Tensei

If you feel like getting better at the game, watch this, all of it.

HotBL and tanking items in general are pretty crucial on Corrupted, mostly due to the nature of his ult and his second skill. Both of these are reliant upon staying around for as long as possible to deal/drain the damage. Getting items like thunderclaw and wingbow will set you up to be a glass cannon, so while you might deal some damage with your auto-attacks, you probably won't live long enough to maximize the duration of your ult/conduit. I wouldn't say there are any real 'cons' to rushing HotBL on him. It just means you can tank way more damage in the first 20 minutes of the game and can get away with fun stuff like towerdiving and all that. If you manage to get HotBL within 10 minutes, Steamboots within 20 and Barbed Armor within 30, you'll be a force to be reckoned with for most of the midgame since your skills are still doing a shitton of damage if you can stay alive long enough in teamfights, while barbed armor will force the enemy to think twice about focussing you. After that you can start building more offensive items like Frostburn/Geometer's/Frostwolf and top it off with a behemoth's heart. Remember that even in lategame, Conduit will boost your autoattacks by 200 damage (almost as much as a doombringer) if you can keep it on for the full ten seconds. Getting the first rune isn't that significant, getting first blood at the runespot is. I assumed we'd gank the runespot with such a stun-heavy team, but my map awareness/judgement isn't exactly at it's best at 4 AM. Edit: Also remember that corrupted has no slows or stuns whatsoever, so most of his ganks will come down to chasing down your enemy with superior movement speed, which will require you to dive towers more often than not.

Senj is a guy from theshizz and Desumetaru is my alt that I use to play public games with newer people on my team so I don't get bad stats on my main account. Oh and you guys won that game because a guy on our team picked Nighthound over a STR turtling hero like Kraken Also, you need the proper 'mindset' to play ganker/support heroes like Witch Slayer. You do not need to keep up in levels with the carry on your team, you do not need to be farming lanes, and you should be roaming and ganking as soon you have your ult and the bare necessities (marchers, bottle). You keep up in levels and farm by ganking other heroes so the enemy team is preoccupied with defending from your ganks and can't go after your carry or farm properly. Oh also...please check the runes. Especially with such disable-heavy heroes like Magmus/Polly, it's EASY to firstblood. You don't check runes to get the first rune, you check to possibly get an easy kill.

The thing about Witch Slayer that makes him such a strong laner is that you can (and should) stun-> drain EVERY TIME it's off cooldown to keep on harassing people. Once you hit level 6 you basically get a free kill if you can stun-> ult an agi/int hero.

Four people on my team chasing down Zero's towerdiving Accursed while I die trying to save at least a few towers that are getting pushed leaves me in despair.

They will get a hell of a lot more XP and gold if they gank you because you hang around in a pushed lane for too long. At a certain point where it's not safe to farm anymore you really should be getting out of there asap, and if you can maximize your gold income by quickly taking down the last few creep waves, it'll make a lot of difference.

I am usually aware of when my team would need me but even with carries other than sandwraith, it's often better to keep farming than to try and stop a push and possibly die (and fall behind on farm because of that). Also, my TPs are more often on cooldown than not, because I literally use them constantly, so I often can't TP to defend instantly.

Actually the way you should be going about clearing creepwaves in midgame is to try and keep them close to your tower as possible by hard-denying and only last-hitting, but as soon as you start pushing out you need to speed up your farm by auto-attacking (but still getting the last hits) and finally once you're in dangerous territory start using your AoE so you can get to the outpost, buy a homecoming and port out.

look at mah items

Well, I usually end up as a captain in the inhouse games, but I don't really make a conscious effort to force newer players to stick to heroes they know, which IMO is counter-productive anyway. I know newer players often end up as one of the last-picks so I'll usually throw a few suggestions at them which would work on our team, even if they're inexperienced with said heroes, rather than forcing them to stick to what they know. The way I went about learning new heroes was first reading up on them and picking one that I thought looked interesting, then I just copied/memorized the skill/item build, tried it a few times in practice mode, and then used that hero as much as possible in real games. I failed at most of them until I tried Defiler and proceeded to rape an inhouse. IMO you should just try out ALL heroes and find a few that work well for you.

Actually I think I'd build him mostly like Pestilence or Predator, i.e. mostly as a ganker/DPS semi-carry. Portal key doesn't particularly suit him because he doesn't have anything in the way of AoE initiation, but he does have plenty of chasing skills. Also, revised, ultimate item build for Corrupted Disciple: Core: - HotBL - Steamboots - Barbed Armor Luxury: - Fenrir's Fang->Frostwolf Skull - Geometer's Bane - Behemoth's Heart Core is easy to farm up and gives you so much tanking capability, so towerdiving for ganks shouldn't be an issue at all.

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=54085 A STR hero with a heavy focus on ganking? HELL YES. He can also totally solo mid with his insane last-hitting.

The post about APM wasn't directed specifically at you, I was just posting my thoughts on it. I think it's only a (slightly) limiting factor if you're really trying do everything you can to win and improve, but if you feel like playing this game at only a casual level (which I really have NO problems with whatsoever), your APM won't matter that much at all. Also Dhsu, that kill was total luck because you assumed I had neither a homecoming stone left, nor enough mana for another dagger. Unfortunately you were right. D: And the game was pretty much over after I got my (first) behemoth's heart. It was still epic like hell. Edit: And I'm really sorry for putting Rambo off the game. In retrospect I really should have told our pub Andromeda to knock it off with the berating of hag/tb a bit more, but the game was just very intense, and I didn't want to get involved with stupid bickering while we still had a chance to win. That said, I really DO enjoy having you on my team, even if you're not necessarily the best player out there, since at least you make a conscious effort to improve, and you definitely are improving. I'm also really sorry for not being clearer in telling you what to do after you asked for it repeatedly, so here's a mini-guide to Thunderbringer: Skill build: 1. Blast of Lightning 2. Lightning Rod 3. Blast of Lightning 4. Lightning Rod/Chain Lightning (if needed for lasthitting) 5. Blast of Lightning 6. Lightning Storm 7. Blast of Lightning 8. Lightning Rod 9. Lightning Rod 10. Stats/Lightning Rod 11. Lightning Storm 12-15. Stats 16. Lightning Storm 17-22. Stats 23-25. Chain Lightning (can be gotten over stats as early as level 10, in case you need the pushing power) Items: Starting with: 2x Symbol of the Novice, 2x Minor Totem, 1x Runes of Blight, 2x Mana Potion. - Bottle (asap) - 2x Amulet of Exile - Power Supply - Steamboots/Plated Marchers - Kuldra's Sheepstick Luxury: - Staff of the Master - Sacrificial Stone - Frostfield Plate - Restoration Stone Lanes: TB should solo mid, as he's very squishy and lacks escape mechanisms. Rune control is vital, but fortunately getting as few as two runes means you will have the mana to chain-nuke your enemy in lane to oblivion (with some exceptions), which means they either die or are forced to go back to heal, which in turn gives you ample opportunity to help out sidelanes with ganks. Earlygame: While it's possible to go gank before level 6, your ult adds a big chunk of damage which will probably be necessary to complete most ganks. Just farm up your bottle, bring it to you by courier, and keep a steady control of runes. Harass your enemy with blast of lightning whenever you have the mana reserves (i.e. you just bottled a rune), as it starts doing critical damage at lvl 3. Ganking is relatively easy but you're still going to need some assistance from your allies in a lane, as they'll probably need to throw down at least one stun. Always open with blast of lightning, preferably out of the woods. The thing about Blast of Lightning is that it's untracable, so using trees as cover means you can nuke enemies into oblivion with barely any fear for your own safety. Save your ult in case the repeated uses of Blast aren't enough to bring the enemy down. If your carry fails at killing him and he escapes at low health, feel free to ult him. Midgame: At this point, after a succesful gank, try to push the outer towers with your lanemates. This will result in either a quick tower kill, or the enemy porting in, which will put them out of position and cause them to group up, which will usually signal that it's the end of the laning phase. Try to group up with 2-3 of your teammates (preferably strong on disables) and try to get a rolling gank going. Ward offensively and immediately try to gank any solo farmer. Push down a tower if you ever manage to get 2-3 kills in short succession. In general, just try to make farming a living hell for the enemy team as your heroes' effectiveness is going to sharply drop soon. In 'downtime', farm from a lane where your carry isn't at, but preferably only use your auto-attack to lasthit and hard deny to prevent the lane from getting pushed too quickly. Lategame: It all boils down to teamfights here, and TB is a great addition to any team, because he's one of the few heroes that shut down a portal-key pre-emptively and can prevent initiation by heroes like Pebbles, Behemoth and Tempest. Timing on the ult is key, you generally want to use it when both teams are close enough that it's too late to back off, but before the enemy team has initiated. Using your ult at this point will deal a good chunk of damage to the enemy team, while revealing any hidden surprises like a Tempest waiting behind a few trees, as well as temporarily shutting down portal keys. It's imperative that your team initiates within this short opportunity. In the actual teamfight your goal is to take down as much HP as possible by the use of Lightning Rod, which means spam, spam, spam. If you had a good midgame with lots of succesful ganks, you might have Kuldra's Sheepstick already, which you should either use on the enemy DPS carry or on a heavy disabler (polly/succubus). Positioning is still quite important, as you're easy to kill and can't escape very well, so hiding behind a few trees should be done whenever possible. Of course make sure that you're still in range for blast of lightning.

I'm usually at 140-160 nowadays. And as for 100+ APM being 'useless' clicks. I think it depends on what you define as useless. I believe that constantly dancing and keeping a steady amount of clickspam will allow me to maintain a certain rhythm and level of concentration where it's easier to respond to what happens on-screen. If you're farming a lane where you're dancing around, then TP mid to counter a push, and spend a good thirty seconds on hold position until either team initiates, I do not believe you're in a good position to quickly respond and make the right decisions in a teamfight. (not to mention you're susceptible to long-range targeted skills like Valk's arrow, as well as other initiators.) Same with walking to a distant location on the map. If you're not spamming move commands or even paying attention to your hero, you won't be able to instantly respond to a sudden enemy appearing.

Crossposting my thoughts on APM here: You don't need high APM to be effective, but there's just so much things that seem like spam, which actually have a function. Dancing in a lane is obvious, but there's also animation canceling, orbwalking, etc. Even if you're just chasing down an enemy you need to be spam clicking in case he jukes and disappears in the fog of war. If you only clicked once on him your hero will just stop right there and not pursue him. Another example is in-lane harassment: you need to hit the enemy with an auto-attack or two but you need to avoid getting hit by creeps since you draw aggro by doing this. It happens so often that a low APM player I'm laning against will issue an attack command, I respond by running a bit back, and he takes hits from several creeps without even landing a hit on me, simply because he didn't respond quickly enough to me retreating. Not to mention that I think that having high APM will naturally put you into a higher state of concentration. I find it a lot easier to be aware of everything going on ingame when I'm spam-clicking than when I use hold and only click on an enemy creep from time to time. Edit: While I don't think APM determines skill as much as it would in an RTS game, I believe that if you're under a certain limit (about 30-40 APM I suppose), you're simply not able to play the game to your full potential, as your effectiveness in last-hitting and denying would be severely gimped.

Because a courier doesn't have any natural mana (and he never gets any regen either because of his 0 int), you're forced to buy items like glowstones and pickled brains, as well as codex, as well as mana potions and possibly health potions. This is very expensive, and if the courier dies, you lose all the items. It's a hilarious gimmick but it's not viable at all in a real game.

The courier, obviously. Nah, I'm pretty sure the gold goes to the courier's owner and the XP just fizzles because you have to be in a certain radius of the death to get XP for it.

YESSSSS

I think skeleton builds would be a lot more viable on forsaken archer now for several reasons (haven't tested this yet): - The skeletons no longer auto-attack creeps, they only target what you target, so in effect, they just increase the threshold at which you can lasthit. - The skeletons have 420 MS now, which is faster than anything earlygame, and faster than 90% of the heroes later on. Chasing and ganking should be a lot easier. - The DoT significantly increases their early DPS output. It doesn't scale, but immobilizing an enemy and hitting with him with skeletons and autoattacks in lane would HURT early on. - They rape you in 3 seconds. Seriously.

Heroes of Newerth's pub community generally has a very shitty attitude. In general, if someone is being arrogant and a douche, no matter what team they're on, I will start mocking them if they ever make a mistake. It happens very rarely that I'm actually up against people that are both skilled at the game and have a good attitude, but these tend to be the best matches, and I'll actually compliment players on the enemy team after they make a particularly skillful kill or escape. Not to mention I'll have a way better attitude about losing a match against this type of player, and will usually genuinely type "GG, well played" at the end.

Don't know about you guys but I'm hoping for deadwood to be a big fat STR carry.

I'd definitely be up for it. Today has been a massive boost to my confidence as I've consistently dominated games with a variety of heroes. :3

Engineer would be a solid A. Very high physical DPS that can get completely shut down by void talisman and barbed armor. Or by just focusing the turret.

TDL in S surprises me. While she's a decent AGI carry, putting her on the same level as Maliken and Madman might be giving her a bit too much credit. I always consider her more of an alternative to Magebane or even BH.