Dota 2 Discussion thread

I mean in pro scenes, they give all safe lane gold and XP to the carry hero and let the supports stack up the neutral creeps. I play KOTL as a lane dominator, and he is.

 

Welps, I gave good ol Ezalor a try last night and, just with my luck, had a horrible team. My buddy and I queued together (me as KOTL and him as Warlock) and our team was Ogre/Viper/Spectre. It was a good setup....only if the players knew how to play them. We went against an Invoker/Drow/Pudge/Sniper/(forgot who their 5th was). Me and my buddy laned against Drow and Sniper and we did really well against them. Warlock got some good fatal bonds in and I got in some good Illuminates and we practically won our lane. But the game went to because our bot lane Spectre/Ogre. They fed so hard and during teamfights, Ogre was our main initiator, but he was scared and he didn't get off any good stuns. Our Spectre was real slow on her farm and our Viper was pinging for fights way across the map when we were no where near him and he'd rage that we were late. Gotta love getting into a ragefest. Anyways, we lost that real fast. I wanna play more KOTL though...he was fun to play nonetheless.

After that game, I had to redeem myself and get in a few wins before I stopped playing. Next game was an AR game as Bane. Our whole team dominated and the other team rage quit. Next game was as Kunkka. That was a good game for me, but the Ursa laning with me was raging at me for not levelling X-marks the spot, saying that it would lead to us dominating our lane. I went Tidebringer for the harass to keep Disruptor and Slardar away and Torrent because Ursa was ballsy as hell and kept trying to fight when it wasn't in our advantage. My torrent saved him a ton of times and I had 2 kills at this point and he still raged at me for not levelling X-marks. Then he raged-quit and we just followed after.

Next game was single draft and I went as Veno. Man, that game was weird as hell. I was in a 4-stack with some buddies and one of them picked Ursa. The last guy in our team who wasnt in our stack, ended up picking Naix. Not bad, because Naix can lane effectively, so I told him to lane with me as our Ursa called jungle first. Nope. He ended starting his build off with Gloves of Haste and went straight to the jungle with Ursa. (O_O). Our Ursa had no choice but to go solo top and I went bot with Omni against Tusk/Cent. Our lane was pretty even, regarding fights, but I was able to harass to lower their HP and keep them away. Then our Naix buys Blades of Attack as his next item. LOLWUT. After that, he got Boots, almost died in the jungle, and then got another gloves of haste. At this point we were about to all rage-quit, but we were winning our fights 4v5 without him. Surprisingly, very much surprisingly, he got the some right items afterwards Treads/Armlet/Mjollnir and once he started joining the fights, we dominated.

Interesting games....

 

Jumped into an AR game last night, got Lich, but switched my buddy who got Shadow Demon and I finally got a win with Shadow Demon! He was teh very first hero I tried to play, but my noobness at the time didn't know how to play him properly so I haven't played him since. Tried him a few times lately and still couldn't win until last night.

The draft didnt look to be in our favor (Lich/Shadow Demon/Gyro/Batrider/Jug) versus (Magnus/Bloodseeker/AA/Beastmaster/forgot the 5th) as we didn't really have a tank/initiator, but we surprisingly did well. The BM I laned against was really ballsy and didn't buy any regen (went boots first), so I knew if he overextended, me and batrider could get him early. Caught him out of position and my illusions were just too strong. The whole game went well for us. I got off some good disruption combos (disrupt + purge + poison stacks) and was able finished people off with 3-4 stacks of poison. I didn't die the whole game until we decided to jump in their fountain at the end. Fun game.

 

Must...save......from.....the thread.....abysssssssssssssssss...

Naix bombs. They're fun =). Especially when someone tries to gank a 'solo' hero. Then BOOOOM. Hello, I'm Naix. Nice to meet your face.

Had a good Razor game last night. Laned against a Tiny and Puck. Puck's orb really kept me on my toes to keep moving around and not staying in a single spot or moving in a straight line, which helped me dodge some of Tiny's avalanche. Went Phase/Mek/Eul's/Butterfly/Heart. Pretty much after Mek, I became too strong for them to take 1v1. After Eul's, 2v1 was cake. Our PA also got in some free farm and was probably the fastest I've seen yet. Our Rubick had some good spell steals and he had some pretty pro hooks, better hooks than the Pudge we played against. Our Necro was practically tank (or at least it seemed so because they always FF'd him in every engagement...lol).

 

Naix bomb, lol. My friend calls the combo where Naix infests Spiritbreaker , the Spirit Bomb.

 

forget naix and SB, try naix ursa and wisp.

replace ursa with any mega DPS hero.

 

Naix and Storm Spirit can be considered a spirit bomb, too. Naix + Spectre can be nice too. Did a Naix/Spectre and a Naix/PL last night. Good times.

But damn a Naix + (insert mega DPS here) + Wisp = a terrifying time. I wanna try that some time, but I need to find a friend who can play Wisp well. None of my friends can play Wisp except for one guy, but he hardly comes on.

 

I forgot how beasty Necrolyte can be. Went something like 17/2/20 with phase/mek/pipe/shivas/heart. There was a point where I went 1v3 and won. Haha. Me and Lion went bot where 2 enemies, Huskar and Tusk were. Lion died almost instantly to Huskar. So I just ulti'd Huskar. Took on tusk quite easily. Got out of his icewall, kited him with my Q and right clicks, and heartstopper aura got him. Then PL came along and I just did the kiting thing again, popped Mek, eventually got him. I think it helped that there were Dire creep there to get last hits for Sadist to help me get mana and hp back during the fight.

 

Necrolyte is awesome, just really hate his atk animation, gotta be one of the worse in the game. Starting with a blade of atk really helps though.

 

Can I ask some REALLY newbie questions?
1) What are the preferred methods of playing the game with a mouse and keyboard? Like, right now I move the screen with my mouse and activate my abilities/items with whatever the default is (Q,E,X, etc.), but it feels much better to move the screen with the arrow keys with my left hand, but then I'm so far away from my ability/item keys! GAH! How do you guys do it?

2) How do I know which lane to go down? Does it depend on my hero or his/her role?

 

lane is somewhat dependent on hero. some heroes are better in a certain place at the start of a match.
I use the mouse to move around the screen, you can adjust the sensitivity in options to make it more comfortable. left hand is for hot keys for abilities.

 

1) The way I do it is I just move the screen with my mouse and then use the default QWER for abilities and then I have my items keybound to my number pad so I can use my Razer Naga's side buttons for items. If you wanna move the screen with the arrow keys, I'd suggest getting a Razer Naga or something that has multiple side buttons (Naga has 12 side buttons) for yoru abilities and items. If not, just keep donig it the way you're doing and eventually you'll get used to it.

2) Like Tree Burner has said, lane isn't 100% dependent on the hero, it's just that some heroes do better in certain lanes. In some cases, you can modify your team line-up to adjust to certain heroes getting picked. For example, say two people in your team randomed and got Tinker and Drow. Those two are strong heroes for the mid lane. Now there's a couple things that can be changed to help with that. One of them goes mid, the other goes solo safe lane, while 2 go in long lane and the other goes to jungle (assuming you picked a hero effective at jungling).

 

Ahh I see. Me being a new player, I think I'll just continue to ask my team which lane I should go down (except sometimes nobody talks the entire game, which is weird to me :/ ).

 

Isn't the long lane considered the safe lane?

 

short lane is safe. long lane presents more opportunities to get ganked. so it's the hard lane.

 

?

Short lane means you fight further away from your tower, hence easier to get ganked (you fight near the enemy jungle). Hence its the suicide lane.

 

Yeah, I've always thought of it in the terms nihar presented. On the long lane, the creeps take longer to reach your tower, so they'll meet the enemy creep waves closer, relatively, to your own tower. Assuming you keep equilibrium with last hits/denies, the creep battles will take place closer. And since you're closer to your own tower, you have a safe zone if they try to dive you.

Also, isn't it if the creeps start to push to far, you can use your own jungle to divert your creeps away for a few moments and reestablish favorable equilibrium closer to your tower.

 

I was thinking in terms of short lane= creeps closer to tower. *warning* I may be crazy.

 

Cray-cray.

Troublehshooting: Sometimes when I want to try a hero I haven't played yet I'll fire up a bot practice game. However, every single time I've tried, at a random time in the session the game will freeze and requires ctrl-alt-dlt to get out of. Happens for any hero I play, any team composition. Hardware is fine and I've verified my files through Steam.


Also: The new models look really good for Vengeful Spirit.

 

Meh, lower level dota is really stupid. People will farm jungle WHOLE game, not move an inch.

Any items work on any hero, all that matters is getting kills.

I'm only starting to get back into it, but play with a sympathetic friend initially as much as u can.

 

Short lane does equal safe lane. Long lane means there's more distance between your tower to theirs so its easier to be gank and also no pull camp to control the wave , thats why its known as the suicide lane.

 

Before we let this get outta hand...

Do you refer to radiant bottom lane as safe?

In that case, the distance from the tier 3 tower on bot to the radiant ancient is LONGER than the distance on top.

Hence long lane = safe.

 

I've always reffered to the bottom and top edges of the map as "short lane" because the creeps start closer to the tower. The right and left sides are "long" because you have to walk farther from the tower to be in the action. Pretty sure every knows that top for scourge and bottom for sentinel is "safe". (I guess that's dire and radiant now)

 

To clarify the safe lane for Radiant is bottom, while for Dire it is top. This is how it is refer on on every dota forum. Safe lane and long lane are two different things and this is pretty how

Give this a quick read - http://www.playdota.com/learn/lanes

 

According to the linked article:

 

^^^

I looked at Dota wiki, and whilst the definition that I put up was probably the more 'easier' definition to answer, I've seen some guys use this defn as well - i.e. long/short refer to the line of the CREEP EQUILIBRIUM - hence 'short' means the the creep line is closer to your tower, and so is the safe lane. But IMO that is completely idiotic hahahaha

 

Crystal Maiden is even worse due to her dismal agility gain.

Necrolyte is really situational, and given the way the game is it is, no way he would fit in. Sure he can be a mek carrier, but he really has no escape or decent abilities and he is pretty slow. Burning even did a carry Necrolyte without success. Chen is a much better hero, giving you a hero who can siege towers at all points in the game, can easily build mek because he is a jungler, as well has a global heal.

Think of it this way, "long" lane is safe lane. The creeps have to walk longer and thus the enemies are coming onto your side. Short lane or "suicide" lane is you walk shorter to enemy tower.

I hope the game changes soon, I am REALLY tired of seeing Naix as a semi-carry/carry, he really isn't hard to deal with. Throw in a Shadow Demon or a Beastmaster or Bane, and you have all the lockdown you need. And if I see another pro player do Drums + Phase boots, I also will smack somebody in the face, phase boots or drums + treads, additional movespeed won't stop Naix from being kited if you have an ultimate that goes through magic immunity. Drums slows down Armlet, Desolator, Mjollinar, Dadelus, etc.

 

I don't know about you, but I find the pro-western scene generally pretty boring.

SEA is a different beast altogether, China as well but its difficult to find decent streams for non-mandarin/canto speakers.

 

It's just sad to see people @ 20 minutes with Drums + Phase and not have Armlet completed yet.

Pro western scene is boring, it's all the same heroes; Keeper, Shadow Demon, Rubick, Enchanress, Lina, Leshrac support; Luna, PL, AM, Void, Lone Druid hard carry; Nightstalker, Lifestealer semi-carry; Batrider, Dark Seer, Bounty, Enigma, Magnus off lane.

SEA is a different beast, but too inconsistent. On one hand, you have teams like Orange, MiTH, Zenith and well known Dota 2 teams, and you got alot of smaller lesser known teams.

China there are many more actual competitive teams, but they hardly stream and just pub Dota, it's not hard catching them pub at like 2-3 am. I'll usually watch YYF or Ferrari pubbing late at night.

 

Played a fun game with clockwerk last night. perfect at murdering solo heroes, their whole team was grouping up after about 15 minutes giving my team free reign while I picked off anyone who tried to interfere. went 13-3-14

 

This whole lane discussion is hurting my mind early this morning! hahaha. (sorry for the long post....I don't really wanna do any work at work this morning)

The think with how that playdota article describes it, they describe it with respect to the opposing team. So from the Radiant perspective, the long lane would be the bot lane because it's the longer lane for the Dire. Short lane would the top because it's shorters for the dire.

In general, I think the community commonly refers to the Radiant bottom lane and the Dire top lane to be the "safe lanes" and the Radiant top lane/Dire bottom lane to be the "suicide/hard/off lanes."

I know I said "long lane" in my post on the previous page, but I'm still under the thinking that short = safe and long = suicide/hard/off. I'll probably just start referring to them in the latter just to avoid confusion in the future.

Anyways, played a nice warlock game and a nice centaur game the other day. It's funny because in both games, my teammates were ing at each other, calling each other names and stuff, but we still ended up doing really well. In my warlock game, it was a 3 stack from this team M-5 and then me and our mirana. Someone from the team M-5 wanted mirana top, but she stayed mid. They harassed and said that she was a noob and dumb for not listening to them, but she did ok mid and had a couple successful ganks. Our teamfights ended up being stronger and we ended up winning, went like 5/1/19 and was able to get refresher/mek/manaboots even though I bought cour/flying cour/wards all game.

In that centaur game, we had a pretty y Io player. Our team was Centaur/Io/Brew/Dirge/Lich and the Radiant was Ursa/Lina/AM/Magnus/BS, so we had to own early because we definitely would have lost late game. Even though we had that whiny Io player, we still ended up doing really well. Probably one of the better teammates I've had because we knew we had to push and pressure early and we wanted to end the game before 45 minutes, which is usually when strong carries tend to get stronger. But yeah, we stayed aggressive the whole game, roaming and ganking and TPing and pushing and we ended up with the win.

 

Had a very awkward game as Centaur the other day. I had the weirdest item build. I noticed during fights, the opponents would all-out DPS me, pretty much staying true to being a tank, while my teammates cleaned everyone up. It got to a point where after treads, I had no idea where I wanted to go. I originally go hood first, but I accidentally bought a vit booster and since I had a stout shield on me, it turned into a vanguard [._.]. Oh well. Then I was like whatever, now I'll just build a hood, so I bought cloak first. Then somewhere down the road, I forgot what I was building and bought a blink. Didn't realize it till wayyy later after I decided to build a heart and got a vit booster taht I didnt finish hood. Haha. So I ended the game with treads/blink/vanguard/cloak/wand/vitbooster.

Still ended up super tanky, though, just a weird item build. There was a point where I was solo pushing their bot tower and their brewmaster and WR came to defend, I ran through their base, ran out through their mid and I still survived. Wand charges, one stun, and my ult came off cooldown at the right time.

 

There's nothing wrong with Vanguard on Centaur, gives him more ridiculous HP regeneration (usually pipe/hood first things to get on him), but also gives block chance and a decent chunk of HP. Remember Vanguard is probably one of the easiest mid game items to purchase and buy, especially for tanky strength heroes. Usually you'll want to get blademail after vanguard/hood/pipe, be even tankier then go for Heart. Remember, you WANT the enemy team focusing you, you should never focus tank heroes, but the squishy supports/carry heroes. It's always funny people focus firing Pudge or Chaos Knight or Axe in fight, then wonder why they get obliterated in team fights.

 

Never said there was anything wrong with vanguard on him, just I wasn't planning to get it and then I unintentionally got it. Haha. It's pretty fun to be Centaur. Heart + Blade Mail + Double Edge makes him hilariously fun to tank with.

 

Anybody know how to play Naga, and what builds to go for. I tried her out recently after not playing her since wc3 when she still have passive crit. She doesn't really feel like a carry anymore, more of a pusher and using her ult to set up for team fights.

 

amazing brah

 

She can be a carry, but in this metagame, she is an initiator/tank hero. Personally I do how I see iceiceice play her, go Soul Ring/Tranquil boots, rush Radiance, Diffusal Blade, Heart of Tarrasque. Same build as I do on Phantom Lancer, heroes that spam out spells but don't have the mana pool to do so.

Unfortunately Naga's base damage is so bad now, and they rescaled Riptide with a diminishing cooldown per level, she has completely dropped off after TI2. And most people play Naga Siren completely wrong, Sing should NEVER be used defensively unless you have taken Roshan for free (which Empire and I believe another European team has done so). But if you use Naga ultimate defensively all game, you lose. It's the ultimate setup spell, only thwarted by magic immunity.

Such a pity Centaur doesn't have Berserker's Call from Axe. Unfortunately most teams try to focus Centaur when you are supposed to do the exact opposite which is to ignore him. Personally all you need on Cent is Pipe, a tanky HP item like Vanguard or Heart and a Blink Dagger. Anything else IMO is detrimental to your team as you are taking away farm from in which they can use.

 

That's pretty much it. There was one game where I only had blink, treads, and heart and everything clicked. That's all I was really able to buy because eveything else was spent on wards and dust and gem. Aside from that, I was able to set up things for my team with blink stuns and stayed tanky enough to tank while everyone else cleaned up. One of my favorite melee heroes to play.

Any of you play nyx? How do you guys build/play him? I played him in a few bot games yesterday. First game I was bot with huskar, so I just tried to support Huskar whenever he needed it. Other than that, stack-pulled when needed and once I hit 6 and got dagon, I just started roaming. Worked out. Was able to get Dagon 5 and then manaboots quickly. Went like 12/2/XX. Next game, I had to play mid against a drow. Rushed bottle and with how ballsy the bots get, I was able to get a few early kills on Drow. Did the same and got brown boots and then rushed dagon 5 and then manaboots. Did well again, around 10/3/XX, but we lost the game due to a noob Lina (destroys a DD that she walked by instead of getting it herself and not using ult during teamfights) and Rambo-ing Sven (ran into teamfights without us being anywhere nearby).

 

Nyx build is REALLY dependent on where you stick him and who you are up against. Personally I play Nyx mid and I usually do tango, salve, mantle of intelligence, circlet and rest clarity potions. I usually finish null talisman, bottle, then mana boots, then focus on Dagon. After Dagon 2-3, I'll usually go for Linkens Sphere and if I get REALLY farmed, Eth Blade. As for skill build, I usually do impale first, but if it like QOP or Invoker mid, I'll actually level mana burn first. Then at least get 1 level of spiked carapice, but it kinda sucks of Nyx as they just rescaled the cooldown and the spike duration. The biggest thing of Nyx is timing, you'll want to hit 2-3 people with an impale during a team fight. Also spiked carapice requires decent timing.

 

Think NA is best as solo mid so he can get lvls quick and then roam and gank. I dont think you should ever get a Lvl 5 Dagon unless your are just straight up dominating the other team or the other team is extremely squishy. You need a disable for late game. I think Nyx is one of the most broken heroes currently, if you don't buy sentries against him hes just gonna snowball out of control. And even if the other team does buy sentries, you are making the support spend extra gold on wards taking away from any items they need to buy. You change the game by just picking 1 hero, kinda broken imo. I mean I have 75% win rate with the hero, and I'm barely decent at him.

 

Most heroes can cause the whole plan to change cause of one hero. you're going to change your tactics based on a lot of things.

 

Ahhh yeah. Nyx is one of those heroes that really put the opposing team on edge so much that they have to focus the team's direction towards him.

Just got out of a CK game. Rough start, died twice (stupid Dirge's zombie tower) in laning, but once teamfights started happening, I started coming back around. Went treads/wand/bracers/armlet/manta/bkb, but by the time I had BKB, game was practically over. Too many strong illusions =)

BTW City, I was spectating your match earlier as Magnus. A lot of pro blink RP skewers =). So good.

 

Depends on the role. notidehunter's S4 will play Nyx Assassin as a solo mid, to quickly get levels. Chinese and the rest of the of the EU teams minus mousesports will run him as an aggressive trilane support. Nyx is too imbalanced IMO, his kill potential is extremely high with decent coordination. Hence why Nyx is banned alot or first/second picked.

 

hey guys,
i have 18 dota2 keys to give away for free. if interested just send me a pm.

cheers

 

Went on an 8-9 game winning streak the past couple of days.....then I broke it with 2 losses yesterday.

Damn it to hell.

 

2 loses in a row is bad? Oh man, over the past 8-9 years that I played dota, I remember 10 games in a row loss streaks, where friends started to argue with each other out of frustration

 

Haha nah 2 losses isn't bad. It's just I was having the longest winning streak I've had since I started playing....and now it's over =(.

My losing streak far surpasses this winning streak. I was close to pulling an even WL ratio, too. lol.

 

Sorry City and Hime for not grouping with you guys! I had just gotten out of a stack with some random guys I made friends with a few days ago. Turns out that we were queuing in the South Africa servers.....I forgot how slow playing with ~200ms ping felt like.

First game, played as Lich because the Radiant team was all melee and the Lich beachbal seemed perfect. They had Centaur/Naix/Pudge/Rubick/Tiny and we had Lich/Necro/Templar/NS/SS. We honestly won early and mid game. Necro and I dominated Tiny/Centaur and we each had about 2 kills on them. SS did really well pushing, too. After midgame hit, I was telling them we should push and keep the pressure on them, we can't just farm up. Sure enough, our Necro stayed in jungle for so long (although, to his defense, he did farm up really fast getting treads/mek/atos/shivas super fast) and Templar keep trying to solo lane and kept getting picked off. That's when things fell off. Radiant eventually got super farmed and the Naix bombs just became too strong.

Second game, played as Lion. I played hard support, getting wards, courier, upgrading courier, stacking camps/ancients, TP supporting, all that. After early game and much of mid, my only items were brown boots and bracers. I died so many times, but had all the assists. Life of a hard support. We were on our way to losing that game (we were getting STOMPED), but suddenly the Dire started arguing with each other. Their Huskar and Pudge (they were from the same team) started accusing their Void for stealing huskar's items and evetually, Huskar and Pudge just AFK'd in teh fountain and even started giving away Void's position. Needless to say, we won that game. lol.

 

Related video:

X Marks the Spot - YouTube