A few newb questions

[MasterGeese]

So I came here from DotA a few days ago and have started learning the ropes. There are a few problems though,

1. Team battles. With every hero using every spell they can, it's nearly impossible to see where my hero is or what's actually going on in the fight, all I see is mass destruction. In DotA it was alright, since you could at least find your own hero in the mayhem. With HoN I feel like it's hard to do much when you can't even tell what's going on.

2. Last Hitting/Denying: I've been practicing this some on single-player, and I was wondering about how many I should be able to last hit/deny before trying to carry. Right now I can last hit 50% or so of the enemy creeps and deny 25% of the allied creeps.

[pk_thunder]

So I came here from DotA a few days ago and have started learning the ropes. There are a few problems though,

1. Team battles. With every hero using every spell they can, it's nearly impossible to see where my hero is or what's actually going on in the fight, all I see is mass destruction. In DotA it was alright, since you could at least find your own hero in the mayhem. With HoN I feel like it's hard to do much when you can't even tell what's going on.

2. Last Hitting/Denying: I've been practicing this some on single-player, and I was wondering about how many I should be able to last hit/deny before trying to carry. Right now I can last hit 50% or so of the enemy creeps and deny 25% of the allied creeps.
1) set gfx to lowest setting, otherwise u'll get use too it

2) I'd say u'd get about 25% last hits in a real lane, I'd aim for 75% in practice (denies doesn't matter if u're a carry). Neuts are nice way to farm too so as long as u're farming it doesn't matter too much.

[Neru]

Adding my own anecdote to the above post (which is pretty much correct), when I joined HoN from DotA I literally had no idea what was going on for like 5 days. I never noticed my level up because it wasn't big and yellow, it was thin and purple-ish colour.
Dropping all my graphics settings to the lowest helped tremendously and you quickly get used to stuff. Try dropping a few different ultimates in Practice mode (like Tempests/KotF etc) so you know them for in a real game.

[LightRain]

Whenever I lose my hero I press C. By default that centers the camera on yourself. You can also double-tap the hotkey for your hero (I believe you start out the game with F1 as your hero's hotkey, but I always assign myself to 1)
This does wonders in a teamfight when you have no idea wtf is going on. Or when you're trying to chase in jungle and you pan the camera ahead but lose track of your pathing.

Static farming is a solely one player skill, if you use a melee hero with a hatchet you should try for every single lasthit and deny. You can hit creeps early to set it up so there's only one available at a time. IMO if you really want to make it second nature, go lane in practice mode until you get every lasthit and deny.
That might be overkill if you're just wanting to play though, in which case just make sure you get used to the hero's minimum damage spread so you avoid most of those awkward moments where you attack a creep and it lives with 5 hp and dies before you can attack again.
That's really all you need as a carry in lane if you aren't static farming: the ability not to miss the really easy last hits your support lines up for you by harassing the opponent away. Assuming you get a good support player in your lane, which isn't always a fair assumption when you have a new account.

[Shadowcamsy]

In practice mode there's really no excuse for missing last hits with a melee carry + hatchet, for 1500+ you can probably get away with only getting the kill 60% of the time in practice mode, for 1600+ you're going to need to get about 80% and by about 1650 you'd need about 90%. For ranged heroes it can be a little difficult as their damage + no hatchet is less than double that of a ranged creep.

I'm not sure if you've read the infamous (yet now kinda old) Inde_ed's guide to micro, but here's a relevant excerpt:

"There are three ways to farm: Randomly attacking and hoping you get lucky, attacking constantly with good timing so you get the last hit on the creep, and timing it so that the only attack you make is the last one.

As for whether you use the second or third method, it’s a matter of preference. Personally, I like the third way best, for several reasons. First, doing this allows the enemy creeps to push further into your side of the field, minimizing the risk from ganking. Also, if there is an allied hero with you, and he is skilled at timing last hits, he will probably get most of the creep kills if you use the second method, and split them with you about 50-50 using the third. Both ways are fine, though, if you can time it correctly.
When trying to time last hits, note that the ranged creep (Necromancer/Druid, Warlock/Archer) deals far more damage than the melee creeps do. Pay special attention to its attack, and time your own attack accordingly.


You need to know your hero’s attack animation and base damage. What do I mean? Some heroes, like Valkyrie, have an incredibly long “wind-up” before they attack, and need to time creeps several seconds earlier than most other heroes. Others, like Sand Wraith, are almost instant, and need to be timed almost a split second before the creep dies. The higher a hero’s damage, the bigger the margin of error you have for timing last hits.

For ranged heroes, if your projectile is especially slow, like Valkyrie, you want to move closer to the enemy creeps so your projectile has less distance to travel. This makes it much easier to time. Conversely, if you find that you’re attacking too fast, you might want to move to your maximium range so that your projectile needs to travel further.

Once you’re near your tower, you’ll probably notice that it seems to steal every kill with its massive damage. However, after several games of experience, you’ll notice that often creeps are left with just a sliver of HP left before the tower deals the final blow. This is when you want to attack for the last hit. Basically, treat the tower like a ranged creep that deals an obscene amount of damage, and you should be able to micro a decent amount of kills while near a friendly tower."

if you want to read the whole guide (which I highly suggest) you should head to http://dotabestguides.com/?p=34

[Gorpik]

Get 70-80 CK at 15 minute mark (real game, not practice). Then you're ready to go.

[Droggeltasse]

Get 70-80 CK at 15 minute mark (real game, not practice). Then you're ready to go.

How do you guys get these numbers. By no means iam a good player, but i still know that CK rely maybe 60% on you and 40% on the enemy.
You can not get 70-80 CK if the enemy :soulr::hell: lane (stupid example) know what they are doing.

I can get 95% CK in practice and like 80% when i lane against noobs. But even then you encounter enemys in a lane were i end with less then 20 CK in 10 mins simply because they outlaned us.

To play a carry you need to be good at lasthitting, and you need to know how to farm, how to stay alive and when you should help your team and/or grap some hero kills instead of farming. Beeing able to get 100000 CK a minute vs stupid enemys is nice but i think there are more important things.

[Neru]

After 15 minutes there have been 120 creeps overall, so 70-80 is not an impossibility but 50+ at least still makes you a reasonable carry. If you have a good harasser laning with you then you should be set to get 70+ but honestly, as long as you get all the experience your lane offers and most of the gold, you'll do fine.

[AncientPC]

If you're a carry, aim for last hitting over denying. If you're support, aim for denying / harassing over last hitting. If you're last hitting as support better than your carry + hatchet in a free farm lane, your carry sucks.

There are one wave of 5 creeps every 30 seconds, or 10 creeps per minute. I aim for 50 CK by 10 minutes and 100 by 20 minutes (which is basically 50% of every wave) as a carry.

However, in my opinion this is not good enough and thus I don't play carries very often. Just watch some of Testie's replays to see how farming should be done. :p