Building a Hero Pool

There is only 1 solution - practise, practise and practise some more.

I strated out mainly playing Support, but I'm moving onto the Safe Lane / Mid Role, and one Hero I'm enjoying right now is Tinker.

I'm not having much success with him atm, but I'm practising to compensate
When I play the 1:
- My CS levels are putrid, mostly because my lane gets overrun and I start wasting resources.
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Run drills in a lobby, don't just focus on never missing a Last Hit, focus on Aggroing the Creep Wave onto your Ranged Creep and clearing the Wave faster, all while keeping it in the ideal position (just below the stairs to your Tower).

Once you can Last Hit 95+% of all the Creeps in a Wave, focus on Last Hitting 95% of all the Creeps in the Wave while Flash Farming and using Agrro to kill your Ranged Creep earlier. As a Tinker, I do this by Lasering the Ranged / Siege Creep in every Wave. Finally, do all that while making sure each Wave meets at the bottom of your stairs (if you lose more than 150HP tanking the Creep Wave, you need to focus a little more on pulling the Wave back a bit.

Run an aggressive Safe Lane that Farms them AND the Creeps. Heroes like Weaver, Viper, Wraith King, Phantom Assassin, Ursa, etc. are good choices for fighting while Farming. Don't pick passive Heroes like Spectre in Pubs, you're only setting yourself up to lose your Lane, instead, CRUSH your opponents and Snowball your way to victory.

Ping on targets to let them know you want them to Initiate. If someone starts a fight you aren't expecting, there's not much you can do about it, so be proactive and try to start fights when you see an advantage. Otherwise, if you see your Initiator about to jump into an inevitable Feed, just hit "Get Back" a couple of times to let him know you don't want to jump in (doesn't always work, but you can't stop Feeders 8{( ).

This is mainly because as a Support, you should be a mile back waiting until most of the dangerous Abilities are on Cooldown, i.e. Call Down, Sanity's Eclipse, Global Silence, etc. The fight will have already been going on for 5 seconds before you're required to do anything.

This is why you're having problems playing Core Heroes, you need to be in the centre of the action, sometimes from the get-go, sometimes waiting for 1 Spell to be put on Cooldown, or 1 Hero to be Locked down. Sometimes you should even be the 1st hero in the fight. It's a bit daunting at first, but just YOLO and learn from your mistakes afterwards.

The only other way to gain a sense for Teamfights is to try and put yourself in another player's shoes, watch a replay of a higher skilled player in "Player Perspective" and pretend you're playing their Hero. Right-Click on Creps and spam your Stop Animation button to time Last Hits, Shift-Que Blink Dagger, Scythe of Vyse, Dagon, Rearm, Dagon, Rearm, Dagon. See if the players make the same plays as you, if not, figure out why they did what they did instead.

Start Theorycrafting your Damage in fights, for example, on your preferred Hero, how much damage do you put out in 1 second at lvl6? how about after 5 seconds? 10? Do the same for Heroes you're likely to go up against, mainly common Meta Heroes, e.g. Queen of Pain, how long does it take her to Burst you down if you're both lvl6? Start adding Items in, what time would you normally expect to get those Items, under even conidtions? bad conditions? good conditions? how do they affect your plays? do they allow you to negate the effect of another Item or Skill on the other Team? etc.

The problem is convincing someone to give Phoenix significant farm. Best cast scenario is that you convince your team to run him as a 4 in a dual offlane (which works).

A few small notes for now, expect a big update in a few days:

Play-testing (learning before ranked): Meepo

My first four games have been a trainwreck, but one kill with Meepo feels better than 20 kills with an easier carry. It's just so satisfying since if you can do ANYTHING with him it's because you truly outplayed your opponent.

Considering adding: Tidehunter, Kunkka, Brewmaster

I tend to play far better with Strength heroes than I do with Agility heroes. Brewmaster is always a fun game of Dota.

I am poor at (but learning) micro-based heroes. I thoroughly enjoy the struggle of micro. I would play more Chen, but most of the "offlaners" at my level just die 5-6 times in the first 10' if not protected by their own support.

It's been a long time. Perhaps too long.

Since October, I lost a really significant family member and have spent a lot of time between work and family.

Most of my games back then were very unfocused. I threw away about 500 MMR.

Since then, I'm back to 1800. I should get to 2000 somewhat soon, since I'm doing a few things differently.

Batrider is actually a really good training hero since he teaches you the concepts of risk management (I die too often, and the hero is slowly helping me with that), positioning (which I ignored), and purchasing the correct items.

A few things I learned in the past month:

1. Every single item in this game is situational. Batrider has to buy a Blink Dagger as a "core" item, but the only reason we call it "core" is because you have to gap close against lineups that will kite you otherwise. The situation that dictates the purchase of that item is so frequent that it becomes a "core" item. It took a while for that to snap in my head.

My GPM levels are still lower than they should be, but at least I'm not pissing away the gold that I do get.

2. I love Dragon Knight as a durable pusher, but the problem I'm running into is that I can't close a game with him. http://www.dotabuff.com/players/46981084/matches?hero=dragon-knight

(I was offlane in my most recent game, and we had two abandons so we were screwed.)

I understand how he works, though. Small victories.

3. I fail to dominate games, but my teams have a tendency to find a way to win. If my first 10 minutes weren't so bad, I probably could dominate. That's the difference between me and 2.5k.

4. Initiation is fun.

My hero pool is a bit of a mess right now. I'll update it in a few weeks.

I don't understand why none gets Satanic on Dragon Knight. It has so much synergy with that hero... Allow me to explain.

Thanks to Elder Dragon Form, Dragon Knight can farm ancients starting at level 11 because the red dragon gains splash. You can stack ancients via Helm of the Dominator that build into Satanic. Next, thanks to his ultimate again, Dragon Knight is the only hero in the game that has AoE lifesteal on his autoattacks. Thanks to his ultimate mechanics, he can go from zero to hero in no time with the Satanic active. It also gives damage, armor and strength which translates into damage again. (since he is a STR hero)

Satanic is part of his 6 slot; He's a pushing hero though. Ideally you don't want to use Elder Dragon Form to farm stacks, you want to be pushing down buildings and ending things pretty early.

It never a bad item on him, because it's almost never a bad idea on cores to have a Satanic

Satanic is not necessary on DK.

He doesn't do that much damage since he lacks a damage steroid, so he will not heal from the active as much as Phantom Assassin or a Sven would. The lifesteal does not splash, you only heal from the primary target. What does lifesteal from splash is Octarine Core, so getting a Mjollnir and/or Radiance with Octarine will give you a lot more sustain in teamfights, as well as give you a 6.75 cd Dragon Tail which is probably better for 1v1 fights that Satanic is bought for normally, so consider Octarine Core as a late game item on DK.

Ancient farming as DK is not really efficient either, since he's more dependent on his transformation than pretty much any hero except Alchemist, Ancients are getting less easy and efficient to take down, since DK needs more items to waste them than Sven, Gyrocopter or Bristleback. Plus, with Dragon Blood buffs, he doesn't need Morbid Mask to jungle either if he has a few levels of it, so lifesteal is not a requirement to farm.

However, Satanic is pretty damn good if you got damage boosting heroes on your team for DK, specifically Drow Ranger, Magnus, and Elder Titan. There is where the extra stats and lifesteal of Satanic really pays off.


As for going into late game as DK, you can't if you buy fighting items. You can't buy things like Drums, Blink, Shadow Blade, and Armlet and expect to do very much in the late game after you cast your spells unless you snowball.

You have to get farming items and farm a lot. Midas, Maelstrom, and Radiance, all 3 are really good on DK for getting into late game. Also, make sure you have Soul Ring and you spam fire on creeps. SnY is also good for farming on DK oddly enough, since it lets him run faster to the next set of creeps.

How can you compare Satanic and Octarine Core on DK?

Satanic gives 200% lifesteal. Octarine gives 25% lifesteal on the splash part of attacks - the main damage does not lifesteal only the splash does.

Since there's not always a splash target nearby, I don't think the items even compare.

Also, satanic = 45 damage, octarine = no damage.

Radiance/Mjollnir : sure you can lifesteal 25% off a super small portion of your damage, or you can lifesteal 200% off your main damage :)

There's like a factor 10 between the effectiveness of the two items...

Generally (especially in this patch) you have Silver Edge as a late game item on DK, so that the hero is still useful as a single target initiator when Elder Dragon Form is down. So you can manage without the cd reduction of octarine.

Maybe I just play carry DK in a different way. I only pick up Octarine as late game item (5th slot onwards), and only with Mjollnir, since lifesteal is negligible without it.

I imagine Satanic would actually be pretty great in a small clash with that lifesteal where you're a lot more likely to tank through the stuns, but I completely avoid small clashes as DK. If there's no teamfight, I go farm. I am also more likely to pick up Satanic on a mid DK (since I'm a bit more active with him which means more small clashes). What I notice happens a lot with DK Satanic is that often after my BKB wears out (and the game is close at all), no one is dead (because DK has no burst, his damage is incredibly sustained, so a 5 second BKB hurts him a lot more than many other carries), which means stuns and debuffs to limit Satanic's use, and it still only heals me like 60% what it would heal a Huskar or Sven. It's not a huge problem if you're not trying to be primary carry, but if you are, its very underwhelming.

But in a teamfight, with a Mjollnir and/or Radiance, you're doing quite a bit more damage than a Satanic Armlet/Crit build, Octarine is just the item that compliments that kind of style more, especially since it means more stuns. But if you don't want Octarine, its not the only option, other tanking up items like Heart and Skadi work too for a similar function. It's just not efficient to go Satanic with Mjollnir, since the lightning hammer cripples your lifesteal.

I think Satanic should not be viewed as a late game core item like many think it is and I don't find DK does enough damage to use Satanic to its potential not unless he has some damage booster, a rapier, or an Oracle. Octarine Core is still a situational pickup that is a suggested alternative.

I'd generally play Dragon Knight as a mid #2, he has no natural damage steroid (unless your opponents are nice enough to stand next to each other all the time :)), so he needs an item advantage if you're going to do enough.

He is very good as a tank/debuffer who throws out reasonable damage, almost an anti-carry, certainly a front liner. I'd generally play him as a ganker/pusher who farms a little on the side.

I'd say the Satanic comes pretty late as you need to build both damage and attack speed for it to be effective - but it can help in his primary role at this point. Octarine Core...there is an argument for it (he has a LOT of armour, so HP is useful, as is the increased uptime on your ult)...but I'd say you need a more unusual/situational build to really make it worthwhile.

Still he's a hero with a lot of potential builds.

I think Icefrog seems to be encouraging the Blink Dagger + Armlet of Mordiggian build, the new regen from Dragon Blood looks to be designed to compensate for armlet.