[Dynamic] Goo's Guide to The Techies Mentality

Introduction!

If you wanted the true, dynamic, guide to the Techies Mentality, this is it. Accept no substitutes.

It really does not matter if you are a flying drake, a paranormal entity beyond space and time, or the most skilled among all assassins, you will die to Landmines.

But, why should you trust me? Well because Bot guy never disappoints. So, what makes me a good demoman. WELL IF I WERE A BAD DEMOMAN I WOULD NOT BE SITTING HERE WRITING A GUIDE TO YOU NOW WOULD I?!

Listen to this while you read: You are surely familiar with this piece.

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Anyway. I have many years of experience on the hero and I am here to tell you what is that differienciates you from the regular Goblin Techies instapicker.

You were smart enough to come check for a guide before you went in and literally blow yourself up on the battlefield., and that simple fact already gives you the tactical advantage. And also gives me the tell that you are not that hopeless.

ON THE OTHER HAND, keep in mind I will not have any cowards on my squad, so retreat if you cannot take the hate of everyone when they see you pick the infamous trio. But ussually the hate of the enemy team is totally bearable if you have any of the following abilities:

1.- First: You simply just do not give a flying ****. (Which is great don't get me wrong).

Or alternatively:

2.- Second You have either an Ultrakill or a Rampage for that matter.

So in this guide I will go over regular goblin Techies stuff, the regular Item Pickups, goblin Techies on the mid lane, how the mines work, and The goblin Techies Mentality

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The hypetrain has come to an end.



Not those guys, these guys.

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Anyway, I challenge you to find all the Techies quotes, yea, you are going to have to mouse-over the text to find them.

Also as always, I welcome anyone to comment on the guide, or vote, but please dont do it until you have finished reading it. Thanks in advance.

The Techies Mentality

Welcome to the oven. You cant leave.

This is the reason we are all here. How will you get inside your enemies minds? How will you manage to make them fall in every trap you place, in every plan you create?

I tell you how. Its what I like to call the self bait.

Just like in my Tinker mentality guide, I will explain it with a nice example.

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So, imagine you are goblin techies right now, you have a big set of land mines that you placed uphill, say somewhere in the enemy jungle, and you went a little two far and you get ganked. Now what do you do. Your mines are placed somewhere that if you try to make everyone follow you into them its going to be pretty obvious bait, and they wont go (This can be also used to escape when you have no trap set, and unless your enemies are really dumb or really smart, they wont follow you across a suspicious path), as its not the faster way to escape. And they know that. So you are going to have to run where you are expected to run, then, attempt some jukes maybe, but act like you are panicking, keep running, and try to create some space between you and the people following you. Go past your land mines trap, and place one mine, now, they have not go over the place they think there is a trap in, and there is, but now that they see you place that mine there, they will not hesitate and walk right through the land mines. And they will be so sure there is no trap there, taht they will surely die. Then you walk away. Haters gonna hate.

You have to be a really good actor.

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That is the most basic self bait you can do. The other big factors to Mindgames are Vision playing, Ward baiting and of course the Minefield Sign bluff.

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So first! Vision Playing is basically like, tricking the security cameras (in this case the enemy Observer Wards, so when you know there is a ward around, trick them to think you dont know they are watching, and place obvious land mines, and try placing Remote Mines outside of the ward vision, and when they come say, try to take your first land mines out, you blow them up on their way with the Remote Mines.

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Moving on... Ward baiting, or sentry baiting, consists of tricking people to waste their Observer Wards or Sentry Wards.

Walking around with an odd number of Observer Wards and going to somewhere you know its warded, and looking at an obvious uphill typical ward placement, people will think you placed that ward you are missing in your inventory, and they will either waste a Sentry Ward to deward it, or avoid walking near that place, and that reduces their confort zone even more, its either expose yourself to ganks, or die to mines.

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Okay, this might be a bit hard to keep up with. The Minefield Sign Bluff.

This **** is rocket science combined with psicologic studies and rock, paper, scissors and Poker.

Listen up. The Minefield sign is a new ability that has been granted to the goblin techies after the arcana scandal. I explain the technical details down at the spells section. Here is where I explain the usage.

So in this case you are going to have to imagine you are not Techies, but instead that there is one in the enemy team, a good Techies player, who read this guide. So you are casually farming, minding your own business and suddenly, you come across a sign.

WARNING: **********ING MINEFIELD AHEAD

Mhmm, this seems weird, so you start thinking, what if its fake, and they are just trying to mislead me, but maybe when I detour, I will fall in the real trap, what if its there just to bait Sentry Wards or maybe they already thought all this and maybe the mines are actually there, and they are trying to make me think about the posibilities to make me wonder if I should go through or not.

10 minutes and 72 double negatives later...

**** it, lets walk through. They are so bluffing. BOOM! YOU ARE DEAD.

The mindgames get to a point that is literally, totally random.

The best strategy to counter the Mindfield sign (typo intended) is to just not acknowledge it, forget its there and move on, this way, without thinking, you expose yourself less to serious brain damage, or even death.

I Cant Believe That Worked!

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The Workshop (Spells)

I think most of you reading this (not all, but most) are either completely new to goblin techies, provided you never played the original DotA, or maybe its been a while and it would be only proper to go over the spells once again.

We will go over the explicit information, and the less intuitive stuff aswell.

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First, the land mines, yes the RED ones, to avoid confusion. Also known as the Demoman's Sticky Bombs.

Basically these Land mines damage go from 300 to 600 from level 1 to 4. Give a small area of vision. And have no timer, that means, they are permanent until they are activated, or you place over the number of max mines, 20, which makes the oldest one explode.

If they are well positioned and you have an unexpecting enemy, will grant you several kills early in the game. Consider the variables: Enemy Jungler, Hard support pulling, maybe rune dependent heroes, Ancient Stacking, etc.

The Hot Spots vary from match to match. Be clever and dont waste mines that are not going to be stepped on.

If you are going mid. Use the land mines to give you good rune control, but keep an eye on it constantly, as you have slow movement speed. REMEMBER TO PUT IT RIGHT ON THE RUNE SPOT, THE VISION IS REALLY SMALL.

3 of these land mines will kill the vast majority of heroes at level 1, so using the pre horn setup and say, placing 3 mines in the path of a enemy support in their way to ward, will get you a First Blood and a fast Bottle.

Avoid placing really passive land mines, or too obvious ones, say the sideshop mines, or say, mining near the rosh pit in the early minutes, because unless there is an ursa. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO WORK you are wasting time and mana, and by extension losing EXP from your lane and giving it to the opponent, have some criteria.

Always shoot to kill. Dont place a number of mines that wont kill someone, and maybe just return him to base, that is not worth your rotation, your time and mana.

On the other hand, dont place 20 land mines on the same place as you are completely exagerating and misusing your land mines. And of course, time and mana.

Note: See "The Techies Mentality" for more information on baits and mind games.

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The Stasis Trap is probably one of the things people have trouble using properly when getting into goblin techies.


They are basically a proximity trap with a very long stun, but also a very long activation rate.

Since they take quite a bit to spring, heroes with fast movement speed or mobile abilities wont get hit by them. That is why I present to you my simple, step by step guide on how to stun that Faceless Void.

So this strategy is based around the fact that when one stasis trap is sprung, it also pops all other stasis traps in the area. So making a cluster on them by placing te first Stasis Trap anywhere, then the second one right on the very edge of the aoe of the original one, and so on, like say 4 in a square shape. You maximize the possibility of someone activating one, and even with high movement speed, and going as far as they can away from the trap they triggered, all the traps around are sprung, stunning the target.

So in a nutshell, just like all the other kinds of mines, one is just not enough, dont expect it to work, just as you dont expect a single land mine to land a kill. (Pun not intended)

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AAAHHHHH!!! SUICIDE SQUAD!!!

BOOM! This is the spell that kills Arteezy. This is the spell that makes you so scary up front, even if you have no right click power and no setup. The suicide squad attack.



This is a straight forward ability, you can click on someone and you explode, dealing pretty freaking massive damage.

Butt. It is not that simple, as the cooldown is rather long, and it may require some practice and skill to land this properly.

You see, there is an inner radius of 200, which is practically, melee range. So to get someone to take the 1550 damage (which is less, yea, composite) you are going to have to go and hug them. And with that movement speed, its not an easy thing to do.

Think Sunder On paper sounds like a completely broken spell, but once ingame, you realize its not an easy spell to perform. Because the cast range is really short and you have to risk your life to do it.

You dont want to kill yourself and not succeed to kill your target, that just sucks. And everyone sees it.

You have to be confortable using this. YOU CANNOT HESITATE WHEN IT COMES TO KILLING YOURSELF.

Yep, Regret Nothing.

Of course, it also works as a deny if you click on the ground, if you really need it.

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And of course, Goblin techies's ultimate, Remote Mines.

The Big Guns.

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Nah, ok lets do it. The Remote Mines are your most powerful skill, as they scale really good into the late game.

Aghanim's Scepter makes for a upgrade of peaceful proportions.

It makes for a new, massive area of explosion, and of course more damage. To the point that just a PAIR of these mines will kill any support, and anything around 8 or more, will completely devastate a teamfight, add a little suicide squad attack and you got your team a really colorful situation.

The Remote Mines give a considerable amount of vision, and you can place up to 21! So gaining considerable map control. Much better than what people do with Psionic Traps.

The bad side to this mines is that they are Magical Damage. That means it is blocked my Black King Bar, or Repel. And so -relatively- easier to defuse.

Also since they are manually activated you can place them in the path of creeps, without of course, them activating the mines.

This becomes extra useful when the enemy team decides to go for a push, you can prepare yourself a nice welcoming gift.

THE MINES LAST FOR 8 MINUTES. And can be activated in two ways.

With the Focused Detonate sub-ability, which detonates all Remote Mines in a selected area.

Or with pinpoint detonate, clicking on the remote mine itself and detonating it individually. You can do this while dead, bear that in mind.

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AND NOW, THE REAL MOST BROKEN SPELL IN THE ENTIRE GAME, TECHIES REAL ULTIMATE SPELL, THE MINEFIELD SIGN!

Well yea, I decided to include this "spell" because it actually breaks people's minds

AND ITS A useless SIGN! But I tell you what? Its not useless, now that is added it plays actually a considerable part on the mindgames and the goblin techies mentality.




It costs no mana no place and has a 120 second cooldown. Only one can be placed at a time. I will go over this with more detail later (see The Techies Mentality).

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This is gonna be fun! (Pre-Horn Setup)

Pretty straight forward stuff here. Teleporting up to tier one tower to set up land mines in a cheesy spot like the a rune spot, or somewhere in the jungle, in case of course, that there is a jungling hero, such as Enigma. That you know where they are going to be headed.

Remember that land mines can be used to block camps Though once stepped on, its unblocked. Not reliable.

3 land mines in most of the times will take someone down at level 1.

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Do not go suicide squad attack on level 1, its throwing the game, even if it works, its not worth it. Unless, its a really high level match and its likely nobody falls for your ****, and you have to go do the dirty work by yourself.

See the Very Wrong Way Section.

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Is that the bottle the nitro was in? (Laning Stage / Early Game)

Techies' Laning Stage is a bit wonky.

More than one time you will feel like you have to control over your lane, because your damage is really low at level 1 (30) and the proyectile speed is really not that amazing either.

Try harassing your lane opponent with constant right clicks, even with low damage, the attack range goblin techies has is pretty respectable. So do that.

When it comes to last hitting you are going to have to use your land mines to last hit, and since you pretty much cant deny your own creeps, for you have no damage.

In the case of Mid-Lane you have no other option rather that keep taking creepwaves down and push the enemy tower down early, and cut their space smaller.

You cant avoid it, if you try to get some last hits with the land mines you will push your lane pretty hard, and you shouldnt be trying to run it back, but trying to use it to your advantage, going ham and pushing.

Though a couple of levels in, and with a distracted opponents and practice, you can surely land some rightclick-regular last hits, its not that hard.

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IN A DUOLANE THOUGH you have to create space for your partner, and try to make the opponents retreat or step land mines, stack and pull for your carry, you are not a support, but you really cant do much else.

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Back to Mid, you want to get that Bottle online as soon as possible, you know, lane sustainability.

BOTTLECROWING USED TO BE SO NECESSARY THAT OFTEN TECHIES BOUGHT HIS OWN COURRIER FOR PERSONAL USE. This is not that vital nowadays, dont worry, but do bottlecrow if you really need to or you lost a rune to the opposing mid.

If you are planning on buying a Bloodstone later, buy Arcane Boots they really help not only with the active, but with the Mana Pool Boost.

If you are not planning on buying a Bloodstone or you are obligated to leave your lane, buy the Tranquil Boots + Soul Ring combo, its pretty self-sufficient and useful to roam around placing mines all over the map. Happy life.

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If you are going for the Map Control build, you are going to be doing this pretty much most of the time, so getting both Arcane Boots and Soul Ring is viable, along with your Void Stone to start making dem BLAWDSTAWN.

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Shut up, Its Magic! (Mid Game)

Mid game is when the warfare starts. People start commiting to take down towers and roam around the map breaking the lanes. Use this as an advantage, use Remote Mines and prepare for war.

BY NOW YOU SHOULD HAVE A Force Staff. Use it to escape through terrain, to follow up initiation with a suicide squad attack and to help out teammates of course, or for that matter, **** an enemies positioning by pushing him towards your team. Basic force stuff. (Pun intended).

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Along with that, some reasons I personally prefer Force Staff over Blink Dagger are:

First: You are not an initiator.

Second: Force Staff, even if it has a longer cooldown, it doesnt get a 3 second cooldown when attacked, and if you are being chased down, you are totally going to get hit again before the 3 seconds end, you are not Tinker you cant juke for 3 seconds and Blink into the trees to save yourself, its much harder.
As I said, using your Force Staff through terrain makes people have to either go around the terrain to catch you, or stop chasing you down. Of course by terrain I mean ground differences, not trees, as you chop those down when you Force Staff through.

You can also Force Staff people into your Mines, specially those supports trying to defuse 'em. Push that booty in.

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The euls scepter of divinity is an item that you not only pick up for its active ability, but for the amount of Mana Regen and Intelligence if gives to you. Along with a little bonus movement speed.

In a combat situation:

Aggresively: Lift your victim and place a Remote and a Land Mine. (Dont try to place a Stasis Trap that **** doesnt work, trust me.

Defensively: Lift whoever is chasing you, and Force Staff or Blink Dagger to safety.

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This is the big item: Bloodstone.

Bloodstone is an expensive item that you should have by Mid game. Since this is when most of the killing happens, and that charges your Bloodstone. It gives Filthy Amounts of Hp and Mana regen, and a bigger Hp and Mana pool.

Also gives you a second way to kill yourself. yay. Never give away that 1300 Beyond Techies-Like Gold.

The Bloodstone pickup is somewhat contradictory, since you kill yourself a lot, losing charges, but then again, the post-mortem benefits for your team, such as the heal and vision will help a bit. Also, you get EXP for any kills you land and for what happens afterwards.

Reduces your Respawn Timer even more. Yea.

Very Fine!

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Enhanced Sparkpowder, I like it! (Late Game)

Is this for experiments or ambushes? W-what's the difference?

In this section we are going to talk about Aghanim's Scepter, Scythe of Vyse and Shiva's Guard.

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Some say you should get Aghanim's Scepter before Bloodstone.

And its ok, both are powerful, get the most suitable for the match first, if you see you dont really need more damage on Remote Mines, just grab your Bloodstone.

BASICALLY:

Bloodstone = More Mines
Aghanim's Scepter = More Powerful Mines

It boosts up the damage each Remote Mine deals by quite a bit, and also ups range, so its less possible that someone is nearby and doesnt get affected, with practice you will know if they are in range just by looking at it.

Good item for scaling better into the late game, but you shouldnt rush it too hardcore, since you will end up with no proper Mana Regen and not even in level 16, for that would be kind of a waste of money. Get Scepter when you feel you need it. Dont get it just because people tell you to.

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The Scythe of Vyse is a big, fat, expensive item.

It gives you Insane Amount of Inteligence, and so Mana Pool and Mana Regen.

If your team is lacking good disables, grab this instead of Shiva's Guard. It helps a lot in teamfights, Hex their Brewmaster and he is a dead man.

Pretty straight forward stuff here.

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Okay now, Shiva's Guard is a bit different.

It gives you a good armor boost, more inteligence for happy Mana, big slow with flying vision. And Freezing Aura too.

Get this if your team is not having trouble taking down a carry, and your team just needs a little more teamfight presence, just a bit.

S'alright? S'alright. (Taboo Item Choices)

In this section I will go over some lesser known items for Techies. Mostly REALLY SITUATIONAL. I'll try to be brief.

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Mekansm, this aura and heal in area is, well, being honest, not your best buy. However, if there is nobody building the Mek for your team, and you really need it, you can carry it no problemo.

Maybe in one of those early tower defenses you can heal everyone up before sacrificing yourself for the greater good. It also helps if you went Arcane Boots and Soul Ring and you need that extra HP regen.

Dont buy Mekansm before Force Staff. You need that first.

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The Refresher Orb is obtainable by performing a glitch on Yoshi's Island 1-1, for this you will need a Fire Flower, A Yoshi and a Clapping Chuck.

Extending Yoshi's tongue, and doing a spinjump at the same time should replace the ID of the coin with that of the Clapping Chuck, so giving you the orb in your Inventory.

Oh wait, wrong orb.

No, but really the Refresher Orb is a really expensive item for what it offers to Techies. The main reason you are buying this item is that you are behind, and you need a Fixed Amount of Mana Regen.

Think Bloodstone, but Bloodstone has a charge system, and so if your team is getting steamrolled, you get no regen from it.

Refresher Orb offers this amazing fixed amount of regen so even if you get killed, you keep the regen, also, if you are behing is this situation, you can refresh suicide squad attack and never feed gold.

If you got the Super Mario World reference I love you.

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Blade Mail is kinda something you buy just because you are Techies; and people hate you, and want to punch your little face.

Eventually you will get sort of tanky (at least for an int hero), and this can contribute something, mainly for deflecting big nukes.

If you Blade Mail a Laguna Blade, then turn around, Force Staff and suicide squad attack, they just helped you with taking down half their health.

I dont promise its amazing, though you can have it in mind.

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Orchid Malevolence is simple as ****. Its a Silence. Its more Magic Damage. Its Mana Regen.

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heart of tarasque, gimme tanky, gimme regen.

Become the Damage Sponge of the team.

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Necronomicon is a bit more complex:

It gives you some damage outside the mines. More Pushing Power. And in level 3 a good way to take sentries down, and deward too, as you roam the map a lot.

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Pipe of Insight works just as Mekansm in this scenario.

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Veil of Discord makes your team win teamfights more easily, gives you some armor, and the potential to bury someone heads down with Remote Mines.

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IMPORTANT ****:

YOUR TEAM DOES NOT NEED 2 Mekansm, 2 Pipe of Insight, OR 2 Veil of DiscordS. AND CAREFUL WITH FEEDING Necronomicon GOLD.

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Counterfeit Gold (Ancient Farming)

As Goblin Techies there are some little tricks to farm the ancient camps on both sides:

Radiant Side Looks like this: Being 1, 2 and 3 the steps.

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Dire side looks like this:

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Its that easy. Stack Camp, Stack Mines, Run them kind of sideways to it, easiest Force Staff ever.

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The Bad Guys...

FOES!

Foes is any pesky **********er that doesnt die:

The list includes:

Abbadon
Dazzle
Omniknight
Bristleback A.K.A Babyback Ribs.
Wraith King
Viper
Anti mage
Pudge
Etc.

Also any Blade Mail carrier:

Clockwerk
Centaur Warrunner
Some Death Prophet
And Sometimes Bristleback

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I wanna stress how annoying Omniknight can be, as he can Repel himself, and go take out your Remote Mines.

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When going Mid, Techies can have serious trouble with farming mid heroes, as he cannot contest his lane, and he is unable to deny.

Shadow Fiend
Tinker
Ember Spirit
Razor
Death Prophet
Brewmaster

Are some examples.

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The Good Guys...

As Techies goes around roaming alone most of the time, there are not a lot of heroes that synergize with him to a Wombo Combo level.

But some heroes are good along him:

Crystal Maiden for Global Mana Regen.
Batrider
Pudge Can get enemies into your mines

And overall, for Midlane, as you dont have a Carry Mid or a good ganker mid, such as Tusk or Tinker. A team with a Techies Mid, needs a good hard carry to carry the team later on, as Techies utility is limited to traps.

The Very Wrong Way

I DONT CARE WHAT YOU SAW ARTEEZY DO, DO NOT BASE YOUR GAMEPLAY AROUND SUICIDE!

This is NOT viable AT ALL, as it doesnt scale well into the late game, and losing gold constantly for death is not a viable strategy.

Do a favour to everyone, Do Not Do This.

[[[---Hypetrain Fuel---]]]]>>>

Here is the Original Techies Reveal at TI4:

Play Video

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Hero Spotlight by DotaCinema:

Play Video

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The Juicy Delicious Arcana Set (Which I am a proud owner of):

Play Video

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Some 1337 Montages by Mike and Ben:

Play Video

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Play Video

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Nice Knowing ya!

This is it for the guide for now!

Maybe later I will add some more stuff I may have forgot, note me in the comments.

Thanks for reading the guide if you actually made it all the way. I may create the In-Game Guide for this.

Go Have Fun!