You take top, I'm jungling or What went wrong.

I didn't actually choose top. My choices were trilane bot or dual-lane mid. Both Windranger and Drow refused to play top and instead spent a good deal of the early game, attempting to gank mid, failing to gank mid, and then just staying at mid, splitting the xp.

I played another game with ET with a team that actually played like a team and I led the final charge on the Radiant Ancient.

This is kind of my point...I'm not saying you're a bad ET player, or that your team were completely reasonable and correct...but one of the main mistakes a lot of players make is to assume that their own situation is the most important one.

Necro and Lich has pretty horrific harassment potential...they're not nice to lane against, and you'd need to have a good chance of killing them in order to be able to "win" that lane in a traditional sense - you're not going to out-attrition them easily.

Ok...you're the toughest, tankiest hero in your team. You need levels, but aren't too bothered about farm. Both WR and Drow would do worse solo against those heroes than you would (they might get a few more last hits in, but couldn't deal with that level of harassment and might well die). You can stock up on consumables, soak up as much XP as possible, with some last hits thrown in from your spirit.

You got the main thing you needed - levels, and you did a job for your team - going solo against that horrible lane and not feeding, giving them a chance to do better elsewhere.

You couldn't realistically "win" that lane unless the opposition have terrible positioning, I'm not convinced you have enough burst until SK has level 6, and you've got Necro's heal to deal with on top of that. All you can do in that situational is "lose well" - i.e. extract as much value from the lane as possible, and stop the enemy getting any more than you can help.

I'd say under the circumstances the SK is actually doing the right thing (even if it's bad of him to completely ignore potential kills etc if they're available and staying in the jungle too long and generally sucking) - he's letting you get solo XP, while getting some XP and farm for himself. If he'd of laned with you, all he would have done is halved your XP and reduced the team's total gold income.

In the same way, try to extract as much value as you can from "bad" team mates - yes, they're not great to have around, but part of the skill of DOTA is getting the best you can from your team.

Tbh I'm not sure there's any value in an ET defensive trilane - you'll just end up horribly underlevelled unless you're bagging kills left, right and centre. And frankly, no tri-lane is better than a bad tri-lane with the wrong heroes/players who don't know what they're doing in one.

An unfortunate side effect of picking less common heroes (which I applaud) is less experienced players have no clue about their abilities and make silly mistakes around them. Low level Oracle players are just horrible for example.

Also, be honest with yourself with that pick - did you get ET as you thought it was the best choice for your team in that situation...or because you wanted to play/learn him? I'm not saying option 2 is wrong in a pub game, but it was a choice you made. Put yourself in the position of the other players on your team...what would you make of what you wanted in that situation?

Great post Sando.

Necro and lich is a nasty lane. What if you put that lane against a support Lion? No one cares. Bounty hunter? No one cares. Anti Mage? Okay, you're in trouble. Change lanes. ET needs no farm, so to lose the lane you over extended. My point with the lane talk earlier was... If you were long lane, you don't have an SK jungle either... So no matter what it's 2v1 and you didn't do well apparently. Top or bottom, it doesn't matter. It's a clean 2v1 and you died. If they dive you top, they will dive you bot as well.

Sando is exactly right with winning other lanes. To strengthen one lane, you weaken another. Send 5 to your opponents safe lane. I bet he won't get any farm... But your other lanes will be destroyed obviously. Sometimes lanes are so strong that it's better to abandon them than try to fight them.

How often have you seen pros make an extremely aggressive tri lane like Tree, gyro, undying and send it to the safe lane? Rarely. You draft aggressively to shut down farm against a greedier carry. They sent aggressive heroes against a hero that needs nothing. Some heroes need a certain timing to take off... ET needs none of that. He's like a Phoenix in that he just farms up and once he's 6 you just wait for someone to say "let's fight them".

You had a winning match up in this situation. The AFK SK didn't lose the lane for you. He just didn't contribute, the same as if you would have soloed long lane and you still lost. They don't even have stuns to disrupt you using sleep/TP. Plus you're safe lane so you have trees to juke in. I'm just saying don't always blame the team. It happens too often in this game.

I don't think it's fair to say the player didn't lose it.

He didn't directly influence the outcome, but who knows?

What if SK had contributed, and was a better player? In lower levels, a decent SK can win games. Unless you're fighting Troll and he wasn't in your ultimate.

Thanks Angelo.

Sk doesn't really have much of a lane presence - he's a melee support with a small mana pool and no ranged abilities at all. He's good at popping up to secure kills, roaming and jungleing. If he can't assist a kill, all he's doing is reducing both your xp. Im not saying this particular player knew that :).

The Sand King needs the quick blink. He has nothing to do on the lane. If you really want to lane him, do some wacky shenanigans max Caustic Finale build mid or against a melee dual lane bot. Otherwise, let him bank in the dagger. Because in comparison with Earthshaker for example, he doesn't have a 1.2k range stun. And he also endangers himself when stuning, due to how Burrowstrike works.

This is the issue, can a [Sand King]] Gank Safe Lane with an Elder Titan to successfuly Gank a Necro + Lich? The answer is unlikely. If Lich is low on HP, far from his Tower and both SK and ET play well, then yes, you can probably get a Kill, but against Necro, you need some way of Bursting him down before he can heal him self up, and with 2 Melee Heroes, it's going to hurt if you can't.

Odds are, if Sand King had Ganked, one of you would have died, slowing down SK's Blink Dagger and helping the Necro to Snowball.

The issue with this is, that by the time SK is lvl6, he should have his Blink Dagger. Before that, he's mediocre in Ganks. He works quite well 3 vs 1 with a Hard Support and a Laner, but as Wulfstan already mentioned, the nature of his Stun makes him vulnerable if he uses it as anything other than an Escape Mechanism earlier on.

Without a Blink Dagger and Epicentre, Sand King sucks at fighting 2 vs 2.

As for playing better, that can be said for each and every player, Angelo already covered this.

I dont think sk is completely useless in lane.
Against a melee lane sk can give them a tough time for taking last hits as he harasses them using sandstorm. Whats more, sandking can have the lane pushed to theor tower so they have to compete with their tower for last hits.


I can see here that OP tries to find meaning in everything. Sadly, many thinhs are trivial in life. What if analysis does come handy in situations where viable alternative exist. Here, my only advice to you would be to learn ET a bit more and use his spirit to harass, last hitcreeps. Et, as the veterans have told you rightly is very level dependant. I personally take 3 levels in stomp, 2 in spirit and 3 in natural order by level 9. Dont level up your ulti more than once. That is one thing that only its slow scales, so you can leave ot to prioritize natural order. Thats the moat broken thing with et. Try just sending your spirit near enemies when team fights with them and you will feel utilized.

I do understand your pain. It is now countless times that people dont realise how his sleep and ulti combo works and they interrupt it. They should nuke people sleeping, and not right click them. That mostly led me to play et only in coordinated games only. Hes much like io in that regard. You can pull off a sloppy oracle but you can do that with the worldsmith.

. Please dont fell down.
As you meet 'tough to asjust with' teammates, you build adaptability. You build your disposition. Ans it will take you where you wnnna be.
Good luck

Sentry Wards. Caustic Finale is the way to go against a melee lane.

They buy sentry you buy sentry.
In an offlane setting you are hurting their economy more than they hurt yours.
A smart player {like you and me xD} would carefully time his last hits to not take caustic finale damage. Whearas in case of sandstorm he has to venture in the ruckus. They get a sentry and you deward, which in my opinion is just making that safelanes' life hell.
I only take 1 lvl in stun and take 2/3 in CF so you are right. I just do these two things in combination. Also levelling up sandstorm accomplishes twin purpose of harass and jungle farm while things are idle.

Note: me drunk. Me so drunk you need to pardon my typos. Me so drunk imma having thots about wulfy... 😄 😃