Tensei

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faZwaiCA2TE&hd=1 <3

Totally stealing zircon's tier list to adjust it to the post-balance changes. God tier - Always pick these heroes if given the opportunity. Always ban them if the opposing team could have access. S tier - Powerful, versatile characters that have significant utility. Try to fill your team with these. A tier - Good heroes that can do one thing very well (perhaps on an S-tier level) but don't quite have as much overall utility as S-tiers. For example, Pollywog Priest is a great disabler. However, Succubus is an even better disabler, plus she has more lane staying power. Pandamonium and Rampage are solid STR carries with good stunning capabilities, but Pestilence offers more power overall. B tier - Average picks. These may be competitive with the above tiers under circumstances, but cannot be thrown into any lineup. Generally these guys are mixed bags. For example, Swiftblade is a pretty good carry, but pales in comparison to Madman or the Dark Lady. Nymphora has some good potential but needs to be with the right heroes. Electrician counters Jeraziah, but doesn't offer a great deal to teamfights. C tier - Below-average picks. Certainly capable of filling specific roles, but they have 1-2 "deadweight" or underpowered abilities, or are very easily countered. For example, Night Hound's Ult makes him invisible, but wards, dust, eyes and Pestilence's ult will reveal him. Keeper's ult is comparable to Tempest's, but not quite as good, his eyes are easily countered, and his self-damage buff is a waste. D tier - Severely underpowered heroes. These guys require significant farm to be effective or are simply extremely hard to play properly. There is little reason to pick them over higher tier heroes. God: Tempest, Jeraziah, Deadwood, Behemoth S: Madman, Sand Wraith, Pestilence, Witch Slayer, Valkyrie, Hellbringer, Succubus, Plague Rider, Soul Reaper, Kraken, Pharaoh, Demented Shaman, Magebane, Forsaken Archer, Puppet Master, Wretched Hag, Pebbles A: Legionnaire, Scout, Pandamonium, Soulstealer, Defiler, Torturer, Accursed, Glacius, Magmus, Hammerstorm, Pyromancer, Corrupted Disciple, Maliken, Predator, Engineer, Thunderbringer, The Dark Lady, Slither, Swiftblade, Blacksmith B: Pollywog Priest, Vindicator, Nymphora, Blood Hunter, Wildsoul, Andromeda, Voodoo Jester, Moonqueen, Devourer, Nighthound, Keeper of the Forest C: Armadon, War Beast, Chronos, Ophelia D: Zephyr, Electrician, Rampage Means the hero dropped a tier or two since the last list Means the hero was previously unranked or went up in the tier list Some justification/explanation: Deadwood is god tier simply because in his current incarnation he's overpowered, no way around it. He will be able to oneshot all squishy heroes until far into the mid game and will outlasthit almost anyone in mid. I'm expecting him to get hit by the nerf stick some more pretty soon. Madman and Sandwraith have both gotten some nerfs, but not significant enough to make them lose their position as the top carries. Magebane has had comparatively fewer nerfs, which consequently bumps him up a tier. Wretched Hag...well, what can we say about her. She got significant buffs in the last few patches, to the point where she's a solid pick in competitive games, and one of the best (if not the best, now that HBs lifevoid got nerfed) 1v2 laners. Her early-midgame ganking power is almost as good as Deadwood, and she has the potential to carry if built with that purpose. Hellbringers earlygame got neutered pretty badly, but he makes up for it by having even more of a presence in teamfights with AoE Death Boil. Pebbles can rape the solo mid lane, and can generally be a god in early-midgame where he will oneshot all squishy heroes. He plays similarly to Deadwood and Devourer, but his effectiveness sits somewhere in between them. He still has the AoE stun initiation going for him in lategame. Puppet Master and Forsaken Archer are suddenly S-tier semi-carries, and while the latter got a good amount of buffs, Puppet Master has acquired this position solely because of the shift in the metagame. Lately, games have been less about hard carries ricing all day, and more about carrying with heroes that are strong earlygame contenders as well. Predator got bumped up a tier as well, for the same reasons as Puppet Master, and is now a solid, if situational, competitive pick to counter certain hero line-ups. Slither was always an insane earlygamer, but with the latest patch he's easily able to 1v1 any hero lower than level 6. His midgame potential has gone up as well due to the ward buff and the regen negation on his orb. Swiftblade is finally a solid pick in competitive games as well, maintaining his earlygame power, but now being able to keep the momentum in mid and lategame. Blacksmith has become a sort of pseudo-Hellbringer, with more single-target burst damage and less AoE capability. Moonqueen can now outlasthit everyone with the Aura/Stats build and still get everything out of her ult. She can start neutraling amazingly early and is generally a semi-carry that will get big really fast, but she still pales in comparison to some of the higher tier carries. Devourer is now a genuine threat in earlygame as well, but is still hampered by his pathetic mana pool. He now has the potential to firstblood pretty easily, but his effectiveness tapers off as the game goes on and his ult will get easily interrupted. I'm still not sold on new KotF. He just doesn't DO enough for your team when his ult isn't up, and getting a non-carry with almost zero ganking potential is a liability for almost every team. Effective turtle hero, but gets outshined by Kraken in that respect.

Given that replays are now available, I'd be happy to take a look at a few, and give some pointers to people looking to improve, since I think I'm at least a decent player. Edit: Also, antigrav, really sorry you ended up on the losing team that game, but it happens, especially in 'inhouses' like that. I actually joined that clan because it has a lot more active members (and consequently more games) and not so much because of the level of play. At least I got this out of that game:

Hellflower and Harkon's means he'll be dealing shittons of auto-attack DPS, especially with his aspd steroid. Not saying it's ideal, but he can definitely be played as an autoattack carry now.

Really liking the Blacksmith buffs as well, seems like he'll finally be able to be a viable alternative to tanky INT semi-carries like Defiler and Torturer. (New) Sacrificial Stone, Hellflower, Harkon's Blade (4x Multicast fireball at -5 Magic Armor says hi!) and Behemoth's Heart would all be awesome items on him. I especially like the - Magic Armor from flaming hammer. Awesome nerf to Madman as well, and the buff to Pollywog was kind of needed. Only thing I dislike are the changes to creep AI which will make it a lot harder to leash them, and consequently a lot harder for melee heroes to lane vs ranged, especially in solo mid.

1.65 is out and uhh..let's just say i'll be playing tort and defiler a lot more in the near future :3

Harkon's is a decent luxury on forsaken archer, but unfortunately the debuff only lasts for 3 seconds, so your ult won't benefit that much from it. Synergizes amazingly with AoE spellcasters on your team though.

After some thorough testing of the new Harkon's blade, I have developed what should be a fun new build for Madman! Instead of rushing a runed axe and playing him as a hard carry it focuses on making him an effective midgame roamer/ganker/DPS monster as soon as possible, and with the proper momentum you can segue into the standard lategame hard carry-style as well. Skill build is completely cookie cutter and static. One level of stalk first, max barrel roll, then max stalk, don't touch the ult until lvl 10-11, and get the crit whenever you can (so lvl 9, 12, 13, 14) Starting items are standard as well, hatchet, 3x minor totem, 1 set of runes and 1 Health potion. Lane with a babysitter at legion bot or hellbourne top. Depending on how you're doing inlane, grab a lifetube and possibly a buckler (if you're getting harassed and running out of regen), or grab a scarab (if you're dominating the lane and want to keep up your mana for kills). No bottle is needed because of the relatively quick focus on increasing MM's mana pool and regen with this build, so go straight for Marchers after this. The build diverges a lot here. If you're still laning without too much trouble, build your scarab into a Greater Arcana. If you feel you need more survivability, save up for a Glowstone instead, but if the enemy team is heavily disable based and pushing early, there's no real option other than rushing a Shrunken Head. Assuming you now have Marchers, a Glowstone and a Greater Arcana, you have the manapool and survivability to gank a bit. If possible keep laning and farming though, and carry a TP so you can countergank (good map awareness required!). Get a lifetube if you need to farm neutrals (Maybe you already had one), otherwise build the glowstone into a Sacred Icon, and top it off with a Sustainer to complete your Sacrificial Stone. Whew. Finish your Steamboots. With this amount of mana regen, farming should be no problem at all as you can keep on using stalk and barrel roll, which makes Sac Stone an effective alternative to runed axe as a farming item. You now have the survivability to be effective in teambattles and should basically be playing MM as an AGI nuker. DPS, while nothing spectacular, will still be solid at this point due to the built-in crits and attack speed steroid. 2.7k gold is what you need for an Acolyte's Staff. This can either be farmed up by laning, or by ganking a lot. Either is fine, though the latter is more fun. It depends a lot on how the game is going, and on the team setups. With your effectively infinite manapool and decent health regen you will rarely need to retreat to the fountain. Build the greater Arcana into Harkon's Blade. Now, having built your two core items, the tooltip will say your auto-attack damage lies somewhere around 100 per attack. Pretty shitty, right? Wrong. Having this huge mana pool is a necessity to sustain Harkon's Blade 50 mana per attack. The tradeoff is that an autoattack with Harkon's Blade will place a debuff that lowers enemy Magic Armor by 5 and turns your (physical) auto-attack into Magic Damage. Base Magic Armor is set at 5.5. What this means, is that you will essentially be dealing TRUE damage with every attack, not to mention that a stalk/barrel roll combo will deal an unreduced 350ish damage as well. If you consider that most heroes at this point will often have anywhere between 40-50% damage reduction for physical attacks due to the armor-stacking metagame, you could say that having 100ish auto-attack damage with Harkon's on is more or less the same as having 200ish auto-attack damage without it. Not to mention that this build will synergize with any heavy INT nukers like Pyro, Witch slayer and Wretched Hag, and becomes downright ridiculous with a Hellbringer on your team. After these "core" items, Shrunken Head is a necessity against most teams. The luxury items would be Symbol of Rage to be able to go toe to toe with farmed up enemy carries, and Savage Mace to make your DPS go through the roof. Any DPS item is fair game as an alternative for Savage Mace, just don't get Riftshards or Shieldbreaker. With Savage Mace and Harkon's, you will be critting for about 500 'true' damage, with possibly the 100 true damage pseudo-crit/ministun from Savage on top of it. This will tear through even the most farmed up tanks. Bracers and/or Power Supply can be gotten at any point early on if you feel like you need them. An alternative build would be Hellflower instead of Sacrificial Stone, which gives you more DPS and a pseudo-disable, but way less survivability.

So according to BardicKnowledge, apparently I'm 'one of those people' that will make lots of 'unnecessary' clicks, with my APM being as high as 170 in some games. This is all in good fun, but I'd actually like to share my thoughts on the subject. In the laning phase it goes without saying that you need to be on your toes and dancing around while lasthitting/denying, harassing, and messing with creep aggro. Your APM here should be relatively high (at least 100+) or you're putting yourself at a pretty big disadvantage because it means you're not doing one of the things I listed (harassment, creep pulling, dancing) properly. Now, imagine the game moving on to the ganking phase, with you playing a ganker/roamer soloing mid. You just got your bottle and marchers and you notice the top lane is being pushed pretty far, so it should be an easy gank, right? How would you get your hero over there though? Would you simply click once at the position where you want your hero and go watch the scenery while your hero moves over there? Or would you constantly click at the edge of your screen so you can immediately adjust to the situation if anything came up? It would be a lot easier to dodge that pyro stun if you're already issuing a lot of movement commands, wouldn't it? Now, how about running back to the fountain? Ideally you have a homecoming stone, but that won't always be the case. Little chance of getting ganked early on among your own towers, so it's not too important to maintain vision and focus on your hero. Why not use this time to check other lanes? Click on enemy heroes that you have vision of, look at their items, and adapt your own build accordingly. There's just so much you can do that I'm honestly surprised some people manage to stay below 100 APM.

If I currently were to place Wretched Hag in zircon's tier list, she'd be near the top of A-tier, if not S-tier. The +5 base int she got with the latest patch more or less ensures you will be able to cast your ult, scream, and blink at level 6-7 without having to regenerate mana in between casts. Her AoE damage output is straight up terrifying, not to mention that she's very hard to juke because of her blink and because of scream now hitting units that are in the fog of war or invisible. After SotM there's really no reason you should ever die (unless literally chainstunned, similarly to Magebane) as she will have a decent HP pool, and you'll be able to regulate the amount of damage you take because of her blink. The only drawback is the lack of a hard disable, which would probably bring her up to god tier. Great hero, and amazing fun to play too, love what S2 did with her.

Yeah, I wonder who that is.

It doesn't feel like a HUGE overhaul at all, but I'm seeing a lot more of MQ, Slither and Devourer in random pubs. Despite the buffs to Swiftblade, he doesn't feel that much stronger than before. (Mainly his earlygame though, lategame potential is probably a lot better) Buff to Harkon's has made Hellbringer as a carry very viable, especially with his AoE death boil, and Harkon's in general feels a lot more useful on many heroes (a solid pick as a DPS item on puppet master for example.)

Portal Key should be gotten on Pesti too. Insanitarius is perfectly fine on deadwood, though I find puzzlebox provides you with a decent amount of DPS and a shitload more utility. Daemonic Breastplate is probably the best lategame item on Pred, Pesti and DW.

Your Deadwood has a disturbing lack of portal keys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Hrcz5laew Replays <3

truefeeder

I'll just leave this here.

If only I could get the test client to work for me. I expect the real patch to come out sometime during this weekend, but having replays will be pretty damn sweet. Edit: okay, I'm not playing with leonidus anymore but ill still play with the other shizzies.

There'll be a hugeass balance patch coming very soon. Expect lots of buffs to underplayed heroes as well as some decent nerfs for the overpowered heroes! Edit:

Where would we be without Kiddcabbage playing Zephyr/Wards-slither/Codex Scout.

Don't know who raged this time but I hope we can still play together because I really enjoy playing with all of you.

Proudly sitting at 1701 psr now, bitches!

fuck off edit: okay that might be a bit too harsh, but really, we've been through this already, don't start this again.

Babysitting and in-lane harassment in general tend to be quite hard. You need to pay extremely close attention to your positioning relative to the creep waves and the enemy heroes, and basically start hitting them with auto-attacks whenever they come into range. This will usually draw creep aggro so you need to be able to judge when to disengage. Unless you're Hellbringer, ALWAYS try to minimize the damage you take from creep aggro compared to the damage you're dealing through harassment. You will generally be babysitting the carry in the safe lane, so getting kills isn't a prime objective, as you generally won't have the lane control to do this vs something like a double stun lane. However, you should immediately pounce when the opportunity presents itself. A typical example is when the enemy melee hero gets too greedy and makes the last deny on his own creep wave. Suddenly he's facing two heroes and a creep wave with nothing between them. This is when you should use any slows at your disposal (with heroes like Hellbringer, Demented shaman, Glacius, or even Maliken and The Dark Lady), as not only will they take damage from your spell but your creep wave will catch up with them and start hitting them. In the case of demented shaman, getting a heal off on your creeps when this occurs will basically mean a guaranteed kill. Hellbringer is a bit of a special case as he can allow himself to take tons of damage from creeps and enemy auto-attacks without fear of dying due to Life Void. You can ignore the creeps entirely and just keep on auto-attacking the enemy heroes. If the enemy heroes decide to auto-attack back, just throw on life void, and keep going. Trading blows will always result in victory for hellbringer. In most cases, weaker lanes will be forced way back, allowing your carry to freefarm entirely. Oh and another tidbit for playing support: Unless you're planning on a coordinated, single-lane push, Never "Push back the lane a bit" with autoattacks or even AoE nukes on the creepwaves when they're close to your towers. Having the creep waves just outside of tower range is a GOOD THING, and you should try to keep the situation like that for as long as possible since it will allow for more creepwaves to be safely farmed. Stick to hard-denying and lasthitting only, even when it's 30 minutes in! (I'm looking at you, Hemo and Jadeauto)

Must be because you're too good already ;D