Tensei

Stun, not stuns. It's not a waste if you use one disable to break his 5 second long channeled disable. And yeah, bkb is a bad idea on electrician because he SHOULD be the one soaking up the enemy team's disables. He's dominant early game and he's an amazing laning partner, but once tower pushes and teambattles start happening his usefulness drops quickly. And yeah, Pollywog Priest is obviously very squishy compared to Electrician, but so are most other support heroes. It's not a good thing to take electrician's tankiness as the 'standard' for playing other heroes, since he IS one of the tankiest heroes around. The key to playing a good support hero is positioning and knowing which targets to prioritize with your disables. Also, everybody should read this: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=34192

To be honest, I think Electrician is kind of a one-trick pony and just not that good. If he gets stunned out of his disable, which is bound to happen unless you're facing complete newbies, he can maybe purge a few people and that's about it for him in a team battle. He can't fulfill his role as a tank well enough because he just isn't enough of a threat to draw fire the way other tanks would. Pollywog has a similar disable and the same great synergy with heroes like Swiftblade, but is much, much more useful in the lategame IMO.

Really really useful thread right here: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=29506 Memorize this.

They're ports of the dota heroes Silencer and Spiritbreaker, so STR and AGI. They'll most likely have the same skills though it's possible a few of them have been changed up.

That's gonna be a pretty amazing patch from the looks of it. Still no (official) support for viewing replays unfortunately.

So, I noticed my favorite heroes as of late have mostly been STR carries, so I figured it would be cool if I compared three of them, Pestilence, Warbeast and Predator, because really, STR carries are AWESOME. Pestilence: - Mediocre farming potential early on compared to the others, can't enter jungle as quickly. - Very good lane presence, especially with the right babysitter. - Amazing ganking potential, can solo gank as soon as he has his ult and fly is at a respectable level. - Impale is a good mid to lategame farming tool. Great escape mechanisms due to flight and impale. - Very, very hard to actually outcarry because of his armor reduction and bash -> amazing scaling into lategame, only heroes I can think of that could stand a chance with equal farm would be Chronos, Sandwraith and maybe Predator. Madman, Magebane, Scout, Valkyrie, you name it, they'll all fall to the hugeass damage output and the near-continuous stun. - Hard counters invisible heroes with his ult. - As far as STR carries go, relatively item-independent; even if you're not getting any farm at all you still have a scary AoE stun and a damage amp that other heroes can make use of. - Potential to be built as an initiator with Shrunken Head and Portal Key. - Dominant force in teambattles due to the huge AoE on Impale and the 'tagging' of targets with his ult. Predator: - Good farming potential early on, can farm ancients and stronger neutrals way quicker than other heroes due to his lifesteal skill. - Decent lane presence, hard to bully him out of a lane due to his lifesteal and stoneskin. - Alright ganking potential. Can't really solo gank unless his damage is enough to take out the enemy in a few swipes (which isn't rare against agi/int heroes though). Only having one snare and no stun hurts him a lot here. - Alright farming potential in midgame. No skills that specifically make him kill creepwaves quicker, but he can still tank stacked ancients with his lifesteal easily. Stoneskin works as an escape mechanism in a pinch but won't do you a lot of good if your enemies are actually faster than you. - Can completely skip Shrunken Head due to stone skin, that's 3900 gold that could go into your Shieldbreaker/Insanitarius/Symbol of Rage/Daemonic Breastplate instead! - Scales decently into lategame but ONLY against other STR carries/tanks. His lifesteal is his only real 'scalable' so it works better against high HP targets. He will have his face stomped by most agi heroes like Arachna, Swiftblade, Sandwraith if they've been keeping up in farm. - Counters tanky heroes like legionnaire and armadon by chopping off 1/2 of their life in four swipes. - Quite item-dependent for damage output and tankiness. Pred can't afford to be underfarmed. - Jumping into a group of enemies and activating stone skin and ult is an alright way to initiate. You should be able to tank them for a bit because of your lifesteal and stone skin, and they can't really ignore you when you're ripping into their ranged int heroes. It's imperative your team attacks RIGHT AWAY as soon as you've jumped in or you're a sitting duck once your stone skin runs out. - His ult helps greatly in teambattles but it often won't really go noticed. His leap and stoneskin allows him to quickly take out the squishy int disablers at the back. - If you chase after Pebbles with Predator he will yell "GET TO ZA CHOPPAAAAAAAAAAH" I wish Warbeast: - Amazing farming potential early game. Take out two neutral camps at a time, pull Neutrals while laning, solo Kongor at level 8, it's all possible with this hero. - Weak lane presence. No nukes, no disables, but I guess he can do a bit of harassment with his hounds. His damage increasing passive gives him easy last hits as well. Not really applicable since he really should be neutraling IMO. - Average Ganking potential. He can chase at 522 mspd and hit like a ton of bricks, but the lack of ANY disables/snares hurts. One of two heroes that Brutalizer is a core item on, IMO. (the other one is Scout). He can however towerdive like a pro. Max movement speed is nothing to scoff at in this case, and he can use the hounds to draw fire from the tower. - Still amazing farming potential in midgame. Take out Kongor every time he's up, solo farm a lane while you let your hounds take out neutrals, use hounds as mobile wards to prevent getting ganked, and escape with your ult whenever necessary. - Doesn't scale that well into lategame. He's got his high damage and uhhh... that's about it. The key to playing him properly is to establish a level/item-advantage over the other teams carries because of your superior farming capabilities, then fast-push and win the game before they have the chance to catch up. - Somewhat counters heroes like MQ/Swiftblade, ie ones that rely on a lack of creeps around the hero to actually land their ults. Just summon your hounds to act as damage sponges and run away at 522 mspd (or pwn their faces). - Extremely dependent on items. Abyssal Skull, Brutalizer, Enhanced Marchers and Shrunken Head is my bare bones build on him. Fortunately this isn't THAT hard to farm up with him, I usually manage to get all this by the 40 minute mark. - Potential to work as a fast pusher in a team that's geared towards this. Hounds can tear down a tower pretty quickly. - Good in teamfights. Provided you have Shrunken head before the majority of the teamfights happens you can even initiate by running in as a big scary magic-immune wolf that takes out their main disabler in 4 hits. War Cry globally adds 44 damage for you and all allied heroes so if you have any other DPS carries on your team they will love you for using this. Provided you have the micro to pull this off, you can use hounds as a counter-initiation tool (I'm sure Tempest loves to get harassed by invisible hounds just as he wants to portkey in and rape your entire team) and mobile wards. Overall, there's no doubt Pestilence is the best of the three, but both others definitely have their merits. Not to mention they're great fun to play. Some stuff that applies to all three of them: - Some form of magic immunity helps amazingly. Shrunken head is a core item on both Warbeast and Pestilence because as a STR carry you will be in the middle of things dishing out the big damage. - Insanitarius is, without a doubt, ALWAYS a good idea to get on all three of them, provided you know how to use it effectively. It gives +65 damage for only 2850 gold, that's the cheapest DPS in the game. - In team battles, unless you have a dedicated initiator like behemoth on your team, you will be the one doing the initiation because you should have magic immunity and a relatively high amount of HP. Try to consider which enemy hero is the most dangerous at that point and focusfire him. This will usually be a squishy int hero with low HP and a lot of disables. Your shrunken head + dps should allow you to take him out before you have the chance to get chainstunned. He will probably be too busy trying to not die to you to start disabling other heroes on your team, who at this point should have ran in and started focusfiring the enemy carry. Edit: Also, zero, could you give me some pointers on playing Hellbringer? I understand he's a very strong hero but I never really manage to do particularly well with him. I'm interested in learning him because I'd like to focus on support heroes/gankers rather than carries for now, since that's an area I'm not very comfortable in yet.

??? So what you are saying is that there are other ways to play starcraft than competitively?

Please tell me how to improve my game. (Though I haven't really played with you lately) Edit: I'm really enjoying warbeast at the moment, my starcraft micro actually allows me to use the hounds for crazy stuff like blocking people from running away and killing neutrals while laning. He's definitely a powerhouse in the right hands, I completely underestimated him because I've only seen bad players play him so far.

Well, I really don't think the issue is that, say, either me or zircon can't play against Tempest or Jera, because I will always be the guy farming up the nullfire or getting the wards if I'm playing the appropriate hero for it. The problem is even when you have 2 decent people on your team, you will NOT be able to coordinate well enough to counter certain heroes effectively.

Well I'm personally against banning any heroes, just saying that if you're going to ban certain heroes because at our level of play we can't counter them, sandwraith definitely fits the bill. The difference between sandwraith and many other carries is that he has very good escape mechanisms, making it hard to gank unless you chain-disable him with several heroes so he has no chance escaping. I have no trouble playing a roaming hero setting up ganks on other carries by myself, with maybe the support of a laner from my team that happens to be around, but I believe that to take out sandwraith, or jungle tempest, you're going to need at least 2-3 people on your team that can coordinate well enough to gank. We rarely get this luxury in inhouse games, where I see most new players staying in lane/jungle forever even when they're not carrying.

If you're going to soft-ban tempest, jereziah and arachna because they're near impossible to counter for newer people, you should definitely add sandwraith to that list. He's completely unstoppable lategame unless he got ganked a LOT early on, which is kind of hard to pull off for the teams with newer people in our inhouse games due to his escape mechanisms. Impossible to counter him when half of your team keeps on laning obliviously.

Best team for me would be something like Demented Shaman/ Pestilence or for the safe lane, something aggressive like Pyro/Magmus or Pyro/Hammerstorm for the short lane , and any decent 'mid' hero for the middle lane. Depending on the enemy team this could be a pure ganker, a semi-carry or even a support hero (Hellbringer). I am completely done playing support or hard carries in pubs btw. Whenever I play support, our team will end up losing because our carries can't make proper use of me being the wardbitch and setting up ganks for them, and whenever I play a hard carry our team will die to early pushes before I can get my farm going. I'm only able to really influence the game when I pick a semi-carry like moonqueen because it means I can be a dominant force throughout all of the game, but it unfortunately limits my choice of heroes a lot.

The way I select my heroes in AP is something like this: I tend to have a pool of several heroes that I'm 'working' on, for the purpose of getting better with them, and I'll switch them out now and then. At the moment it's Predator and Moonqueen but a few weeks ago it was Pestilence, Zephyr, Succubus etc. Of course in a 'serious' game I will always adapt according to my team's needs, but in an inhouse with mostly new players I just pick heroes from my 'pool'.

I think that once the incoming Silencer port hits, Tempest will finally have a true hard counter( iirc Silencer's ult is a global silence for several seconds, so you can pop it immediately after tempest ults to break his channeling), so I'm looking forward to it. On an unrelated note, PLEASE STOP WITH THE RETARDED DRAMA IN INHOUSE GAMES. Don't ragequit before the game has even started just because the enemy team has picked Arachna and Tempest. Don't call me out on bitching when I give you advice on how to play your hero after you've repeatedly said that you're inexperienced with him. Remember that I just as well could have pointed out the obvious and said that you were feeding the enemy team and just sucking in general.

I just pick predator because I like him. Also he has a cute/cool idling animation where he lifts himself into the air by stabbing his blade-arms into the ground :3

^agreed, if you're getting your ass kicked just buy fortified bracers instead. I never really buy HotBL, even on heroes that I see other people getting it on. I have no trouble farming neutrals with zephyr with just a shield and two trinkets (to build into shaman headdress later on), and when I see people getting it on heroes like Pestilence or Predator it makes me want to cry. For tanky heroes like lego and armadon I still think bracers are a better and cheaper option for the raw HP boost (as well as giving other stats), whereas Headdress gives enough regen. I've seen people get it on defiler as well, which, I guess, is their way of dealing with the big nerfs to her core items (e.marchers, sac stone, behemoth's heart), but I think there would be other viable alternatives.

God, I love playing Moonqueen. She's not a great carry by any means (I'm having trouble outDPSing the enemy team's carries even when I'm fed/farmed like hell and have items like Shieldbreaker, Wingbow and Symbol of Rage when they're still building their Wingbow), but her midgame ganking power is just ridiculous, and a well-timed ult can turn an early teambattle into a genocide.

I'm really really sorry about bailing midgame yesterday, but we had a several-hour long power outage here, so it really wasn't my fault this time. I'm sure my XXXTREME scout skills were sorely missed.

I didn't say they should farm EVER. I just mean that when, as Pestilence, I'm farming a lane after the ganking and pushing phase has already started, making sure I don't push out too far by hard-denying my own creeps, I don't want to see a slither/pollywog walk up to me and auto-attack away until the lane is pushed too far for me to safely farm. I have a reason to be there, support heroes don't.

That's my point. If you're at least semi-decent with pollywog you can stay effective far into the midgame with not much more than a bottle.

Actually, as a support character, getting shrunken head is usually redundant, unless you're an initiator like Behemoth. To avoid dying as a support character you need proper positioning in teambattles and a team that knows what they're doing and can protect you.

Just put 50 euros on my paypal account with the specific purpose of buying this game, I'm looking forward to having some epic 4v4 VS battles with all of you fine people again.

Please consider what hero you are playing, as well as their role, and how much their effectiveness depends on having the right items compared to other heroes on your team. When you're glacius, pollywog, hellbringer, electrician or one of many other support heroes you do NOT need to farm. Gain levels by helping with pushes, ganks and teambattles and being around to receive xp for dead enemy heroes. It kind of pisses me off too when I see a nice big creepwave in one of the lanes but before I can get there a bunch of support heroes takes it out. Same with farming neutrals: junglers/neutral farmers like zephyr, lego, tempest and wildsoul have priority when it comes to this, after that come the other carries, but support heroes or gankers really shouldn't be farming neutrals ever. Edit: added both vilecat and atmuh to my friends list, so when I see you online ingame I'll be sure to pass you a clan invite so we can set up some games.

Yay, thanks :3 Got a new HD monitor btw, awesomeness!