Solo Queue Journey

Okay so some stuff that crosses my mind:

First of all, queuing on US servers sacrificing ping for fluency in English seems like a serious mistake. Admittedly, a very small portion of Europeans are native English speakers and most have flaws in their speech, but still, most are able to communicate in English. It might not be beautiful, high level and fluent English, but in a game like Dota you will probably be using very simple expressions anyway, after all, it's not about writing a novel, but calling shots like "push", "gank bot", "roshan now", "take rax and then back" etc. What I'm trying to say is that most of the time it's not the language that is the problem, but the actual will to communicate. There are people who are not going to listen to you in US also.

About Lycan, I'm generally not a fan of jungling from the start, because you will not get as much farm as when farming the lane and also because it leaves your team vulnerable to early aggression. On Lycan you want to secure a fast Roshan and from there on push towers with your team. About items, I like to get an early Medallion of Courage for an even earlier Roshan if either of your supports aren't able to farm one in about 10 min into the game. Necronomicon is probably my favourite item on Lycan as your passive aura, the 650 movespeed from your ult and your Howl affect summons, making him effective in a zoo strategy. Book also gives you some nice strenght to help you tank up a bit. Keep in mind however, that you should try and adjust your item build for every game.

Some heroes that are nice with Lycan are heroes with summons, to get buffed by Howl, minus armour, auras, crowd controllers etc. You might also want to pick a support who can benefit from farming the safelane, as even when you lane a Lycan, you will want to go to jungle after a few levels as it won't slow down your farm and gives space for someone else to farm it.

I was never asking for suggestions on servers or gamemodes. I generally don't bother with forum trolls so I have reported you to the moderators, so lets see if they are serious. I'm going to stay on topic.



Could you explain me why they have poor synergy with lycan? I find frost shield to be useful as it makes lycan a bit more durable, and the slow from lichs nukes makes it easier to chase them down, but if you have some suggestions on support heroes that goes well with lycan then please let me know so I can check it out in a match. Also, who do you think would be a good pick to solo one of the lanes while I am jungling?

I really like lycan.But not as carry,I played him as a rat.Just build vladmir and necro will rip the pub'racks up.

I play him as a rat sometimes too, but I mostly play him as a carry as well as a towerpusher. But that is the great thing about lycan, it is a very versatile hero. Sometimes I find that if I focus only on pushing towers and barracks, my team might lose a teamfight because I am not there to help them out.

Well.Theres prob no perfect server exist.I played in SEA and EU both server.Troll is always unavoidable but good players still exist.Just tryhard and gl hf.

Since most of Lycans killing is done in his Shapeshiftform, he doesnt really profit that much from slows. Imobs and straight out stuns usually are way better. Granted, the armor can be nice, but it simply isnt enough to be called "synergistic" with lycan. Come to think of it, Treant Protector - while still not being too amazing of a partner - actually has more synergy with lycan than lich.

As i already said in my earlier post, for supports you usually want heroes, that can amplify your damage even more (by -armor for instace) or general utility heroes (that cann keep you in range of the enemy; keep you alive and whatnot). Vengeful Spirit, Ogre Magi, Ancient Apparition or Dazzle are pretty nice additions to a lycan draft.

The offlaner usually is somewhat of a utility role and tries to counterbalance some of your setups weaknesses. Unless you have a good idea on what the enemy safelane will look like, you dont want to choose your offlaner. As i already said in my previous post, dont try to solely focus on synergy in your draft and pick 1-2 heroes that can simply pressure the enemy. Clinkz and Weaver for instance, have nice synergy with Lycan and are decent (but by far not the best) offlaners. They however, have very little early game impact and with you being in the woods as well, this could already put you into a position, where you have to fight from behind. Tidehunter on the other hand, can usually manage against most melee hardcarries (which tend to be weak early), adds very good teamfight to your draft, and even adds -armor and a slow in form of Gush to your lineup.

these guys are not forum trolls, they are people who have been on the forum for quite a while, and you just come here and dismiss their advice as trolling.
i agree with them that playing on a high ping server is a pretty bad idea, and by just looking at the few comments you made it seems you have some attitude problems yourself, so saying the entire EU server sucks coming from someone who appears to cannot handle criticism? the problem might not just lie with the other players.


Ok back to topic.
first off you should never jungle a carry. you can get away with it in low mmr pubs but even there you can be severely punished if you team gets behind in the laning stage, you cant help them, you will have a support who wont get any levels or items. your safelane runs the risk of being overrun by a strong offlane.
junglers should always be supports, they can atleast gank, dont gimp your other lanes and drain away farm from your other heroes.
so another reason why you shouldn't be just playing AFK jungle lycan. besides, you are not going to get any better playing that, so your mmr wont go up either.
play him safelane or even mid if they dont have a lane dominator there.

for itembuild necrobook is really strong but unneeded in 2k pubs, players there have a hard time dealing with a combat lycan, so if that works for you go for it.

for lineups i would go with a strong teamfight and objective oriented lineup. in low ranked pubs players dont push the issue when your high cooldown spells are unavailable, so those heroes are very strong. players also have trouble splitting up.
so go for heroes like tide, ommni, viper, bristle, lesh. strong teamfight, strong lanes, so you can take lost of buildings whenever your ults are up.

Jungling as Lycan may work in lower levels, and can survive if you can pull it off against a team without push, but in higher leagues people will notice you are picking a farming jungler and counter it hard, with say, a Bounty Hunter to soak xp and steal farm. Now you may say "but pros pick Chen in games or Enigma in games, and they win." That's because they see an opportunity where the enemy team can't take advantage of weak lanes, or if they do, the jungler can help out. One of the only reasons Chen is jungled( other than the fact that his skills focus on controlling creeps) is that that way he can get items like a mek, that allow his team to help out early. Now if you compare a Chen at 10 minutes and a Lycan, both jungling, at 10 minutes, you will find that the Chen can help out his team much more.

Try creating a bot game against easy bots. Go play Lycan in safelane, and farm as much as you can in 10 minutes. See what items, what levels you get. Then open a different easy bot game, and jungle as Lycan. See if you have the same level of farm and levels that you did in the safelane.

Tl:dr, just because Lycan can jungle mostlyi efficiently from the start doesn't mean he should.

Yeah tidehunter seems like a solid pick for a hero to solo the offlane. I will try it out and see if it works, possibly with some replays.



Problably the hardest counter to jungle lycan is Bloodseeker, as he can easily gank lycan in the jungle during the early game, so I always ban him. Getting a good start and early rosh is important, and bloodseeker has the potential to ruin that completely, which is why playing lycan in all pick is a bad idea. I don't really think I have played against a bounty hunter as lycan so I don't really know how big of a threat it is.

"Bad"

Most of them have been playing dota since 2-3-4-5+ years
Sorry to tell you but this is very high skill.
Bad would be 3 months of dotka.