The Principle of Inverted Reasoning

I just want to say that I think the critical point of conflict between myself and the members of this community disagree on exists as whether to prioritize the big picture 2 directional aspect of the game which is whether you want to

-kill heroes or farm in to pulling yourself back in to farming/killing heroes in order to balance yourself out.

versus

-Being of utility value to the team by getting all of your skills and using them in cooperatively between each other and the rest of the teams skills. (Difficult to coordinate)


If you start a game by asking yourself the question, do I want to kill heroes? or do I want to farm? I believe that the dark seer, and pugna are the best examples I know of two heroes that are so different from each other that you automatically know what one of those two directions you will be starting in, and they are completely opposite from each other.

Remember, I'm starting with the question that I ASK MYSELF as I prefer to ask, do I want to kill heroes or do I want to farm?

Dark seer is such an extreme farmer that this is his primary initial goal, so he will do what he can to make both his farming more effective as well as keep ion shell on opponents when in team battles. A MoM can help with both of these things simultaneously, which is why it can be used to farm a dagon, but MoM not completely necessary as maybe you want to balance yourself out in to hero engagement asap.

So dark seer heads in the direction of farm, but then quickly and heavily pulls himself in to the direction of being a hero engager with dagon.

The point I'm making here is that it is a powerful, simple, and convenient design concept for a player to understand.

Dagon makes absolutely perfect sense on him because of the gold it needs to max out, and then once maxed out can be spammed and wielded all the more powerfully....

Now Pugna would do the exact opposite, following the direction of hero focus, engagement, harssment, in to being able to purchase an item for farming which sooner or later gets you to that goal of just being super powerful because of level and items.

People will say that pugna is support and shouldn't use physical carry items like Phase + cystalis from the start, but all he needs is a wand mixed in there to counter act any sort of mana deprivation because of it. His speed and long distance attack makes him great at harassing heroes with his regular attack from the start, and you want to follow that direction.

But when you decide what item it is that you want to farm with, shivas guard or radiance, that is when you stop and think, "ok, i'm a utility intellegence hero, so the mana/intel is more fiitting for me then just the raw damage on radiance"

That's because you are using decrep with nether blast and life drain.

Note that none of these are anything like critical strike for the regular attack, so why would you use crystalis and phase?

As I said, he is super fast and super long range naturally, and a wand is really all you need to get an effective amount of mana for those skills.

Although you don't hae something like a crit passive for raw physical damage items, it doesn't matter, the combination of your mana offense with your physical offense are just as powerful together as some character that is a pure physical carry.

But that's the balanced and beautiful part about the game, and what game designers want their players to see in RPGS. They want to provide their players with character concepts such as "A warrior mage" etc, etc. Different characters in this game may reprsent these interesting combinations in some very unusual and creative ways to boot.


So that's the big question, philosophically, the question is.... what question should we be asking ourselves from the start?

And I'm open minded that this question whether my way or the communities way could be situational based on characters and team composition.

So that's the way I see it, good luck people.

*Oh, forgot the one simple point on how pugna farms with shivas guard.

Now you combine nether blas with guard pop down a lane and it's auto death to the creep mob, getting all the gold for it.

That's the way I see farming, I don't like jungling. A DS nuke is cheap mana cost and goes far beyond the life of the creeps in generally, which makes it great potential for effecient lane farming.

To be an effecient lane farmer with pugna requires another aoe pop after nether blase, so guard makes sense.

Technically, Pugna is not super fast. If he was, so what? You can just turn around and kill him if he ever tries to man up on you.

I recommend Arcane Boots and Aghanim's Scepter instead of Phase Boots Crystalys, since he needs more than a Magic Wand for mana and his ultimate is awesome. Making damage items on him is just inefficient. Why do that when you have an awesome, spammable aoe nuke and a channeling ultimate that does **** tons of damage and heals you all on its own?

I don't see how making something like this would be "balanced" or "beautiful". It seems really inelegant and conflicting.


EDIT:
Actually, Arcane Boots are interchangeable with Phase Boots, but Crystalys in a non-troll game is not that effective.

I would a agree with you if there wasn't something called a scroll that costs 135 minerals which allows you to fall back to a fountain that quickly restores an entire mana pool... being fast also helps to run back out in to battle -.-

That is why I find wand to be fine.

lol... wtf.

Conflict can become wholesome and complete.

There is a famous simple phrase that goes...

"Where there is 2 that are against each other, there is war, but when there are 3 there is peace"

So... you'd rather spend 1350 on your boots and an extra 135 *gold* each time you get low on mana and miss out on almost 3 creep waves of experience, than to buy boots that cost only 100 more than Phase Boots and eliminates the need to constantly return to base for mana. Pugna isn't supposed to rely on auto-attacks, like I said. He has spammable spells to rely on for his damage output.

Its like sending 20 drones to long-distance mine a base rather than building a hatchery and mining from it with 12 drones. They cost about the same amount to execute, but the latter is obviously more efficient.


EDIT:
Even with a base speed of 315, Pugna is still not fast without an ability that increases his speed or transports him a certain distance. He's definately not fast enough to escape a stun and a few auto attacks with his low health, and even if you do, you will have to waste your *gold* on TP scrolls.

I'm very sure you're using this in the wrong context.

After pushing the opponents out of lane or killing them, yes.

Should wand charges to boot

What if your goal is neither of these two things? What if your goal is to protect your team mates? What if it is to initiate large scale fights between the two teams successfully? There are 5 players and 3 lanes, not everyone can farm unless you're going to have 1 hero in each jungle too - good luck with those lanes...

Also, not everyone can farm, so not everyone can get the big expensive items you need to be able to win fights. Therefore, it makes sense to concentrate those big expensive items on to fewer heroes, ideally the ones who can use them most effectively. These are heroes with strong passives, good primary stat and agility gain. Nuke skills drop off in power as the game progresses, while physical damage increases and increases. Therefore you put the large damage items on the "carry" heroes. The other heroes help them acquire and use those items, and provide all the other things required outside straight damage.

Dotatheory 101

ALTERNATIVELY

Farm and buy whatever items you think will make your hero better at killing other heroes and getting more gold, regardless of which hero you are and whether it would be better on somebody else.

Kyfoidtheory 101

Quality trolling btw, it is difficult sometimes to tell if you're deliberately trying to annoy people or genuinely don't understand some of the basic premises of the game...tbh I kinda like that you make people question WHY they do things, and why ideas might be good or bad. Some of the explanations posters have come up with have been very good. Just don't overdo it.