Tensei

You won't ever farm it 'quickly', but it's viable to get in most games (depending on the hero of course) as long as you try to die as few times as possible. It's not even that necessary to get many hero kills if you farm well off creep waves, but dying really sets you back. About scout, he barely provides lane control, but in mid/lategame he will probably be able to solo gank any hero that's by himself. The solution to this is simple: DON'T SOLO. I think besides being too aggressive, one of the first mistakes new players make is staying in a lane forever, not paying attention to what's going on and getting ganked repeatedly. After a certain period, people will INEVITABLY start bunching up in groups of multiple heroes, roaming around to gank stragglers. You do not want to be the guy who's still obliviously laning when everyone is missing, you want to be the one ganking. While this doesn't apply to ALL heroes (hard carries/junglers probably shouldn't go gank unless it's happening nearby), it's still something I'd like to emphasize; don't stay in lane forever.

Please don't take it the wrong way, I wasn't raging so much at you as I was at your hero (scout), not to mention our teammates' 3v5 mentality.

Actually I'm pretty sure the cooldown on Chronos' bash is no more than 1.5 seconds. The bash duration is 1 second, so while you can't really permabash someone, as soon as you have bash maxed and elder parasite activated (level 10-14ish) you can usually proc enough to destroy anyone 1v1. Elder Parasite in general is a GREAT item on Chronos because it synergizes well with his ult and his bash ( you won't really feel the 30% increased damage on yourself if they're either near-permabashed or inside your bubble). In other news: Mock of Brilliance - 5150 Posthaste - 2700 Completely outfarming some of the meanest carries in the game - Priceless.

I thought people were referring to Hemophiliac to be honest.

I dunno what happened after I left, but I thought that match where I played Zephyr was pretty good. I don't particularly remember any kind of QQ from it, so hey, good on us. Edit: I know that ingame it might seem like I'm ordering people around in teamchat, but I obviously have to be very concise with typing, so yeah, most of my suggestions end up sounding like orders. Please don't take it the wrong way, I just try to minimize the time I spend typing.

Shroud is fine for pub games. Portal Key is much more useful in higher level scrims. On our level, either is fine. (as proven by Zircon earlier today D:)

He played Maliken but he wasn't that good or anything.

Voodoo Jester is based on Witch Doctor, Pollywog Priest is based on Rhasta, fyi. Also, yeah, in general, don't assume that just because a hero is ported from DotA he's anywhere near the same level as he used to be. The ports usually aren't accurate when it comes to attack animations and stat gain iirc. Also, different metagame and all that.

I'm pretty sure Chronos isn't an EXACT port of Darkterror. He's definitely not the best carry in the game, and I think most of the HoN community would back me up on that one. Sure, once you have your items farmed up you can solo the entire team, but that doesn't change the fact that he's fragile like hell, has nothing that can help him farm, has no lane control, and FULLY relies on items to be effective. He will be mostly useless for your team for the first 30~ minutes. Edit: Some more thoughts on playing. How to be a better support hero: Playing a support hero can be very hard, not to mention frustrating, because it requires quite a different mindset, and even if you're good at it, it won't be as rewarding or satisfying as soloing the entire enemy team with a carry. To clarify, by support heroes, I mean any type of hero that is mostly item-independent, with abilities that offer him and his lane buddy a substantial amount of lane control, such as healing or multiple disables. Having a ranged auto-attack is very important as well, with maybe one or two exceptions (Electrician and possibly Accursed). Laning/Babysitting This is probably the most important difference between playing a carry and playing supportively. If for some reason you don't happen to have a carry in your lane, but are paired up with a ganking-type hero, or, god forbid, another support hero, you can obviously play normally, since neither of you will strictly need better farm than the other. Babysitting a carry is where it gets tricky though. Firstly, and most importantly: never, ever steal last-hits from your carry. In fact, it might be better to not last-hit at all, or only do so if your carry is out of range. Obviously don't auto-attack creeps either. Keep moving back and forth to not get hit by any aimed skills like Pudge, Valkyrie and Torturer's. Never forget that your primary purpose in babysitting is making it easier for your carry to last-hit and farm up his core items. What this means is that you have to provide easy access to the lower health creeps; the carry has to be able to last-hit without sustaining a barrage of nukes and auto-attacks from the two enemy heroes. This is where harassment comes into play. When you're a ranged hero, it's very easy to take some potshots at melee heroes whenever they get in range, and I highly suggest you do this. It's obviously a bit trickier against other ranged heroes, but positioning plays a large part. (Normally you shouldn't be this close to the enemy tower, but bear with me, it's hard to set up in practice mode for me ) Do not go out of your way to hit enemy heroes, try to keep the carry and the creep waves between you and them. If you have to run next to the creep waves to hit the enemy heroes, you are doing it wrong, because the creeps will target you and do more damage to you than you would have done to the enemy heroes. Only hit the enemy heroes when they come close to the creep waves to get a last-hit. Even if they manage to land it, you will have done some damage, which will eventually start adding up and give you and your carry the possibility for an early kill. I do not particularly advocate harassing with spells. Generally you want to keep your mana as high as possible so you can actually coordinate with your lane partner and get that kill when the time is right. There's some exceptions, like blood Hunter's or Hellbringer's DoT spells, which you should spam whenever you feel like it (since neither of them has burst damage or a disable early on, you're better off spending your mana on lowering the enemy heroes' hp by using the DoT). Addendum: Since you're item-independent, you can, and should, spend your money on getting wards and/or a courier. Your team will love you for it Kills/Ganking Getting kills in-lane (so without help from other lanes) can be a great way to get an early advantage for your carry, and by extension, your team, but it's quite situational, and depends a lot on what heroes you are playing and what heroes you are facing. Unless you have a very very broken lane combo (we're talking electrician/swiftblade here), I generally think it's better to wait until the enemy heroes are out of regen items and have been harassed down to around 50-60% HP (any lower and they'll probably be playing a lot more cautiously). At this point, let them push the lane. Hard-deny your own creeps (i.e. start hitting them once they're under 50% HP) and don't even bother with getting last-hits anymore. Being close to your tower means you can quickly run to safety if things go wrong, while you'll have the opportunity to chase the enemy heroes down in case things do go your way. Some things to consider with picking your target: - How much HP does he have? Do we have enough burst damage to take him down? Try to go for an INT or AGI hero. - How much can the other hero do to prevent us from getting the kill? Stuns/disables/nukes? How far is he away from the hero we're trying to kill? - Does he have a homecoming stone? (Doubtful this early in the game, but you never know) If so, do we have means of interrupting it? - In what order should we use our skills and who should initiate? - Can we use the terrain (trees/higher ground) to our advantage? Ideally you will have killed your target, but more often than not he will be running away with red HP while his buddy will be doing his best to block you from reaching him. This is why it's so important that he has some distance to run to his tower, it allows the skills you used to cooldown, and use them again if he's still in range. If you still have a lot of HP and mana (doubtful) it MIGHT be worth it to towerdive (i.e. chase him to behind his tower), but only do this if you are sure you can get the kill because it's very very risky, especially if the other hero is still around. Getting disabled near the enemy tower basically means you're dead. Obviously, if all went well, GIVE THE KILL TO YOUR CARRY. Once the enemy is at very low HP be sure to stop auto-attacking him so your carry can finish him off. I can't emphasize enough how important this is. If you are playing for a high k/d ratio, don't play support. Period. Ganks are similar, but should be a lot easier because you'll have the numerical advantage as well as a bigger pool of disables, so the chance for success with ganking is a lot higher. Same thing applies here, don't just blindly spam spells to finish off a hero, but consider who needs the gold and xp for the kill the most before you go in.

I honestly think that the last-hitting mechanic has just been implemented to add extra depth to the laning phase, when you're essentially just grinding XP.

Ophelia is only effective in midgame, really. Lategame she turns pure support. Three 1400 hp creeps that can chain-stun for 6 seconds total means you can easily set up ganks, provided you can micro well enough, as well as push towers really early. She's not a lategame hero, but if played properly she can actually win the game (or at least take out a barracks) before it even gets that far. Also, I like last-hitting. I prefer it to the alternative of sitting around and watching my hero auto-attack creeps for the first +/- 10 minutes.

As far as I know, Watchtower's left and right lanes are exactly the same with tower placement, so the difference is a lot less pronounced (there's still the neutral creeps though). The midlane is basically the same as Caldavar. Darkwood Vale's two lanes are exactly the same as far as I can tell.

Some thoughts on "Which lane should I take?": While it may seem pretty arbitrary whether you take the top or bottom lane (from a legion perspective, on forests of caldavar), there's some slight differences that make certain heroes more suited to be in a particular lane. Top Lane (Legion) characteristics: - Defaults to be very close to the enemy tower, so unless you're a lot better at laning than your opponents, you will generally be more vulnerable to ganks in this lane, since the creep waves will clash close to the enemy tower most of the time. - No neutral creeps around, unless you try to neutral pull from the hellbourne jungle (risky). - Faces the hellbourne 'safe' lane, so if your opponents know what they're doing you will probably be facing a carry and a babysitting support hero. Considering all this, I think legion top is most suited for heroes that aren't that item-dependent, but are capable of strong lane-control with multiple stuns and/or burst damage (i.e. gankers), to allow for a possible first blood on the enemy carry. Examples: Behemoth, Magmus, Succubus, Pharaoh, Andromeda, Wretched Hag, Pyromancer and similar heroes. Obviously ideally you'll only want one melee hero at most, to allow for harassment on the enemy carry. (if the enemy has a ranged support and a carry against your two melee gankers, the carry should have an easy time farming last-hits while the support hero can just take potshots at you whenever you come in range) Mid Lane: - Very close to towers, abusable high ground, so very safe overall. - River allows for fast access to sidelanes and runes, so it's easy to set up ganks. - Heroes in this lane will most likely solo so they will level faster than their teammates in the sidelanes. If you take a look at these characteristics, it's pretty obvious that a mid-laning hero should be capable of several things to make the most use of this position: - He has to be able to gank as early as possible, the level advantage will give him quicker access to higher-level skills and items, so he'll be able to do significant damage to heroes in sidelanes in earlygame. - He has to be able to make use of the bottle and runes, even if it's to just deny them from the enemy hero. Heroes with powerful nukes but a low manapool will be able to make excellent use of the bottle and midlane because they will be able to replenish their mana. - He needs decent lane-presence to be able to score last-hits ( ranged heroes are very much preferred, though not necessary. A decent madman can do fine in mid in a low-level game.) - Though again not necessary, it helps a lot if the hero scales decently into lategame, since he probably will be farming quite a lot of gold and xp if he ganks a lot (which he should). So considering all this, most likely you'll want a ranged ganker/semi-carry: Soulstealer, Thunderbringer, Arachna, Defiler, Pyromancer are all fine choices. Plague Rider is a bit of a special case, since he's mostly a support hero, so he MIGHT be better off babysitting your carry. However, his mana replenishment skill will deny creeps completely, causing the enemy hero to miss out on xp, which eventually adds up and can be REALLY frustrating to deal with since the enemy hero will fall behind and won't be able to carry his team as well. Not to mention he can spam his slowing nuke over and over again due to the infinite mana, so he has a really strong lane presence as well. Situational, but still solid pick for mid. Bottom Lane: - Defaults close to the tower, making it a 'safe' or 'short' lane. - Has neutral creeps nearby, which allows for neutral-pulling and jungling. The fact that this lane is relatively protected from ganks, makes it perfect for your main carry hero. Predator, Pestilence, Maliken, Swiftblade, Magebane, hell, even Chronos can perform well in this lane and get a lot of farm out of it, provided they have the right support. Support heroes come in all flavors and sizes, but it's very very very much preferred that they have a ranged attack in this case, since it allows them to harass the enemy heroes as well as deny their own creeps, all of which will make it easier for the carry to farm up on last-hits. Ideally the support hero will have some kind of long stun/slow and/or a healing ability, which will respectively give the carry some chances to get hero kills, or allow him to stay in lane for longer and skimp a bit on regen items in favor of getting his core items faster. Soul Reaper, Pollywog Priest, Electrician (kind of situational because he's melee), Nymphora, Demented Shaman, Voodoo Jester and Plague Rider are all fine choices for support heroes in this lane. In case you have someone who's jungling or starts neutraling from a certain level onwards on your team, they will most likely start out in this lane as well, and should be helping with ganks in this lane if necessary. This goes for heroes like Zephyr, Legionnaire, Tempest, Warbeast, Wildsoul. Jungling/neutralling should be seriously considered if you have any of these heroes because it makes the bottom lane another solo lane, which means more experience for the hero there. A disadvantage of this is that you shouldn't be pitting a carry against two heroes because he most likely won't be able to farm up anything. In this case, just treat it like laning mid and pick another ganker/semi-carry (preferably not thunderbringer or soulstealer, as neither of them have escape mechanisms, which is tricky when you have no higher ground to fall back to. They also don't get to use their bottle as much). Arachna or Madman would both be a decent choice for the bottom lane if you have someone jungling/neutraling. If you have a hard carry and a jungler on your team, move the hard carry with his support/babysitter to the top lane.

Haha, oh man, if you've been using items/casting spells by right clicking on them, learning to use the hotkeys will make you improve a TON.

Soul Reaper's healnuke is on 5 second cooldown, so you'll probably be able to spam it at least four times in most teamfights. This, along with the damage aura, adds up. Nymphora's and Jereziah's healnukes are both harder to aim, and will affect fewer targets. Not to mention that they won't be able to spam as much as Soul Reaper, so while he might not deal damage in big bursts, I'm sure the damage and healing will eventually add up and make a difference.

eternal Zero, you might have posted about this already, but what are your thoughts on the new scout, still garbage? Seems to me that with the AoE silence and the disarming passive he'd be a pretty decent anti-carry himself now.

I think Madman does belong in the S-tier, he's definitely one of the best DPS carries as far as I'm concerned.

Dear anyone that happens to be on my team, When I pick Pestilence, I pick him because he's a capable ganker, a decent initiator, and can carry the team in lategame if he's farmed up well. Emphasis on "farmed up well". Yes, pestilence is primarily a carry. What this means, is that when you are playing a support hero, or a ganker, you should really ask yourself: "Do I really need that behemoth's heart to cast my skills/spells with the purpose of ganking/support?" I mean, after all, it's not like all those fancy expensive items will increase the damage output of your spells, or will make you cast healing wave any better. So, when you're playing any type of hero that is not a carry or a semi-carry, you REALLY DON'T NEED ANY HERO KILLS. All the money you get from them is completely wasted on you, especially compared to having that cash on a real, item-dependent carry! And THAT'S why it's a very very bad idea to cast your nuke or even your ult on a hero that's running away with +/- 100 health, getting chased down by Pestilence. You are actually actively screwing over your team by taking that kill, because Pestilence is mostly USELESS in lategame (as are other carries) if he isn't farmed up well. That's my rant after having a game where I went 2/7/18, and as a result my inventory 40 minutes in looked like this: Enhanced Marchers, Insanitarius, Homecoming Stone, Logger's Hatchet . Seriously, LET ME GET SOME KILLS IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO BE USELESS. A properly farmed up Pestilence will take apart most agility carries when they go toe to toe.

Amen to that, mock of brilliance and marchers on Booboo makes for a lot of fun.

MISS SWEDEN, CAREFUL, MIGHT BE GANKING! lol

Oh my god, Dhsu, that's almost as bad as those starcraft-related innuendo's I used to come up with. Anyway, it's always fun when you get kicked out of several pub games "Because it's not worth it", since our PSR is that low, then finally once we get a game going with the odds 5% in our favor, we win it.

My issue with the "just avoid it" is that splitting up in a team battle is possibly the worst thing you could do in a team battle. Sure, your entire team won't get instagibbed by plague rider's ult, but it's easy for the enemy team to chase you down one by one. Not to mention that if you only get hit ONCE by the ult you are already slowed.

Getting warpcleft and eventually daemonic breastplate should imo definitely be the top priority as a lategame item for pebbles. It gives him a shitton of attackspeed to compensate for his ult, as well as a ton of armor.

Palerider is relyanCe's brother. And yeah, sure, Slither IS sort of a counter to Arachna. She's a semi-carry with a low health pool while Slither is an early game ganker. The way to shut down Arachna completely is to gank her often early. Edit: Since ancients apparently aren't immune to the pharaoh's eyerocket, I've been practicing long-distance ancient-stacking. It allows you to stack up ancients while staying in lane, but requires some pretty precise timing (around :47 from Legion top seems to work for me) as well as placement (The tormented soul has to draw aggro but shouldn't overlook the ancient camp or it will prevent them from spawning). This is the result: The benefits from this are obvious: if you have a guy with a big fat AoE attack on your team (behemoth or magmus), this basically means they can get an end-game item in one fell swoop.

Okay, had some hands-on experience with Soul Reaper. Teams were kind of unbalanced in our favor though. He IS actually decent in mid (did very well against Arachna), but I think he relies on killstealing a bit too much. It's not useful at all to launch your ult on a fully healed hero, except to, for example, stun tempest during the channeling of his ult. To really get the most out of the ult's potential you shouldn't use it on people above 50% hp, so, by nature, it promotes killstealing. This of course shouldn't be that much of an issue since SR carries reasonably well, but still, I can see people get pissed off about it. His aura is arguably even worse in this respect. I had several kills where the aura finished off heroes getting chased down by my team-members. It does kind of give a bad aftertaste to that 15/1/3 ratio I had.