Heroes of Newerth

[Tensei]

Man, if there's anything that makes me not want to play, it's drama.

On another subject, I understand that everyone here takes this game way more seriously than I do, but I wish some people would just be more chill about any mistakes I make in-game.

It's alright, Luke, I don't mind playing with you.

[bladiator]

But flat out not listening is just inexcusable. You were guilty of it there, and so was bloodpuddles, and bloodpuddles had an extremely shitty attitude because of his inability to listen & learn - zircon and I refuse to play with him ever again, and I highly recommend everyone to do the same because he absolutely would not use his ultimate as kraken and dash in to initiate, and then when he failed to do what he was asked, he started bitching at me as if I caused him to not do what is kraken's only major role. His attitude is second on the tier to the worst teammate you can have in a team game, the worst being a griefer. One can argue that claiming that by his complete and acknowledged unwillingness to work as a team is griefing as well, as it's a team game that highly depends on teamwork.

I think that's part of what I hate the most about the game. Here you've made the decision that ultimate + dash for the intiate is "kraken's ONLY MAJOR ROLE". Before a person even understands how to play the game, or a character, they are pidgeonholed into playing it exactly one way. Because for some reason it has been decided in advance that this hero is useful in only one aspect in this very way. And that is just boring to some people. Myself included. I understand that there are ways to maximize how a character plays, but in this case it just feels like you could set up a macro system and go get drunk while your character does his job.

[zircon]

But this is a team game, and heroes have roles. It's like saying you're going to build Legionnaire with a Wingbow. You could do that, but it's stupid, and it hurts your team's chances of winning severely. Kraken's best ability by FAR is his ult. If you don't use it, he has basically nothing to contribute to a teamfight. And guess what? We lost that game, and it was extremely frustrating, because the other team was using THEIR heroes properly.

There is a lot of skill even in characters who are rather simple. Look at Legionnaire. He is basically supposed to do one thing - portkey in and Taunt. If what YOU are saying is true, anyone could be a good Legionnaire. But that's not true at all. There is an enormous spectrum of skill in playing that character. Knowing WHEN to use the portkey. Knowing WHERE to blink into, and where to wait beforehand. What to do after your Taunt runs out. Who to chase. Who to execute (and when/if.) etc.

[BardicKnowledge]

But this is a team game, and heroes have roles. It's like saying you're going to build Legionnaire with a Wingbow. You could do that, but it's stupid, and it hurts your team's chances of winning severely. Kraken's best ability by FAR is his ult. If you don't use it, he has basically nothing to contribute to a teamfight. And guess what? We lost that game, and it was extremely frustrating, because the other team was using THEIR heroes properly.

There is a lot of skill even in characters who are rather simple. Look at Legionnaire. He is basically supposed to do one thing - portkey in and Taunt. If what YOU are saying is true, anyone could be a good Legionnaire. But that's not true at all. There is an enormous spectrum of skill in playing that character. Knowing WHEN to use the portkey. Knowing WHERE to blink into, and where to wait beforehand. What to do after your Taunt runs out. Who to chase. Who to execute (and when/if.) etc.

Let's use another game as an example -- Pyros who only snipe with the Flare Gun are not helping their team out at all, for instance. Get out that flamethrower now and then to do what you're good at!

[relyanCe]

Let's use another game as an example -- Pyros who only snipe with the Flare Gun are not helping their team out at all, for instance. Get out that flamethrower now and then to do what you're good at!

granted, knowing who to flamegun during a teamfight is terribly important lategame, once your other two nukes stop scaling.

[BardicKnowledge]

granted, knowing who to flamegun during a teamfight is terribly important lategame, once your other two nukes stop scaling.

haha, fair enough.

I have a question for people better than me: Assuming that you're playing a character who will eventually get either Shaman's Headdress or Heart, why is HotBL such a bad idea?

The parts can be disassembled in the stash -- if you get one of those items above you mitigate the cost by almost 1000, and help yourself out a TON earlygame. I'm especially seeing it viable for people who plan on going Heart lategame, as Heart + lifetube regen (which can be built into Sustainer --> Runed Axe later) is a good thing.

Thoughts?

Edit: One exception I've thought of is devourer, where he has to rush shaman's as fast as he can.

[Bahamut]

granted, knowing who to flamegun during a teamfight is terribly important lategame, once your other two nukes stop scaling.

I think Bardic was using a TF2 analogy

[relyanCe]

I think Bardic was using a TF2 analogy

i know, i just took the analogy straight into HoN.

like a bawss.

[Tensei]

Even if you're eventually going to go for either of those items, it's still very much debatable whether you actually NEED HotBL early on over, say, faster Steamboots, Power Supply, Bottle or whatever a core item on your hero is. If you're going for HotBL, you should ALWAYS rush it imo, because, like I said earlier, it's effectiveness declines really quickly as the game progresses. Remember that HotBL costs about the same as 2x Bracers, Marchers and a Bottle/Power Supply.

Now, about hero roles. Taken to it's logical conclusion, you could argue that you're getting pigeonholed into doing several 'arbitrary' things in this game, like laning, ganking and pushing. There are no set rules that FORCE you to play like that, but the way the game is set up, it turns out it is the most effective way to play.

Similarly, if you take a look at Kraken, his second, third and fourth skills all synergize with each other, and looking at their effects, they IMPLY, if nothing else, that Kraken is 'meant' to be played as an initiator, first and foremost.

Now, were this a singleplayer game, there would of course be no problem with not playing by the 'rules'. However, as it stands, this is a team-based multiplayer game where everyone is expected to at least pull their own weight, so in my opinion, not attempting to play to your full potential every game means you are actively dicking over the rest of your team.

If you want complete freedom in how you play the game, pick up a nice open singleplayer RPG like Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Dragon Age: Origins, but don't confuse the way these games work with Heroes of Newerth.

[Dhsu]

Leerooooyyyyy

JENKIIIIINS

Edit: Speaking of TF2 analogies, two words - Battle Medic.

Edit 2: I like Plated Greaves! Great item for support heroes.

Edit 3: Even though I guess it should've been pretty obvious, I ended up crunching the numbers and confirmed that Plated Greaves is by far the better survivability option over Steamboots. +5 armor by itself is a 30% increase in EHP, which becomes better than the extra 7 Str (133HP) from Steamboots once you have, oh...443HP. And it scales. The +3 to Int and Agi as well as the extra 12% EHP increase through the activated ability is icing. POOPSOCKING FTW.

I still think the new recipe for Ghost Marchers makes no goshdurn sense though. Two Gloves = 24 damage??

[Dead Goon]

Hey dudes. I'm new to the forums, but I play HoN with many OCR'ers here. I'm a regular on The Shizz Minibosses board as Disposable Hero and play in your clan as DH (xXDHXx...gay, I know, but DH was taken, so I had to get AOL on my username). I've got a couple friends who would like to join in the fun, they are currently playing League of Legends and would like to try out HoN. Does anyone happen to know where I can score a couple invites? Thanks.

[MaxFrost]

PM their emails, I'll send em an invite

[zircon]

FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUu

I just played a game to the 70 minute mark. My team was Tempest, Predator, Valkyrie (left at ~30 minutes), Corrupted and Sand Wraith (me.) Enemy team was Lego, Kraken, Pesti, Nympho and Arachna. It was really intense - they had nearly defeated us but we won a huge teamfight thanks to double Tempest ult and pushed two lanes (vs. one lane for us.) We were about to push the final lane - we already had one rax down - when... the game dropped. For such an epic game, it was a really crappy ending

[BardicKnowledge]

wow, ouch. Games that drop are really terrible for exactly that reason -- especially when you invest more than an hour of your time into it.

[Dhsu]

You make it sound like it was completely wasted. What do you miss when a game drops, like 20 PSR? If you aren't having fun for that 70 minutes you got to play, you're playing games for the wrong reason.

[zircon]

It's not that I didn't have fun, but a LOT of HoN is waiting around for those big teamfights and tactical decisions. IMO that endgame was the high point but I didn't get to see it through. So, it was frustrating - that's all.

[zircon]

And in this episode of "Ridiculous Late Games", we lost 66 minutes in, but the items were just silly. Our enemy Accursed was carrying - he had a Runed Axe, Elder Parasite, Hack n Slash and fully upgraded Riftshards. As Wildsoul, I had Iron Shield, Fort bracer, Greaves, Abyssal Skull and H&S on myself, and Mock + Steamboots on bear. Nobody can stand up to that kind of pain - with my two buffs we were doing something like 500 damage every combined attack. Oh yeah, and I had about 38 armor / 3000 HP. Sadly, when Pestilence is on the other team with a Daemonic Breastplate, it's eventually gg.

[Dhsu]

To add to the hilarity, check out BIess's inventory.

First time I've seen that item on anyone.

[Rambo]

To add to the hilarity, check out BIess's inventory.

First time I've seen that item on anyone.

I'm so confused. I thought I only had 1 component of Staff of the Master. This game summary says I had the whole thing? I hate shopping with a passion.

[Dhsu]

Hm, that is weird. The replay pages are still WIP though, so some things might not be entirely accurate. Maybe you bought a recipe and it thought it was the entire thing? (You should never buy the recipe first btw. )

[Rambo]

Hm, that is weird. The replay pages are still WIP though, so some things might not be entirely accurate. Maybe you bought a recipe and it thought it was the entire thing? (You should never buy the recipe first btw. )

I think I bought the Glowstone. It appeared the most beneficial while separate. But I've been told I've bought the wrong thing first before, so i wouldn't be surprised.

Things I learned today:

-Pings either mean "Go here" or "Get the F*** away from here" at the user's discretion.

-Using my Ult on their best player when they are at low health is fantastic. Unless that player can completely absorb my attack, regain full health because of me, and double-back to kill me and a teammate.

-I don't know what to do after lvl 10

-Going into the jungle, even with all my teammates, is a horrible idea.

Excellent learning day.

[Tensei]

Pings are very context sensitive and can mean tons of different things, like "Rune spawned over here", "I saw someone there, so be careful", "Push this lane", etc.

In an evenly matched game, both teams will often start making attempts to quickly push a few towers with 2-3 people after level 10-ish. The way this is usually done this early is to gank one or two heroes who are still farming in a lane and then quickly push the tower before the rest of the enemy team can respond. This will net your team a nice bonus in gold and it will force the enemy team to group up and play more defensively, to prevent more towers from falling, which in turn allows the rest of your team to freefarm lanes. If you're a carry-type hero you should still be farming as much as possible.

Later on, as heroes become able to quickly take down a lane by themselves, the emphasis is moved from the pushing towards team battles.

[zircon]

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=36434&page=2

My Accursed suggestion is one vote away from being Popular. Someone vote on it!

[Bahamut]

Voted for ya

[Rambo]

In an evenly matched game, both teams will often start making attempts to quickly push a few towers with 2-3 people after level 10-ish. The way this is usually done this early is to gank one or two heroes who are still farming in a lane and then quickly push the tower before the rest of the enemy team can respond. This will net your team a nice bonus in gold and it will force the enemy team to group up and play more defensively, to prevent more towers from falling, which in turn allows the rest of your team to freefarm lanes. If you're a carry-type hero you should still be farming as much as possible.

^ that's actually very helpful. I know it seems like it should be intuitive... but I didn't quite have everything in that perspective. I noticed that mid/late game I was barely farming at all, and I thought this just might be a late game mechanic. I thought the game had switched to team battles. But now that you mention it, at that point we had lost 2 towers, and they were probably still farming those lanes all the while. I can appreciate the significance of making a push a little more now.

Also, voted for zircons proposal. Despite having no right to vote on anything.