DOTA 2

[Dog Pants]

Maybe it was more strategic, but you decided that you wanted to try a more aggressive (or maybe more active) support character because you were finding yourself a bit out of it with Treant Protector.

[shot2bits]

At some point ill try and write up some sort of "how to support" guide, not that anyone is bad at it, its just as pnut mentioned last night its very easy to lose track of what you as a support player should be doing in a game at different points. just some tips and such about what you can be doing beyond warding and helping your carry get the last hits (possibly going into the different ways a support can help with this) in the early game, it can certainly be as involved a role as the carry's if not more especially if you are trying to keep an eye on the entire map.

Also happy to step in with small 2-3 person games to explain fundamentals of the game or if people want help with a particular hero or role as trying to explain that kind of stuff (especially the bare basics) during a proper game is rather difficult

[Dog Pants]

In-joke here. I laughed when I spotted it.

[shot2bits]

[Mr. Johnson]

Fantastic!

[Anery]

Hahaha, I like his reaction

[Dog Pants]

Today I made myself a homebrew build for Slark, tailored for the way I play him. It felt really good to think through my priorities and roughly what stage I'd expect to be at when I hit certain points, then coordinating them so that they upgraded without going over six items at once. I tested it on Medium bots and won in 27 minutes, hitting my marks - getting a Mantle about four levels in for when I started making moves against other heroes, timing the Orb of Venom for level 6 so I could cross to the secret shop quickly. It was a massive sense of achievement. Then I tried it against Hard bots. I lost, but not by much. Which also made me think that the meat games we have are at least the equivalent of Hard bots.

[Roman Totale]

Very fun game against irl doods tonight. We lost, badly, but it was highly entertaining and they were goods sports.

And this made me laugh:

[Mr. Johnson]

[Dog Pants]

Last night I had the click-tracking software that comes with my mouse turned on, and today I had it generate a heat map. It's not particularly surprising, and I suspect the calibration is a little out, but it's still interesting. Says to me that I click on items too much (I really need to think about hotkeying at least the top row). I quite like the minimap part - you can see almost the whole game was spent in our half. That's because we were getting battered. The image behind it is generic, by the way. I don't tend to play Night Stalker (although I probably should).

[Roman Totale]

That's pretty cool - would be interesting to see the differences between different hero classes (carry, support) and where they click.

[Dog Pants]

I'm not sure there'd be a lot of difference. I played support last night, but the movement is likely to be pretty much the same and ability targeting is still going to be in the vicinity of the middle of the screen regardless. Movement clicks will vastly outnumber anything else anyway. The difference between a game we win and a game we lose would be interesting though.

[Dog Pants]

Just noticed there's a mouse movement one too. That's not particularly enlightening either, but it did make me think that I move the camera by edge-scrolling with the cursor. Is there a better way?

[Roman Totale]

I vary between mouse scrolling and mini-map clicking. I think mini-map awareness and camera positioning are vital skills in Dota - don't just rely on what you can see in front of you, look at the rest of the map too. If I'm on Radiant I tend to keep my hero in the bottom half of the screen so I can see more of what is coming towards me (and vice-versa for the Dire).

[Dog Pants]

Yeah, keeping an eye on the mini-map and clicking around it is a good skill to pick up. One of the few I actually have.

[Roman Totale]

Looks like they've released a new hero - Winter Wyvern

Edit: and a video

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFknOLXTrY0[/media]

[Dog Pants]

Ah yes, looks like a decent combat support. There's a fairly amusing comic with it here.

Also an amusing tweet from Richard Cobbett suggesting an alternative dialogue:

Rewriting that Dota 2 comic. "You know how you're a support disabler?" "Yes?" "And I'm a giant dragon?" "Your point would be?" "Vengeful."

[Mr. Johnson]

Cool! (see what I did there)

I had a look at the crystal maiden bundle, it's $35 sans discount.

[Roman Totale]

[Dog Pants]

Porsche Knight!