[Megathread] DotA 2

[Lysah]

I'm not sure about the BS vs QoP mid. Haven't played that setup in ages but buying PMS seems like a heavy investment. And no, past level 6 QoP is quite strong in rune control due to her having the ability to push the lane before rune spawns.

What you are forgetting is that BS is also kept out of the fight if the Rubick doesn't show himself because Bloodseeker is pretty much useless outside of his Rupture. And spell steal has same range as Rupture. And so what if you Rupture the Rubick if he is standing behind his team? Not like you can go on him and not like he has to move, he is already in a good position.

If Rubick steals a spell like Ravage or Black Hole that requires him to run into the middle of your team, how is rupture going to do anything but completely stop him?

[PizzaSHARK]

If Rubick steals a spell like Ravage or Black Hole that requires him to run into the middle of your team, how is rupture going to do anything but completely stop him?

noob tp counters rupture

[Lysah]

noob tp counters rupture

TP counters everything - just wait for Sven to stun and TP out LOL he can't do anything nerf TP scroll

[Hermanni]

noob tp counters rupture

hehe funny comment though i think i saw this one b4

Are you fucking stupid?

[PizzaSHARK]

hehe funny comment though i think i saw this one b4

Are you fucking stupid?

Easy there, buddy. Your sense of humor seems to be missing.

[Longview]

Easy there, buddy. Your sense of humor seems to be missing.

if i had to rate the joke it'd be right up there with some of my favourite jokes including putting Descartes before the whores and the one where the baby seal walks into a club

quality humor 9.2/10.0

on the real though, Team Liquid goes up against Fnatic.EU in the loser bracket final of the Defense 4 in one hour and thirty minutes after this post

casted by mister tobiwan

should be a fantastic bo3 I'd recommend watching it if you care

[Demidov]

You guys got any tips for playing Dazzle? I've been getting into him a lot lately, and he's great fun.

http://dotabuff.com/players/95713528/matches

I like getting phase over arcane boots, as mostly someone else would get them and extra mobility from it helps me with positioning, medallion over urn and drums/mek depending on the match. Anything you guys would change, skill build wise too? Don't expect the matches to be anything good either, they are all medium~high skill bracket, no very high here(maybe eventually :P)

[Longview]

You guys got any tips for playing Dazzle? I've been getting into him a lot lately, and he's great fun.

Dazzle is the hero I "mained" (for lack of a better word) while learning to properly play the game. Few key things as I'm in a hurry (I'll gladly give you more specific tips and pointers later if you're interested):

• Poison Touch has an invisible mini-stun on impact that will cancel channeling spells (and TP scrolls!) on all levels
• Shadow Weave is physical, and will damage and heal magic immune targets
• Poison Touch DoT is also physical, and will thus damage through magic immunity (won't stun, though)
• Use Weave on whatever team is pushing
• If your team has more physical damage, use Weave on your team (and vice versa)
• Shallow Grave can be used on illusions for confusing your opponents (and killing people with Dark Seer wall illusions (SingSing died once as carry tiny due to this, it's probably on youtube))
• Don't mindlessly heal targets that are under Shallow Grave, save it for when the effect ends (circle hits the ground)
• Shallow Grave+TP scroll will get you out of most situations

Keep in mind that Dazzle is hopelessly level-dependent and I'd advise against ever running him in a tri-lane. He's not too shabby of an off-laner if you aren't up against dual-disable or reliable stun+burst combos. If you want replays of my slightly-above-average gameplay here's a game where I won solo against Slardar+Zeus and here's a game where I fed like crazy against Lion+Huskar.

Try carry Dazzle mid if you ever get the opportunity, it is great fun. I know TC of Team Liquid has played it a few times on his stream (example).

[Lysah]

singsing

"Holy fuck that's next level!"
I laughed. Probably a move I wouldn't have thought of, pro dazzle.

My main tip for Dazzle play - you CAN solo a lane and do it well. Dazzle is very powerful with early levels and his spells hurt A LOT. Don't be afraid to heal your creep wave if an enemy melee carry goes in to last hit - you will screw up his last hit and hit for a hundred or more health even in the first few levels. Even if you push the lane you can do enough damage to the enemy hero to make up for it. Playing like you're a hide-in-the-back crystal maiden is not the Dazzle that scares people.

[PizzaSHARK]

"Holy fuck that's next level!"
I laughed. Probably a move I wouldn't have thought of, pro dazzle.

My main tip for Dazzle play - you CAN solo a lane and do it well. Dazzle is very powerful with early levels and his spells hurt A LOT. Don't be afraid to heal your creep wave if an enemy melee carry goes in to last hit - you will screw up his last hit and hit for a hundred or more health even in the first few levels. Even if you push the lane you can do enough damage to the enemy hero to make up for it. Playing like you're a hide-in-the-back crystal maiden is not the Dazzle that scares people.

Dazzle can play like a poor man's QoP with Poison Touch spam. Especially once you finish Medallion, that spell actually starts to hurt, especially on low armor ints and strength.

[yesty375]

wow i got to learn so much from the thread including the next level dazzle. but here's my concern: I would like to improve my map awareness on every game and I want to improve my ganking ability, you know decision-making kind of stuff. i hope you could help me since i want to be better on DOTA2

[Hermanni]

wow i got to learn so much from the thread including the next level dazzle. but here's my concern: I would like to improve my map awareness on every game and I want to improve my ganking ability, you know decision-making kind of stuff. i hope you could help me since i want to be better on DOTA2

Posted this before, but what I did in my early days of WC3 DotA was looking at replays to improve map awareness. When you get ganked a lot just load up the replay, disable enemy vision and watch yourself play while keeping an eye on the minimap. Could you have seen the enemy hero leave the lane, or predicted incoming gank and positioned better? Learning from mistakes is one of the more efficient ways, and watching yourself happily sit in the lane half a minute after Nightstalker left his lane is a pretty solid lesson.

Besides that, just try to develop a routine at the start of the game to assess what heroes enemy team has and where they're all laning and if someone is jungling. You'll have less nasty surprises. Then try to develop another routine of glancing at your minimap every n seconds and seeing if the scarier heroes are still there.

[yesty375]

thanks for the advice i believe watching my own replays could give me more knowledge on where i should approved so tyvm i would search for those posts btw since at first i didn't know. and for map awareness i can't imagine how good players are while playing syllabear and still having great map awareness. crazy

[PizzaSHARK]

Besides that, just try to develop a routine at the start of the game to assess what heroes enemy team has and where they're all laning and if someone is jungling. You'll have less nasty surprises. Then try to develop another routine of glancing at your minimap every n seconds and seeing if the scarier heroes are still there.

I feel this is a major dividing factor between the average carry and the above-average carry. Average carries will miss out on a lot of farm because they're too afraid to go more than X distance from their t2 tower. An above-average carry will be watching the map, and if that scary Night Stalker is visible, he knows he's safe to farm the lane he's in.

I know my farm as a carry increased considerably once I picked up that trick, anyway. You still need wards, but if you have a ward watching your jungle entrances, you can safely farm your team's safe lane if that nasty ganker is on the other side of the map or is otherwise visible and not heading your way. Feels particularly important for getting a little bit of farm and XP as a support when the enemy has a hero like Nyx or BH on their team - if you just saw them in bot, you can safely farm top for several seconds.

Oh, and wards are necessary. If your team's supports suck and don't buy them, buy them yourself. 150 gold for wards is only 3 creep kills; you lose a lot more gold (not to mention XP) by being dead for 30 seconds.

[Morally Grey Storm]

I feel this is a major dividing factor between the average carry and the above-average carry. Average carries will miss out on a lot of farm because they're too afraid to go more than X distance from their t2 tower. An above-average carry will be watching the map, and if that scary Night Stalker is visible, he knows he's safe to farm the lane he's in.

I know my farm as a carry increased considerably once I picked up that trick, anyway. You still need wards, but if you have a ward watching your jungle entrances, you can safely farm your team's safe lane if that nasty ganker is on the other side of the map or is otherwise visible and not heading your way. Feels particularly important for getting a little bit of farm and XP as a support when the enemy has a hero like Nyx or BH on their team - if you just saw them in bot, you can safely farm top for several seconds.

Oh, and wards are necessary. If your team's supports suck and don't buy them, buy them yourself. 150 gold for wards is only 3 creep kills; you lose a lot more gold (not to mention XP) by being dead for 30 seconds.

well here lies one of the main problems: its next to impossible to make your teammates buy wards/counterwards\dust if you cant afford them yourself.
Its not like I'm a Necro with 1\3\7 k-d-a and I was on bot with our main carry who farmed literally everything, I'm still supposed to buy wards when all I have is boots and few branches.

[Lysah]

Most ints have a method of farming the jungle, even a camp or two will buy you wards. Too often I see supports just standing next to a tower doing nothing when they could be farming up a set of wards or ganking (assist gold is also a set of wards). Newer players are especially guilty of this, they don't know what they should be doing so they just run around the map following teammates and doing nothing, wasting potential gold.

[Faldric]

Its not like I'm a Necro with 1\3\7 k-d-a and I was on bot with our main carry who farmed literally everything, I'm still supposed to buy wards when all I have is boots and few branches.

Go to the 2 jungle camps near the lane, clear them out with death pulse and regen with Sadist. Dont see the problem.

[PizzaSHARK]

well here lies one of the main problems: its next to impossible to make your teammates buy wards/counterwards\dust if you cant afford them yourself.
Its not like I'm a Necro with 1\3\7 k-d-a and I was on bot with our main carry who farmed literally everything, I'm still supposed to buy wards when all I have is boots and few branches.

You have to figure out how to make it work. Supports can farm easy camp pretty, uh, easily and it's most of a set of wards. Stack/pull, roam for ganks, etc. The pros make it work, so obviously we're the problem, not the game

[Hermanni]

well here lies one of the main problems: its next to impossible to make your teammates buy wards/counterwards\dust if you cant afford them yourself.
Its not like I'm a Necro with 1\3\7 k-d-a and I was on bot with our main carry who farmed literally everything, I'm still supposed to buy wards when all I have is boots and few branches.

The two main problems would be that saying "i was at top/bot" doesn't say much if you don't state which side you were playing, and that as Necro you should be a carry unless you were playing AR. But on a serious note, if you actually have space to try to find some farm on Necrolyte, you could level Heartstopper since you won't be taking lasthits in the lane and stack some jungle camps and whittle them down with the aura when you've nothing better to do.

The key to having enough gold as a support is to not waste it, and knowing when you have to be selfish and find farm and XP. If you're behind a lot, you should try to look for an empty lane and go there, even if it means you might miss out on a gank or small skirmish somewhere else. If you're level 4 Windrunner 9 minutes into a game chances are you won't be contributing much to that tower push the rest of your team are doing, so you might as well defend another tower from creep push. Just a minute or two alone on a lane can get you back in the game.

Don't waste wards. This is what Lysah already said a few times in this thread, but you need to consider where you need vision instead of arbitrarily smacking wards at your favorite spots or wherever some guide told you to. Wards come in twos, but if you don't need to ward 2 spots just save the other one for later instead of putting it to some useless spot. Especially when playing Radiant side some people absolutely love warding that cliff between mid and bot lane for no good reason. You ward it when enemy are pushing into your base, but not when you need to be in a position to at least control your own safe lane and jungle.

Don't make bad purchases. This is what a few of my friends do too often, they say 4 minutes into a game that they don't have gold to upgrade courier or buy a TP or whatever and then I look at their inventory and they have a completed Wand and 5 empty slots. Or a Bracer. Upgrading from Stick to Wand isn't that huge, you can just leave your extra branches somewhere. Use your item slots and aim to get boots before redundancies.

Don't waste TP scrolls. If you aren't immediately needed at lane after you died or went to regenerate, walk there instead of using 135 gold and putting your TP on cooldown. Same goes to returning to base early on.

edit: stupid lanes

[Longview]

as Necro you should be a carry

can we please not go through this again