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[Impmaster]

I'm hopefully going to get Dota 2 from Trevor above, so I was wondering how powerful Rikimaru (Stealth assassin) was now. I used to play with him in dota 1, and I could usually get a ton of kills.

[ink.inc]

Don't usually see him being played; he gets hardcountered by BH and Slardar.

[Impmaster]

I know, my bro kept slaying me with them. Are they popular?

[Uykered]

You'll find it easier at all stages of the game if you choose a ranged carry and preferably one with an escape (Mirana, huskar, weaver etc) unless you have a cool support helping you a lot.

[IzzyReggie]

The thing about Dota2 is that it requires you to use your brain. Juggernaut's spin isn't going to kill an enemy alone unless he's really dumb, and simply having vision on Bounty Hunter isn't enough to kill him. This is simple stuff, just think about it.

This is really unfair to say, because it applies to a lot of things and it's just a random insult towards me. Like, how does Dota2 take any more usage of my brain than League of Legends or Call of Duty? It's super dum to think your game is superior than my game cos it takes so much smarts to play and that I'm playing poorly because I'm just SO DUMB.

What are you doing harassing enemies and farming creeps with your skills? Especially something as valuable as Blade Fury. This isn't League of Legends, you're just wasting mana by doing that. Relatively few heroes can spam abilities and get away with it, and most heroes need some form of regen to keep using their spells. And if you're someone like Juggernaut who has trouble itemizing for mana regen, it's best to save your spells for when you really need it.

Yes, I realized that in the first few minutes, but there were a few times where I was about to go back and needed just a bit more gold, so I'd bladefury some minions/a jungle camp trying to clear them as fast as possible. It was super slow. And Magic Stick basically provided me most of the mana regen I needed in lane, so I could afford to whiff a spin or two entirely. And I never said I was spamming it "oh, wellp, q's up. Better use it!" - no. I used it when I thought it needed to be used.

Learn to last hit with your auto attacks, and harass your enemies with auto attacks. Try to only use your spells if you see the opportunity to get a kill or a team-mate is going to help you. Otherwise you're going to use your Blade Fury to harass the PA then suddenly Queen of Pain ganks from mid and you have no mana or cooldown and she ults you and you die. Then you go on tigsource and whine about how useless the heroes skills are, when it's clear you really don't have a clue about what you're doing.

Until I got Battlefury (or whatever the cleaving axe item is called), it was difficult to last hit with auto-attacks (especially with Shadow Demon taking all of them). 50 damage or whatever Juggernaut starts with is a joke.

edit: forgot about the healing ward, which you're wrong on that as well. it heals based on a percentage of your max hp, so how does it get worse beyond level 3? as long as the enemy doesn't kill it and the ward is skilled to level 3 and you have ~700hp, you will get your entire hp pool back when you use it. AND it's an AOE so it extends to your entire team. extremely useful for doing roshan, or healing after a teamfight for a push, or farming, or just about any situation really.

I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe I am just a big dum but every time I used it it was a big waste of mana. At half hp, use it under turret and stand still completely unmolested for full duration. Don't get back to full. use it after a skirmish on the 5 of us at 50-75% life. Nobody gets to full (although I do think Gondar killed it about 3/4s of the way through the duration that time so maybe ) The only time I found it useful was healing up after a few invisible Gondar attacks in the early levels, when it only had to heal up 3-4 of his attacks and maybe 1-2 from Phantom Assassin (I know, waste of cooldowns and mana and whatever)


Sorry for venting my frustration. I didn't realize somebody would take it as a personal attack. Guess I should use my brain net time  

I guess what the actual issue was, was that nobody on the team had any stuns. It was Juggernaut, Shadow Demon, Viper, Dark Seer, and Templar Assassin. As far as I can tell, that team only has slows (Shadow Demon has his Q, but you can't damage during that(I think???) and Gondar always just stealthed as soon as it wore off and got away). I guess I should have bought uh... Abyssal Blade?? right? instead of Battlefury?
How did I get the one team with 0 stuns against an enemy that required stuns to beat?

edit: Also what the heck is up with this backdoor protection or whatever? Our team was losing hard, and I had an opportunity where I was at the 35% enemy inner top tower unimpeded for like 5 minutes, and I think the tower actually gained hp from my attacks. Why. What kind of silly babby game doesn't let you backdoor? If the enemy is going to ignore you at their low health tower for that amount of time they deserve to lose that stupid tower.

[Uykered]

Like, how does Dota2 take any more usage of my brain than League of Legends or Call of Duty?

Tip: some games require more strategy/intelligence than others and some action/dexterity, not all games are the same!

[ink.inc]

it was difficult to last hit with auto-attacks. 50 damage or whatever Juggernaut starts with is a joke.

you get used to it; also, quelling blade helps a lot for melee units

Also what the heck is up with this backdoor protection or whatever? Our team was losing hard, and I had an opportunity where I was at the 35% enemy inner top tower unimpeded for like 5 minutes, and I think the tower actually gained hp from my attacks. Why. What kind of silly babby game doesn't let you backdoor? If the enemy is going to ignore you at their low health tower for that amount of time they deserve to lose that stupid tower.

heroes like natures profit (lol) would be retardedly overpowered without it

How did I get the one team with 0 stuns against an enemy that required stuns to beat?

life is suffering; be the change you want to make™

[deathtotheweird]

I didn't mean it as an insult, just a suggestion. If you've having problem with something in the game, sit down and think why. All your problems could have been worked around on your own just by thinking about it for a second.

As for low base damage, this is a skill you will have to learn if you ever want to play the game right. The best way to learn the (rather boring) intricacies of last hitting is to play a custom game solo with Morphling and morph strength all the way up. And just practice last hitting with super low base damage. It's a very handy skill to learn, last hitting is. And 50 base damage is pretty good, considering Juggernaut has a good attack animation.

If you're taking farming priority on your team and can't last hit well, you're really hurting your chances on winning. If you miss 50% of the cs as a carry early game, you're pretty much automatically lost if the other carry is on top of his game. This is a gross exaggeration but you should pressure yourself to get as many last hits as you can without using skills, it's super super important.

And the healing ward isn't meant to give you a gigantic blast of HP in just a few seconds. unless you can manage it well in fights, it's just going to get picked off immediately. it has a duration of 25 seconds (I think) and the reason why it heals so little is because it heals a little over a rather long time. at level4 with around 1k hp it will heal you for 1250hp. The math supports this, dunno what you're doing wrong.

TA and Viper is more than enough to catch a bounty hunter, but yeah a team with no stuns is just asking for trouble.

Battle Fury is a farming item, it's generally a good idea to never buy it unless you plan on farming a lot. And if you can't get it by 20-25 minutes don't get it at all. Abyssal Blade is good but it's hard to get that Relic, especially with a BH pressuring you all the time.

[Nillo]

Playing a melee hero is pretty hard in general since you have to balance taking harassment from ranged enemies and getting the last hits. I recommend getting a Quelling Blade as mentioned above to help you with the farming. Try to be on the safe lane (Bottom if you're Radiant, top if you're Dire) and pull the creep camp that's closest to your tower, or ask your support to do it if you don't know how to do it.

If you're playing Juggernaut, you should be going for kills early with your teammate IMO since his skills deal so much damage. Any hero with a slow will work fine. Crystal Maiden, Lich, Jakiro, whatever. Just get a hero with a slow in your lane and getting kills should be easy. Otherwise, you're better off playing a passive farmer carry such as Void or Spectre.

[Blademasterbobo]

the way the pros practice last hitting is shadow fiend with no skills / points in anything / no items, or at least that's what i've heard. try to get 40-80 in 10 minutes i think is the goal? idk it's fucking hard

riki can do pretty well. the problem is people act like his invis makes him immortal, when in reality it means you have to be even more cautious with him than a normal hero because everyone is going to instantly target you in a team fight. i like playing with invis heroes and i usually do well with most of them. except for slark.

[Nillo]

Newbies think Riki is good because of invis, pros know Riki is good because of smoke.

He is a situational pick, but he wrecks teams if you know when to pick him. He even saw competitive play as a counter to Anti-Mage for quite a while when AM was popular.

[deathtotheweird]

You'll find it easier at all stages of the game if you choose a ranged carry and preferably one with an escape (Mirana, huskar, weaver etc) unless you have a cool support helping you a lot.

just saw this, and for a newbie this is probably the worst advice ever. the easiest heroes to play are ones that are very forgiving with mistakes. unless you're playing against bots, a noob taking the carry role (ie a hero that's useless without farm and generally doesn't have any sort of cc) is going to really hurt your team. unless you get lucky and get a few early kills and snowball your way to victory but honestly that's pretty rare.

a few heroes that are really easy to play for newbies is tidehunter, venomancer, undying, crystal maiden, lich, lion. all their skills are pretty easy to land and they don't require a ton of items or levels. if you're in a teamfight and blow all your spells and die, you've pretty much done your job.

so buying wards and getting your skills off in a fight even though you're dying a lot = good. playing a carry but missing most of your last hits and generally just farming poorly = absolutely useless.

[Nillo]

Protip for Tidehunter: Remap your ultimate key to G so you never miscast it when you're trying to use anchor smash. This also helps for other heroes with huge cooldown ults and a castable E.

[Blademasterbobo]

melee carries are way easier than ranged carries in doter 

[IzzyReggie]

Okay, last-hitting isn't as bad as I thought at first. It's harder than it needs to be because there is 0 indication of how low a minion is without clicking on it (well, it has a health bar, but it doesn't really give too much information. It definitely could be separated into bars, like 50 hp per bar and BOOM! Instantly less frustrating game), but I got the hang of it with Juggernaut pretty much.

The only problem now is snowballing? It seems crazy in this game. If an enemy hero snowballs, should I just leave? Is there any point in playing that game any more?

Me+Shadow Shaman are chilling in Dire's Safe lane, doing okay (not great, but okay). Windrunner is putting a beating on us a little but we know she's going to stop doing damage mid-game, and Spectre is turret diving us and getting destroyed under tower (Shaman snare+bladefury=pretty strong)
(As a side note, there got to a point, around 10 minutes in, where bladefury - which I'd been maxing - stopped doing damage to Spectre and Windrunner. Shadow Shaman was the first to notice, but we had a full channel snare+full length bladefury on Spectre and we didn't even bring him to half hp. Same thing happened a little later where I hit Windrunner AND Spectre for at least 3 seconds and the damage didn't seem nearly as high as it should be)

Then, Weaver shows up from mid lane, destroys everything in about 2 seconds, and goes bottom to destroy everything in 2 seconds, and then goes back mid and destroys mid in 2 seconds, and for the rest of the game, Weaver destroyed everything in 2 seconds. I *THINK* I could have gotten him if I got a good omnislash on him with true sight and no enemies anywhere near (and probably a stun, if that stops him from going back in time), but since our team didn't seem to have ANY capability to clear waves, the enemies always had a horde of minions backing them up, basically taking Omnislash out of the equation.

After Weaver snowballed hard, that dumb tower-diving/suiciding Spectre started snowballing, and then Sniper started snowballing, and then Omniknight got Satanic and started snowballing, and it felt like there was no way for the team to pull through with a victory. Is there some kind of ANTI-SNOWBALL item I could have gotten to catch up a little or shut them down or anything or was I supposed to just sit that one out?

(Also, TY shadow shaman and bane for taking my first 4 kills. It really helped me out)

PS: Does Vengeful Spirit's aura increase ALL physical damage or just auto-attack damage? Reading the tooltip it seems like it'd even increase Omnislash but my little brother says it only works on auto-attacks.

[Nillo]

PS: Does Vengeful Spirit's aura increase ALL physical damage or just auto-attack damage? Reading the tooltip it seems like it'd even increase Omnislash but my little brother says it only works on auto-attacks.

The aura increases attack damage. If a skill is based on the hero's attack damage, it will be increased by the aura. Otherwise, it remains the same.

Omnislash is a bit misleading. It has a spell component, but Juggernaut also actually attacks while he is using Omnislash. You can notice this if you get a lot of agility items and watch him attack much faster during the slash. However, the bonus it gets from Venge's aura in this case will probably be negligible.

(Also, Juggernaut can attack while he is using Blade Fury, but only against magic immune targets. This is usually irrelevant but can be helpful vs mechanical units or a hero with BKB!)

[deathtotheweird]

(Also, TY shadow shaman and bane for taking my first 4 kills. It really helped me out)

poor attitude, a carry can make up the loss in gold for those kills a lot faster than a support can. if a support gets the gold and uses it to buy boots/wards/courier upgrade then it's a win for your team. don't be so selfish, there's generally no such thing as a kill steal in a team game like dota. if he can give you the kill he should (a good support would know when this is possible or too risky), but it's not a crime if he takes it himself.

shadow shaman should have been pulling and stacking or ganking other lanes, he doesn't really gain much by staying in your lane and leeching xp against a solo windrunner. grab a poor man's shield and dodge her powershots and she can't do much to stop your farming.

and you can snowball in dota2 but if you buy shit items or make too many risk plays you can easily lose. the best thing for you to do is farm up and don't get caught alone, try smoke ganking, or turtle and take fights at your base. I've won so many games where the enemy was clearly ahead simply by smoke ganking or farming.

some games you just lose, but I don't advise you to leave games. you'll learn more from playing than you will by getting mad/frustrated and leaving.

[Blademasterbobo]

last hits are your main source of income, not kills. kills are just gravy for a carry, supports / gankers NEED the gold from those kills.

[Impmaster]

Is this available on mac yet? If not, I'll bootcamp or something....

[Geeze]

(Also, Juggernaut can attack while he is using Blade Fury, but only against magic immune targets. This is usually irrelevant but can be helpful vs mechanical units or a hero with BKB!)

I read somewhere he's able to hit anyone during bladefury, but his damage is set to zero, but you can proc orb effects during it. Orb of venom viable?