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Guide
This guide will focus more on how to play techies and is meant as a supplement to other fantastic techies guide like Twisted Logics guide to techies.
Why choose techies?
Techies is a hero that is less item dependent than you think; relies more on playing mind game with the enemies; it feels good to get a triple kill, rampage, godlike; and it feels even better to make the techies haters eat their words after you win the game for them. Sort of.
When to choose techies
Techies tend to extend the game drastically because they are great anti-pushers and are generally better as a counter plays (Waiting for the enemy to engage in your side of the map and turning the tide) Techies does not have enough mana to do much early game anyway, which is why a techies work much better mid-late game. However, techies can be a great pusher too thanks to the land mine and the stasis trap as an escape. In fact, if your team composition is lacking a core like AM or void, you need to concentrate on pushing!
Your team should have pretty good cores (at least 2 of them) to take advantage of late game and the countless of stasis you will be planting. You should have a good support to buy obs since you wont have gold to do that. You teammates should learn of your mining pattern, and know to retreat to certain mines, stasis etc.
Synergistic
Outworld Devourer. The amount of money you get is insane late game. Just plant away.
Keeper of the Light. Provides a lot of mana with chakra.
Crystal Maiden. Mana aura. Every little bit helps.
Pudge. Stand on your mines, hook.
Vengeful Spirit. Stand on your mines, swap.
Magnus. Reverse polarity, skewer to mine.
Rubick. Telekenesis to mine if close enough.
Tiny. Toss a techies early game. Not recommended though.
Antagonistic
Nature's Prophet. The treants screw up your land mines. And an np with gem will thwart all anti-pushing efforts with a single gem since his range is long enough. And this will happen over and over again because np is a ranged pusher. Very irritating.
Enigma, Lycan, Chen, Enchantress. Same problem, but you can disrupt their jungling to some extent early game, so not all is lost.
Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer, Morphling. The illusions are horribly irritating for the same reasons.
Sniper. With shrapnel and increased shooting range, a sniper will have no problem destroying mines uphill.
Pudge. So fat, so much magic resist.
Anti-Mage. Makes my head hurt when factoring in his magic resist to decide number of mines to plant.
Rubick. Same problem with magic resist.
Invis heroes on your team. You guys are essentially encouraging the enemy to get active detection.
Item counters
Manta Style could be a good counter. There is a small chance that you may bait out the manta so it'll hopefully be on cooldown during important fights.
Necronomicon is a good counter, but pple tend to use it to clear mines uphill when pushing, so most of your mines elsewhere will be safe.
Gem of True Sight and Sentry Ward. Duh.
Choosing lanes
Offlane works best for techies. You can use your mine to zone out the enemy carry, deter ganking, which is the main problem of an offlane anyway. You have access to the enemy jungle, which means potentially blocking them. You don't have to walk as far as the safe lane to reach the creeps, which is very useful for a hero with such slow movement speed
Strategy 1 - Block camp
Use land mines to block creep camp. This is especially useful for heroes who jungle such as life stealer, legion commander, dark seer. For heroes who jungle with controlled units such as np, enigma, lycan, this won't work since they can clear the camp with their creeps, but you can still try. Weigh the pros and cons of preventing farm, and level while giving up some of your own
Buy clarity, tp scroll and tango, sentry, run to the opponent's creep camp. Timing is key here. You want to block all 5 creep camps before the creeps spawn. Due to the cooldown and the need to move between camps, you may have to place sentries in some camps to prevent spawning at the 30s mark.
Find the optimal location to plant mines such that they are not immediately obvious to heroes with detection. Look for shrouds, cut down trees etc. You should be able to block 3-4 camps if executed properly. This strategy runs the risk of enemy scouting you out alone in their jungle, so be sure to hide on cd.
Strategy 2 - Mine around lane
Mine lanes. Regardless of which lane you end up in, you will want to purchase tp, tango, clarity and soul ring recipe. If the support on your team isn't a hard support, consider buying a courier too. Tp into lane and start mining. The $ spent on tp allows you to place an additional mines before the creeps meet in lane. In mid, that means 3 mines. In safe and offlane, that means 4 mines. You could mine rune spots too, but dont expect to place more than 2 without the enemy knowing. 2-4 mines is all you need early game (2 min mark) to kill.
As for where to mine, you can try either the secret shop (quite useless frankly), or just places where the creeps don't normally walk to, but heroes will. This requires that you have an idea of creep pathing. In-lane mines tend to catch the enemy off-guard since they assume an area mine-free if the creeps did not trigger anything. While it is not a bad idea to mine the secret shop, it doesn't do much for the lane especially if the mines are triggered too early on and the enemy respawns 10 sec later. Also, the sideshop is an awkward place to retreat/lure enemies into.
Strategy 3 (Recommended)
A combination of 1) and 2). Instead of blocking all camps, block the pull camp. Instead of planting 4 mines in lane, plant 3. This more or less prevents any pulls for a good chuck of the early game, and if it is dewarded, just run in to plant more.
Strategy 4 - Jungling
This requires a lot of patience, and it may not necessarily pay out. Ideally, you want to jungle with stacked ancients. I have not explored this option, but it is by far the least enjoyable.
Where to plant mines
Plant mines in lane. Having it in lane prevents enemies from moving freely, especially if they are melees heroes or if they don't buy sentries. The key is to balance the number of mines that the enemies see you lay down and the ones that they don't. You want to place the mines such that creeps don't touch it, but enemies will if they stray too far from the creep's pathing, which makes farming very awkward for them. Most melee will back off. In fact, you can usually walk up to their ranged creeps and the melee hero will back off for fear of suicide. Lay a mine (away from the ranged creep so it doesn't detonate) and run back. If all else fails, suicide. Kaboom!
When mining off-screen, be sure to mine at places you can retreat to, and places to prevent a wandering Pudge or Crystal Maiden from ganking. Typically, 2 mines is enough to scare off a gank, and 3 for a kill at early game. Don't put too many because it is a waste of mana. Remember, mana economy is key. Scaring enemies from ganking you with many single mines can do wonders to the laning phase as opposed to having 10 mines all clustered at a single spot. (When playing against a good techies, you can calculate the time and the max number of mines he can possibly have. If the number that detonated is less than the possible number of mines laid, there is a good chance that the difference is waiting close by to catch you unaware.)
I don't recommend mining the rune spot heavily. 2 to 3 is usually sufficient to scare off the midlaner into thinking twice before collecting a rune. Usually, the rune spot is warded anyway, so mining there as a scare tactic is good enough. Don't count on getting kills off it though, especially in high level matches. It does force a good enemy support to waste 200 gold on sentries, which is great. However, you will need leave your lane to plant them, which means less exp. Definitely not recommended. If for some reason, you get forced to mid, help the mid solo by planting some mines at the corner of the ledge, away from creep pathing. It doesn't matter if the enemy sees it, but it'll reduce enemy aggression in mid.
Special note to stasis trap. I have not tried this since it disrupts the mana economy quite a bit, but using stasis for vision early on is a great idea as it gives you vision that complements the limited 2 obs early game. Don't expect to get too many kills off it either.
Special note to remote mines. They are great, but at early stages of the game, land mine does more damage while requiring less attention from you, all for the same mana cost.
Experience and Gold leeching
Ignore what your teammates say. You are a techies, you need farm early, or at least until you get soul ring and boots (or even arcane). Otherwise, you will be playing a 4v5 game for a long time. The carry will be farming all game anyway, so they will be able to catch up. Also, your low damage is a joke really, so it shouldn't affect your ally's farm by much either. If they can't last hit, they are probably the ones at fault. Exp is important too, but it shouldn't be a problem early game either as long as you don't veer off the lane too much. Falling 1-2 levels behind is normal, but no more.
Lane pushing
You will generally want your lane pushed. This gives you a lot of flexibility as to where to place your mines with or without the enemy seeing. If your lane buddy complains, tell him/her that your mines are preventing ganks, which is the reason why people don't want their lanes pushed in the first place. However, having said that, you should not use mines to push the lane. Mana is precious, you can do a lot more meaningful stuff with strategic mines then stealing farm and annoying everyone.
Mana economy and item progression
Obviously, mana economy is going to be an issue, so you need to plan your mining locations very carefully. Clarity Potion will help, Scroll of Town Portal will help, as does suicide (respawn with full mana and to buy more clarity). Always rush a soul ring. I don't actively use land mines on creeps to rush it since it pushes the lane too much, but it is definitely useful. Progress to an arcane.
Using suicide
Suicide should be used only for the following reasons: prevent enemies from chasing down your ally; denying yourself; securing a kill/first blood; or as a free trip back to the fountain. Best used when you have little gold and barely enough mana left anyway. Also, note that forcing the enemy back instead of killing them outright may be a better idea at low levels since it takes longer for them to walk back than to respawn.
Skill progression
I have played games where I skilled suicide to level 4 over land mine. I have also played games where I only skilled 1 in favor of stasis. Skilling suicide to 4 lets you do a lot of damage early on especially if you get ganked. And the damage is more worthwhile early game. I'll decide if I will be using suicide at around the 3-5 min mark, and if lvl 1 suicide is enough to kill. If not, I'll skill it to level 2. Nowadays though, I tend to favor land mines and stasis more, but I do have 1 point in suicide for speedy respawn. I have tried skilling stats over stasis, but the additional mana doesn't quite justify the lack of a powerful stun, specially since techies tend to be slightly under-leveled.
Dealing with sentries, trilanes, solo and counters
If the enemy support buys sentries, you become semi-useless. If it is just the initial two, you can try to work around it. If they use one to clear the pull creep camp, even better. Place a few mines some distance apart to find out where the blind spot of the wards are. If the enemy support starts to buy a lot of sentries, it is time to change lane. It is tempting to go on an all-out sentry ward war, but techies need farm, so the gold disadvantage will have a greater effect on you. Also, against certain heroes like mentioned under antagonistic, they will run your mines over. Consider switching lanes. I repeat, consider switching lanes. (You should bid them farewell with a bang first of course)
Realize that you are a fantastic hero against anyone who is invisible because they love to roam, have low health typically, so a couple mines here and there should kill them or at least scare them away.
For trilanes, do what you normally do, but focus mines against ganks a little more. Place mines near tree lines, especially at places an enemy walked past just minutes ago, because they are likely to return. In some situations, you may even want to use suicide to clear a chunk of the trees. A stasis behind the tower is great too since trilane heroes have the tendency to dive and they would never expect a mine so far back and they would never know it is there without detection thanks to your tower.
If you are a solo offlaner, you can still function very well. The goal in this case is to leech as much exp as possible while prevent ganks. Frankly, no hero does that better because 1) you can deter mindless dives with your land mine and stasis 2) you have long range, albeit horrible damage 3) you should have blocked the pull camp anyway 4) you have suicide, need I say more? Focus on gaining levels. Don't worry too much about getting gold at this point since frankly, you won't be getting any as with all the trilanes. By 4-5 min, ping for your allies to gank bot if they are not having an impact at top.
Switching lanes
I have not explored this option, but if safe lane is having it hard, sometimes, it is more productive to tp up, lay a few mines at strategic places to deter enemies from ganking. Lay some stasis for some temporary vision, and if you are level 6, a quick remote will provide the much-needed vision to warn of a potential gank. In fact, simply by showing your face, the enemy should become a little more wary and less aggressive. Note that this maneuver does screw with your gold and exp, so think carefully.
Tips and tricks
When tping in back to lane, consider dropping a quick mine while the fountain buff is still on you. It will be next to the tower, but hey, you get a free mine out of it!
Pushing
Don't underestimate the power of the land mine when pushing. Try to bait out the glyph before using it. Also, if your mine catches the oncoming creep wave, all the better. If you can spare the mana, always plant a stasis close by so your team has an escape route. I cannot stress this enough! Plant remotes a distance away to help with any clashes and score some kills, but not necessary.
Farming
If you don't already have your arcane boots, this is the time to use land mines to accelerate your farm. If need be, plant a land mine, then a remote, and detonate them to clear a wave instantly. You will need to do this 3 times or so to get enough for an arcane. If you are great at last hitting, you could use just one land mine. First lower the ranged creep health, next plant a mine near the melee creeps, and when it detonates, score 2 last hits immediately. Then try to last hit the other 2 melee to get the full wave. A techies can technically farm a jungle, but only if it is stacked. Otherwise, the damage you need to kill the creeps isn't worth the mana used. The next item you should work towards is either an euls or scepter. I'll explain why in a bit.
Note that it is not a good idea to steal farm from a carry that will need it more than you at this stage of the game.. I know it feels amazing to see your mines clearing wave after wave, but trust me, your team could use that farm a lot more than you now. Basically, don't be the Nature's Prophet, Keeper of the Light and Tinker that steals farm but doesn't impact the game. Wealth should be distributed somewhat evenly* among your teammates so that no one is really dysfunctional.
In high level games, the creep waves are usually occupied or pushed quite far out, leaving a techies with few places to farm. On the plus side, it also means you more places to mine undetected! If that is so, as long as you have soul and arcane, you can switch to mining, or farming elsewhere. (See Mid game - mining strategies) Alternatively, you can plant a few remote mines and using them to clear waves 2 bombs at a time when the creeps arrive. You lose out on a bit of exp by not being there, but hey, you got the precious gold! (See preventing pushes.)
Roshan
Roshan can be game changing, and techies have the absolute best skill to scout for roshan attempts with 10 min long remotes. If you want to mine purely for vision, buy a smoke of deceit and a tp scroll, run to the pit hidden, and do your thing. Unless there is an ursa or lycan, you shouldn't waste too much time mining the pit for that one kill early on though. When you have prepared the surrounding area with mines and a rosh fight seems imminent, consider planting enough remotes to steal rosh. An interesting tip is that with Aghanim's Scepter, techies will have enough range to plant remote mines from dire's bot lane near in trees. Another important thing to support clashes is to place a remote at the enemies high ground for vision (There usually isn't enough time plant enough mines for kills). Always always spam stasis. It is much cheaper in terms of mana cost, and it can easily turn the tide of a roshan clash. Note that stasis trap also work on Roshan for the full duration.
Runes
The only rune that is of interest is the regen rune. Because your spells have relatively high mana cost and low cooldown, you can actively plant mines for free when the regen buff is active as long as the mana never fills up. This usually translates to 2 free stasis, remote and land mine if done right.
Special note to haste rune. If you are thinking of using it to suicide, be careful as there is a tendency for techies to outrun the target and detonate too far for full damage.
Level and item progression
It is ok to be under leveled to a slight extent since your main contribution is via stasis trap, which is cheap and spammable at low levels anyway. You do want to reach level 11 before making remote clusters though as it adds 50% more damage to your mine immediately. Depending on how the game is going, you may or may not want to rush scepter, but it does give a really nice range and boost damage to 600. If you are being pushed, 3 scepter-enhanced remote mines translate to a quick 1800 damage! You can use it as a grenade to clear creep waves too, which will accelerate your farm and pushing potential immensely. However, it does little in terms of mana regen, so it makes it harder to spam any type of mine. To spam stasis trap, it is more useful to get euls for the mana regen right after soul ring and arcane boots. You should be aiming for a bloodstone and/or BOT by level 16.
How to play against detection
If the enemy has gem, kill the carrier. If they have active detection, There isnt much you can do, except to hide the mines behind trees, on top of slopes etc. The stasis spamming strategy works because it is all over the place, so even if someone has gem, he/she is bound to get caught by a stasis trap eventually. More importantly, work with your team so that if you see a support de-mining along the river or on your side of the map, gank him/her. It is painful to see your team farming away when your territory is clearly being invaded, so communicate with your team.
What to do in a team clash
In clashes, use your eul's to save yourself, to crowd control the opponent, and to buy some time to place a stasis, a remote or even just a land mine. Techies don't typically get focused down, so you will have time to plant a stasis in the middle of the fight, which will help tremendously for fights that last longer than 5 sec. It forces the enemy to decide if they should disengage or risk the stun. Throwing a remote grenade does a whooping 600 damage at lvl 3 too! Don't forget to use your suicide for damage, though it only make sense if it is level 4, if you are out of mana already, or if you are getting targeted down. Otherwise, you are always much better off staying behind and dropping mines over and over again.
Special note on suicide. You are not just using it to deny exp and gold, you are reducing your respawn time by half, and that is terribly important especially if the game progresses to late.
One type of techies play is to delay the game so that you get into late game where your carries are very well farmed and start owning. To do this, a techies must learn to prevent pushes.
Joining the action
First of all, always be on a look out on where the enemy team is pushing or will be pushing. Often, you will see clashes that happen in a particular lane, and heroes will linger for a long time there. Assume that a push is imminent, especially after a team wipe. If you are not there, consider tp-ing there to support, or tp-ing back to base first for mana and walking there asap. If you are out of mana except suicide, you could tp into lane and shift queue suicide. Be sure to check that you have got mana for both tp and suicide. Plant stasis behind the tower to prevent dives, plant in tree lines to provide escapes/vision or just opportunities for your team engage. You can place multiple stasis as well as long as they are out of range of each other.
The actual defense
To defend the tower itself, place a land and a remote mine near the tower. That should clear one creep wave easily. Enemies don't typically push when they have no creeps anyway, less so when there is always the threat of remotes mines. Usually, if a push is imminent, you won't have time to place more than 2 remotes anyway. You can either plant 2 stealthily in the hopes that you can kill off unsuspecting heroes, or plant 3 and risk letting them see it, which will either prevent the push anyway, or lure out a sentry and waste your mines. Also, if the tower is going to fall anyway, it will be better to place remotes behind the tower to punish the enemy if they continue to push.
Securing other lanes
If you have time to set up because the enemies are busy pushing other lanes, consider stacking mines at your lane to thwart any push efforts later on and scoring a double kill sometimes. Of course, this is becomes a delicate question of how many mines per cluster, how many clusters, where to place the clusters. To determine the number of mines, ask yourself who you want to be able to kill, whether it is a juggernaut split pushing, or a nature prophet. Account for any magic resistance, and plant enough mine to kill the target. [color=#ffff00]Note however that the more mines you plant, the more time you spend away from gaining exp and gold, and less mana you have for other things.[/color] Typically, you want at least 4-5 mines in a single cluster. The standard is to place mines about 600 range in front of the tower. This will be in range of most heroes pushing the tower, so you will hit all heroes who are pushing.
The problem with this strategy is that it is the most obvious, and a good opponent will always carry sentry to de-mine before pushing. One way to counter that is to place the mines farther out so that enemies are less likely to de-mine. However, you have far less time to create a remote cluster unseen if it is planted farther out, so you may have to retreat and plant them in separate clusters, but it is worth it to keep the remotes a surprise.
Additional tips
Try to keep track of the timer on the remote. If it is ending in 2 min or so and you have not used it on a hero, try using it to clear waves. This is especially true if you planted the mines quite far out after that lane is pushed. Enemies are less likely to walk that area, and if they do, you are likely to miss it, so just detonate it on creeps.
Besides mining to prevent pushes, there are lots of other things you can do with mines. Ill now discuss some of them:
Vision
Stasis and remote mines provide pretty good vision. Stasis is a cheaper option while remote mines dont get triggered and last 10 min! You will have to decide between which ones to use, but when mining for vision in your own jungle, make sure to use a good mix of both. When mining for vision in enemy jungles, use remotes since a stasis is more likely to be triggered. See map to get an idea of the amount of vision you can potentially get with remotes and stasis.
Land mines
Plant land mines in clusters of 4-6 for mid game. You may not kill the enemy carry, but you are sure to kill most roaming supports, especially if you place them just uphill so they die just as they place an obs or sentry. Continue mining the rune spots if you happen to walk past them, but don't spend too must time since those areas are usually warded anyway. Start with 2-3 land mines, while planting stasis around during codlin. If the mines are not triggered by the time you return to the rune spot, add another land, and keep repeating until there is enough to kill off someone.
Buying sentries
An important tip for mining either land mine or remote clusters is to check the area for obs or sentries first before wasting a good minute mining there. The stupidest thing a techie can do is to spend precious minutes mining a place that the enemy can see the whole time, only to have the mines destroyed soon after. You typically want to check for obs if you are mining in places that are commonly covered by obs anyway. In fact, if the enemy is ganking your jungle etc, there is probably an obs, so you will want to deward and mine to prevent further intrusion.
Know thy enemy
One way to know where to mine is to study the enemy team's composition and their behavior so far. Then adapt to their strategies, react to their next move. For example, if they are actively seeking out your junglers, consider mining your jungle heavily with stasis, remote etc. You basically want to create a safe place for your carries to farm. If they tend to frequent an area like ambushing from the dire's secret shop, a couple stasis will provide both vision and a good escape plan. If they are about to roshan, mine the area around it. One thing you should realize in dota is that old habits die hard. Invis heroes will roam, pudge will be tend to go to a few favorite hooking spots, a clinkz will d.pact creeps at the same few camps. If you know these patterns, plant mines accordingly to disrupt their flow!
Mana economy
Always carry tp scrolls. They are essentially 100 gold fountain refills when you are out of mana. Remember, a techies without mana is essentially a creep that contributes essentially nothing. Every second without laying mine is a second wasted.
Be sure to cover your base with stasis and replacing those that have expired. Stack a few remotes at the entrance, but also a few outside, and a few in base. The cluster outside can be used to clear creep waves to delay a push, kill support, and provide vision. The ones in front at the hill deters most pushes but are easily countered. The ones deep in base punishes heroes that rush too deep, which is another behavior you get in high tier matches. Consider stacking land mines around the rax as well to deal with heroes with bkb. Do this even if your team looks like it is coming out on top, unless you are very confident that your team will not throw the match.
If all three lanes are down to tier threes only, you will need to plan your wards very carefully. Consider using tps (even for such short distances) and a bottle (To boost your fountain recovery speed) to accelerate the mines laid per minute. It is easier to cover all three lanes with stasis than with proximity and remotes. Focus your remotes on the lane that the enemy are most likely to push.
If the opponents manage to get megacreeps, good luck.
When pushing, drop stasis and remotes along the way. At the enemys base, you can throw a remote mine uphill if vision is needed. Plant stasis as close as possible to where a potential clash may occur. Run in to the tower drop a land mine and run back out.
If your team happen to be pushing other lanes while you are away, do your part by pressuring your own lane with remote mines while dropping stasis to prevent possible back stab. It pushes a lane of creep back in, which makes counter pushing that much harder in the event that your team lose the engagement.
Should you spend time on land time clusters, remote bomb clusters, stasis traps coverage, defending tower, mining jungle, blocking creeps, or farming? There are many decisions that a techies can make, and they will have a drastic effect on the game. Learning about the enemy is one way to make that better decision, but it also depends on the current state of the game, your items etc. For example, if you get 5-6 kills from random mines in the first 10 min of the game, the enemy team is going to be very careful with where they tread, which changes the dynamics of the game from that point on.
In general, I will say that most techies players spend too much time trying to build remote clusters only to have them de-mined by a good team with gem and sentries. What is worse is when techies forget to detonate their clusters because of poor map awareness. On the other hand, while land mines are great, they are typically planted away from lanes, which mean you will be gaining less gold and exp. Also, they don't do much vision-wise, and are not exactly cheap. Furthermore, as the game progresses, they deal less and less damage due to increasing armor on the opponent, and the damage doesn't scale. Both bomb clusters also suffer from the problem that it depends on the player's prediction on where the enemies will come next, and then react to that guess. It takes a lot of mana and time to set the mines, and the effect can only be felt in a small location, so it is a huge risk.
Stasis trap provides great vision, having 3-4 can cover a huge area, prevents potential ganks, makes for great comeback in clashes, have a relatively cheap mana cost, and at level 4, shares the same cd as the other mines. In other words, you can spam stasis relatively easily, your team will thank you for it and your impact in the game will be felt to a greater extent! Now compare that to a miserable 10 mine remote mine cluster that gets de-mined, or never gets used.
Having played techies since Dota 1, I got to experience its evolution along with the game and frankly, it just keeps getting better. The great thing about playing techies is that it gives you a new perspective on the importance of all the little things in Dota, like creep spawn time, rune, knowing when to give farm, take farm, the importance of vision, resource management etc. In fact, resource management does not just involve gold, health and mana; it also includes the amount of attention you can dedicate the map. Techies may not be the most conventional hero, but sometimes, it is just the hero we need to gain a new appreciation (and lots of hate) for the dota.
All hail the bomb lord!
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