there are plenty of creepwaves going unfarmed.

with that said, there are definitely games where you should not be hitting creeps.

[Sorcereria]

Basicly this.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1499356419
Such games make you titl. Yes necro was mid and lane was empty for almost 12min.

[Lysah]

early on in a game, the jungle is usually underutilized. even if you can't clear the camps as a support hero, stacking camps is literally free gold.

This I can agree with, #1 thing most support players need to learn. Even at 5k nobody ever stacks anything for anybody except themselves, so much wasted potential. Even when you have a hero like Sven Gyro or Magnus + anything melee, supports still can't be bothered to even stack ancients. I think watching the clock is hard for people.

Junglers need to learn it, too. Stacking a hard camp literally won't slow your jungle down at all if you aren't already clearing all of it every 60 sec. For most junglers that just rotate between medium camps or a medium and a hard, it's really not hard to stack the other hard camp while you wait on respawns. I admit I get lazy of this myself.

[EqualWin]

1v5 http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1506640502 , even with late radiance (around 20-25min) won that game. almost threw

[PizzaSHARK]

https://youtu.be/Iu905hR_SVw?t=25m20s

This is like watching domestic assault in Dota 2. Probably the most one-sided, most gruesome game I've watched in pro DotA. Both deaths on VG's side were to neutral creeps, and Visage's death was completely intentional. I think that, in addition to just getting outdrafted, C9 were tilting really hard in this game after a pretty one-sided loss to VG in game 1. EE played like complete shit in game 2, and he's usually pretty decent - as much as I despise his fans, I think EE himself is a pretty decent player.

C9 in a nutshell - they kick ass all the way to the finals and then just get absolutely obliterated.

Why the hell isn't there an Ogre Magi announcer pack

Dunno, but I'm looking forward to the Bristleback announcer. He might finally replace the Defense Grid announcer.

Likewise with Battlefury on PA. If you can get Treads-Aquila-BF, BKB follows roughly 4-5 minutes afterwards with good farming patterns. Couple that with lvl 11 ult and you're jumping around, impossible to lock down, 1-shotting people at 25 minutes because you've got a fuck-ton more farm than they have and you crit for 800-1k already.

Cool, you can crit that hard with Desolator at 15 minutes. If you have lvl 11 and Desolator at 15 minutes, you can literally one-shot supports and even most non-Centy/Tide/etc cores on a crit. Deso also costs about 1000 gold less than Bfury so you're virtually guaranteed to get it faster than Bfury, even if we assume freefarm speed on the Bfury (typically around 16-18 mins, which would make Deso like... fucking 12-14 mins.)

A. Get it in games where you're under enough pressure that your Battlefury timing is either going to be late, or you need a BKB at around the same timing you'd normally get your Battlefury even with relatively uncontested farm. You don't fucking play BF PA against a Pugna/Lesh/Tide lineup that just walks at your towers from minute 10 - that's when you get a BKB as your first major item and pray to fucking God it works out.

sup Omniknight. Oh, what's that? Enemy team is 100% reliant on shit blocked by BKB? And there's a hero that can give you a 12 sec BKB on virtually no cooldown like 10 minutes into the game? Really!? It's almost like spending 4500 gold on a shitty item is a bad idea when you can do something like that.

B. Can't lane or farm if their lives depended on it, get Battlefury at 25 minutes and think that's an even remotely acceptable timing, and then proceed to do absolutely nothing with said Battlefury because their farming patterns look like an epileptic having a stroke while strapped into an electric chair.

You'll still do better with Deso. You don't need to afk farm as PA (afk until you get Bfury, then afk until you have BKB+Basher+HotD because you're useless with just boots+bfury, suddenly 20 mins later you can actually fight!) and Deso makes Roshan, ancients, and towers ez.

And for the record, you know what happens when you go Vlad's Deso instead of getting a BKB and try to fight with that build against players who aren't idiots? The inevitable, ever-present Lina/Lion/etc gives you one mean glare and you're stuck waiting 45 seconds to respawn because you have 900 HP and no magic immunity.

Know what happens when that Lina or Lion pops up when you spent your 4500 gold on a Battlefury and you haven't farmed up your BKB yet? Yup, same exact result! Except Deso PA can literally one-shot core Lina or core Lion while Bfury PA can't.

The only (major) reason to build BF over other damage items is to farm stacks. For less moniez you can get Desolator, which allows you to 1 shot people, or for 1k more gold you can get abyssal that allows you to duel and 1 shot people.
Arguably it's a good item when enemy have problematic heroes like DK, you don't want to hit DK (aka - waste crits) and even Deso won't help you to burst him faster. But with BF single crit on Solar Crested Dazzle can cleave DK into serious troubles.

I personally think that treads + basil is all PA needs for early game, then vlad/helm for sustain, deso/abyssal for fighting and bkb for late/mid game fighting

Yes. You don't need BKB for the first 25-30 mins of the game if you play her intelligently. 1200 range daggers that can crit because volvo pls, 1k range blink, and pretty much no cooldown on either or significant mana cost. Be patient. Hang back, wait for the first round of disables to fly out, wait for an enemy to be out of position (or until you outskill them by critting them with a dagger for 2/3 their health because icefraud balans), then you jump in. PA is basically all about picking people off and cleaning up fights for the first 30 mins of the game. And if you build her right, the game ends at 35-40 mins so really, that's what she's about all game.

If you want someone that can charge in and manfight, there are way better choices (I like Sven or Leoric.)

PA loses the game the second the enemy carry gets a MKB, which means she has to end it before then.

Silver Edge is even worse. It's so easy to force PA into an unwinnable situation once your team has Silver Edge, Halberd, sheeper, etc. Hit her with Silver Edge and she either has to manta out of it (if it's not on cd, which means she has to hold onto it for the purge and can't be using it to siege or for damage etc) or BKB out of it. If she BKBs, stay alive for 5 sec and then fuck her with halberd, sheeper, etc. If she doesn't BKB or manta, Silver Edge basically makes her a weak melee creep. The order can be reversed, too.

And this doesn't go into actually picking against her. Shadow Demon fucks her out of the entire game, but that hero is OP as fuck now anyway (seriously his Agh's is way too much.) Rexxar fucks her almost as bad, with shout having almost no cd once he has Agh's and basically guaranteeing she doesn't get to actually use her BKB, and boar poison slows through BKB etc.

this is very important and cannot be stressed enough

its hard to play bad when you have more items than your opponent

early on in a game, the jungle is usually underutilized. even if you can't clear the camps as a support hero, stacking camps is literally free gold. see: no tidehunter when they still had eternalenvy, that guy spent half of his games running around stacking.
when the jungle starts getting cleared every minute, there are plenty of creepwaves going unfarmed.

with that said, there are definitely games where you should not be hitting creeps.

It's definitely the biggest stumbling block for me. I try to look at replays and figure out if I should've been off killing those creeps or if I should've pushed with my team. It's a lot easier to determine which was the correct choice when I watch my in-house games, but in pubs... man, pubs are so fucking disorganized I find I have much better success literally muting everyone else in the game and completely ignoring my team for the entirety of the game. I only show up to fight if I feel like it, otherwise I'm farming and pushing, regardless of my hero.

[Jester Joe]

Dunno, but I'm looking forward to the Bristleback announcer. He might finally replace the Defense Grid announcer.

Currently I only own the Stanley Parable announcer, but the Defense Grid one definitely does have like, the top voice at least.

[StrawberryZebra]

It's that you fucking suck at hitting creeps in large amounts. That's what's holding you back. Like I see people who can't understand why they can't break 4k with 150 CS at 40 minutes and it just makes me want to take a knife to my eyes, man. HIT. THE FUCKING. CREEPS. And then hit them some more.

In general, I'd say everyone could use more practice when it comes to actual mechanical skills. And even more practice when it comes to good farming habits and patterns. Getting more gold means you win more games, its that simple. Working on how to get that gold is something that's far too often overlooked and under appreciated, probably because there are no flashy plays associated with it.

This I can agree with, #1 thing most support players need to learn. Even at 5k nobody ever stacks anything for anybody except themselves, so much wasted potential. Even when you have a hero like Sven Gyro or Magnus + anything melee, supports still can't be bothered to even stack ancients. I think watching the clock is hard for people.

The actual act of stacking the Ancient camp is easy enough for most people. Where they struggle is getting to it in the right sort of time frame. Get there too early, and you're stood around wasting time you could do something else with. Get there too late and you might as well not have bothered to make the trip at all. But I can forgive supports for having more important things they could be doing at any given time. I find it really hard to come up with excuses why carries with Helm of the Dominator aren't stacking it for themselves. You can do it from anywhere on the map, while farming elsewhere or pushing towers it doesn't matter. The creep you get is the best part of the item and so often it goes totally unused.

[Lysah]

I think the issue is that support players are usually also bad at farming, because they never practice it. So the idea of stacking just doesn't occur to them, their attention is never on maximizing gold gain but on other things instead. The idea that you would stack ancients and maybe a hard camp 4 times so that your mid Sven goes from blink to blink and BKB in the span of 3 minutes is just too much for some.