Good Pub 5 Stack Drafts

Invoker is just tactile memory and adapting to remember the Cooldowns on his Spells without a visual aid. Would have thought it would take more than 4 games though... 8{O

good memory brah ;)

There's a lot more to Invoker than that, but it is mainly tactile memory, reflexes and cooldown management. However, the difference between me, who can do that, and someone like Black^ or ice3x is insane, and not just because of actual skill levels. The hardest part about Invoker is knowing which spell will be most useful in the current situation and seeing ahead to when you can use it. This basically means that you have to think ahead numerous seconds, depending on how long Invoke cooldown is.

Used perfectly, Invoker can basically win any engagement... used badly, he'll **** up everybody's combo.

im pretty sure thats the way carl likes it ....


though i have trouble with the transition from engaging to disengaging i find its hard to transition well.

Few lessons learnt yesterday:

1) Captain's Draft might be a good mode for us. It's a mix of random mode, with a small element of banning/picking by captains. Means we're not stuck with just meta-heroes, and the random element of available heroes means the other team can't use pre-planned wombo-combos. Both captains/teams have to be more reactive, and that suits us better.

2) Good picks/combos go a long way. We had a 50/50 record in the games I played last night. First one we put up a good show but got beaten up by better team fight (Wulfy learns limitations of glimmer cloak ;)). Second game we had some nice picks (Nubs Slark, Kainen Skywrath Mage, Xyrus Viper, Wulfy Earth Spirit, Sando Abaddon), snowballed pretty early, did some good combo breaking and generally worked together pretty well for an easy win.

Game 1

Game 2



Well, a lot of people joining the stacks say "oh noes it's all people I know from Dotafire!" and how stressed they are by it :). I know in the past when I've been asked to play in games above my average skill level I've felt under more pressure than normal to try to do well and not let anybody down.

Much as I agree with some of your points about learning, I'd still much rather have a hero I know reasonably well and feel comfortable with. That way, when people highlight my errors I'll understand what I need to tweak and why, rather than just making bad decisions out of unfamiliarity.

Whenever you're trying to improve any set of skills, it's always much easier to just focus on 1-2 at a time instead of lots. If you're trying to play in a trilane (which you've done rarely before), stacking, roaming, harassing, setting up kills...all at a higher level than you're used to, AND you're trying to do it with a new hero...that's too much at once.

Much as we all try to advise each other in stacks, there's not much time ingame, generally mistakes get picked up after they're made ("why did you skill/build that?") by which time it's too late. There's no time to go through every decision, and we all tend to assume people know what they're going to do unless they ask.

Personally the thing that puts me off playing more than anything is the feeling that I let other people down when I care about their opinion. If it's a bunch of internet randoms I don't really care very much what they think, wheras I do care about what friends think.

Anyway, I do agree with your points about learning and breaking patterns (that stuff is important) but I think people need to get more comfortable with their new team mates before we get too into that.

If we can wrestle our win rate up to something a bit more respectable, I think we can afford to lose more games by experimenting more.

I know the feel :)

First game I had with Smuggler felt like I had to justify my place in his stack. Then I discovered how hard he feeds and things got a lot less stressful after I carried his 0/37 Lina :D

3 4ks, a 3k and a 2k...and yet no 4k players in the opposing 3 + 2 stacks 8{3

• 187GPM 0-12-5 no Blink Batrider Mid
• Midas + Dagon KoTL highest GPM
• No TPs for Wulfstan 8{D
• 15 minutes Aghs after Mek on Viper

...to think some people feel pressured when they play with 4k players X{D

I suppose so, but that still doesn't stop me from playing Heroes I'm weaker at in higher Skilled Stacks, I just do the usual thing and either wait and see what's needed and play that, or call a Pick before we even start queueing if there's something I particularly want to play.

This sounds an awful lot like Sando Mirana. 8{3

#SacredArrowMissedRoshan
#ShotsFired 8{3

Hmm, thought I missed something...now I know ._.

Hi guys, what can I do to try an in-house game with you? (or when is your next one).

I would like to be amongst all these 3k and 4k players and see if they are so good as they think they are next to people with supposedly low mmr :D

Terathiel, LOL!

They're hosted whenever someone feels like hosting one, just keep a look out in the Inhouse section. They almost always will occur on the Weekend though. All you need to do to join is be a dotafire member, and post in the inhouse thread whether you will be attending or not.

Thanks Bukan, I've found the inhouse thread now! Will be on the lookout :)