Is it worth stacking ancients in pubs?

So I just had a Sven game, where instead of the pub classic MoM I got a helm for ancient stacking purposes. I was bad because it was probably the second time I ever used HotD for stacking, so I only had about 3 stacks when I was able to use them. Then, naturally, while I was dead Vengeful Spirit and Mirana farmed them. What made me mad was that the reason I was only able to stack 3 times was because Vengeful also took over half the last hits in the lane, meaning I got a late helm. It was a pub of course, so I still managed to outfarm our dominating Ursa while having a worse KDA.

But my question is, is it actually worth stacking for farm in pubs? Half the time, it seems, you don't even get your own stacks.

Well, It may infuriate you, but a vengeful getting money isn't the worse thing, just buy helm knowing that you may not always get the stack, or you could get better at stacking them and stack it so much that they cannot kill it! >:)

It's worth it provided the following:

You don't miss stacks
You can protect the stack from the enemy team
You have someone who can quickly clear the stack
You don't have to skip core items to buy a helm

In your case (Sven), buying helm prevents you from buying MoM, so it's usually not worth it unless you have someone to do the stacking for you.

It depends on how cooperative your team is. If they're jackasses and don't work as a unit, I wouldn't waste time stacking. It will likely get stolen. If they're just bad and you're stacking for a carry, or leaving stacks for a long time, they'll get stolen by the enemy team.

I played a game the other day where I had a quad stack of ancients waiting for our Morphling, but he would never come get them. Eventually we lost a teamfight near Roshan and the other team pretty much hit the jackpot.

Well, from the point of view of making your team win the game, it was worth it because Venge and Mirana can use farm and levels pretty well even though admittedly they can be played with zero farm as well. They're just being complete pricks for stealing your farm so be sure to make it very clear to them, but stacking was still good for the team.

Helm of the Dominator is the serious way to play Sven, huh. It's the standard way to play the hero, MoM is decent but situational. A well used Helm of the Dominator will get you infinitely more gold than a Hand of Midas ever will, you just need to stack regularly : don't just stack to farm your BKB or something, stack at every minute until you're 6-slotted with 10k in the bank for buyback and you just bought your 3rd BKB :)

From personal experience it's completely worth it to stack ancients in pubs, you just need to be self sufficient about it : don't expect your supports to do that for you just because you picked Gyro or Luna, buy your helm and do that yourself. Sometimes you even have to ward/deward them yourself. However if you're playing support and you have a gyro/alchemist/tinker in your team go ahead and stack/ward/deward your ancients.

Sure, ancient stacking can be countered by a 5-man smoke raid from the enemy team to ninja your stacks, but when's the last time you played against a team who did that, huh? :)

I think it's worth it. Of course it feels bad if you don't get go farm them but atleast you helped your team. For example i played one game as Shadow Fiend yesterday. I had quad stack and i intented go farm it myself but then changed my mind and told our Luna to go farm it. Thar guy is my friend but still she got some fast money and thst way got his Satanic a lot faster.

Worth it - the only real consideration is that your TEAM gets it. Ideally it should be you, but it's all good provided the other team doesn't get them.

You can't rely on your supports to do this for you (they might not be up to standard with that kind of thing, or might just be too busy), so HOTD is good. MOM on Sven is very situational. Satanic is fantastic on him, so you even have a strong upgrade path.

Probably still worth it as your team is still getting farm, but yes it would be very annoying if a venge took half your stack while you are Sven. You could:
1.Make it clear to your team that you are stacking ancients for yourself and yourself only. This is especially important if you have another ancient stacker like Tinker on your team.
2. Simply let them take the stacks.Your team is still getting farm, and you probably wanted a Satanic from the helm anyways.
3. Memorize stack timings, stacking earlier as the stacks become larger. Use this technique to stack the ancients so much nobody else will be able to take
(A quad stack of ancients is quite hard to achieve, but it is very difficult to take without the proper heroes.) Keep in mind this is probably a last resort method when communicating to your team is useless and you really, really need farm because you might get your team killed trying to do ancients, and proper heroes ( Alchemist, Tinker, Beastmaster, etc.) can still steal your stacks.