Ancient stacking with non cleave aoe heroes like Luna, Gyro, Medusa,...

It technically works, but it's essentially a mind trick at that point.

The thing is, Butterfly is the best damage item on Luna by far, so if you're playing *against* a Luna, it's actually worth it to rush a MKB...before she buys her bfly.

Because then either she goes bfly and she can never use the evasion, or she doesn't go bfly and she skips her best damage item.


By the way, I tried out Yasha vs Hyperstone on
devilesk.com/dota2/apps/hero-calculator/
It's actually funny, because if you have helm + aquila, hyperstone is more DPS than yasha, but if you skip aquila, yasha is more DPS than hyperstone. All in all it's very similar.

Personally I've never timed how much the ancients last, but I've found level 4 Moon Glaive to be the difference between clearing them with Treads, Aquila, Helm and Yasha, or not being able to. Which is why I max it at level 11 over Eclipse.

Rolling in.

Honestly I don't know why u all like Helm and stacking so much. IMO it's only worth doing in like 5.5+ avg or 5 stacks because ancient stacks are a team matter. Your team needs to ward it, protect it(because you can't contest a lot of enemy carries should they want to just walk in and take them alone or with team), mb deward it and when you have your pos 5 babyraging because you picked Luna in the first place(actually happens, and not that rarely) you can't rly count on that.

Relying on your teammates' decency in low-mid MMR brackets is deliberately lowering your avg winrate.

Standard build of HotD-Yasha(they even used to go drum instead of helm because you could rely on your teammates to patch you up) is great in competitive but you can't play from behind with that build at all.

When you play from behind as Luna, you splitpush and tp into fights only if you are at least 80% sure you can get off a good ulti and not die. You can't splitpush normally when you have HotD- Yasha(Moonshard is even worse) because you can't escape. The only item that lets you splitpush on Luna before bkb is dagger. If you have dagger and still can't splitpush because of heroes like Doom, Riki, Storm Spirit, Anti-Mage etc. you've pretty much lost :)

You can go HotD-Blink if you like helm so much but really why would you want to do that if you can get about the same amount of farm just running around the map farming everything you see with MoM and not rely on stacks that may or may not go to the enemy carry who will say "thank you".

Whatever, nobody will take that build seriously until some pro players uses it or I get to something like 6k with it, whichever faster.

Getting your stacks warded / getting ganked when farming stacks is pretty likely, but having the enemy carry able to actually take your 4-stacks is a really niche situation. I mean sure, you don't stack if they have a Sven that wants to screw you up, but that's about it.

Essentially IMO when the enemy team wants to contest you farming your stacks but they don't have the ability to kill the stack themselves, I don't see what you have to lose by stacking anyways. If your supports suck, you buy a sentry and deward the stack yourself, done. You don't need a team do so that. It's so easy to know if they are warding your ancients it's not even funny.

The real issue however is that when you're playing from behind against a ganking oriented team you can't go near your ancient camp without getting picked off. That's why I prefer Hand of Midas as an item over helm because midas is the only item that always makes gold even when playing from behind.

I really like the Mask of Madness Luna actually. I'm just not a fan of the Blink Dagger. Especially now that there is Hurricane Pike that can replace dagger really well.

Blink + helm Luna makes no sense, because if you build to stack you need to build damage to actually kill the stacks. It only makes sense if it's a MoM.

I actually take your build seriously Dimony believe it or not :)
Just I'd make it Mask of Madness into Hurricane Pike. The synergy is just too good, you pike away from danger, use MoM when you don't take any damage anymore and run away. You can even transition into early BoTs for full rat and max MS.

I thought about Pike but even after the buff I think it's ****. Short ranged and destroys trees, Blink is rly strong in the sense you can blink far away into the trees and few heroes could catch you and cancel your tp there. You can't use the active buff on creeps otherwise you lose all the mobility for a 100 IAS buff which you already have from mask. Worse for initiating as well.

The only advantage is that it saves up a slot and it's better against invis heroes and generally heroes that can cancel your blink before you react, that's probably the only situation I'd buy it in.

You don't need to initiate with Luna though. Just get into position for your ulti.

And it comes down to the Blink Dagger vs Force Staff discussion, but on a hero who only needs an escape to rat. I don't think there's a radical answer there.

I just think the Dragon Lance attack range and HP is super good on Luna in teamfights.

when I randomed Luna, I tried going lance+treads+vlads (uz there was spirit breaker, riki and clockwerk on enemy team -_- so I needed some stats for early fights and I accidentaly bought vlads in one fight) and then BKB -> bfly -> manta... worked pretty well though once I got bfly...

Dragon lance is defenitly a good item on Luna but not neccesary. It is one of those items when you like it buy it, if you don't like than don't buy it.

But I think if you buy Dragon Lance you should also get the pike since that is actually an amazing item for luna

There is never 1 build on a hero, which is the beauty of dota.

Save your level 4 skill point instead of putting it into the aura. Once you hit level 8 or 9, put your points into glaives and then go rotate between the jungle and the lane.

Q-E-Q-Don't skill anything-Q-R-Q-Don't skill-Don't skill-Dump everything into glaives-R-E-E-E-U-R

But then I understand more why you're *****ing about Slark Dimony because if you go blink - MoM you get completely reky by Slarks.

While if you go Manta Style + Hurricane Pike you can kite the fish endlessly by breaking his leash and piking away from his skadi.