Got to keep the { happy :)

I was replying to this guide earlier on, and it got me thinking about why I tend to build Death Prophet the way I do. Is there a best way to do it?

It's quite tricky as you really want many early levels in Crypt Swarm, at least 1 level in Silence (for ganks) and at least 1 level in Witchcraft to make your level 1 Exorcism suck less. The mana cost reduction and speed increase of Witchcraft also make it very enticing for many players - it's really quite useful.

Ok, so lets oil up TheXyrusOmeter, cos it's maths time!

Lets look at why I usually go with this build...

Early game nukes and magic damage are pretty much king - they tend to secure the kills, deal the serious harassment and generally run the show. They often fall off the side of a cliff late game as they don't scale however.

Mana pools and regen are also a big issue early game - unless you've got access to a mana …
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I know Xyrus starts getting crabby if he doesn't get his regular fix of Dotomaths, but I've been thinking about this for a bit... Ursa has a really strange set of damage output characteristics:

- He's an agility hero with a higher strength gain (2.9) than primary stat (2.1)

- He has a no-longer-UAM in Fury Swipes

- He has brief burst of massive attack speed in Overpower

- His health pool can feed into his damage output through Enrage

This gives him some really interesting interactions between his strength/agility balance and he's the only hero I can think of who can get moar damage from a Health Booster?

Working out any damage output on Ursa is very difficult - attack speed always complicates things, and his changes anyway due to Overpower. Add to that the unpredictability of how much extra damage Enrage offers...a full HP Ursa can do waaay more damage than one with low HP, right?

Once he has level 2 Enrage he actually gets more damage benefit out of strength items than…
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Why are Damage Types Important?

A big part of getting better at DOTA is expanding your knowledge of how some of the more arcane mechanics work. Damage types are a classic example of something that looks complicated, but are actually quite straightforward and useful once you get your head round them.

I'm going to look at a few ingame examples that will hopefully help you see how this understanding can help you. For a full, detailed explanation take a look at Dota 2 Wiki.

Our example hero is Bane, who uses four of the main types of damage:

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Physical Damage is reduced by Damage Block and Armor.

Like all heroes, Bane has a standard right click that inflicts Physical Damage.

Say we attacked a Bloodseeker carrying a Poor Man's Shield for 60 damage. First of all, the PMS will block 20 damage from our attack. Then his armour of 4 will reduce the remaining damage of 40 by 19.4%. This works out at a 7.76 reduction, leaving us with 32.24 damage.

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Magic Damage is reduced by…
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I've ended up doing this a few times - twice I went a hard support build: (the hero I thought was offlane screwed me over)



And once I chose to do it after another player picked Crystal Maiden:



I'm hoping at some point to try: (if our supports actually buy wards)

( Urn of Shadows to follow)

So...how did it go? Well, it actually worked out pretty well all 3 times. Sacrifice denies 20-30% of their farm and experience (pretty brutal for a trilane), as well as giving your guaranteed experience and mana, and allowing you to pull the lane back towards your own tower. I played passively unless their supports disappeared and I could go 1v1 with their carry.

1 level in Frost Blast gives you an easy way of grabbing the occasional last hit (125 damage is pretty hard to argue with at this point) or harass their carry if they're short on consumables. 1 level in Ice …
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One of the most common things I see these days seem to be "min/max" type builds - players taking huge risks to go after big items as early as possible. This is no doubt an overhang from the pro scene where players will routinely be farming big items in record times...so if the pro's do it...then it must be a good idea, right?

Well, yes, and no. The pro's can do it for several reasons:

1) They're really good.
2) Their team are all really good too.
3) They have excellent team communication and co-ordination.
4) Their strategy and team are setup to make those choices work.

If any of these things fall down...well you can end up in big trouble. And in the average pub game, you'll frankly be lucky to get to even number 1 of that list, let alone the rest.

This is generally the biggest issue with carry players - going for really greedy builds like Hand of Midas AND Battle Fury in the hope of having some uninterrupted farming time. If it works, their GPM will be off the charts and the…
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