Help reviewing roaming pudge

I have played pudge a couple of times before, and have tried offlane "support"(offensive trilane), duo offlane and safelane, mid, as well as roaming. I prefer the playstyle of a roamer by far and i feel i should get some help to improve.

https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1522087931

This is a recent game of me playing pudge as a roamer, and i would like some experienced players to help me improve. I feel i made a lot of mistakes and spent a lot of time not doing much, especially towards the end, but i am not sure how and what could i have done exactly while looking for kills.

ill replay cast it for you.

ive done your team game but need to clean it up and make some changes so wont be posted till later.

ill do this one later tonight.

ah thanks so much smuggels

You spent a lot of time idling in your Fountain deciding which Items to buy. Since you want to be contesting Runes at 0:00, you need to buy your Items and move out within a few seconds of Spawning in the Fountain so you can get into Position for a possible First Blood.

You ended up buying a Healing Salve, 3 Claritys, an Iron Ring and a Circlet (after selling your Gauntlets of Strength.

Healing Salve - You would do better to start with a set of Tangoes, they provide more overall Healing, but more importantly, they allow you to cut paths through Trees to better Position yourself for Meat Hooks. If you lose more than 400 HP in the 1st 5 minutes, the best option is usually to spend your Unreliable Gold (on a TP Scroll and Smoke of Deceits) and commit sudoku with Rot. This is because if you lose most of your HP Pool, you're vulnerable to Global Spells and Ganks that can finish you off if you aren't careful, you'll also probably have used most of your Mana Pool on Meat Hook as well. Rather than waste Items bringing yourself back up, it's better to spend a few seconds, dying respawning, then Tping to a Tower. You'll not only come back with Full HP and Mana for 100 - 200 Gold, but you can reposition yourself for a Gank almost anywhere on the Map. (Prepare to get yelled at by scrubs for doing this though)

Clarity - Buying 3 this game was fine, you were going to need the Mana to sustain your Hooking for quite a while. You need to buy enough to ensure you have enough Mana without using the Courier before your Mid buys their Bottle (assuming they'll go for one), or until you can afford your own Bottle. You can always buy more and fery them on the Courier later on though.

Iron Ring - Kind of useless at this point. Yes, you will be building Tranquil Boots, but +3 Armour is useless if you're going to be hiding and Hooking most of the time. If you ewxpect to get into 3 vs 3 skirmishes, you might want to pick this up, otherwise, the value it gives is far less than it's cost for the 1st 10 minutes.

Circlet/ Gauntlets of Strength - You shouldn't start with either of these. Having more Int means you have an extra 26 Mana and 0.02 Mana Regen. This doesn't help much with the 110 Mana Cost for Meat Hook (you'd need 3 extra Int in order to have enough Mana for 2 Meat Hooks). You need Claritys for that. The Gauntlets of strength offers better value as you can use the extra HP to trade better with Rot and you can even drop the Gauntlet while you Heal yourself (this isn't as viable with Clarities and Circlet since it takes half a minute to Regen your Mana). The only problem is, nether Item offers enough value to be worth their cost at the start of the game. Later on, yes, but before 0:00, 150 Gold is a heft cost and puts you further from your Core Items.

If you feel you really need extra Stats, take 3 Iron Branches, they cost the same as a Gauntlets of Strength, but they also give you enough Mana for a 2nd Hook:-

(14 + 3) == 17 Int
17 * 13 == 221 Mana
221 / 110 == 2.01 Meat Hooks



These ^ are the Items you should be starting with. I cannot stress how important it is that your RUSH your Boots of Speed, hell, if you're feeling confident or have Random Gold, you could even start out with Boots of Speed, although they don't have that much impact until after 0:20 when everyone has headed to their Lanes.

Boots of Speed - Getting these early is your top priority. The extra 50 Movements Speed goes a long way in moving between Lanes, securing Runes and getting into Position for a Meat Hook. Before 2:00, THERE IS NO BETTER ITEM on Roaming Pudge than Boots of Speed...unless you get so fed you can afford Transquil Boots. 8{3

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00:30 - You sort of stood there...thinking?...and blocking off the Small Camp. The most important part of playing Roaming Pudge is that you need to be decisive. Don't worry about whether what you are doing is right or wrong, just make a decision and go for it! (you can always make a thread about what you did right or wrong later, amiright? 8{3 )

00:55 - You missed an easy Hook on a Sand King who was already below half HP. Remember the imfamous Dendi phrase - "You miss every Hook you don't throw". Again, don't hesitate, as soon as an opportunity comes, seize it!

01:12 - You ended up getting the Hook on Earthshaker, but this wasn't a good way to Hook. The big reason that Pudge isn't a popular Hero in competetive is that if you can see the Hook, it is very easy to dodge. Rather than running out in front of the Creep Wave after they went of PL, you should have anticipated that ES would run back and moved directly north, towards his Tower while still hidden behind the Trees, while they were going on PL.

At this point, neither of them would have known you were there until "FIRST BLOOD". This not only ensures your Hook will land against opponenets that are smart enough, calm enough and experienced enough to dodge, but it also adds a huge psychological blow on the other Team, particularly SK and ES - "WHEN THE $%^& DID PUDGE GET HERE?!" Suddenly dying without seeing what killed you places a lot of pressure.

Even if they still dived PL, moving away from him allows you to Hook hispursuer away from him, possibly saving him.

01:20: The dance of confusion 8{D - at this point, SK was still Chanelling Sandstorm. As he's only level 1, he can only keep this up for 20 seconds at most, however, Earthshaker will soon be returning to help him (due to low respawn timer + TP Scroll). You sort of hovered around since you didn't want to take Damage from Sandstorm, but since the damage from it is low at lvl 1, it was almost over, and he clearly has no Burrowstrike, you should have just ran up to him and prepared to Bodyblock and Right-Click him while PL Spirit Lanced him.

It was a good opportunity for 2nd Blood, or to at least force SK back to the Fountain as ES is going to have trouble landing a good Fissure to Block you in for a Counter-Gank (not that he would have done this, but I'll get to that in a bit), and with Sandstorm on Cooldown, you would only have had measly right-clicks and Creeps to contend with.

As a result, SK was able to run past you and head straight for Dazzle (who was...ridiculously out of Position) and Kill him. You might not have been able to stop this, but you probably could have Killed SK before Dazzle died and certainly before losing all but 10HP to the Creep Wave. If Earthshaker hadn't have chickened out, you would have died to him as well. 8{(

01:55 - Denying yourself == smart. Not buying the TP Scroll first == an extra 50 gold lost



02:00 - I've already explained this, but Boots of Speed are crucial to your Early Game, Sage's Mask is almost useless at this point.

02:20 - I've already explained about Tangoes and TP Scrolls after sudoku. You'll notice here, you could have landed a Hook here by eating a Tree or 2 to move closer to PA while still being hidden. Luckily, Tusk managed to bait PA out though.

03:20 - You bought a 2nd Sage's Mask...For 325 Gold, you are increasing your Mana Regen by 50%. You currently have (14 + 2) == 16 Int, which gives you 208 Mana, and (0.01 + (0.04 * 17)) == 0.69 Mana per second. Sage's Mask gives you 0.69 / 2 == 0.345 Mana per second, meaning it takes more than 5 minutes to give you enough for a lvl1 Meat Hook from Sage's Mask alone. Overall, it still takes more than 2.5 minutes to generate enough Mana for a lvl1 Meat Hook. Never rush to buy a Sage's Mask! T-T

03:40 - You hesitated again for a few seconds, but you landed a good Hook. <}3

04:18 - A rather good mine placement by Techies, as this route is useful for Ganking and Run Control on Radiant side, don't feel too bad for running into it, most experienced players would eat those mines too. 8{(

04:55 - You picked up an Urn of Shadows...WHY DO YOU HATE BOOTS SO MUCH?! T-T

06:20 - Eziest Hook of your life. <}3

06:55 - As soon as Dazzle and PL blocked your Hook, you should have realised you weren't needed for that Gank, instead, you should have moved North-East through the Lane, ducked West behind the Trees and moved into Position to Hook Earthshaker. By the time you moved on him, you had to throw a Hook he could see, and as I've mentioned before, it's easy to dodge the Hooks you can see.

08:15 - As soon as Viper, waled into that bottleneck, you could have instantly Roted and Bodyblocked him to prevent him from running away. You may have even baited out a bad Fissure from Earthshaker to block him in even harder! 8{D

09:45 - Instea of running North-East out of the Trees and straight towards PA, you should have continued East through the Cover of the Trees. You would have had a better chance to Hook her under her Tier 2 that way.

10:30 - I have absolutely no idea what went on here...well...nothing happened here I guess. 8{3

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To come..tommorow I guess ._.

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Editing in progress - more to come

@ Ultra - these comments are mostly specific to masaaki's game...DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG MY PUDGE GUIDE WOULD BE?! NO ONE WOULD READ THE WHOLE DAMN THING!!!

Make a guide for roaming pudge and post it -.-