Heroes of Newerth

[Nutritious]

Ok, I broke down an installed the game. Haven't played yet, but I used to play DotA years ago. Maybe I'll catch you guys on sometime.

Can someone explain what "carry" is? A lot of these new player guides talk about it, but no one really defines it. Also, the new player guides are extremely helpful. I didn't know that you get xp just for being around enemy kills - I thought you had to damage them!!

I'm not sure what carry is referring to, but yeah, it's really important to be on the front lines with the creeps to gain xp. That's why you gotta be careful how to commit yourself so you don't have to retreat from taking too much damage.

Another strategy is called creep denial, where you kill your own creep unit to prevent the opposing team's hero from receiving xp from it dying. You can also do this on your team's towers if they're low enough on health. You actually get a bonus IIRC (I watched my brother play a couple hon games a few weeks ago when I was in town there, just haven't played myself).

EDIT: just read back a bit and saw Tensei's post on creep denying. You can ignore me now

EDIT2: Sounds like carry just refers to heroes that start week, but use the strategy of depending on accumulated items to eventually gain strength and effectiveness late game. Until that point, their team "carries" them because they're not pulling their weight.

[Tensei]

A carry-type hero is generally a hero that's considered to scale very well into lategame, at which point his role is to 'carry' his team, but at the same time he might not be very good in early-midgame so he often needs to be protected ('babysitting') to grind xp and gold for the majority of the game. A typical example would be Nighthound or Chronos, who are really so-called hard-carries, as they're basically useless for the most part of early and midgame.

Defiler, Moon Queen and Arachna are all sort of semi-carries. They aren't as dominant in the lategame as hard-carries, but they can fulfill other roles earlier in the game.

[SirChadlyOC]

I feel like I should try this game. If anybody has any extra beta keys, I would be very happy to take one off your hands.

[zircon]

God Tier - Magmus. He's a lot like Behemoth... lots of stuns, lots of damage. Not quite as much burst damage, but the stun into ulti combo is insane.

[Tensei]

Add another one for the crap tier, scout!

(Actually I'm pretty sure he can be at least decent if he's played properly, so I'm going to practice him a lot)

[anosou]

HEY SMELLY PEOPLE, IT'S-A-ME!

A-tier: Defiler, Electrician

A/B-tier: Torturer

NOT AS LOW AS ZIRCON SAYS-tier: Armadon (he's not supposed to do damage idiots, he's supposed to initiate, run around and not die. He does that VERY WELL )

[TehDonut]

Actually if he's anything like bristle, his quill damage stacks, doing massive damage, + slow and armor reduction, and his ulti gives attackspeed/movespeed. I'd say he's a pretty viable strength carry.

[anosou]

Actually if he's anything like bristle, his quill damage stacks, doing massive damage, + slow and armor reduction, and his ulti gives attackspeed/movespeed. I'd say he's a pretty viable strength carry.

He's exactly like Bristleback. I'm saying he's a great hero!

[zircon]

I dunno, I don't see a reason to play him as opposed to, say, Behemoth, Magmus, or Legionnaire. That's why I put him at a low tier. He's not garbage, but a lot of other characters have abilities as good or better, and better invulns/escapes/armor.

Torturer is probably a solid A. Great all-around nuker. Legionnaire IMO is also A. His execute is crazy earlier on (and even later on to an extent) but relies on items to get himself in, and, well, again he's good but why play him when you can play Behemoth or Magmus?

I'd also knock down Arachna from S to maybe A, now that I've played against her more. Her snares are still good, but I dunno, just doesn't seem as strong now.

Jereziah probably goes in S tier as a support guy for obvious reasons. Another S would be Thunderbringer. Though he doesn't have much in the way of stuns, his raw burst damage is nuts as an INT char.

I definitely don't think Scout is garbage. If anything I might move Chronos to garbage because he takes so long to get good. Scout at least is good at what his name says, and for ambushes and ganking he seems nuts. One problem with our game was that we were generally underleveled, so your Scout never got to boost his damage and really hang in there.

[BardicKnowledge]

Accursed is damn near impossible to kill endgame. I was literally standing there taking hits from 3 level 25 heroes, including behemoth...and not dying. His ultimate is auto-triggering, and refills his health faster than the fountain.

We need more awesome STR heroes imo.

[Tensei]

We had a pretty great 5v5 earlier, with me playing as a scout, and yeah, like I thought, his playing style requires him to start ganking asap, while having wards set up around the rune spots to grab them as soon as they spawn ( I remember snatching one right from under donut's nose ).

I fell behind in levels eventually due to our team not being THAT well coordinated with setting up ganks (which should become your main source of income and xp after you hit like level 6), but having wards all over the place, hogging the runes, and generally doing a good job of initializing team battles were still quite a credit to the team I think.

As of now, I'd rate him a solid C or B. He requires a very different mindset to be effective.

Also, about Arachna: I think a big part of her strength is the psychological aspect of having to face hero that has the potential of killing you if you venture a bit too far from your tower. I notice many people tend to play very conservatively against her, and even rush back to their tower as soon as you take a mere potshot at them with a single web. After level 6 she does start to be a serious threat to single targets with her ultimate, but if she's laning against 2 heroes, she loses a lot of her shine.

Her true strength is in lategame: once you get shieldbreaker, your ultimate will start doing insane amounts of damage due to the armor-reduction on shieldbreaker and you're basically able to take down most people 1v1.

[anosou]

I dunno, I don't see a reason to play him as opposed to, say, Behemoth, Magmus, or Legionnaire. That's why I put him at a low tier. He's not garbage, but a lot of other characters have abilities as good or better, and better invulns/escapes/armor.

Torturer is probably a solid A. Great all-around nuker. Legionnaire IMO is also A. His execute is crazy earlier on (and even later on to an extent) but relies on items to get himself in, and, well, again he's good but why play him when you can play Behemoth or Magmus?

I'd also knock down Arachna from S to maybe A, now that I've played against her more. Her snares are still good, but I dunno, just doesn't seem as strong now.

Jereziah probably goes in S tier as a support guy for obvious reasons. Another S would be Thunderbringer. Though he doesn't have much in the way of stuns, his raw burst damage is nuts as an INT char.

I definitely don't think Scout is garbage. If anything I might move Chronos to garbage because he takes so long to get good. Scout at least is good at what his name says, and for ambushes and ganking he seems nuts. One problem with our game was that we were generally underleveled, so your Scout never got to boost his damage and really hang in there.

Chronos is admittedly garbage. Also Behemoth/Magmus/Legionnaire aren't really tanks.. they're more damage focused. Armadon's a pure tank and he's the best in the game at that, you need good teamplay to really make the most out of him though but then he'll be REALLY high.

Also, Electrician is definitely borderlining A. Great early for ganks and dual lanes, great mid for ganks, fucking UNSTOPPABLE late-game. You can't kill him, it can't be done. Can't say he's straight A though because he's a bit item dependent, needs to cooperate a lot and his voice is horrid.

[zircon]

Agreed on Electrician.

Glacius is interesting. I'd put him in S tier. Gives GLOBAL passive buff to regen, but more importantly, he just has a great mixup of abilities. Very good caster to have.

[anosou]

Agreed on Electrician.

Glacius is interesting. I'd put him in S tier. Gives GLOBAL passive buff to regen, but more importantly, he just has a great mixup of abilities. Very good caster to have.

Not S, A. He's quite useless alone if he hasn't been feeded like hell. EVERYONE's good feeded as hell. While the buff is nice he's slow and frail, with so many better casters (Defiler, Thunderbringer, Pyromancer and so on) I just can't see him as S. So yeah, I disagree, I know you did great tonight but we were really feeded

• • • • •

*nom nom*

[Arek the Absolute]

Really had some fun with the puppet master. First time using him and I dominated the match. Ask tensei

Decent game so far.

[Tensei]

his voice is horrid.

I HAVE AN ELECTRIC PERSONALITY I HAVE AN ELECTRIC PERSONALITY I HAVE AN ELECTRIC PERSONALITY *cringe*

I'd rate Moon Queen a solid B. She is kind of similar to Arachna, but has higher movement speed and a pretty strong nuke, as well as an ultimate that's basically insta-win as long as you use it when there's only a single hero around (it does 7x350 damage to random targets in your vicinity). Her biggest drawbacks are a lack of disables (her nuke has like an 0.3 second stun time so it's only useful to interrupt spellcasting), and her reliance on her two passive skills. (multi-hit and a damage boosting aura, which will only really start to matter once you've farmed up enough damage dealing items)

[Eulogic]

yeah, accursed is pretty unkillable in the right hands (mine are not the right hands, but i still did not die easily!)

i still like the wildsoul best i think. ranged helps a lot early game and bearform allows you to be more beefy lategame. also, booboo allows you to pretty much constantly annoy whoever you're laning against.

[BardicKnowledge]

Is taking your first level in stats instead of skills viable? +2 all helps a TON more in the early game than it does late game, and will make you much better than basically any hero you run up against 1v1.

Especially for a STR/AGI hero, it seems like a decent idea to get bloodlust or at least scare them into healing early.

[Eulogic]

It would depend on the hero (and what other skills are available), I'd imagine.

[Capa Langley]

Is taking your first level in stats instead of skills viable? +2 all helps a TON more in the early game than it does late game, and will make you much better than basically any hero you run up against 1v1.

Especially for a STR/AGI hero, it seems like a decent idea to get bloodlust or at least scare them into healing early.

I'd say that is entirely dependent on the hero you've selected. Some level 1s can do great without any abilities while others not so great.

[bladiator]

All I heard was DotA and I am all about this. Anyone wanna hit me with a beta key?

Also, after reading through a lot of these posts, I can see why some people still really hold on to DotA .. because I remember jumping into that game, and I could do /random, get any hero, and you could ALWAYS use them to good effect. There weren't any crappy heroes ... I mean, there were ones I sucked at, and I thought sucked in general, but then I'd always get in a game later where that hero would rape me. But then again, this is beta, so they gotta keep working on this stuff. The effects look great though.

[Sporknight]

Good times playing last night. I tried a pub game later that night and, well, yeah. Not so much fun to be had. When you lose, you lose hard, and it takes a while to finish losing, too, and you only keep losing worse and worse as it goes along. That's probably my biggest complaint at this point with the game - if you start sucking, it's a very slippery slope.

Does anyone know if there's a way to stop your hero from running in and auto-attacking? There are times when I just want to sit a ways away and farm XP, not get in the middle of a brawl and risk getting ganked (again), but this means I have to just keep clicking for him to move away over and over again while hearing the same 2 voice clips. I really hope they expand the voice response library a bit more, or have an option to turn it off (is there one?)

[Capa Langley]

Does anyone know if there's a way to stop your hero from running in and auto-attacking?

Pressing H will make your hero hold position and not do anything. While holding, just be ready to move in the case that you do get gank.

[Tensei]

To prevent my hero from attacking I just click back and forth, preferably to make him run up and down the ramp. This means you're safe from getting harassed by enemy heroes with range for most of the time (since they can't see up the ramp) and just move closer to the creeps once there's an opportunity to last hit or deny. I just love clickspamming I guess *shrug*

Also I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that picking stats on level one is a bad idea with 90% of the heroes. Unless your hero is AMAZING at last-hitting with his auto-attack (demented shaman maybe?), it's always advisable to get a nuke or disable first in case you end up against a someone who is great at denying, just so you can at least get a few more last-hits. Personally I only get stats on level 2 at the earliest when I play one of the more squishy heroes (Arachna comes to mind).

Oh, and Jereziah is like beyond God Tier. Kicks Magmus' ass.

[BardicKnowledge]

yeah, Jereziah is the new Akuma. Seriously, it's damn near that bad.