Solo Queue Journey

If you are captain, you shouldn't only think about your Lycan pick, try to focus on the entire draft as a whole. Pick heroes that fit and synergise well with your prefered Lycan pick.

I am going to play solo all the way up to some of the higher ratings in this game, using Lycan.

Currently, I am slightly above 2000, but I am looking to raise my ratings to a point where I would consider myself a good player in this game.

As far as I know, 2k is the average rating, and 4k is where the good players are found, but perhaps someone with greater knowledge could clarify on this? RMM is trash at all levels honestly, you will never get rid of feeders, bad players, acc buyers, trolls, ignorant pricks, double mids, people speaking language you don't understand and whatever type of people you want to get rid of. These guys all exist even at 6k+. If you want to play with and vs good players, organize a team or just find people you want to play with in stacks, that's the only way to find quality games consistently. Ranked system just can't do that, it doesn't work.

I am playing on US servers, the reason is that I absolutely dislike playing with russians and europeans, as they are terrible when it comes to speaking english, and that hurts a game like dota 2 where teamplay is a key to success. AFAIK US servers have their own "bane" - peruvians, brazilians and other spanish/portugese speaking people. Dunno for sure though. Anyway, it's simply not worth it. I can communicate with 95% of EU West players because I can speak both English and Russian but it still doesn't help with the fact that most players are selfish, ignorant pricks who won't listen to anyone, no matter which language do you speak. US will be no better, I heard from some people trying to play there that they are even bigger *******s than europeans.

One thing about playing on american servers is that there is a small delay and my ping is a bit higher than usual, so that makes last hitting on lanes almost impossible. So jungle lycan a perfect choice, as I can focus on farming the jungle instead of laning. If your ping is so high you can't even lasthit normally(god, it must be like 200+), playing with such delay is pure masochism, especially given that you have another option. And you pay that price(mind you, it will affect your gameplay a lot and you won't be able to react to your enemies' actions. How can you dodge Magic Missile by activating BKB if you are already stunned by the time you Venge cast it, for instance? It's not worth it, you are just give yourself a huge penalty without getting any real benefits.

I am playing captains mode as my prefered gamemode, as playing all pick as lycan is simply too risky, as people will mostly pick a counter and make you lose, in captains mode I have the ability to ban some of the counters to have greater success. Playing CM solo might be the worst idea ever, especially ranked. Would you want a random dude that you know nothing about pick you heroes and tell you what to do? What if he is an imbecile? Or a troll? Or a russian? Or an imbecile russian troll? And even then, given how little non-5 stacks are there in Ranked CM, other perverts(I'm sorry, but queuing for Ranked CM solo is even a worse idea than queuing for LP in Russia, and I queued for LP in Russia) will sooner or later simply ban your Lycan. And this is the top of the iceberg, there are so much ways to ruin your day - pick cap's before you and refuse to pick Lycan, taking Lycan away from you once you have finished drafting, simply say "LC jungle or feed"... goddamit, dude, you actually gave me a perfect idea of which mode to queue for when I want to troll folks.

So what I would like to talk about here is building a solid team, getting the most out of farming the jungle, what heroes to choose, what heroes to ban, what items to go with, what strategies to use and how to set up the lanes.

I am captain in most of my games so I get to choose the team most of time.

My idea is a setup with one hero that can solo one of the lanes, allowing me to jungle as well as getting rosh before the 12 minutes mark. I usually pick two supports, a hero that can tank some damage, a mid and a second hard carry, in case I should have a bad game.

As for items, my suggested core items are power threads, vladimirs, black king bar, assault cuirass, skullbasher and desolator. I have seen some people having success with necronomicon, as well as some other items, so let me know if you have any ideas and suggestions.

Won't bother with giving advice on that cause I am not a Lycan player, I think other guys know better. I seriously hope you will quit your 200+ ping solo CM idea and just instapick him in Ap, you will lose much less game that way. And sorry for all the typos, I type too fast and usually don't bother with fixing them.

Because you like to play him as a jungler, you also want to make sure that the rest of the team can manage without you for a good part of the game. Picking too greedy (like 3 very farm dependant cores) can put you at a serious disadvantage - for example of you lose all your Tier1 towers by the time you are done jungling. So make sure to pick one or two heroes, that can keep the enemy pressured for these early stages of the game.

If my opponents are pushing right from the start, it might be a fast loss if my team mates are struggling to defend the towers. Some of my worst losses was against opponents who were five man pushing and the game was over in less than 25 minutes, so it would be good to figure out a way to deal with it. I thought about picking Lich as support, as his ice armor helps by slowing down melee heroes, and his nukes are awesome during the early game.