DOTA 2

[Twig]

Well, the Slardar forcing himself mid was really stupid.

 

But people should roam to gank mid as often as possible. Usually the supports of course, unless you're going to commit to a push afterward, but that's beside the point!

[Henroid]

My problem with people calling for gank help is when they're calling for it at a bad time. I've had gank calls at level two where people were saying to do it by the enemy tower. Which is just a BAD idea. I know it's doable but we are not pros.

 

Just played a match as Riki against a magic-damage heavy team. It was pretty much game over for them when I got Hood of Defiance after my Diffusal Blade.

[Dewar]

I played Dota ages ago, but not online 'cos I'd heard terrible, awful things about the community, and I'm a total wuss who needs constant reassurance. Is there some kind of Thumbs support group which can ease me into Dota? Stroke my hair, coo platitudes into my ear, that sort of thing

 

The Idle Thumbs group has been fairly silent, but a few of us here play in the Giant Bomb groups and they are generally (but not always) all right.

 

Edit: On another subject, is there a top level summary you can give me about when to push towers and when to hang back? In general, I try to keep the creep wave as close to my tower as possible (only attacking for last hits and such) but I'm never really sure when to transition to creep-destroying push mode. Gyro constantly pushing our lane in that game really threw me off, but maybe he was doing a good job (he did have the second highest XP gain) and I just need to push harder? Or maybe he was just a muppet?

[njoos]

My problem with people calling for gank help is when they're calling for it at a bad time. I've had gank calls at level two where people were saying to do it by the enemy tower. Which is just a BAD idea. I know it's doable but we are not pros.

 

Just played a match as Riki against a magic-damage heavy team. It was pretty much game over for them when I got Hood of Defiance after my Diffusal Blade.

 

Learning how to control creep and tower aggro will win you games most of the time. Since most people don't have a clue. 

[BusbyBerkeley]

I am totally down to play with scrubs. I'm not great but I've been playing for a while and sort of know what's up. I've not had any luck queuing with the the thumbs channels, but if you do, just be sure to mention that you are new and people OUGHT to be chill (or else they just won't queue with you).

[Dewar]

Man, did they take away the icons on the selection screen that told you the specialties of the various heroes? I know they were kinda off a bit, but at least it would give me an idea what I was picking.

[Henroid]

I didn't notice those icons disappearing. I always put the lord select screen into grid mode, which wouldn't display those icons. I can see them being useful though.

 

So last night for the first time on Spirit Breaker I was able to complete an Agh's to boost his ult. I skipped a couple things in my usual item build order to get it done, but I only did it because we were dominating the match (most of my kills came from the laning phase; I was wrecking things up). The result: Agh's is tragically bad on Spirit Breaker. The AoE is too small, and the mana cost is still super duper high. Plus, making the cooldown 20 seconds isn't that big of a deal because it's not like you're engaging for that long or that frequently.

[Twig]

It may be a bug. They recently changed the icons.

[Henroid]

I'm starting to realize how effed Troll Warlord's ult can be. Not for himself. For a Faceless Void that bubbles the team and gets juiced by TW's ult. Holy crap.

 

Also lost a match yesterday where the enemy Warlock used a Refresher Orb and had four fiery golems stomping our asses in on the final push.

[Cleinhun]

I just played a game of All Random Deathmatch despite the fact that I was not attempting to queue for it and actually I didn't even know you could. For those that don't know, it's all random, but whenever you die you get a new random hero with the same items and xp. I was Necrophos/Juggernaut/Venomancer so I just got Aghanim's, and then we wiped their team without losing anyone and snowballed from there.

 

It's not quite as silly as ability draft, but I think it will go in the same space of modes I play when I want to play dota without really playing dota.

[Jutranjo]

I just played a game of All Random Deathmatch despite the fact that I was not attempting to queue for it and actually I didn't even know you could. For those that don't know, it's all random, but whenever you die you get a new random hero with the same items and xp. I was Necrophos/Juggernaut/Venomancer so I just got Aghanim's, and then we wiped their team without losing anyone and snowballed from there.

 

It's not quite as silly as ability draft, but I think it will go in the same space of modes I play when I want to play dota without really playing dota.

 

I like it a lot more than ability draft. You only draft once, try shit early game, you have fun because it looks silly but then it's over and you get to play the rest of the game as broken heroes.

 

ARDM is how specific to a hero you want to build before you die and respawn as arcane boots euls chaos knight.

 

It has some bugs though, if you DC and reconnect you won't be able to buy items for your current hero, after you die once it fixes itself.

[BusbyBerkeley]

I'm starting to realize how effed Troll Warlord's ult can be. Not for himself. For a Faceless Void that bubbles the team and gets juiced by TW's ult. Holy crap.

 

Also lost a match yesterday where the enemy Warlock used a Refresher Orb and had four fiery golems stomping our asses in on the final push.

 

Yeah, Troll is ok on his own as a carry, but run him as a 2 position with a hard hitting right clicker as your 1 and his ult is SO GOOD. Also fun to throw him into a pushing lineup. Give him a Lycan or Aghs Tiny to buff up and watch as towers go down all over the damn place.

[undermind9]

i did this exactly this morning in a 2/3 position with a Drow & bristle.  when it came to time to siege the base pop the ult every CD and let drow tear apart a tower while bristle and i caused havoc up close.  helped that we had a yolo enigma who was ready to blink hole anytime more than 3 in a space

[Henroid]

I hate those matches where the other team won't pick until your entire team picks. It makes me super paranoid about being counter-picked.

 

And that's definitely what just happened. We got our faces stomped in. The only thing that prevented the match from ending fast was the enemy team's hesitation to continue pushes.

 

Edit - Also loved the part where someone on my team yelled at me for "picking Riki against Bounty Hunter," forgetting that I chose Riki long before the enemy team made their picks.

[Jutranjo]

Bounty's only good for ganking riki but he doesn't see him coming. Slardar's the same deal. A dust or their ulti is the same, theirs is worse since you can't blind fire it. Riki coming up to someone to gank won't be affected by the fairy fire, only when running away. 

 

Diffusal, manta or bkb remove dust and BH ulti. 

 

Not to say that BH is bad at killing Riki, he just isn't particularly better at killing him than killing any other hero.

[Dewar]

In contrast to my earlier QoP rant, I'd just like to say that I am horrible at playing Terrorblade.  I see a lot of cool possibilities there, but I just can't make the right moves to do anything useful with him.

[njoos]

BKB doesnt remove BH ult does it? Just prevents it from being cast on you while active. 

[undermind9]

i also was unsure, but dota2wiki has clarified

 

will remove the track when BKB'ing...but will not block application

 

 

bkb partial immunity/certain spell interactions is a total pain in the ass.  like still being doom'd...but no damage, etc.

[undermind9]

botched an Io game last night.  

 

i picked it with a pub tiny and he was expecting me to go mid...but i started bottom to even the lanes because they tri-laned against our VS.  anyways, tiny subsequently lost the lane to pudge, vs lost to the tri, and top ate bristleback spines & got ganked a lot.  im taking blame since shouldnt try trick lanes with rando's, especially quiet ones

 

side question, does anyone ever have a hard time hearing people on the in-game voice client?

i run skype with my friends when grouped and have no problem, but 1/2 the people i play random with are extremely quiet. (not because skype auto-reduces other software sounds)

[Jutranjo]

Wisp+VS is barely better vs a trilane than just solo VS. VS could at least leech exp, wisp could make sure pudge doesn't get runes or at least gets less of them. The jungler didn't have problems from the enemy trilane?

[undermind9]

in reality, it was awful picks all around on my team - i play random draft so its bound to happen pending the pool - http://dotabuff.com/matches/738354868

 

Radiant - Top - Bristle, Mid - Pudge, Bot - Disrupt pulling, PL and abbs in lane

Dire - Top - Viper & Warlock, Mid - Tiny, Bot - VS & Wisp

 

it was just a train wreck. pudge got a few top runes and used them to kill mid and gank top.  Tiny couldnt farm because he thought i was going to feed him mana and rot got overpowering.  what is even more frustrating is that with VS stun & orbs we had Abbs sub 100dmg a few times and forced tangos/heal early opening up harass on PL

 

Tiny ultimately took an abandon, im sure i was reported for feeding or something asinine 

 

i really like wisp, but it seems 1:3 great games to awful clusterfucks.  i think i need to reserve it for a 5-team and well defined lanes

[Jutranjo]

Wisp is hard as fuck to play well. Not only for the guy playing the wisp but unlike say meepo your teammates need to play vastly differently to account for your ulti anywhere. 

[Henroid]

So about 49k dollars left until the prize pool for the International reaches 10 million dollars. This is bonkers.

[Henroid]

Just had an hour long match, which I don' experience often. We were certainly losing through the whole thing, but I was doing particularly well as Viper so I managed to have fun. Our best defense that held up was when they had us on our backs with mid and bottom totally destroyed (Ancient exposed); We stopped every push attempt for a damn long time. I came out of the match with a 12-4-13 KDA and 27.7k damage done to heroes, being second best in both categories across all players (the best in both going to Invoker, who swept us).

 

They had a heavily farmed PL and Sniper too. But PL was resentful toward his team because they all spoke Spanish and one of them stole his Eaglehorn in the middle of the match, so he didn't show up often even though he had the ability to wipe us on his own. As for Sniper, he was just bad. Didn't even get Desolator (which would've changed the match entirely; no chance for us to fight back); he went for Helm of the Dominator instead. That was weird. Any time he tried to stand up to me he was a total pushover.

 

It's funny how the brief time you have to build a relationship with your team matters. The PL situation was just hilarious to me. He and I were the only English speakers, on opposite teams.

[Henroid]

TRIPLE POST.

 

Playoff predictions are available now. A minimum of 120 games are gonna be played during them. I feel confident with some of my choices but I know plenty I'll be changing up. One thing I have no idea how to pick on is the biggest gap in GPM. The largest sum is 50k+. How the hell, does that actually happen?