Xyrus's #RoadTo4k Thread

In other words, I'm trying different builds to see their strong and weak points, I already know how much of an impact Monkey King Bar has against Evasion, but how much impact does a Skadi have against WR? You don't learn these things until you try them out. Yes, I'll lose games by messing around with Items, but these are Unranked 2k games, experimentation is more important to me right now.

Take my Razor games as an example:-

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2086496816
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2087747000
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2090150469

I know that the current Meta Build on Razor is Power Treads->Optional Sange and Yasha / Drum of Endurance -> Black King Bar -> Platemail. Game #3 is the 1st game where I've gone that build on Razor, since I'm used to the old Mekansm / Aghanim's Scepter rush days.

In a 2k Pub, you're going to run into Health and Mana Issues from the Mid-Game onwards and you can't rely on your team to push the advantage after a fight, so I tried Aghs Deso for increased pushing power and Vlads for Sustain. I found it surprisingly effective, but I still went for a serious build in a higher skilled game.

I'm completely capable of adapting, I just choose not to when I'm experimenting, unless the Situation allows me to run an experiment I won't necessarily be able to run in the near future, e.g. I've been meaning to practise my HotD Farming on [][Phantom Assassin]] and try Slahser's way on her, but since the game was going badly, I decided to experiment with Mask of Madness since I also wanted to experiment with building it as a desperation Item to recover against a heavy gold lead:-

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2094423393

I already know that the Attack Speed from Mask of Madness significantly increases the number of Crits you can get in 5-10 seconds, but how much of an impact does that actually have when taking the increased damage taken into account? Turns out, I only get an extra Crit every few seconds, but it has the same effect as getting an extra Nuke every few seconds. Very useful if you can isolate a Hero. I can theorycraft a lot of this, but I found a few times that I had MoM on Cooldown when I needed it to be up. I wouldn't have expected to run into this issue, and since I stuck to my build and saw it thorugh to the end, I ended up learning a lot from it.

Now if I find myself in a losing game as PA, I feel more confident in my ability to handle the Situation, I learnt how to use a new Item effectively. I may lose (Unranked) games by doing this, but when I start playing Ranked, I'll be in a much better position than I was if I simply use what I know from theorycrafting alone.

Take Monkey King Bar against Windrunner as an example, I know I need to build it, but how do you play against a Windrunner before you get that MKB? Is MKB the 2nd Item you need? the 3rd? You can theorycraft the answer quite easily, but have you ever experimented to test the results?

I know I haven't. I've tried avoiding WR completely and focusing on purely Ratting with Jugg. I now know how far I can get with that style, and trust me. If Windrunner + Wyvern + 1 or 2 other Heroes died to Remote Mines without buyback, I would easily take Rax in under 30 seconds due to keeping the Waves on their side of the map and having BoTs to press the advantage instantly.

If I pick "obvious" items every game, like Black King Bar against Silences and Monkey King Bar against Evasion, I might win a few more games. If I experiemnt and see how far I can get with certain builds, I'll learn more about the limitations of my Heroes.

The more builds you try, the more Situations you can adapt to effectively. Even if those builds are ineffective in one game, you may find them highly effective in another, because the elements that made them ineffective in 1 game are not necessarily present in the next.

True, my playstyle did not suit that game, but if I was afraid to make mistakes, I wouldn't even bother playing Ranked. It's true, I need to improve my game knowledge and overall skill with every Hero, in particular the ones I intend to play a lot.

However, I'm not going to get there just mimicking Pro builds and building X every time I see Y. It's probably going to take a few hundred games before I start playing any Hero at a 5k level, but by the time I get there, I'll have tried more Item and Skill builds than most people would ever dare with the same number of games.

If this degenerates off-topic again, the thread goes down. Deleted all the comments that have no relevance what-so-ever.

Pls giff update Xyrus

+1

Yeah, an update to ould be nice. Although, I don't really see him on the forums anymore.

Maybe he is training his heroes hard!

and is currently reaching 3k?

Official message from Xyrus:



Hopefully he'll feel like playing again and come back. :(

Aww, that's too bad. I'll miss the mustache man.

That is you fixate too much on winning. At least that what I think happened.
Is it just me or did a lot of our long-term members stop playing dota?
Or well...maybe it's just me. I mean Safecyn came back....

Well at least we can finally have a moderator with proper memeing skills that are required in this job...

Sad to hear though, he could have become something under my presence =(