Brannigan

DOTA 2

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Shopping: You can buy things away from base and they will enter your "stash" where they can be picked up by you or sent to you via courier. Don't lose an item you've farmed because you forgot to buy it.

Aghanim's Scepter: Don't quote me on the exact number, but about 1/3rd of the heroes in DotA can buy an item called Aghanim's Scepter. It costs 4200 gold, gives +10 to all three stats, and does something very important. You see the picture of Tiny carrying a tree I posted up there? That's his Aghanim's bonus. He permanently uproots a tree and carries it around, giving him cleave, an attack range boost, and slowing his attack speed. It's great, but unfortunately, if you ever buy an Aghanim's on Tiny, you're an idiot. There are heroes that can get Aghanim's that never should, and some that always should. Feel free to ask if you're not sure.

Is there a way to buy stuff from secret shops and store it in your stash? I think the closest I got to something similar was by flying the courier to the shop, buying the item and then flying the courier to me.

Also can you explain the steps one would take to tell if the Scepter would be a good upgrade. Is it simply just a look at what stats it boosts and what stats you need, combined with how good your ultimate upgrade is? How can you tell if an ultimate upgrade is bad?

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Is there a way to buy stuff from secret shops and store it in your stash? I think the closest I got to something similar was by flying the courier to the shop, buying the item and then flying the courier to me.

You cannot buy things from the secret shop without either you or the courier being there, no.

Also can you explain the steps one would take to tell if the Scepter would be a good upgrade. Is it simply just a look at what stats it boosts and what stats you need, combined with how good your ultimate upgrade is? How can you tell if an ultimate upgrade is bad?

It's kind of a toss-up whether or not Agahnim's is worth it. You should never buy it on a hero that DOESN'T receive an ultimate upgrade from it, of course. There are a few where it's generally not worth it unless you are literally swimming in gold...

Examples of a couple where it's pretty much mandatory, if the game goes on long enough: Earthshaker, Dark Seer.

Earthshaker's ultimate is one of the best initiations in the game, when combined with a Blink Dagger. It does damage based on the amount of units, friendly or hostile, that are in the area of effect surrounding Earthshaker. So it's really good against, say, Broodmother, or Nature's Prophet. The scepter increases damage enough to make it worth working toward, once you have your Blink Dagger. (Or so I'm told - I don't play Earthshaker.)

Dark Seer's ultimate can completely turn a game around, because it virtually doubles your attack power before the scepter, and triples it after the scepter. Before scepter, it puts down a wall that makes a copy of any enemy hero that walks through it, doing 90% of their autoattack damage. AFTER the scepter, it ALSO makes a copy of any FRIENDLY heroes. It is... fucking amazing.

There are also many heroes where it's really not necessary. Lich, for example, is better off spending money to better support the team. He goes for Mekansm first, then anywhere else from there that will help the team more.

Unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to know if it's worth it or not, other than experience and reading some guides.

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The only way to buy in absentia from the secret or side shop is a courier, so you were doing it correctly.

As for bad Aghanim's characters, it's really on a per-case basis. Bad characters for Aghanim's include... fuck it, here's who you get it and don't get it on.

Addendum A: In truth, all Scepter purchases are situational. Any hero with a Scepter bonus can get by without one, and gold is often better spent elsewhere. But if you have the money, you're already good on supportive/tank/carry items, it's rarely a bad idea.

Always Get An Aghanim's On:

Dark Seer

Invoker

Necrolyte

Situational Aghanim's Purchases On:

Axe (Are you carrying? Are you farmed?)

Clockwerk (Are you carrying? Are you ganking heavily?)

Doombringer (Are you carrying? Are there a lot of people with low health susceptible to silence?)

Jakiro (Are people standing in your ult? Are people not dodging Ice Path?)

Leshrac (What are teamfights like? Messy clusters of unintelligible murder? Buy it.)

Lich (Are you having amazing ults? Has the enemy not learned from them yet? Do you have the gold for some stupid reason? You may be better off with a Refresher, in that case, but keep it in mind.)

Lion (Are there INT heroes on the enemy team that you could easily Spike and Finger for an instant-kill?)

Lina (Same deal as Lion. Will that extra 325 damage be able to nuke someone into oblivion with your full combo?)

Natures Prophet (Should almost be in the "Never Buy" category, but sometimes you just have a really good game.)

Night Stalker (Are you fed as hell from nights one and two? Buy an Aghanim's, it gives you unrestricted sight, even over terrain. Ensure your carry status.)

Puck (Only if you've got a ton of kills and are initiating well. And you should never have a ton of kills as Puck, unless your team is bad.)

Queen of Pain (That cooldown is nice, but can you justify the 4200 for Scepter over a Scythe of Vise? Or even an Eye of Skadi?

Not usually, no.

)

Razor (Again, how hard are you carrying? Will cropping up a Scepter'd Storm during a team fight kill everyone?)

Shadow Shaman (Do you have ward trapping down? If so and you already have your Eul's/Scythe, buy.)

Spirit Breaker (Are you the carry? If not, can you guarantee more kills with Scepter?)

Vengeful Spirit (How much of an asshole do you feel like being? 10 second cooldown on your ult sound good? Think you have the reflexes to swap the right person at the right time? Go for it.)

Venomancer (People just surviving your ults won't be solved by this. But if you can ult and then get a Q or an auto-attack on everyone, deaths are coming your way.)

Warlock (Two golems are better than one, but can you keep an eye on both?)

Witch Doctor (Are people stupid enough to stand around during teamfights? Are you constantly hitting three or more people with casks? If so, buy, but not to the detriment of other supportive items.)

Windrunner (Are you actually doing damage with auto-attacks? If so, grab a damage item first, then an Aghanim's.)

Zeus (People surviving with sub-100 HP? Get it.)

People You (Almost) Never Buy Aghanim's On:

Tiny

Viper

Sand King

Pudge (Never ever.)

Huskar

Enchantress

Earthshaker

Dazzle

Crystal Maiden

Beastmaster

Chen (Could almost be in Situational, but if you ever have occasion to need a 10 second CD on Hand of God, you may have more immediate problems.

You're a shit Chen.

Addendum B: Any support heroes mentioned here are recommended to obtain supportive items before any Scepter purchases. In fact, if you purchase a Scepter when you could have a Scythe in another three minutes of farming, I hate you. :deranged:

E: I see Twig and I disagree on ES. My argument towards not getting a Scepter on Earthshaker is pretty simple. If you're doing that much damage on entering the fight with a Blink + Echoslam, you should really already have won the game from wiping them out. Not to mention if you're swimming in kills as ES you're doing it wrong.

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Well, like Is aid, I don't play ES. But my friend, who plays a lot of initiators (it's pretty much his only good role, though he will often think he's good at carries, too), always gets a scepter on him (and Sand King).

Only heroes I play that need scepter are... well, none, I think. But I always get one on Venomancer, unless there are no other supports on our team. Veno's ult is too good to not upgrade. UU:

I did get it on Lion yesterday, though. Along with a level 5 Dagon. SO FUN. (We were, uh, stomping the enemy team, obviously.)

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Oh man, I don't even want to talk about Dagon. But I should.

Here's the skinny:

Are you anyone other than eveyone? No? Don't get Dagon.

Seriously, don't get Dagon. It's a waste of gold, and only a gimmick item on certain people.

I can definitely see the Scepter on Sand King and Earthshaker, but I mean, this is after Arcane Boots, a Blink Dagger and likely a Vanguard/Heart. I mean, if you're rolling in gold after that on SK/ES (hoooow? are you up 40 to 10 or something? :erm:), then by all means.

We need to do some Thumbs DotA.

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I don't usually get Dagon. In fact, I had never gotten it before.

But it was fun bursting people down from full health to none all by myself. Soloing Axe as Lion? YES PLEASE. X:

Part of the reason I did well enough to have that gold is thanks to my lane partner. Lion/Sven is the best lane.

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Hilarious Dagon heroes:

Riki

Lion

Lina

Pugna (Decrepify + Dagon is a lot of damage)

Anyone with a burst stun (A lot of people)

Gondar

Clinkz

Both Nerubians

Leshrac (Please don't)

That said, Push Stick -> Eul's -> Your Stun -> Dagon is pretty hilarious. On Skeleton King. :mock:

I still say never buy Dagon's, but if you're absolutely rolling through the enemy team, there's no reason not to.

Twig, what is your Steam? :shifty:

E: A lot of people will recommend Lich as a starting place for DotA. They're not wrong! He's a good place to start, since he doesn't require any items to function (a couple bracers will serve you well however) and Sacrifice makes his spells quite spammy.

That said, it's hard to go wrong with Skeleton King if you follow the ultimate guide: http://www.playdota.com/guides/epic-return

While the guide is hilarious, I'm not joking. It actually works.

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I find earthshaker or tiny aren't bad starter heroes either really, not super complicated to play. Ranged agility characters can be on the easier side too just because you can sit back. Again though that's saying that when I do have a lot of LoL experience.

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I'd agree with that, though I'd voice a couple concerns in that;

- If you fuck up a critical Fissure, bad things happen.

- Farming with ES and Tiny is... an experience (read: terrible) and you need that blink dagger on ES at least, if not Tiny, and that can be problematic when starting.

Otherwise yeah, go for. More initiation is always appreciated in pubs.

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Farming can kinda blow as them, but if you're doing things right you should be racking up assists. ES has major control over a fight if done right.

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So I put some time into AI matches and feel pretty confident that I wont "feed" the enemy team and I feel like I do a good job of spending money (I'm not sure if always on the right stuff, but at least stuff). Also playing ranged characters makes the game way less stressful because I have much better harassment potential, and it is harder to harass me.

Plan to continue playing and should have more time to sink into the game in about two-three weeks. Until then it is mostly just learning and trying all the heroes.

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so I started the weekend with 8 wins 1 loss, i'm now at 10 wins 18 losses. I admit to some bad games, but holy crap so many bad people dragging me down with them.

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I've somehow managed to maintain a positive W/L ratio by the skin of my teeth. Playing with 2 other pre-organized people seems to be the sweet spot for a 50/50 ratio.

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I've got a positive win ratio, as well, though I'm not sure how I've managed it. I sometimes feel like I never win. (Not been a problem lately, though.)

Last night I played a game with a frequent Dota 2 buddy and I thought we were for sure going to lose about 35 minutes in. They had two of our barracks down, and successfully pushed all the way to our ancient and got those two towers down not long after that. We kept defending, though. FOUR TIMES we wiped out their entire team. I usually died, making sure to get my Venomancer ultimate off after venomous gale (and already having six plague wards down because I always had plenty of time to see them coming and set up). We managed to make a huge comeback and win it at 70 minutes. O:

At one point we were in their base and bounty hunter tried to backdoor us so I TP'd back and scared him off. :D

It helped that our carries were better late-game than theirs. We had Riki, Lifestealer, Viper. They had Doombringer, Bounty Hunter, and... uh... I forget the third.

I was the only one who wasn't level 25 by the end. I was only 19. Haha. I spent a lot more time defending and setting up wards than I normally do. I'm usually really aggressive with Veno. Didn't really have a choice, though, I suppose.

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Had both the best game and worst game today. First game, went 15/3/15 as earthshaker, which is really silly. Lina(played by a friend) was also fed and we carried that team pretty hard to victory. Second game...all lanes fed early and we couldn't make up for that. Had a vengeful spirit that might as well have been named "Captain Over-extend" who always blamed everyone else on his dying.

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always blamed everyone else on his dying.

Those are the worst. It's easy to ignore them when they're just some random person on the internet, though.

Unfortunately, one of the people I regularly play with is like that. Not only will he blame everyone else for everything that goes wrong... He also never gracefully accepts criticism. If ANYONE criticizes him, no matter how nice they might be about it - granted, most Dota players aren't nice about criticisms - he'll blow up at them. (Sometimes I wonder why I play with him. Which is why I haven't lately.)

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Those are the worst. It's easy to ignore them when they're just some random person on the internet, though.

Unfortunately, one of the people I regularly play with is like that. Not only will he blame everyone else for everything that goes wrong... He also never gracefully accepts criticism. If ANYONE criticizes him, no matter how nice they might be about it - granted, most Dota players aren't nice about criticisms - he'll blow up at them. (Sometimes I wonder why I play with him. Which is why I haven't lately.)

Ahh it was just annoying because he always died because he was always pushed really far out by himself. I have a buddy like that in LoL, except instead of angry he gets super depressed and apologetic whenever something bad happens in the game. I think that might be more annoying.

Unrelated, it's an absolute joy to hang dota 2 over patters' head. I just realized since I also got into the steam mobile beta I can bug him about it even when I'm not home!

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Ahh it was just annoying because he always died because he was always pushed really far out by himself. I have a buddy like that in LoL, except instead of angry he gets super depressed and apologetic whenever something bad happens in the game. I think that might be more annoying.

Unrelated, it's an absolute joy to hang dota 2 over patters' head. I just realized since I also got into the steam mobile beta I can bug him about it even when I'm not home!

Fuck you.

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Oh man, I suddenly wish I was in DotA 2, despite the fact that I've never played a Lords Management (is that the right name for this genre?) before in my life.

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Had a pretty heartbreaking game, playing as Death Prophet (voiced by Ellen McLain!) with a team of fairly competent people. Things were going great though the initial farm as well as the coordinated pushes, Exorcism/Silence/Crypt Swarm is a very supportive combo. Anyway we get into their base through mid and take down mid barracks and well as towers. Then Faceless Void and his %&$#*@ Chronosphere.

Anyway they win 4-5 team battles, push into our base and take down our ancient. Wish I had more time to pour into Dota 2 but matches are just long enough to not match up with my schedule more than once a day.

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I finally got around to playing a couple of games of the Lords Management mod on SC2(been playing warcraft and starcract for years and never got into DOTA, and I had so much fun I did the hardware survey and opted in for the DOTA2 beta. Hopefully I can get in soon

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