Tensei

Just five minutes in, Already want to conceed? Screw that, voted no. Check your log, noob, I definitely called miss Your own fault, dumbass. Let me get this rune Oh fuck, Moonqueen was camping, Stupid OP ult. All game have you farmed, made us lose many teamfights. Why the d/c now?

Your ult scales better than you might think because as you get higher level Mana void, the enemy magical armor will get lower, so your ult will do more damage. Provided you have the money, get a restoration stone. A double ult will win teamfights, even later on in the game. The stun will go through magic immunity and the range you can cast it on is huge. It's one of the best initiation/counter-initiation spells at any point in the game. Before Vindicator, Hellbringer was possibly the best counter to Tempest because he could just drop his ult on him as soon as he started channeling. Yes, the DoT is kind of worthless at higher levels, but 360 magic damage amplified by Life Void can still help wear down enemy HP. You level the DoT early because it's very strong in lane and should you allow to dominate in combination with the healing you get from void. Use the slow either on runners or on the enemy DPS carry to fuck up his attack speed. Hellbringer is good at ganking as well, but it requires good micro to pull it off consistently, basically you need to cast your mana void, the DoT and your ult as quickly as possible on the enemy, then immediately hit him with Malphas' firebreath, and slow him when he starts running away, all while hitting him with autoattacks from both yourself and Malphas. In competitive games, I can see him getting Kuldra as his only lategame item for obvious reasons, but in lower levels of play you can pull off fun stuff like barbed armor + life void or aforementioned restoration stone.

We should totally form a team to play in the $10k tournament that's scheduled to happen when they release the tournament system. Even though we probably won't even get past the first round, it should be fun to experience a more competitive environment.

I like this idea, voted yes. Also: Rampage = B tier. Typical noob stomp hero. Kills most heroes 1v1, no real AoE capabilities. Scales well into lategame Vindicator = A tier. Situational pick, but should be quite strong in the current AoE rape based metagame, will probably become a bit less useful if/when people start moving away from Tempest/Behemoth/Plague Rider/Magmus type meta.

God, maybe I'm a masochist, but playing Sandwraith recently has been an excercise in tedium. I realized he's very very dependent on your team not being dumb and pushing lanes for no good reason. Being on a shitty team can mean you get your Mock of Brilliance like ten minutes later than the norm, at which point it's hardly effective anymore.

Especially during the laning phase, I spam movement commands, not just to prevent myself from auto-attacking (because I could just spam S for that.) but also because I CONSTANTLY need to reposition myself in respect to the enemy position so I can stay just outside of harassment range and minimize the damage I take each time I go in for a lasthit. I'm pretty sure most of the APM comes from 'spam' like that, rather than multitasking as would be the case in games like Starcraft. It's much easier for me to get up to 120-160 APM in HoN than it was in Starcraft where I literally had to practice like crazy to get my multitasking up to a respectable level. Starcraft pro's get up to 400 APM by the way. Also, I find it kind of telling that I have more fun playing with someone who was a random pub that happened to join our game (d'o't's') than some of you from OCR.

With the new post-game stat screen I found out I'm usually floating around 120 APM, but when playing certain heroes like Hellbringer or Warbeast it can get up to 160.

Considering Rhino Rider is a pub hero he will be facing tons of scouts, nighthounds and assassin's shrouds.

Okay, so you wanted to remake because our team got first blood? Boo fucking hoo. I would have voted no even if I did have a chance to hear your explanation in that case. It happens, not every game is a roll in your favor, and your team still did pretty well considering you quit on them. They might have even won had you stuck around. The reason you can't remake after 5 minutes, is that it's almost never possible to discern whether you're going to lose or win a game within the first five minutes. Remaking isn't something you do when you THINK you're going to lose.

I didn't vote to remake because dots wanted to remake or was threatening. I voted to remake because we were playing a 4v4 for no good reason at all, while I had some people on my friendslist that could've filled it out. The game had started before I had time to tell this to Leo so I told it to him over teamchat, and he agreed. Apparently other people preferred to play a 5v5 to a 4v4 as well, or they wouldn't have voted yes on remaking it. That's how the voting works. On the other hand, relyanCe called for a remake without even giving an explanation (apparently because his lane was losing?), so I just ignored the votes, because I know he votes to remake for completely arbitrary reasons, like the enemy team having arachna, or his team giving away first blood. I also do not recall relyanCe THREATENING to ragequit if he didn't have his way, he just did, screwing you all over. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to blame us ALL for you having a bad time, when it wasn't us that ragequit on you. I had my own reasons for voting to remake the 4v4.

relyanCe, stop being stupid. It's fine if you don't want to play, but don't join a game and AFK in the middle of it, not only screwing your team over, but preventing other people from playing as well.

The tooltip says they'll get a warning when Rhino Rider gets within a distance of 2500 from them.

I'm pretty sure at least SOMEONE here will have some invites left. Maybe zero still has some on one of his many alts? Also, about scrims, people who have been playing with me recently will have noticed my picks vary between a number of competitive high-tier heroes, so I can adapt to the needs of a team, rather than always picking my 'best' hero (Pestilence). I'm quite comfortable with playing Pharaoh, Hellbringer, Demented Shaman and Plague Rider, as well as a number of carries, but I'd still like to see how I'd hold up in a competitive environment. also: OMG YES THE PATCH IS OUT

I'm going to be honest with you, I really don't want to discourage you or anything, but this game has one of the steepest learning curves I've ever seen in a game. It's quite hard to initially wrap your head around the entire concept as a whole, as well as many of the counter-intuitive details of 'proper' play. The fact that this game is so dependent on your team makes a lot of the community outright hostile to new players, and I can see newer people trying to join a random public game having a terrible experience, getting verbally abused and such. This is because one bad player on your team can literally lose you the game. Consequently, I don't believe it's possible to really play this game 'casually' like you would most other games. You HAVE to get 'good' or at least proficient at it to keep having fun, unless getting yelled at by your teammates is your definition of having fun. Getting 'good' involves being pro-active in looking up general guides as well as guides for specific heroes. In short, I think you need the right mindset as well as the will to improve, even if it involves 'nerding out' by looking up guides or memorizing each heroes' abilities. That said, this game can be amazingly fun and rewarding. Don't take me TOO seriously though. I'm personally always welcoming of newer players, and I can't think of anyone in the OCR group that would yell at newer players for being bad. As long as you only play inhouse games with OCR people when you're just starting out, it should be fine.

Defiler has been quite nerfed with the changes to enhanced marchers, behemoth's heart and sacrificial stone, which were all core items on her. She's probably best off soloing mid, and runewhoring like crazy. Her main weakness is that she's slow and weak early on. The lack of escape mechanisms means she's usually a bad choice for a side lane since she's much more vulnerable to getting ganked there and has limited access to runes. In mid, on the other hand, she can rape. Her nuke has a huge range and can be used to harass and last hit at the same time. 2-3 hits with it on the enemy hero can already force him back to heal. Very dependent on runewhoring obviously, but if you actually manage to kill the enemy in mid, you can immediately push down the tower with your ult, after which you're free to roam and set up ganks in other lanes. Considering all this, I wouldn't suggest picking her unless you can ensure a mid position for yourself.

I feel like we should play a scrim sometime.

Scout is notoriously bad inlane as well. The time of the game where I think he's *arguably* at his best is early-midgame where he will have lots of chances to gank people who remain in lane, though his DPS will still be quite low. Except taking the gold from ganks will not do his team a lot of of good because even a farmed up scout will not be dominant in lategame. Also I can name like 20 heroes of the top of my head that are at least on par with scout in early ganks but also have uses in lategame teamfights.

No. He destroys people one on one (and only squishy DPS carries at that), and that's the extent of his late-game power. Too bad for him that lategame nobody will be soloing. A Scout is completely useless against a competent team even WITHOUT dust of revelation. I consider having a scout on my team a massive disadvantage, whereas having him on the enemy team will mean we're playing 5v4 most of the time. If you wanna argue he's good for your team because of the AoE silence, let me introduce you to this hero called Defiler.

1 on 1 is exactly how you do NOT want to engage scout. He's an anti-carry, so of course he'll make short work of you with disarm+basher. The only carries I would even try that with are Chronos and Pestilence, due to the long stuns/bash. Aside from the short AoE silence, scout is nearly useless in teambattles and I'd prefer having a wretched hag or tree on my team to having a scout.

There's lots of other heroes with skills that are mostly useless or even detrimental during certain phases of the game. That's why there's quite a few heroes where you get stats early on instead of leveling a second skill. Behemoth is an example of a hero where I won't get anything but stats+ fissure until level 6, simply because there's no real use for having another stun that early when the alternative is increasing your mana pool and survivability. There's actually very few heroes that have skills that are ALL equally powerful and worth getting asap (Nymphora is an example of this, though), which is why there's usually a logical order in which to get your skills on most heroes.

<3 Clockwerk

Behemoth only needs to stand diagonally below the creep wave (assuming the enemy heroes are Hellbourne and standing above the creep wave) to set up a most likely lethal fissure whenever one of the enemy heroes moves into melee range to hit a creep. While this is still in harassment range, you don't need to stand there all the time, you only need to IMPLY walking up there to become a potential threat. At that range, enemy heroes can't harass you unless they want to sustain a lot of attacks from creep aggro. Like I said, a lot of it is mindgames and positioning, you need to establish yourself as a threat towards the enemy heroes early on to keep them at bay. I'm of course assuming that we're talking about a player that has good experience with Behemoth and can land the fissures consistently where he wants them. Anyway, before I go more offtopic, I'd still like to see a different effect on Enrage than what you're suggesting, preferably one that still allows enrage to be cheap and spammable. I never used Enrage on it's own, but I think having a spammable AoE stun in the form of Enrage + Heavyweight was quite important for Behemoth as well. Maybe the 200% dmg on the next attack could be made into an AoE buff that can give Enrage to your allies as well but for a lower % of increased damage? The spammability of Enrage is exactly what made Behemoth a bit more buff lategame: He's hard to focusfire with melee DPS because he can just spam his AoE stun if anyone comes in too close.

I added some stuff about your suggestions for Enrage in my earlier post. I still think you're underestimating him in regards to the earlygame power of fissure. Hammerstorm and Andromeda both have an easy to land stun, but the effects and duration of it are a lot less devastating than fissure. If you land a perfect diagonal fissure early on, forcing someone to go all the way through two heroes and your creepwave to get to safety, that's almost a guaranteed kill even if the enemy hero was full HP. Electrician gets shut down completely by any lane with a double stun, so Swiftblade/Electrician would fail against a lane like Madman/Nymphora, whereas something like Behemoth/Pyromancer could give them a very hard time. It's for this reason that Behemoth will often be put in the 'aggressive' lane with a hero with another stun or burst damage, i.e. the lane that will most likely face the carry and his babysitter to complicate farming for them. If Behemoth really were that weak early on, he'd have to be played as a carry and get babysitting, which just doesn't happen. Edit: Bardic, it's a lot harder to say which AGI carry is the 'best' of the ones I listed, because it varies greatly depending on the level of play. I think Moonqueen can carry a pub way better than Valkyrie, but she's useless at higher levels of play due to her lack of escape mechanisms and easily counterable ult. On the other hand, I think Valkyrie is probably the best of the four at the competitive level. I think Soulstealer and Arachna are more or less on the same level of usefulness (i.e. not top-tier picks for competitive games, but still viable), though Soulstealer is obviously a lot harder to play.

I have to disagree about Behemoth not being useful earlygame. I find he actually has the most lane presence out of any melee hero, perhaps even more than electrician. If you assert yourself early on by getting a first blood, and generally just play aggressively by trapping them as soon as they get out of position, THEY will be the ones not getting farm. He's amazing when paired up with anyone who has a hard to target stun/burst damage (pyro, torturer, valkyrie), and he can completely devastate a lane. You don't even have to blow through all your mana to do it, you can just play mindgames by walking towards the enemy and threatening a fissure trap, forcing them to back off or regret it. He also has one of the slickest attack animations, so not getting any last hits with him is rare, unless you're doing something like soloing against ranged heroes, which is a bad idea for any melee hero. Not to mention that he's an amazing ganker once you have your bottle/ring of sorcery, as all you need to do is just trap someone with your fissure and have your teammates finish him off. You're probably not playing him the right way if you don't consider him a strong early game contender, because that's really where he shines IMO. And yeah, Enrage basically is only used for Heavyweight, but it's his only cheap and spammable ability that can actually capitalize on it. If it did something ridiculous like adding 40 strength (which translates to something like 800 extra hp I think?), it'd need a way higher mana cost and cooldown, consequently making Heavyweight a lot less useful. That said, the numbers definitely need to be tweaked. Adding an instant 200 hp, which is what you get with your version of lvl 1 enrage is SICK powerful earlygame.

Due to popular demand, I'm gonna do a comparison similar to the STR carry one for a few ranged AGI semi-carries. Arachna: - Good earlygame farming potential. No skills that particularly speed up her farm, but her attack animation is awesome, and the threat of orbwalking people to death will ensure you will rarely get harassed out of your lane. - Very, very good lane presence. She's one of the heroes that typically take solo mid, and even though there's a few heroes that WILL be able to shut her down (Succubus for example), she's still a very solid choice for this lane. Performs well in sidelanes as well, can be paired with almost anyone. - Doesn't need a bottle at all. Web is cheap, you most likely won't be outright spamming carapace, and your ult has a high enough cooldown on level 6. It's still worth it to runewhore, if only to deny the runes from the enemy hero. - Easy to pick up and play, hard to play to her full potential. Yes, you can do fine with getting assassin's shroud (ugh) and just ulting people in ganks, but you will get countered by any semi-competent team. Being able to orbwalk and the abuse of carapace is necessary for using her in higher levels of play. - Great ganking potential, even before level 6. While many people argue that her ult can be countered by homecoming stones, chances are slim you will be carrying one before the mid-lane has even reached level 6, and if you're facing a semi-decent arachna, she can just orbwalk you to death with web, rather than having to wait for her ult to be up. - Farms fairly well in midgame. She can kite the higher level neutrals with her web as well, so you can probably take them down a bit earlier than other heroes would. Can escape easily from ganks by orbwalking away from the enemy heroes and using carapace to dispell debuffs and snares. - Scales very well for an AGI semi-carry. Lategame she's a strong presence due to her high DPS, slow, and high magic resistance which somewhat protects her from being chainnuked to death. She can even go 1 on 1 with the stronger melee carries because of her powerful slow. - Soft counters nearly anything melee, especially if they have to lane against her. Don't count on getting even a single last hit without sustaining 3-4 autoattacks from her. Is countered by strong chain disablers or melee carries that have means of closing the gap without getting hit by her web. - Is not very versatile when it comes to builds and roles, but she's perfectly fine as a ganker/semi-carry. - Better presence in teambattles than people give her credit for. Should focus on keeping her web and her armor debuff (from shieldbreaker, a core item on her) on as many people at once as possible, while using her ult to take out a high priority target (either the enemy DPS carry or a strong disabler). Valkyrie - Fine at earlygame farming. Decent attack animation, no special abilities to help her out. - Strong lane presence. Her long ranged auto-attack and the threat of a mid-range arrow that stuns you for 3-4 seconds is enough to keep your enemies on their toes and worry about positioning. Solid choice for solo mid, fine in sidelanes as well, especially when paired up with another stunner. - Bottle is very very good on her. Arrow and her AoE nuke are all quite mana hungry so a bottle is the perfect tool to refill your mana in between ganks. Makes good use of runes like Invis and DD as well. - A bit tricky to play effectively. You need to be able to land your Arrow semi-consistently from one screen away, and you have to be careful with closing in to land your AoE nuke because she's on the squishy side. - A strong ganker. Again, very dependent on your ability to land her Arrow, but if your teammate opens with another disable it's almost a sure kill. - Good midgame farmer. When properly used, your AoE nuke will net you a lot of last hits quickly and her blink and ult are both decent escape mechanisms. - Scales fairly well into lategame. You will be doing a good amount of DPS if you're farmed up well, but you're still quite squishy. - Does not outright counter anything, except maybe heroes that depend on channeling their spells since targets that aren't moving are a prime target for a long range arrow that stuns for the maximum amount. Gets countered by most of the stuff that shuts down other AGI semi-carries as well (Chain disables, powerful melee carries), but has no glaring weaknessess. - Is flexible in moving between a more carry/farming oriented role and a more gank oriented role. - Good presence in teambattles. Arrow and ult can both serve as good initiation or counter-initiation, and she should be doing quite some damage if she's farmed up well. Moonqueen - Alright early game farming. Inferior in attack range and animation to the other three, but her nuke is good harassment and can be used to get last-hits in a pinch. - Decent lane presence. Moonbeam is a long-range, low CD, high damage nuke with a mini-stun attached, which can make life hard for other squishy heroes you're facing in mid, provided you have a steady supply of mana. Not as good in sidelines due to a lack of synergy with other heroes. - Bottle is a core item on her. Very reliant on her nuke to stay in control of the lane, and is a prime hero for runewhoring due to her ult, high damage nuke, and high base movement speed. Makes good use of runes like regen, haste and invisibility. - Easy to pick up for a beginner. No abilities that require aiming and no 'advanced' techniques like orbwalking. The hardest thing to learn is using the ult at the right time and position. Probably the biggest pubstar hero of these four (yes, including Arachna). - Very strong ganker. Ult is a free kill each time you catch someone out of position, and moonbeam will interrupt any TP attempts. High auto-attack damage in the late-midgame. - Very good midgame farmer. Multi-hit combined with high DPS will ensure you farm entire creepwaves in a few seconds, lifesteal allows you to kill neutrals, whispering helm and ult allows for taking out stacked ancients to get a big chunk of gold. No escape mechanisms besides her high base mspd though. For this reason, she's basically the only hero I get assassin's shroud on (she's a pubstar hero, remember?), also because it synergizes with her ult positioning well. - Scales decently into lategame. Ult and Moonbeam aren't as much of a threat anymore but at this point your high DPS and lifesteal will have taken over. Not hard to farm up at least wingbow with her, but she gets taken apart by a lot of the other carries. Predator will just laugh in your face as you try to ult him and he turns on his Stoneskin. - Counters heroes that like to roam. Provided you have good map awareness you can attain complete monopoly over the runes by just ulting anyone stupid enough to be in the river alone. Unless they're Swiftblade... - Genocide anyone? If earlier teambattles occur, her ult has the potential to not only completely tip the scales, but wipe out the entire enemy team as well. Lategame she gets relegated to the same role as most other semi-carries, i.e. doing a lot of physical DPS with her auto-attack while trying not to die. IMG limit D: Soulstealer - Decent earlygame farming. Has a high base damage provided you can keep momentum with last hits because of his soulsteal ability. Good attack animation and range as well. - Strong lane presence, though very dependent on player skill. Demon Hand is a cheap, damaging, and spammable nuke, but hard to aim for beginners. - Makes good use of bottle to keep up his mana for Demon Hands. Doesn't particularly synergize with any of the runes. Relatively bad at runewhoring due to the hard to aim nukes, squishiness, and complete lack of escape mechanisms. - Very hard hero to pick up for beginners. Even if you look past the difficulty of landing Demon Hand, he's very very squishy and has no escape mechanisms at all. - Mediocre ganker. No disables, and by the time you have your ult and portal key, the laning phase will be over. The burst damage from the demon hands is good, but you'll probably need someone inlane to open with a disable for you. Often you're better off farming for your core items (posthaste, portal key, shrunken head) than ganking. - Probably the best midgame farmer out of these four. Obliterates creep waves in a fraction of the time even MQ can, and should be raking in the money like nobody's business. Portal key or Assassin's Shroud is a complete necessity due to the lack of escape mechanisms, as well as a keen map awareness. - Scales well into lategame. The armor reduction aura is his 'scalable' ability, which ensures you will be doing a lot of damage with your auto-attack after you've gotten your luxury items (shieldbreaker, wingbow). - Does not specifically counter anything, but he's almost always a solid choice for a mid hero if the player has sufficient skill. Gets countered by gank-heavy teams interrupting his midgame farm continuously. - Very strong in teambattles. Portal Key, Shrunken Head and Ult can be used to initiate but are even better when used after an actual initiator (behemoth) has gone in and disabled the majority of the enemy team. Expect to get multiple kills if you follow up an initiation with your ult. EDIT: **What's this Orbwalking I keep talking about?** An 'orb' is an ability or item that modifies your auto-attack in some way. An example of this is shieldbreaker or nullfire blade. For Arachna, it's her web, as it adds a slow property to her auto-attack whenever you activate it. Now, every heroes auto-attack has an animation before you actually land the hit/fire the projectile, and one after it. It's possible to cancel this animation before hitting by pressing S, or spamming a movement command, which is useful for timing last hits. However, when you orbwalk, you cancel the animation AFTER the hit, by immediately spamming a movement command, if possible towards the enemy hero. What this means, in short, is that you can get in more hits on an enemy hero when you're chasing him, because you will be using the short period of time that you'd normally waste by doing the 'after-hit' animation to move closer/chase. While knowing this in itself is very useful for almost every hero, true 'orbwalking' is only possible with Arachna at the moment, since no other hero activates his orb in the same way as she does (for example Magebanes mana steal is passive). So to orbwalk with Arachna, you utilize her web ability to damage and slow the enemy hero, while during the attack cooldown, you move closer towards him to stay in range, and hit him with another web as soon as possible. Another important property of her web orb is that using it is counted as a spell, which means that you will NOT draw creep aggro like you would if you were to just right click on an enemy hero. Because of this, it's quite possible to orbwalk people to death in a lane, with minimal damage to yourself.