The most common question among pub players is: how do you raise MMR? Some people say to spam this hero or that. Some say to jungle for 10 minutes and come out with the intention of of snowballing your team to a victory. My advice and what has worked for me is to find a niche and fill it.
Lets use some abstraction to understand this.The pub scene trends toward certain picks, strategies, and styles of play. Because the pub scene favors certain heroes, strategies, and styles of play over others, this creates a deficit somewhere. Sometimes this deficit is well founded and sometimes it isn't. Right now, when it comes to support, it isn't. The pub scene at 3k is lacking the support duo currently (Fluff gives a good talk about this here). Rather than having a hard 5 and greedier 4, there's an awkward 3.5 and 6.5 position hero. This is bad.
Most importantly is that no one wants to play the 6.5 position because they are getting sacked so hard. Buy all the wards and the courier and share your tangos. Forget about getting brown boots until minute 12, buy all the smokes and it's your fault for not putting up enough wards when some one on the team gets ganked. Moral of this story is help your supports through buying wards, sharing tangos, upgrading courier, buying smokes and not flaming them.
The second most important point is that having a 3.5 is a liability, most of the time. There are small exceptions. However, the majority of the time picking a greedier support will help your team out way more than having a 3.5 because they will be active on the map and help buy support items during the beginning of the game. The goal of the first 10-20 minutes in a game is to win the laning stage and transition into the mid-game with a lead. The best way to do this is to have a dynamic support duo who matches up well against the enemy team.
Now I know a lot of you out there are going to still play a 3.5 hero, so here's my recommendations:
Enigma - fastest farming jungler there is. Can push early, gets an early mech, and has great team fight ulti.
Chen - maybe the second fastest farming jungler there is. Pushes early, gets mech, and has a great team fight ulti.
Ursa - everyone knows your going for Rosh by 7 minutes. After Rosh, it's time to get aggresive
Bloodseeker - Global ability that powers you up and gives vision when people are low seems like a good deal.
Crystal Maiden - getting a quick level two and ganking the mid lane is how I like to play her. Just make sure to get quick boots because you are slow. Your aura helps your team win the laning phase.
these heroes get active before the 8 minute mark and create pressure on the map naturally during the laning phase. They all have things in common: they pressure the enemy team in ways traditional heroes can't because they don't show on the map until it's too late.As a 3.5 position, you need to help your other support. Like it or not, you need to compensate for your lack of direct laning presence by empowering your other support.
In current pubs, there's a place for a 4 position support or a super active 3.5 position hero. Trying to pick a sub-par jungler like Legion Commander is a waste of time and a pending loss. Fill the niche your teams needs and be rewarded with MMR.
Showing posts with label MOBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MOBA. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
Developing the mindset of a winner
Every once and a while, I find myself sliding from 3.6k to
3.4k MMR or lower with a series of games, most of which I couldn’t have done
anything to change the outcome. When this happens, I need to refresh my mindset
because it’s draining. I don’t want to get caught up in the negative aspect of
the game I just played. To avoid this, I take advantage of two powerful
feedback mechanisms that everyone has: reframing and perspective. The reframe
changes your mind set from your current state to a desired state. Perspective
gives you a reference point for progress in your game. With these two strategies,
I perpetuate the mindset of a winner.
I am a senior electrical/computer engineering (EE or ECE) student
at a small private college. The EE curriculum is a mix of required classes and
technical electives. The one technical
elective that all EEs should take is control systems. In
controls, the idea is to keep a system stable, i.e. keep the system from
tilting, using a certain type of controller. You mind operates on some of the same
principles which means it’s up to you to control your attitude. A very easy way
to do this is called the reframe. The idea is that every time you feel yourself
descending into a mindset that you don’t want to identify with, you physically
and mentally change that mindset. There are a few simple strategies you can
employ to do this:
-
Tell yourself something out loud. Phrases like “I’m
still the best”, “even good players have bad games”, and “I’ll get them next
time” can go a long way to improving your attitude.
-
Watch a replay of yourself playing well, a
highlight reel (like DOTA Cinema’s Symphony
of Skills) or favorite player. These will help get your head back into a
winning mindset
-
Develop a pre- and post-game routine. There’s a
reason sports teams huddle together to pump each other up before and shake
hands after a game – it works! This doesn’t have to be some super in depth
ritual. I always begin my DOTA session by watching some live games to get
myself in the right mind set and get some water after each game to walk around.
In controls, the reframe would be called a feedback approach
and the perspective a feedforward approach. Basically, you use the game you’re
playing today to influence the game you will play tomorrow. While you’re playing the game, the only moment
that exists is the current one. After the game is over, you can look at the
whole game, noticing how certain events shaped each team’s play. This
information translates into a greater understanding of how to play in those
situations the next time they come around. If you watch professional players,
they do this as they play because their reference experience is so large that
they see minute details and courses of action that the average doesn’t. They
then translate this into an advantage and that advantage into a win.
When you combine these two ideas, you create a potent
control system for your game. It helps you stay positive, get more enjoyment
out of the game and progress as a player. In order to really embrace these
ideas, you need to do them constantly so that they become part of your normal
thought patterns. Remember, however, to only focus on improving one thing at a
time. I would recommend starting with learning to reframe because the time
investment is smaller and you will see results from it sooner.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
It's almost time for that new patch smell
Many people have hopes and dreams for the next patch and rounds of balances. The big ones that come to mind are:
- Reworking buybacks interaction with reliable gold, experience, and the comeback mechanics and
- Balancing some of pub stars: Troll, Juggernaut, Lion, Sniper, and Axe come quickly to mind.
Outside of those two things glaring straight at The International, DOTA2 is in a good place. The support hero pool is large and diverse. www.DOTABuff.com just ran a three part series highlighting 10 of the most viable supports you can pick (you can find part 3 here: http://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2015-04-02-introducing-top-tier-supports--part-3). To that list I would add the Ogre Magi, Treant Protector, and Sand King. There are only a few heroes considered unplayable (Sorry Kunkka). The mid lane is seeing a Rock- Paper-Scissors-Hammer-Blade-Scream… between Shadow Fiend, Sniper, Storm Spirit, your magic nuker of choice (usually Lina or Queen of Pain) and the maverick picks ( Ember Spirit, Brewmaster, Magnus, Viper, and even Artzeey on the Razor). With that said, there are still somethings that need fixing so here’s my wish list.
There are a few abilities that need to receive minor nerfs. Sniper’s shrapnel is crazy good at 50 mana and a 40 second recharge rate. Either the mana cost needs to increase enough to where you actually have to consider the cost of casting it, the recharge rate should be increased, or a combination of the 2. I don’t think it’s that far off from being viable but not overpowered. The other ability that stands out is Lion’s Impale. This spell is targeted so as long as you reach the cast point, the stun will land unless they are super far away. This leads to some stuns that are a bit on the questionable side. The solution here is to either have it remain targeted but once you cast it, it goes a fixed distance in the direction of the target or make it a skill shot but increase its range a little. The trend has been to make things more skill intensive; think Fissure for the Earth Shaker or Impale for Nyx.
A few heroes would really benefit from a bump because they are narrowly situational, they are a worse something else, or they are just unplayable. Visage best fits the narrowly situational pick because you almost never see him without a Drow or another pushing hero. Chen has pushed out almost every other pushing hero except for the Enigma. The buff to his abilities is a welcome change, however now the situation exists where Enchantress is a worse something else. Maybe she needs a rework to compete like buffing the damage her creeps have or increasing her healing effectiveness. Finally, the unplayable heroes: Kunka, Alchemist, Leshrac, Chaos Knight and Lifestealer just cannot be picked because they are situationally worse than everything else. A buff to these heroes would be welcome, especially Leshrac. He puts out a ton of damage, but has to compete with QoP, Lina, and Storm for the position of mid int. hero and he can’t. He’s also not a good support because he damage is reliant on being alive for the duration of a fight. A buff in either direction would be most welcome and I think it starts with Lightning Storm.
Hopefully the next patch freshens up the current meta, bringing new heroes to prominence and pushing down some of the current stars. What are your picks for heroes that need nerfs? Buffs? Let me know in the Comments.
- Reworking buybacks interaction with reliable gold, experience, and the comeback mechanics and
- Balancing some of pub stars: Troll, Juggernaut, Lion, Sniper, and Axe come quickly to mind.
Outside of those two things glaring straight at The International, DOTA2 is in a good place. The support hero pool is large and diverse. www.DOTABuff.com just ran a three part series highlighting 10 of the most viable supports you can pick (you can find part 3 here: http://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2015-04-02-introducing-top-tier-supports--part-3). To that list I would add the Ogre Magi, Treant Protector, and Sand King. There are only a few heroes considered unplayable (Sorry Kunkka). The mid lane is seeing a Rock- Paper-Scissors-Hammer-Blade-Scream… between Shadow Fiend, Sniper, Storm Spirit, your magic nuker of choice (usually Lina or Queen of Pain) and the maverick picks ( Ember Spirit, Brewmaster, Magnus, Viper, and even Artzeey on the Razor). With that said, there are still somethings that need fixing so here’s my wish list.
There are a few abilities that need to receive minor nerfs. Sniper’s shrapnel is crazy good at 50 mana and a 40 second recharge rate. Either the mana cost needs to increase enough to where you actually have to consider the cost of casting it, the recharge rate should be increased, or a combination of the 2. I don’t think it’s that far off from being viable but not overpowered. The other ability that stands out is Lion’s Impale. This spell is targeted so as long as you reach the cast point, the stun will land unless they are super far away. This leads to some stuns that are a bit on the questionable side. The solution here is to either have it remain targeted but once you cast it, it goes a fixed distance in the direction of the target or make it a skill shot but increase its range a little. The trend has been to make things more skill intensive; think Fissure for the Earth Shaker or Impale for Nyx.
A few heroes would really benefit from a bump because they are narrowly situational, they are a worse something else, or they are just unplayable. Visage best fits the narrowly situational pick because you almost never see him without a Drow or another pushing hero. Chen has pushed out almost every other pushing hero except for the Enigma. The buff to his abilities is a welcome change, however now the situation exists where Enchantress is a worse something else. Maybe she needs a rework to compete like buffing the damage her creeps have or increasing her healing effectiveness. Finally, the unplayable heroes: Kunka, Alchemist, Leshrac, Chaos Knight and Lifestealer just cannot be picked because they are situationally worse than everything else. A buff to these heroes would be welcome, especially Leshrac. He puts out a ton of damage, but has to compete with QoP, Lina, and Storm for the position of mid int. hero and he can’t. He’s also not a good support because he damage is reliant on being alive for the duration of a fight. A buff in either direction would be most welcome and I think it starts with Lightning Storm.
Hopefully the next patch freshens up the current meta, bringing new heroes to prominence and pushing down some of the current stars. What are your picks for heroes that need nerfs? Buffs? Let me know in the Comments.
Friday, January 2, 2015
More Efficiency
I go to school for electrical engineering and am on course to graduate this May. A topic often covered and talked about in engineering is efficiency. The efficiency of your engine, dispersing heat and processors are all important to understand for their applications. For example, your general - and I mean general, not just internal combustion - engine can only be about 20% efficient because of the inefficiency built into the system from things like friction. Don't be dissuaded from using an engine, however, because we are transferring one form of unusable energy into another, more usable one. In DOTA, efficiency is also extremely important; allocating damage, farming, purchasing items, movement, et al contribute to the efficiency of a player.
The more efficient a player is, the more impact he will have on the game. This is because he is optimizing his outcomes from each decision. The easiest way for me to visualize this is to think about using town portal scrolls (TPs). When used correctly, TPs allow a player to move about the map more efficiently because it takes about 3 seconds to port from top lane to bottom lane instead spending a long time walking and risking being caught out of position. Still, TPs are only so efficient like the engine because they cost gold to use. Thus a player converts gold into less travel time and a lower risk movement.
The contrapositive is also true: the less impact a player has on a game, the less efficient that player is. The carry or 1 position players for each team illustrate this the best. Generally, the carry which is more efficient and able to accrue a bigger advantage over the other carry will take their team to victory. Another way to think about this is to visualize two Anti-Mages: one with level 4 blink and the other without blink. The AM with level 4 blink will be more efficient at all aspects of the game - except, perhaps, mana usage - than the AM without because of the advantage blink offers.
Often players get hung up on efficiency, causing them to become inefficient. Don't let this be you. When considering the cost of a decision, it is often the case that there is an asymmetry of information; it is literally impossible to know all possible differences between and outcomes of two courses of action. Don't let this hinder you. Many players will get hung up on item choices, missing stacks, missing pulls, taking unnecessary creep damage, not spending their gold before they die and the list goes on. All these contribute to small game inefficiencies but psyching yourself out will contribute to large ones because not all inefficiencies make meaningful impacts on games. There is a caveat: the higher the skill game, the more those matter and can snowball into a game loss because players are better at leveraging small advantages created by these inefficiencies. With that said, psyching yourself out is not allocating your brains processing power efficiently and can lead to tilting: the definition of poor and inefficient decision making.
The next time you find yourself looking for an aspect of your game to improve, consider efficiency. Look for ways to minimize wasted gold and movement then move on to things like allocating damage in team fights or stacking stuns on an elusive target. By improving your efficiency, you will help your team and, hopefully, translate more games into wins.
The more efficient a player is, the more impact he will have on the game. This is because he is optimizing his outcomes from each decision. The easiest way for me to visualize this is to think about using town portal scrolls (TPs). When used correctly, TPs allow a player to move about the map more efficiently because it takes about 3 seconds to port from top lane to bottom lane instead spending a long time walking and risking being caught out of position. Still, TPs are only so efficient like the engine because they cost gold to use. Thus a player converts gold into less travel time and a lower risk movement.
The contrapositive is also true: the less impact a player has on a game, the less efficient that player is. The carry or 1 position players for each team illustrate this the best. Generally, the carry which is more efficient and able to accrue a bigger advantage over the other carry will take their team to victory. Another way to think about this is to visualize two Anti-Mages: one with level 4 blink and the other without blink. The AM with level 4 blink will be more efficient at all aspects of the game - except, perhaps, mana usage - than the AM without because of the advantage blink offers.
Often players get hung up on efficiency, causing them to become inefficient. Don't let this be you. When considering the cost of a decision, it is often the case that there is an asymmetry of information; it is literally impossible to know all possible differences between and outcomes of two courses of action. Don't let this hinder you. Many players will get hung up on item choices, missing stacks, missing pulls, taking unnecessary creep damage, not spending their gold before they die and the list goes on. All these contribute to small game inefficiencies but psyching yourself out will contribute to large ones because not all inefficiencies make meaningful impacts on games. There is a caveat: the higher the skill game, the more those matter and can snowball into a game loss because players are better at leveraging small advantages created by these inefficiencies. With that said, psyching yourself out is not allocating your brains processing power efficiently and can lead to tilting: the definition of poor and inefficient decision making.
The next time you find yourself looking for an aspect of your game to improve, consider efficiency. Look for ways to minimize wasted gold and movement then move on to things like allocating damage in team fights or stacking stuns on an elusive target. By improving your efficiency, you will help your team and, hopefully, translate more games into wins.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Death Ball so hard
The past international saw Newbee dominate with the 5 man death ball. Get a pushing hero to 6, group up, take towers, get ahead, push more, get further ahead, and win. This is the death ball way. It became so prevalent that it pushed other strategies out of the meta and wrapped how people played the game leading to a structural change for the tower glyph and gold and hero balancing (sorry, DP.) Re-balancing the game in this way reduced the incentive to employ this strategy, but it's still powerful.
The poster heroes for taking towers are Pugna, Death Prophet (DP), Shadow Shaman (SS), Nature's Prophet (NP) and the big bad wolf (Lycan). Since the nerf stick hit the DP and Lycan directly, they haven't been first pick/first ban in pro games like they were during The International 2014 but are making appearances in the hands of capable teams and players, like EG's Arteezy and Cloud 9's Eternal Envy. Pugna and the SS have fallen out of favor as a direct result of the meta shift even though they are still viable picks although more niche. The NP is a bit of an oddity here because he's picked to globally gank and fight early, evident by the popularity of the Null Talisman and Blademail build.
The strategy was too oppressive, limiting the number of viable strategies and heroes. Teams with a death ball could take two towers in quick succession by winning a team fight at a tower, executing a successful gank, or slow sieging a tower with a counter initiation edge (think Dark Seer) giving them a huge lead. This lead gave more map control the the death ball leading to Roshan, more towers, securing the enemy jungle, et al. While the lead wasn't always insurmountable, it gave significant percentage points to teams who could reliably leverage it into a win.
Why doesn't the death ball bring all the boys to the yard like it used to? Mostly it's the nerf stick, let's say 50% can be attributed to direct nerfing; Lycan, DP, and NP see play, but NP has evolved so he only counts as half leading to 2.5 out of my 5 poster children.. What about the remaining 50%? I have a few theories, and they go as such:
The poster heroes for taking towers are Pugna, Death Prophet (DP), Shadow Shaman (SS), Nature's Prophet (NP) and the big bad wolf (Lycan). Since the nerf stick hit the DP and Lycan directly, they haven't been first pick/first ban in pro games like they were during The International 2014 but are making appearances in the hands of capable teams and players, like EG's Arteezy and Cloud 9's Eternal Envy. Pugna and the SS have fallen out of favor as a direct result of the meta shift even though they are still viable picks although more niche. The NP is a bit of an oddity here because he's picked to globally gank and fight early, evident by the popularity of the Null Talisman and Blademail build.
The strategy was too oppressive, limiting the number of viable strategies and heroes. Teams with a death ball could take two towers in quick succession by winning a team fight at a tower, executing a successful gank, or slow sieging a tower with a counter initiation edge (think Dark Seer) giving them a huge lead. This lead gave more map control the the death ball leading to Roshan, more towers, securing the enemy jungle, et al. While the lead wasn't always insurmountable, it gave significant percentage points to teams who could reliably leverage it into a win.
Why doesn't the death ball bring all the boys to the yard like it used to? Mostly it's the nerf stick, let's say 50% can be attributed to direct nerfing; Lycan, DP, and NP see play, but NP has evolved so he only counts as half leading to 2.5 out of my 5 poster children.. What about the remaining 50%? I have a few theories, and they go as such:
- Team theory - certain teams do better at certain strategies because of their competent hero pool (who they pick and can play at a professional level) and decision making processes (why they pick certain heroes and how they use them). For tier 1 teams, on an average day, they are all within a few percentage points of each other and a few more percentage points above tier 1.5 and more yet over tier 2 teams. As the meta shifts, these percentages also shift in favor of the team which can leverage those shifts into wins. The examples of this are Alliance and Navi who were so dominant up to the last International, but derailed and haven't found much success since. Thus, because there are narrow margins separating pro teams, shifts in the meta create an environment for teams to capitalize on them based on who they are, dooming teams who relied on strategies which have been pushed out.
- Power Curve theory - with each update and introduction of new heroes, it shifts the aggregate power of all heroes and re-balances the relative power level of all heroes. All you have to do is watch the Beyond the Summit 2 game between Team Tinker and C9 where Lifestealer went up against Terrorblase and it was ugly. TB raised the power curve, pushing comparable heroes out - sorry, naix - and raising the stock of counter picks. A similar phenomena happens with an update, but the aggregate power level may not grow or might even shrink. Since the international, the updates and introduction of more heroes lowered the stock of most death balling heroes or pushed them out of the meta completely; Pugna, Dragon Knight, SS, Enchatress, Chen, Clockwerk, and Lone Druid see basically no play as attributed to the Powe Curve. As one commentator put it, Chen creeps run toward TB and die before they get there.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Foreseer's Contract Update and Nemesis Assassin Event Thoughts
The Foreseer's Contract has been issued. After a cool digital comic which offered a peak at the newest hero to sign their name in blood for ancient's struggle, the Oracle was made live. I'll highlight some of the additions, positive and negative.
- The new Phantom Assassin arcana looks awesome, but disappointing that it's only a weapon. The model change, alternate animations, and in-game icon are well done. My disappoint with it only being a weapon stems from wanting to use a whole set, not just 4 of the 5 piece or whatever the case may be. Maybe Valve should add an "augment hero" equip slot for occations such as this.
- The Oracle as a hero seems underwhelming in power level, but I don't mind. At least for the moment, the Oracle isn't breaking pubs the way some previous heroes have (Terrorblade I'm looking at you.) I would much rather have the Oracle start a little under-powered and get tuned once it's better understood how he interacts with heroes than the alternative.
- Buying the prediction item every time seems a little greedy for Valve. If it were me, buying the PA arcana would give you one everyday for the duration of the event (as long as you used it up the previous day.)
- Playing with the in game contract idea with reward is super fun. It introduces an objective that doesn't create an advantage for either team. Creation of such an objective with a sought after reward (an awesome set) adds dimensions of freshness and fun to the game.
| Level 1 | PA: | Oracle |
| Level 2 | Razor | Razor |
| Omniknight | Earth Spirit | |
| Sand King | Phantom Assassin | |
| Centaur Warrunner | Magnus | |
| Ogre Magi | Sand King | |
| Lion | Leshrac | |
| Axe | Pugna | |
| Crystal Maiden | Undying | |
| Level 2 | Razor: | Sand King: |
| Drow Ranger | Zeus | |
| Sniper | Techies | |
| Techies | Spectre | |
| Viper | Bloodseeker | |
| Meepo | Juggernaut | |
| Bloodseek | Phoenix | |
| Sand King | Sniper | |
| Ember Spirit | Elder Titan |
Friday, November 21, 2014
The Top 5 support picks in pro DOTA
Gone are the days of the brown boots supports. Thank goodness. Not only are the games more exciting with supports who have their force staff and blink dagger at the ready, but their team contributions to these games can tip the scales of a close game in their favor. In no particular order, my top five supports for current pro play are: Skywrath Mage, Ogre Magi, Mirana, Elder Titan, and Vengeful Spirit.
The Skywrath Mage (DOTA buff profile) is probably the best support in CM currently. His instant silence in the hands of a pro player makes Pandas look silly as they blink on to shake hands with Ancient Seal. Seal also makes heros like Storm, Weaver, Puck, and most supports over glorified creeps. Concussive shot is the other spell which needs mentioning here. The range on this spell is a ludicrous 1600 units, which makes it perfect for setting up ganks or zoning heroes during the laning stage and beyond. This spell, like Mirana's sacred arrow, takes advantage of being cast from the fog of war; mid heroes beware.
The bra-less wonder. Ogre McGee. Our favorite melee support, the Ogre Magi (DOTA buff), received a buff of last patch (6.82) to his 2X multicast, allowing him to make an impact on the game earlier, and base HP regen to 2.5, increasing his ability to harass. These seemly small buffs create a larger window of time for this hero to maintain relevance, propelling him to a tier 1 support. The Magi signature spell is his fireblast, which also received a decrease in damage but an increase in the duration between each proc thus stunning a target for longer. This reliable, instant cast stun provides the burst damage necessary to gank and blow up other heroes. The other reason to pick up this hero is to boost a right-clicker's dps and movement speed with bloodlust. At level 4, the 50% increased attack speed and 16% movement speed is like having 1.5 yashas equipped (with out the bonus states).
Mirana (DOTA buff) is the most polar hero in this pool. She fluctuates from unbeatable to a waste of space, all depending on how prepared people are for the arrow. A team constantly on guard and placing wards will make a roaming Mirana look embarrassing. However, if those arrow are hitting and translating into kills, the early game lead, and probably the game itself, is yours. Mirana also pairs well with other supports who can set up arrows like Ogre, Venge, Shadow Demon, and Rubbik to name a few. Lastly on the ability front, Moonlight shadow adds a unique dimension to team fighting and ganking. The other thing about Mirana that is unique among these 5 supports is that she can play any position, from farming carry to brown boots support so picking her early or late isn't a liability and reveals very little about your strategy.
Team Secret's Big Daddy has been playing out of his mind on the Elder Titan (DOTA buff)recently in the support role rather than as an offlaner. This hero offers unique effects which only get better as the game goes on, namely Natural Order. Removing 100% base armor cripples stat based carries, like Morphling and Drow, as well as amplifying your teams damage. This hero also scales well with items, but is not dependent on them because of Astral Spirit. His stomp offers a long range initiation that sleeps units for a full 5 seconds, allowing your team and an earthsplitter to set up for a complete blow out. The only weakness of this hero is that his laning presence early is poor because stomp takes time to channel and he is melee so he has trouble harassing and zoning enemy heroes.
The Vengeful Spirit (DOTA buff) is well positioned right now because she works well with farming heroes that rely on physical damage - like Razor, Death Prophet, and Lycan, offers a bat rider-like ability to remove an enemy hero from play at instant speed via swap, increases the teams damage and has a reliable stun. Nether Swap and the increased damage through vengeance aura and wave of terror are the reasons to pick the Venge. She also facilitates Roshan with all the minus armor she's packing, especially if you get a medallion of courage. This item seems to have the DOTA communities consensus on being a core item for her. Shendelzare (yes, that's her name) can also play more of a core role, but operates just fine without items.
These 5 supports the best at what they do. Items aren't a necessity and they all add a dimension to your team which creates space for the team's cores to farm. Next time you play have to play a support, keep these 5 in mind; they won't steer you wrong.
Mirana (DOTA buff) is the most polar hero in this pool. She fluctuates from unbeatable to a waste of space, all depending on how prepared people are for the arrow. A team constantly on guard and placing wards will make a roaming Mirana look embarrassing. However, if those arrow are hitting and translating into kills, the early game lead, and probably the game itself, is yours. Mirana also pairs well with other supports who can set up arrows like Ogre, Venge, Shadow Demon, and Rubbik to name a few. Lastly on the ability front, Moonlight shadow adds a unique dimension to team fighting and ganking. The other thing about Mirana that is unique among these 5 supports is that she can play any position, from farming carry to brown boots support so picking her early or late isn't a liability and reveals very little about your strategy.
Team Secret's Big Daddy has been playing out of his mind on the Elder Titan (DOTA buff)recently in the support role rather than as an offlaner. This hero offers unique effects which only get better as the game goes on, namely Natural Order. Removing 100% base armor cripples stat based carries, like Morphling and Drow, as well as amplifying your teams damage. This hero also scales well with items, but is not dependent on them because of Astral Spirit. His stomp offers a long range initiation that sleeps units for a full 5 seconds, allowing your team and an earthsplitter to set up for a complete blow out. The only weakness of this hero is that his laning presence early is poor because stomp takes time to channel and he is melee so he has trouble harassing and zoning enemy heroes.
The Vengeful Spirit (DOTA buff) is well positioned right now because she works well with farming heroes that rely on physical damage - like Razor, Death Prophet, and Lycan, offers a bat rider-like ability to remove an enemy hero from play at instant speed via swap, increases the teams damage and has a reliable stun. Nether Swap and the increased damage through vengeance aura and wave of terror are the reasons to pick the Venge. She also facilitates Roshan with all the minus armor she's packing, especially if you get a medallion of courage. This item seems to have the DOTA communities consensus on being a core item for her. Shendelzare (yes, that's her name) can also play more of a core role, but operates just fine without items.
These 5 supports the best at what they do. Items aren't a necessity and they all add a dimension to your team which creates space for the team's cores to farm. Next time you play have to play a support, keep these 5 in mind; they won't steer you wrong.
Monday, November 10, 2014
More Midas, More Problems
Is
midas really worth it? This item embodies many of the great aspect of DOTA. Are
you behind in farm? Grab a midas. Are
you really far ahead from the 6-15 minute mark? Grab a midas. Your game has
degenerated to a farming war? Grab a midas. The opposing team is going to
pressure your towers from the 10 minute mark on? Don’t grab a midas. The item
itself represents an investment of time and gold which you hope will pay back
dividends in the future. Once purchased, the repayment period for the midas is 11 uses or 16
minutes & 40 seconds. Assuming that a player is averaging 400 gold per
minutes (gpm) prior to purchasing it, the initial time investment 2050 gold /
400 gpm = 5 minutes 7 seconds to farm it. Let’s assume that our hero continues
to farm 400 gpm plus their newly acquire midas - who’s added gpm is 2050
gold/16.66 minutes = 123 gpm. This makes for a grand farming total of 523 gpm.
This changes the 16 minute and 40 second payback period to a true repayment
period of 2050 gold / 523 gmp = 3 minutes and 55 seconds. To sum it up, the
time it would take to save enough gold to purchase a midas and then farm up
enough gold to where it paid for itself would be 9 minutes and 3 seconds. A
player gains or loses about a minute for each 100 gpm difference from the
baseline case of 400 gpm.
With
all these numbers, let’s try to make sense of what’s going on. The initial time
investment is the period of time when the player is working toward getting
their item. This is the point when the player is most vulnerable to having
their farm disrupted. Each minute of decreased gpm, from deaths for example,
during this period adds another minute that the game must go on in order for
the midas to generate value. The repayment period is the amount of time that
the game has to go on for the midas to break even. It needs another use after
that (100 seconds) to generate value. Therefore the game must go on for 18
minutes and 20 seconds for the midas to turn a net profit in isolation. The
true repayment period of the midas represents the aggregated affect the item
has on a players farming with a players gpm. Finally there is a roughly 9
minutes of cost to break even on time investment that is, to have 2050 gold
again.
All these tangibles are important
to understand when thinking about purchasing a midas. If you won’t have about 5
minutes of uninterrupted farm, it doesn’t make much sense to purchase a midas
because it will push back the true repayment period, delaying your relevance in
the game giving. The repayment period gives us an idea of how long the game
needs to last from point of purchase it to have a positive return on
investment. If the game ends before the 16 minute and 40 seconds window is up,
you would have been much better off purchasing a different item which would
have improved your hero in some way other than gpm and slight attack speed
increase. If the game does go the distance of 18 minutes and 20 seconds from
point of purchase, then the true cost of the midas is what we need to worry
about. This tells us how long after the purchase of the golden hand we can
expect to start getting other items and begin impacting the game in a more
noticeable way.
Many of the things discussed here
are tangible and easy to quantify. There are still many aspects of the midas
worthy of discussion, like the impact of the extra experience or the increase
in the value of a creep wave, but weren’t touched on here. The inspiration for
this post is to get a rough idea on the worthiness of purchasing the golden
hand and a starting point for making sound decisions. Obviously I can’t factor
in every variable; however a baseline has been established and will be built
upon. Below I have provided a table and graph for quick reference when deciding
to purchase a midas.
Player GPM:
|
Initial Investment
|
Player GPM with Midas
|
True Repayment time
|
Total Time invested
|
100
|
20:30
|
223
|
09:12
|
29:42
|
150
|
13:40
|
273
|
07:31
|
21:11
|
200
|
10:15
|
323
|
06:21
|
16:36
|
250
|
08:12
|
373
|
05:30
|
13:42
|
300
|
06:50
|
423
|
04:51
|
11:41
|
350
|
05:51
|
473
|
04:20
|
10:11
|
400
|
05:07
|
523
|
03:55
|
09:03
|
450
|
04:33
|
573
|
03:35
|
08:08
|
500
|
04:06
|
623
|
03:17
|
07:23
|
550
|
03:44
|
673
|
03:03
|
06:46
|
600
|
03:25
|
723
|
02:50
|
06:15
|
650
|
03:09
|
773
|
02:39
|
05:48
|
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