Herald 3 here. Im a new player and have been playing for the past 3 months. I understand that BKB is good because they cant stun you during fights. But it only gives you a little bit of damage anyways. If I forget to activate it its not any good on me.

So my friend told me to just not buy it and use something else instead, does he have a point? He says a passive bkb is no good anyways. Maybe I could build another item like the hesrt of tarrasque to have more health instead or deadalus for more damage.

I’m making this post to share this “build” / encourage discussion etc. I’m a div3 offlane spammer and about a month or so ago I started building fast Tranqs on most offlaners without a sustain when I’m against WD in lane. Maledict is a disgusting spell even if you know how it works and itemise against it correctly (burst heal, raindrops etc.). It has almost 50% uptime on level 1 and it usually doesn’t stay on level 1 for long. Showing up to the wave usually means losing over a half of your HP and spending all the gold you have just to regen that back feels horrible. But Tranqs only cost 500 gold on top of Boots and enable you to regen pretty much instantly after you disengage. You don’t need to wait for a salve to arrive, just disengage and regent then you’re ready to contest the next wave.

So far, I’ve built them on Timber, Underlord, Axe, Brew and even LC once. While both on Axe and LC they felt kinda bad after laning phase ended, you could just sell them later on and treat the 450 gold lost like gold spent on regen (since it pretty much was). Even if you plan to drag the wave they feel useful.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a Faerie Fire and save stick charges for situations where he’s clearly not trying to harass but they’re going for the kill. But it enables you to not pop them most of the times when you know he’s just casting it to harass you.

I have been spamming nyx 3 to a decent success (27-20).

Usually going

Arcanes > Meteor Hammer > Dagon 1 > Aghs > bkb > dagon 5 / utility items

I was wondering if there are any other pos 3 nyx spammers thst could share what works for them, as I feel that this build is somewhat suboptimal.

So I had a game where my friend played PL, his lane partner is SS, his opponent is Axe and Weaver. After lv4 axe keep farming behind my friend own tower and weaver drag their creep wave to the jungle to deny my friend cs. I want to know both as a pos 5 and pos 1, what can I do if I am stuck in this situation in the future. I am new to Dota.

Hi there! For context, I’m a booster (ready your pitchforks, but bills need to be paid).

Throughout my years of stomping low ranked games, I’ve noticed a lot of mistakes that low rank players make and it’s easy to get caught up in thinking about certain matchups or itemization when there’s a bigger elephant in the room in terms of micro/macro gameplay.

For context, I’ve been playing since 2014 and I too had to adapt to the most recent evolution that Dota2 has become. I had struggled as a returning player and found my form again. If you’re a returning player just like I was, it would be beneficial as well as I’d be able to explain what has changed in terms of the map and meta!

There’s no harm, I’ve got free time and I’m down to meet some new people and help you gain some results :)

If you find yourself interested in this offer, do add me on Discord: k3vblr666

And if you’d rather drop your replay ID’s here for me to review and answer your questions, that works too!

last time i posted cores/supports vs the most picked carries and someone said in their games the carry usually goes last. so i checked the mid side

numbers are from a model trained on 2.4M ancient+ games on 7.41f. i only kept pairs that point the same way on stratz (divine+) and dotabuff too, so its not just my model saying it

stuff that surprised me:

- huskar and meepo vs am are huge, like +6-7%

- tinker and storm vs am are the opposite, both around -5%

- leshrac shows up vs both pl and slark

- luna: no mid really counters her, nothing above ~2% anywhere i checked. her real counters per stratz are stuff like bristleback and abaddon

the numbers mean how much more often u win vs that carry than usual, so +6% is like 56 instead of 50, not a free win lol

if anyone wants the full table for all 23 mids just ask

fyi the numbers come from a free draft overlay im building (draftline), it shows this live during the draft. no link here, its on my profile if ur curious

I’m a legend support player, pos 4 or 5, and I’ve recently started learning oracle. With him I try to keep as far back as possible, and its led to me going from around 3-5 deaths in the lanimg stage to around 0-2. The result has been a lot more won games for me, but I’m a little unsure if its because oracle is good at my rank or if its just a result of me not feeding so much?
I’m wondering where people’s priorities are. I usually try in lane to go for trades, and any kill wheee I die feels good, but I’m wondering if thats true, or if I should be playing more conservatively so that my carry is never alone?
Thanks for any insight :)

Which heroes should I pick as an offlane for those heroes? What other heroes in other lanes do well against those heroes? What items should I buy?

I was in a game earlier against magnus, dark seer, lina, wr, and spectre. My random allies picked sniper mid, TA safe, and then ES and treant supports. I picked Slardar. We lost so bad. TA or Sniper are always getting ulted by Magnus. Spectre also just dives them with her ult.

ive been playing lina a lot, and id like to expand on my hero pool with another mid that has strong laning, very fast farming, low tempo dependence, and can solo carry a game all the way to late game. i know kez and sf are like this, but im not sure if either is viable rn. would prefer to sit in lane and hit creeps as long as possible. is leshrac a good pick?

But I feel completely lost when I have to choose another hero. Can you suggest beginner friendly alternates when I run out of tokens or lifestealer is banned?
Thank you.

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/66432504

I really don't get this character. Like yeah I can win the early game, but as soon as it's midgame I just become a feeding machine.

I can either position really far back to survive, but then people die without getting shallow grave because I have to cast projection and move forward to do it.

If I position close enough to grave, someone just blinks and chainstuns me to death in a second.

I can't really hit his heal in any meaningful way because I'm never close enough when the fight starts, and frequently one person on their team is just flanking or looping around specifically to kill me helplessly. They keep doing the same thing and I don't really have a defense for it other than spending all my gold on survival items and inevitably dying anyways, without pulling any meaningful weight in the teamfight.

How can I survive and actually be useful mid to late game?

Lycan's been my main focus over the past few weeks, 65% because Helm of the Dominator/Overlord is my favorite thing in Dota & he's the best hero at sending the creep to splitpush away from him, 35% because he doesn't buy boots (I refuse to ever buy Phase Boots & to some extent Power Treads. The other boots are fine tho). While I'm generally comfortable with the micro ATM, some nitty gritty moments are still a little tricky, especially in the lane. I currently have access to 6 easily reachable control group binds (Mouse side buttons. The other 6 are item actives), plus a "Select Other Units" bind (D) that doubles as "Select All Units" with an alt modifier. 2 is Select Courier, S is Courier Deliver, A is still Attack Click, G is move click (Invis Wolves FTW), 5 is neutral item, 6 is TP scrolls, M3 to cancel action, Scroll Wheel for Previous/Next units (Yes, I know it sounds weird, but I ain't changing this unless there's a more intuitive & optimal use for the Scroll Wheel), Space Bar to Select Hero, QWERFT for abilities. Tab is my alt-modifier ATM, but there's this 1 button on my mouse (M901P-KS) that I'd REALLY like to be able to rebind as my alt-modifier but currently can't until I find a hacky work-around software (It's the DPI up button right below the scroll wheel. If anyone knows of an easy to use software that can let me rebind not just that but all 3 of those "hardset" buttons, much appreciated). ZXC row is way too uncomfortable for me to reach from my natural QWER resting position. 1 is just barely reachable (Dunno what I could use it for tho). My middle finger literally rests directly IN BETWEEN the 3 & 4 keys from where I rest it on the E key with no good way to move my hand in a quick fashion to reach it, So both those are out of reach too. Hands are just that big

My current control groups are 1 for my main helm creep, 1 for all the subcreeps (Skeletons & Golem Shards), 1 for all wolves at once (+the Necrobook Creeps for games that somehow go past an hour), & 1 for each individual wolf. Out of all of these, the individual wolf groups are PROBABLY the most expendable, but IDK what would be more efficient in terms of reducing the amount of manual clicks & box selects, especially since I still have usecases for splitting up my wolves (Even beyond just scouting before the horns sound). The main hurdle I've been having lately is situations where I need 1 wolf to do something away (Like blocking a camp or invisibly scouting an enemy hero) but still need the other wolf to stick by Lycan himself. Unfortunately, there's no real way (To my knowledge, maybe a console command could help that?) to select multiple control groups at the same time without fucking them up, & even if there was, I likely wouldn't be able to do it (My mouse is stupid like that. There's a reason I can't put my alt modifier on any of the 12 side buttons). & I'm trying to optimize these control groups BECAUSE I wanna avoid box selecting as much as possible. It's always just hella slow & awkward for me to do reliably & quickly in the middle of laning or fighting compared to just hitting a couple of keys that I can easily do super fast with enough muscle memory not unlike motion inputs in a fighting game. I GUESS an alternative would be replacing my individual wolf groups to be the same but include Lycan himself since clicking/scrolling to an individual wolf isn't QUITE as time consuming compared to box selecting Lycan & a wolf? IDK, feels like theres something I'm missing. Anyone got any ideas?

BTW yes there are some settings I'm aware of & have tweaked. Turning off smart-attack-move has done WONDERS for my splitpush macro (The fact I can Shift+AClick AT ALL now feels so fucking good), & auto-selecting summoned units is something I've experimented in turning on or off depending on how much either side helps or hinders me in any moment (Anyone got a definitive answer about that?). So if there are any other settings worth looking at or console commands I could mess with, feel free to lemme know :)

Not being able to share videos here is completely lame by the way.

DK's shard does damage in 1/2 second intervals.

The tooltips read that it lasts 6 seconds, and has a linger time of 2 seconds.

You'd expect this to hit 16 times total.

Instead, it hits 17 times, and the first hit does twice as much damage as all the rest.

Can someone explain the math behind it?

It's doing an extra 120+ damage more than it should. No wonder it's so good right now.

Hi guys

I (Ancient IV) recently noticed in my games when I was playing offlane or carry that often times supports join the lane after the first or even the second wave because they are trying to get first blood or something, which I would argue succeeds rather seldom. When I play support I put a lot of importance on these first waves and will TP to them to be present so that we get a good start into the lane and have lvl 2 ahead of the enemies.

I feel like arriving late is really bad and jeopardizes the game, especially as a pos 5 because if your carry plays 1v2 on the first to waves the lane seems lost in most cases. Now my question: Is my intuition correct? Is it even worth it if you arrive in lane late as a pos 5 if you can secure first blood? And lastly, as a core in said situation, would you just avoid trading altogether, if you get bullied 2v1?

This video I decided to talk about a mentality, that me and a lot of high MMR players believe is the way to rank up.

There are 7 rules to this mentality, and I will be explaining those in the video.

Thanks for watching, and feel free to ask any questions.

Good morning, my great Dota friends.

I’ve been playing for a while now, trying to improve and make Shadow Demon my main support hero. I’m currently at the Legend 1 rank, and I’ve found that he’s quite viable in pretty much any situation at this level. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I could improve; if any of you could analyze a replay from my last match, I’d be very grateful—the match ID is 9063571955.

I’m looking for advice on things like warding, whether I used my abilities effectively, how I could have used them differently, and so on. I’m always grateful for the community’s help—together we are stronger and will continue to grow. Have a great Tuesday, everyone!

Title. I am not a strong mid player. I prefer 1 and 3. Anytime I play mid and get bottle it feels underwhelming. It is either always empty or just does not give enough regen to keep using it to refill mana. Getting 2 Null Talismans always feels so much better to me.

I have been playing this game since January of 2015 almost every day. I started at 1800 and peaked at 5400 mmr in 2018 (screen shot of me matching against sumail in a pub during this time).

I have primarily hovered between high legend and mid ancient since 2019. I have mainly played medusa as you can see in my dotabuff profile. Everytime I play a different hero or role I lose very badly and get flamed to all hell from my team. I get sad and the cycle continues of going back to my comfort hero.
From pre 2020 I played medusa mid - post 2020 I played medusa safe lane.

I come to these realizations and try to venture out and improve then I get bored and jaded and revert back to my comfort hero. As you can see in my dotabuff stats, I really tried to improve with traditional mid heros but all of my winrates are ~42% even with significant games played. I even did several mid specialized coaching sessions back in 2017/2018 and it didnt work.

Wtf is going on here? Why can I only win with medusa? I think my brain just connects with medusa the most?

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/78303653

one can determine win lose just from draft.

https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/9064568701

why sometimes herald / guardian stray in archon?

What actually separates a pub player from a pro during the laning phase?

In this video, I analyze Divine and Archon replays and compare their laning decisions to professional players.

I look at the small mechanics and decisions that can completely change a lane, trading, positioning, creep aggro, wave control, when to push or hold the wave, and how players create an advantage.

I also explain how pros recognize when a lane is in their favor and how they can break the balance of the lane to create better opportunities.

Link here: https://youtu.be/DfxQbfbvMww

Also, thanks everyone for sending me your replays and match IDs!

I couldn't get everyone into this video, but like I mentioned in today's video, I'll most likely be making another 2 videos, so I'll keep looking through some of the games from the people who sent me their match ID or friend ID.

Some of the replays were unfortunately too old (I think Valve doesn't let you download replays that are more than 5 days old sadge), but I'll keep checking the ones I can!

Thanks again for all the submissions.

The game against Lich becomes unplayable without BKB, but I'm getting shot at with these balls over and over, I checked what is the cooldown on this and I'm like - whaaaaat? 60 seconds on 18 level

No wonder he can use it casually in every goddamn fight. I thought it was like at least 120s, maybe 100s on level 18, but it's closer to Upheaval than to Warlock's golems.

Hey guys, today i'm bringing you a new video on my YouTube channel in which i'll be explaining some of the things, concepts and mechanics that pro support players do and which you can apply to your games.

I'll be going in depth on some of the map movements and plays that Rue and not_me do in this very specific game, and explaining from my POV why they do them and how you could get advantage on your games by doing them too.

You can find the full video here:

https://youtu.be/qAYz54p_1Qo

For more dota related content or coaching inquiries you can visit my page:

www.skylightcoach.com

Thank you guys for the ones who support my channel by leaving nice comments and positive criticism, I hope i'm somewhat useful to the ones looking to improve their dota understanding and gameplay, love y'all.

Enigma, PL, zoo Heroes.

Im archon 2 and I feel like I suck at that part of the game. With units. How do you practice effectively to get better at them.

I always liked enigma but I dont feel like im good at playing it because of the units I dont know how to manage them correctly.

He was easy to kill laning phase but unkillable end game, my hero did so little damage

My items where:

Threads

Manta

Butterfly

Hurricane Pike

Nullifier (i dont know how to use it, i went for it instead of eye of skadi)

He had:

Boots of travel level 2

Aghanims

Abyssal blade

Sange and yasha

Radiance

Mkb

It is like he killed the whole team by himself

I had a similar match where my medusa couldnt kill phantom assassin in endgame, i had mkb, though she had abyssal, nullifier, satanic

1. How do i beat endgame lifestealer as medusa?

2. What could i do to improve my game as medusa in the future?

Thanks!

Match id: 9062519550

Had around 500 GPM