Babachoo
05-23-2010, 08:45 PM
BABACHOO'S GENERAL GAMEPLAY GUIDE
I'm going to try to cover as much as I can in this guide from basic roles, to excellent gameplay. I'll start off with very basic knowledge and progress into some not so obvious topics. So the more you already know, the further you should be scrolling down to start.
Table of Contents
Roles
Pushing!
Turtling
Map Vision
Laning and Jungling
Ganking and Wards
Last Hitting Tactics
Juking and Fog of War
Attitude and Composure
Be Creative!
Harassment Control
Basics on Attributes
Roles
There are a few different roles in this game.
Carry
Carries shine brightest in late game since they need to get geared up before they are very useful. A lot of people describe them as being useless early game, but they simply aren't. They just do a lot better late game since they have everything they need. For example, if :poll: :jera: tried to kill :wret: at level 5 they would fail. Hag would just blink out of that situation after Pollywog holds her. Now throw in :scou: and it can be done. Even at lowly level 5 Scout would go stealth up to Hag so Jereziah can target him with inner light, Scout has level 3 of his invis flurry to burst, and he can silence Hag with one of his eyes so she can't blink out. So they can be used early game, they just achieve new heights once they have been geared up for late game.
Carries usually are just auto attack beasts, but it is possible to carry with some heroes who just need some bulkiness from items so they can survive long enough to let them be at their best.
There are ranged carries as well as melee. The ranged melee's can handle the middle lane better and have better harassment. However the melee carries tend to have a higher damage output... It's called balance =].
Here are the heroes who can carry a team. I'll stick with the solid, more traditional carries for now.
Sand Wraith, Dark Lady, Valk, Rampage, Corrupted Disciple, Tortuerer, Chronos, Nighthound, Puppet Master, Moonqueen, Predator, Zephyr, Maliken, Swiftblade, Forsaken Archer, Engineer, Magebane, Soulstealer, Arachna, Wildsoul,Madman, Warbeast, Scout, Defiler.
Semi Carries
Semi-Carries are heroes who can't carry as well as a hard carry, but they have other uses which is where the balance lies. For example, Hammerstorm is a great semi-carry who also is a pretty great initiator. Pestilence is the same way, they are both semi-carry initiators. The trade off is, Hammerstorm can give his team some movement speed, and Pestilence has a great ult on a 10 second cooldown that diminishes enemy's armor and reveals them in fog and stealth, and they both have a good stun which is where the initiation lies. So semi-carries do a good amount of damage, and give their team help in various ways.
Initiator
Initiators are heroes who help start the team fights. They usually have some kind of area of effect disable in some way or another. It's a very effective strategy to sometimes have two initiators go in one after the other, this gives your team even more time to dish out all of their abilities, eliminating even 2 heroes before the disable is over can already win you over a team fight. Initiators will usually get a Portal Key :Portalkey: to just blink in and let our all of their abilities. They also will usually want to get a Shrunken Head to make them immune to stuns and damage through magic :ShrunkenHead:. Here are some of the best initiators.
Kraken, Pebbles, Legionare, Pestilence, Pharaoh, Magmus, Behemoth, Maliken, Tempest, Hellbringer, Chronos, Keeper, Hammerstorm, Bubbles.
People will often mention "tanks" this is not World of Warcraft PvE, you do not need a "tank" in HoN. You can have a team of squishy heroes and that's fine as long as they all pull their own weight and contribute nukes, disables, high damage, etc.
Support
There's actually a wide variety of support in this game including heals, disables, pushing, map vision.
Heals obviously enable your team to live longer so they can keep being the pain trains they farmed all game to become, and fortunately for the healers team, over half the heals in this game also cause AOE damage, haha.
:ophe::jera::nymp::soulr::deme::accu::Astrolabe:
Disables go as far as stuns, holds, morphs, disarms, silence, slows, and invulnerability. Stuns are helpful for initiating fights, stopping them from harming you, stopping them from running or blinking away, or even just delaying them if they are chasing you down. Holds longer than stuns but it requires that the hero using the hold can't be doing anything else (it's called balance =]).
Morphs apply a slow, silence, and disarm. They are used for any of the things they apply, they are just situational. Like to help you run away, or slow someone so you can get those last couple auto attacks, interrupting an enemy from holding one of your team mates, or just getting rid of someone during a team fight.
Pollywog Priest, Witchslayer, Sheepstick
Disarms just stop your enemies from auto attacking, there aren't that many disarms in the game, just like morphs I suppose. There are some disables that include disarms, but as far as stopping auto attacks without a straight up stun it's pretty much Keeper and Scout.
Silences prevent the enemy from using any of their skills, they are very effective and they shine brightest during teamfights.
Vindicator, Dark Lady, Nighthound, Bloodhunter, Scout, Defiler, Bubbles.
Slows are used to, well, slow. Many heroes have slows. They just slow down enemy heroes to prevent them from getting away, or to help you survive while they are chasing you.
Pandamonium, Sand Wraith, Dark Lady, Ophelia, Hellbringer, Nighthound, Deadwood, Corrupted Disciple, Glacius, Predator, Blacksmith, Forsaken Archer, Wretched Hag, Engineer, Plague Rider, Armadon, Electrician, Arachna, Devourer, Slither, Demented Shaman, Kraken.
Invulnerability is a disable that stops them from doing anything at all, but also stops them from being harmed in any way. It is good for just getting rid of someone for a few seconds in team fights, or saving one of your team mates. Exclusive to Pollywog Priest, he gets to trap enemies in his wards while they are invulnerable. It is currently only something that belongs to Bubbles and Stormspirit :Stormspirit:
Pushing!
Pushing towers is one of the greatest ways to get those cowardly farming carries out of their jungle and into the fight. It's good to have at least one pusher on your team. It is very important to do if the enemy team has a noticeably better late game than your team does. You push down the first two towers in one or two lanes and the enemy team carries have no more time to farm. having pushers on your team is an extremely safe way to go, because pushers are usually very great at turtling (a strategy I will get into in a bit). So if you have a carry and maybe a semi carry on your team, your carry will have much more time to farm up those items they need. Another great thing about pushing towers is that it creates a great amount of pressure for the enemy team, that pressure turns into the enemy team having to drop what they do to defend the tower, this makes it so they can not attempt to gank your carry who is farming the day away. If they don't put up a resistance, then your carry is only getting more and more gold from the towers that his pusher is destroying!
Ophelia, Hellbringer, Tempest, Forsaken Archer, Pollywog Priest, Wildsoul, Andromena, Warbeast, Slither, Defiler, Engineer.
Turtling
Turtling is a strategy that people use for a few different reasons. Personally the most common reason I've seen it done is when a team is losing and they don't want they enemy team to out-farm and out-level them anymore than they already have. They also start turtling if they have been getting ganked way too much.
All turtling is, is just staying safe by your base and farm the creeps that come close to your base. It isn't always effective against an enemy team, because your team will have less creeps to farm, and more people to share the gold with. The enemy team can also choose to just go farm elsewhere instead of pushing, and they will also have both of the jungles to farm in as well as all the lanes.
It takes certain heroes to turtle. In example, Kraken is a great turtler because he can grab a few enemies with his ultimate and port them to inside his base, where they will be killed easily by Kraken's whole team. Turtling is a very defensive strategy, but as long as the defensive team wasn't beaten too bad in the beginning of the game, then it will be an effective strategy.
To help explain how it can be effective, I'll make a hypothetical situation an extremity. If every hero is level 25 and has the best items they can possibly have in every item slot, then why would you need to push down the enemy base if they are going to come to you? You don't, you can just wait for them to come to you because you'll have a nice hill to be on top of, and a tower to add some damage =]. On a side note, Bubbles is also a good turtle, HAW HAW HAW I'm so lame!
Map Vision
Map Vision makes you team much more aware of how safe they are, and how unsafe the enemy is. Wards as well as hero abilities help your team have map vision. And The Dark Lady has an ult that unlinks map vision with team mates and towers. There's a small handful of heroes that have a say in map vision.
Keeper, Bloodhunter, Wildsoul, Thunderbringer, Sandwraith, Scout, Dark Lady.
Laning and Jungling
If you are going with the normal solo mid, then they will usually need a bottle. Rune control is mid control, and mid control is the first big step to winning the game. You need to fill up that bottle with a rune every chance you get, it will give you all the mana and health that you need to keep yourself in that precious middle lane. Examples would help here, if Pollywog Priest has rune control, those jolts will be harassing you all game, you'll pop one of those health potions or a bottle charge and he'll jolt a creep that will bounce to you and purge it. Stuff like this happens repeatedly for the whole laning process when the rune control is one sided. On the other hand, even a Magebane can do well in mid with rune control. He'll farm up a bottle in a couple short minutes and he'll do the same thing that you were trying to pull. Even if both teams have a rune spawn warded, he can even get there first because of his blink. It's an odd hero to have mid, but it can still be very effective just by having control of the runes.
On the side lanes you should just get a logger's hatchet if you are a melee hero, and some basic regeneration and stat items, such as minor totems, pretender's crown, health potion, mana potion, runes of blights, iron buckler.
Jungling
Jungling isn't something that every hero can do in the beginning of the game. Very few heroes can start jungling at level 1.
Legionare, Predator, Ophelia, Tempest, War Beast, Zephyr, Wildsoul, Keeper
Some of these heroes have controllable units to take damage for them, but for any jungling heroes who are directly taking the damage from neutral creeps, they should be getting an iron buckler to lessen the damage by a remarkable amount. You can purchase duck boots from the outpost and eventually turn that :IronBuckler: into :IronShield:.
IMPORTANT
There's a very important thing you need to know for jungling and it's something that isn't obvious, but it has a huge effect on the amount of damage you will take when jungling. When you go jungling you need to kill the biggest creep that's doing the most damage first, not the smaller ones even though they die significantly easier. The reason being that your iron buckler or iron shield blocks about all of the damage that the smaller creeps dish out. Sometimes you'll see little gray "19's" popping up on the screen while you are fighting neutral creeps. This is because they aren't even doing a full 20 damage that the iron buckler blocks. Therefore the bigger creeps are the only thing that is actually hurting you. This small bit of information will help you farm significantly better. It will be very important Towards the end of the laning phase where your carry will head into the jungle with only a sustainer farmed up. They will be able to jungle for much longer if they use this tactic and they will be able to farm up that runed axe a lot faster. For most hard carries, they will often rush a runed axe :RunedAxe: as fast as they can. Once they get it, they are able to farm significantly faster than before.
It is very important to let your carry get all the last hits on creeps that he is able to get in the laning phase. You should pair your carry with a hero who is great at babysitting them, or harassing the enemy so your carry can head into the jungle as soon as possible.
Keeper, Jereziah, Accursed, Demented Shaman, Soul Reaper, Nymphora, Voodoo Jester. Those are some good baby sitters
Ganking and Wards
Ganking is very easy to do with the right hero and map awareness. However it shouldn't be attempted every time you see an enemy hero alone. You can very easily find yourself in a dangerous situation if you are trying to gank on the opposite side of the river without enough sight via wards. The most basic way to find out if it is a good or bad idea is to think if the enemy is in a favorable position or not. Is it going to be worth it to tower dive for the kill? Is the kill on that squishy int hero running into his jungle worth it even if there's a decent chance that the enemy teams Zephyr will come out of the fog with 8 tornadoes flying around him? After some practice, and failure, you'll gain more operational risk management and find out if the risk is worth the gain, and how high of a chance the risk will turn into a reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emdv6tXDQeg
Now I'm not saying that things like in this video here are a bad idea. Deadwood had two of his team mates rolling deep with him, and they could have easily taken out the enemy team's carry if he had been farming in that jungle. However it would be much safer if they had the enemy's jungle warded.
If you find yourself getting antsy, eager, or bored because you don't feel like you're doing enough, you're doing it wrong, and possibly your whole team is doing it wrong. After the basic laning phase is over and MIA calls are no longer necessary , you and your team should be discussing plans on what you are going to do next whether it be pushing a tower when it is clear and safe to do so, grouping up or stealthing across the river to set up wards, stacking creep spawns for your carry, or setting up bait, or ganks in a safe way.
You'll want to focus the ganks on the heroes who need the most farm, so usually the carries in the game.
You'll need to counter the enemy's wards in some way. If they are warding in hard to find places, it would be worth it to get a bound eye :BoundEye: to find their wards. It would make it extremely easy to find wards and you can just drop off the eye in your pool so it won't be at risk from a team mate dying. You'll be able to pick it up the next time you want to go for a ward run. Wards are a huge part of this game and you won't be able to shut down the enemy's carry at all if they have defensive wards set up. Here are some ideal ward placements.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/wardweewooo.jpg?t=1274729288
The red circled wards indicate ward placements that are most of the time exclusively used for the Hellborne, blue is for placement that can be used for either sides that helps prevent ganks, and yellow is for Legion placement.
The northern most ward for the legion to put down is one of the best places for a ward for late game and when you want to hunt the hellborne's carry. It is extremely useful, when I'm playing the role of shutting down the enemy carry, before I even farm up Stormspirit, I can just walk right up to them when they are at the heavy creep spawn closest to their base and just trap them in Pollywog's wards since they'll just be standing there fighting some Catman Champs.
The lowest ward on the map for the Hellborne to use to hunt the Legion's carry while jungling. You can get full sight of them on their heavy creep spawn as well. All the blue circled wards are actually all gank peventing wards for both sides except maybe one of them which only helps Hellborne, it's the one on the entrance of Hellborne's mid lane going into the jungle.
There are two wards that I have pointed out by a white arrow. These are ward placements that give you sight of the top of your opponents hill, so you can continue to harass them, or simply just to make sure they don't get a head start on you to a rune that has just spawned. The ward in that spot that I placed down for the Hellborne side actually has sight of the top of the Legion's hill as well as the top rune spawn. You should go into practice mode and play around with those ward placements a bit, you can find a couple different spots that give great sight as well as catching sight of a rune spawn if you put some thought into it.
Notice how there are two wards for the Legion and Hellborne that are in the same spot. Each faction has the opportunity to block creeps from spawning with one of those wards, so it is even and fair. The Legion can block a creep spawn with the top rune ward, and the Hellborne can black a creep spawn at the bottom rune spawn at the Legion's jungle.
I've even went as far as buying wards of revelation and putting them in almost all of the enemy's creep spawns. This blocks anymore creeps from respawning while that ward is placed there. It's not something that will have great purpose, however it will help if you use it right. Like spawn blocking the creep camps that you don't have your ward of sight on. This forces them to get some small amount of farm from the creep camp that your team has vision of so you can easily gank them there since there will be nothing to farm anywhere else. Odd tactics like this are things that make you grow as a player just from toying around with them.
Last Hitting Tactics!
I want to cover some last hitting information that a lot of people don't recognize. This game will work the same every time you play it. A tower will hit a warlock two times and it will be in last hit range. A melee hero with a logger's hatchet can last hit it after that, but if you are a weak range hero without much stats, you might need to hit it twice from that point. Knowing things like this, you can get the first hit at the beginning, its a constant in the game. Constants never change.
Another thing to know about last hitting is that there can be mind games to it if both opposing heroes have an auto attack that hits about as hard as eachother.
However sometimes you find yourself in a very bad match up. If you are a ranged hero who only has a bottle without stats, there won't be any mind games at all. You need to have a competitive auto attack, because you won't always be playing against someone you are far better than. You also won't always have perfect rune control to fuel your bottle, which means you won't be able to harass them to the point where they can't go in to last hit. So on top of everything mentioned, if your auto attack can't even contest theres, then you have nothing to fall back on, and will lose that laning trial.
The Laning Mindgame (or lack thereof)
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/pebsvoom.jpg?t=1274673118
Take a look at this for a moment. Pebbles has gone mid against a Bubbles, and he came armed with a logger's hatchet, some regen, and either stats, iron buckler, or a guardian ring that he'll later turn into his ring of sorcery. If Bubbles is running that bottle, there is definitely no way he's going to get any last hits. When I find myself in a situation like this, I tell my friends that I'm going to count how many entire creep waves I can last hit in a row before i miss one. When I'm on the unfortunate end of this scenario, I'm having a miserable time, usually fighting against a Bloodhunter who I can't do anything to because he just last hits everything and is constantly being healed as a result of it. In any case, if Pebbles is packing a logger's hatchet, his damage will be so much higher than his ranged opponents that there won't be a mind game at all. In example, if Pebbles does 100 damage and has a hatchet, and Bubbles does 60 damage, Pebbles will just wait until a creep is around 110 health and just safely and easily last hit when Bubbles won't even have the opportunity to try. Now I'm going to cover what mind game I'm talking about in this next part.
Range vs Range Mind Game
When you and your opponent are both ranged auto attackers, there's a small mind game that can have a huge impact on who's dominant, and watching this unfold will easily show who the better last hitter is. It is based on your damage output and your attack's projective speed. There is a set time that you need to auto attack so that you last hit a creep, and when two ranged attackers are against each other, they have to stretch it so they are hitting exactly when the creep's health is in range by the time their projectile reaches that creep. Now there's two effective mind games that can be used.
The first, and slightly less effective the higher skilled your opponent is, since range vs range makes both players auto attack slightly earlier, you last hit normally until you are both having trouble with the timing. What usually happens is similar to when you are in a pub and your selfish jerk of a lane mate is competing for last hits with you. I bet you know what I'm talking about, you both try to get it as soon as it might be in range, you mess up the timing a bit too early, and a creep gets it because you left a creep with 5 health after you attacked it, but right before your lane mate attacked. This happens the same way when two ranged characters go head to head, they attack too early half the time and as a result, a creep ends up getting it.
There are two things that help solve this problem and can put it into your favor. The first way is to simply have the faster auto attack, that will make the opponent forced to try and get it too early. The second thing that can win you this war is to simply get closer to the creep than your opponent. Corrupted Disciple would beat Pollywog Priest easily if both players were at the same skill level, and the same distance away from their target. Pollywog has a better chance of getting it if he is standing in melee range of the creep.
Now the second and much more effective way is... don't even hit that creep! That's right, the next level to this mind game showdown is to appear as the less dominant person. You simply auto attack first, however, attack the creep standing to the side of the creep that is about to die. When your opponent sees you starting up your attack animation, he'll start to do his, because like I mentioned before, the person who moves second will win in that case. However, you aren't hitting that creep, you are aiming at the one next to it with full health. This makes it so your opponent will think you are the lame-o who went first, then he'll hit it early, trying to nab the kill before the creeps normally would get it. So you just use your first auto attack on any other creep, and immediately hit the creep that is about to die. I hope this isn't too complicated for anyone to grasp, I promise it's effective.
I remember one of the greatest performances in mid that I ever saw was by bkid. It was a tournament match and he was blacksmith. He had an immaculate creep score and it was the talk of the game. When he was interviewed after his amazing performance he was asked how he was so good at last hitting, he replied that he's just really good at this game. Last hitting mind games and tactics like the ones I mentioned are part of how he is so good at it. Those are things that make him so great at it, just simple knowledge like I have mentioned.
Juking and Fog of War
There are a few different ways of using fog of war to your advantage. You can become very good at juking by knowing how the mind games work, and paths set out between trees, and what new paths open up just by knocking one down.
The mind games with juking are successful when they are down either a bit smarter than your opponent, or one step dumber. Let me show you what I mean starting with one step smarter.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/juke1.jpg?t=1274682441
This is at the hellborne neutral creep spawn that gets pulled to behind the first tower in the lane. Not everyone knows about every single nook and cranny in the map. Even a single practice mode game can help you find the majority of the good hiding spots if you just browse around the map. Having more awareness if the map on a fundamental level like this can put you leaps and bounds ahead of your opponent. I've personally never even seen anyone else even use this spot before, but to me it's a big life saver when I'm running away from ganking the enemy team's carry in the jungle.
Before I go on to the next form of juking, I want to note how important it is to always have a homecoming stone on you at all times aside from the first few levels of the game. You'll need them to evade deaths and protect towers and team mates who are getting tower dived on, or at least to get the revenge kill. Not all heroes even have stuns to stop you from porting back to base, so with a homecoming stone, you won't even have to juke yourself into a safe place to port back to base. Heroes like Armadon, Bloodhunter, Predator, and Arachna can't even stop you.
Now for the second kind of juke mind games. The step below average intelligence, or at least it seems. It's a last resort tactic that I use when I simply don't have the spacing allowed for a normal juke. It is effective because it's uncommon, therefore unexpected. When they think they have a guaranteed kill, and normally would, this little trick works pretty much all the time. The secret is... run towards them instead of away.
That's right, I said it! Sounds very stupid doesn't it? It usually is unless you have just about no spacing between you. It even works when they have marchers at level 5 and you don't! (Swiftblade comes to mind). Let me show you how it's done.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/hirojuke.jpg?t=1274686211
Now in step one. We're a bit limited on space to flee or juke. In this particular situation you could be any level from 3 to 7, and Swiftblade loves starting with those marchers. There isn't time or space for a normal juke. You would just keep running west until you can go south through the trees into you lane and hope for the best, and probably end up dying. What you need to do in these almost certain death situations is find the nearest tree that sticks out enough for you to bend around the corner for as little as half a second of being hidden in fog. Once you can't see them, that means they can't see you either, so you pause about one forth of a second, and start running towards where he is coming from, and then some. That is what happened between step one and two. Step three in this case would be for you to successfully get back to your tower, eat some trees while sucking your thumb, and get over it. When you get it, it'll be sweet. you friends watching will start laughing out loud and breakycpk will be praising you for it over the next half hour if you're in a tourny match. But don't even let it get to your head, eventually this becomes a dime a dozen to you, and most other people will keep having their jaws dropped in amazement every time they even see a mediocre juke. That's not important, what is important is that over time you'll become more confident with yourself and you'll know you're getting better at this game. Trash talk will effect you a bit less because you'll become secure and sure of how skilled you are. If you keep an open mind after that, you will only get better. However keeping an open mind means realizing that you still have so much you can become better at.
Attitude and Composure
Composure is King in this game. Folks, this has got to be the most rage inducing game that's ever existed. A novice simply heading towards the wrong lane will get him cussed out in ALL chat. The most important thing to remember in this game is to stay calm, for more reasons than one. When people are about to go in for a gank, or if someone who had an invis rune pops all their abilities on you out of nowhere, a lot of people get jumpy and panic. If you stay calm you can get out of a bad situation a lot easier and faster. When people jump in on me now I just stay very calm, tap my stormspirit hotkey, click on them, and there you have it. Now I can just trap them in some voodoo wards, bind them inside of it, jolt ftw, and there you have it. I just successfully turned a gank around, and now my wards will remain there to take out all the creeps present. If I'm lucky enough to be close to the jungle, I'll grab some neutrals and pull them to my wards. now I'm 400 gold richer because I stayed calm and had a second to analyze the situation instead of just panicking that I was getting bursted and trying to run away.
Another reason to stay calm is because if you have a crappy early game, your late game will be even worse if you and your team are just gloomy about not being in the lead. Early game gankers and pushers do their jobs, and that's okay. The begining of the game being 7 kills down 14 minutes in doesn't matter at all really. The game ends up being about the team make up. I've always been great at any game I picked up. Back in Halo 2 I'd feel bad if I didn't have 7 more kills than deaths. I'd be 10-10 and feel horrible.
That brought me no good coming into this game, if you are support on the winning team you can even have a negative KDR, just don't let it get you down and keep your chin up. You'd be surprised what you can come back from.
My current KDR is probably like 0.8-1 KDR and my PSR recently dropped to 1460 after playing with some rl friends that don't know about teamwork yet. That's okay too, I've been as far as 1670's before without even trying. I've had a 1.2 KDR on my smurf account in the beta phase. I realized my KDR on my smurfs were far better than my normal account because I would get stressed out worrying about some lame stats. It isn't worth it, as long as you know that you're pretty good, that's all you'll need to get back up on your feet. I'd probably be 1550 again already if I weren't writing this guide right now, haha.
Plus, it's even in the game hints that pop up on the loading screen; if you direct anger towards people and start barking out orders, they won't even listen. If you're calm and you suggest good ideas, only the baddies and scrubs will ignore you. Even then you have a chance of getting their attention.
Your attitude alone can change everyone else's. If I hear my best friends sighing because they just both got double tapped, it drags me down in spite of everything I already know about the game and how composure works.
I'm going to try to cover as much as I can in this guide from basic roles, to excellent gameplay. I'll start off with very basic knowledge and progress into some not so obvious topics. So the more you already know, the further you should be scrolling down to start.
Table of Contents
Roles
Pushing!
Turtling
Map Vision
Laning and Jungling
Ganking and Wards
Last Hitting Tactics
Juking and Fog of War
Attitude and Composure
Be Creative!
Harassment Control
Basics on Attributes
Roles
There are a few different roles in this game.
Carry
Carries shine brightest in late game since they need to get geared up before they are very useful. A lot of people describe them as being useless early game, but they simply aren't. They just do a lot better late game since they have everything they need. For example, if :poll: :jera: tried to kill :wret: at level 5 they would fail. Hag would just blink out of that situation after Pollywog holds her. Now throw in :scou: and it can be done. Even at lowly level 5 Scout would go stealth up to Hag so Jereziah can target him with inner light, Scout has level 3 of his invis flurry to burst, and he can silence Hag with one of his eyes so she can't blink out. So they can be used early game, they just achieve new heights once they have been geared up for late game.
Carries usually are just auto attack beasts, but it is possible to carry with some heroes who just need some bulkiness from items so they can survive long enough to let them be at their best.
There are ranged carries as well as melee. The ranged melee's can handle the middle lane better and have better harassment. However the melee carries tend to have a higher damage output... It's called balance =].
Here are the heroes who can carry a team. I'll stick with the solid, more traditional carries for now.
Sand Wraith, Dark Lady, Valk, Rampage, Corrupted Disciple, Tortuerer, Chronos, Nighthound, Puppet Master, Moonqueen, Predator, Zephyr, Maliken, Swiftblade, Forsaken Archer, Engineer, Magebane, Soulstealer, Arachna, Wildsoul,Madman, Warbeast, Scout, Defiler.
Semi Carries
Semi-Carries are heroes who can't carry as well as a hard carry, but they have other uses which is where the balance lies. For example, Hammerstorm is a great semi-carry who also is a pretty great initiator. Pestilence is the same way, they are both semi-carry initiators. The trade off is, Hammerstorm can give his team some movement speed, and Pestilence has a great ult on a 10 second cooldown that diminishes enemy's armor and reveals them in fog and stealth, and they both have a good stun which is where the initiation lies. So semi-carries do a good amount of damage, and give their team help in various ways.
Initiator
Initiators are heroes who help start the team fights. They usually have some kind of area of effect disable in some way or another. It's a very effective strategy to sometimes have two initiators go in one after the other, this gives your team even more time to dish out all of their abilities, eliminating even 2 heroes before the disable is over can already win you over a team fight. Initiators will usually get a Portal Key :Portalkey: to just blink in and let our all of their abilities. They also will usually want to get a Shrunken Head to make them immune to stuns and damage through magic :ShrunkenHead:. Here are some of the best initiators.
Kraken, Pebbles, Legionare, Pestilence, Pharaoh, Magmus, Behemoth, Maliken, Tempest, Hellbringer, Chronos, Keeper, Hammerstorm, Bubbles.
People will often mention "tanks" this is not World of Warcraft PvE, you do not need a "tank" in HoN. You can have a team of squishy heroes and that's fine as long as they all pull their own weight and contribute nukes, disables, high damage, etc.
Support
There's actually a wide variety of support in this game including heals, disables, pushing, map vision.
Heals obviously enable your team to live longer so they can keep being the pain trains they farmed all game to become, and fortunately for the healers team, over half the heals in this game also cause AOE damage, haha.
:ophe::jera::nymp::soulr::deme::accu::Astrolabe:
Disables go as far as stuns, holds, morphs, disarms, silence, slows, and invulnerability. Stuns are helpful for initiating fights, stopping them from harming you, stopping them from running or blinking away, or even just delaying them if they are chasing you down. Holds longer than stuns but it requires that the hero using the hold can't be doing anything else (it's called balance =]).
Morphs apply a slow, silence, and disarm. They are used for any of the things they apply, they are just situational. Like to help you run away, or slow someone so you can get those last couple auto attacks, interrupting an enemy from holding one of your team mates, or just getting rid of someone during a team fight.
Pollywog Priest, Witchslayer, Sheepstick
Disarms just stop your enemies from auto attacking, there aren't that many disarms in the game, just like morphs I suppose. There are some disables that include disarms, but as far as stopping auto attacks without a straight up stun it's pretty much Keeper and Scout.
Silences prevent the enemy from using any of their skills, they are very effective and they shine brightest during teamfights.
Vindicator, Dark Lady, Nighthound, Bloodhunter, Scout, Defiler, Bubbles.
Slows are used to, well, slow. Many heroes have slows. They just slow down enemy heroes to prevent them from getting away, or to help you survive while they are chasing you.
Pandamonium, Sand Wraith, Dark Lady, Ophelia, Hellbringer, Nighthound, Deadwood, Corrupted Disciple, Glacius, Predator, Blacksmith, Forsaken Archer, Wretched Hag, Engineer, Plague Rider, Armadon, Electrician, Arachna, Devourer, Slither, Demented Shaman, Kraken.
Invulnerability is a disable that stops them from doing anything at all, but also stops them from being harmed in any way. It is good for just getting rid of someone for a few seconds in team fights, or saving one of your team mates. Exclusive to Pollywog Priest, he gets to trap enemies in his wards while they are invulnerable. It is currently only something that belongs to Bubbles and Stormspirit :Stormspirit:
Pushing!
Pushing towers is one of the greatest ways to get those cowardly farming carries out of their jungle and into the fight. It's good to have at least one pusher on your team. It is very important to do if the enemy team has a noticeably better late game than your team does. You push down the first two towers in one or two lanes and the enemy team carries have no more time to farm. having pushers on your team is an extremely safe way to go, because pushers are usually very great at turtling (a strategy I will get into in a bit). So if you have a carry and maybe a semi carry on your team, your carry will have much more time to farm up those items they need. Another great thing about pushing towers is that it creates a great amount of pressure for the enemy team, that pressure turns into the enemy team having to drop what they do to defend the tower, this makes it so they can not attempt to gank your carry who is farming the day away. If they don't put up a resistance, then your carry is only getting more and more gold from the towers that his pusher is destroying!
Ophelia, Hellbringer, Tempest, Forsaken Archer, Pollywog Priest, Wildsoul, Andromena, Warbeast, Slither, Defiler, Engineer.
Turtling
Turtling is a strategy that people use for a few different reasons. Personally the most common reason I've seen it done is when a team is losing and they don't want they enemy team to out-farm and out-level them anymore than they already have. They also start turtling if they have been getting ganked way too much.
All turtling is, is just staying safe by your base and farm the creeps that come close to your base. It isn't always effective against an enemy team, because your team will have less creeps to farm, and more people to share the gold with. The enemy team can also choose to just go farm elsewhere instead of pushing, and they will also have both of the jungles to farm in as well as all the lanes.
It takes certain heroes to turtle. In example, Kraken is a great turtler because he can grab a few enemies with his ultimate and port them to inside his base, where they will be killed easily by Kraken's whole team. Turtling is a very defensive strategy, but as long as the defensive team wasn't beaten too bad in the beginning of the game, then it will be an effective strategy.
To help explain how it can be effective, I'll make a hypothetical situation an extremity. If every hero is level 25 and has the best items they can possibly have in every item slot, then why would you need to push down the enemy base if they are going to come to you? You don't, you can just wait for them to come to you because you'll have a nice hill to be on top of, and a tower to add some damage =]. On a side note, Bubbles is also a good turtle, HAW HAW HAW I'm so lame!
Map Vision
Map Vision makes you team much more aware of how safe they are, and how unsafe the enemy is. Wards as well as hero abilities help your team have map vision. And The Dark Lady has an ult that unlinks map vision with team mates and towers. There's a small handful of heroes that have a say in map vision.
Keeper, Bloodhunter, Wildsoul, Thunderbringer, Sandwraith, Scout, Dark Lady.
Laning and Jungling
If you are going with the normal solo mid, then they will usually need a bottle. Rune control is mid control, and mid control is the first big step to winning the game. You need to fill up that bottle with a rune every chance you get, it will give you all the mana and health that you need to keep yourself in that precious middle lane. Examples would help here, if Pollywog Priest has rune control, those jolts will be harassing you all game, you'll pop one of those health potions or a bottle charge and he'll jolt a creep that will bounce to you and purge it. Stuff like this happens repeatedly for the whole laning process when the rune control is one sided. On the other hand, even a Magebane can do well in mid with rune control. He'll farm up a bottle in a couple short minutes and he'll do the same thing that you were trying to pull. Even if both teams have a rune spawn warded, he can even get there first because of his blink. It's an odd hero to have mid, but it can still be very effective just by having control of the runes.
On the side lanes you should just get a logger's hatchet if you are a melee hero, and some basic regeneration and stat items, such as minor totems, pretender's crown, health potion, mana potion, runes of blights, iron buckler.
Jungling
Jungling isn't something that every hero can do in the beginning of the game. Very few heroes can start jungling at level 1.
Legionare, Predator, Ophelia, Tempest, War Beast, Zephyr, Wildsoul, Keeper
Some of these heroes have controllable units to take damage for them, but for any jungling heroes who are directly taking the damage from neutral creeps, they should be getting an iron buckler to lessen the damage by a remarkable amount. You can purchase duck boots from the outpost and eventually turn that :IronBuckler: into :IronShield:.
IMPORTANT
There's a very important thing you need to know for jungling and it's something that isn't obvious, but it has a huge effect on the amount of damage you will take when jungling. When you go jungling you need to kill the biggest creep that's doing the most damage first, not the smaller ones even though they die significantly easier. The reason being that your iron buckler or iron shield blocks about all of the damage that the smaller creeps dish out. Sometimes you'll see little gray "19's" popping up on the screen while you are fighting neutral creeps. This is because they aren't even doing a full 20 damage that the iron buckler blocks. Therefore the bigger creeps are the only thing that is actually hurting you. This small bit of information will help you farm significantly better. It will be very important Towards the end of the laning phase where your carry will head into the jungle with only a sustainer farmed up. They will be able to jungle for much longer if they use this tactic and they will be able to farm up that runed axe a lot faster. For most hard carries, they will often rush a runed axe :RunedAxe: as fast as they can. Once they get it, they are able to farm significantly faster than before.
It is very important to let your carry get all the last hits on creeps that he is able to get in the laning phase. You should pair your carry with a hero who is great at babysitting them, or harassing the enemy so your carry can head into the jungle as soon as possible.
Keeper, Jereziah, Accursed, Demented Shaman, Soul Reaper, Nymphora, Voodoo Jester. Those are some good baby sitters
Ganking and Wards
Ganking is very easy to do with the right hero and map awareness. However it shouldn't be attempted every time you see an enemy hero alone. You can very easily find yourself in a dangerous situation if you are trying to gank on the opposite side of the river without enough sight via wards. The most basic way to find out if it is a good or bad idea is to think if the enemy is in a favorable position or not. Is it going to be worth it to tower dive for the kill? Is the kill on that squishy int hero running into his jungle worth it even if there's a decent chance that the enemy teams Zephyr will come out of the fog with 8 tornadoes flying around him? After some practice, and failure, you'll gain more operational risk management and find out if the risk is worth the gain, and how high of a chance the risk will turn into a reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emdv6tXDQeg
Now I'm not saying that things like in this video here are a bad idea. Deadwood had two of his team mates rolling deep with him, and they could have easily taken out the enemy team's carry if he had been farming in that jungle. However it would be much safer if they had the enemy's jungle warded.
If you find yourself getting antsy, eager, or bored because you don't feel like you're doing enough, you're doing it wrong, and possibly your whole team is doing it wrong. After the basic laning phase is over and MIA calls are no longer necessary , you and your team should be discussing plans on what you are going to do next whether it be pushing a tower when it is clear and safe to do so, grouping up or stealthing across the river to set up wards, stacking creep spawns for your carry, or setting up bait, or ganks in a safe way.
You'll want to focus the ganks on the heroes who need the most farm, so usually the carries in the game.
You'll need to counter the enemy's wards in some way. If they are warding in hard to find places, it would be worth it to get a bound eye :BoundEye: to find their wards. It would make it extremely easy to find wards and you can just drop off the eye in your pool so it won't be at risk from a team mate dying. You'll be able to pick it up the next time you want to go for a ward run. Wards are a huge part of this game and you won't be able to shut down the enemy's carry at all if they have defensive wards set up. Here are some ideal ward placements.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/wardweewooo.jpg?t=1274729288
The red circled wards indicate ward placements that are most of the time exclusively used for the Hellborne, blue is for placement that can be used for either sides that helps prevent ganks, and yellow is for Legion placement.
The northern most ward for the legion to put down is one of the best places for a ward for late game and when you want to hunt the hellborne's carry. It is extremely useful, when I'm playing the role of shutting down the enemy carry, before I even farm up Stormspirit, I can just walk right up to them when they are at the heavy creep spawn closest to their base and just trap them in Pollywog's wards since they'll just be standing there fighting some Catman Champs.
The lowest ward on the map for the Hellborne to use to hunt the Legion's carry while jungling. You can get full sight of them on their heavy creep spawn as well. All the blue circled wards are actually all gank peventing wards for both sides except maybe one of them which only helps Hellborne, it's the one on the entrance of Hellborne's mid lane going into the jungle.
There are two wards that I have pointed out by a white arrow. These are ward placements that give you sight of the top of your opponents hill, so you can continue to harass them, or simply just to make sure they don't get a head start on you to a rune that has just spawned. The ward in that spot that I placed down for the Hellborne side actually has sight of the top of the Legion's hill as well as the top rune spawn. You should go into practice mode and play around with those ward placements a bit, you can find a couple different spots that give great sight as well as catching sight of a rune spawn if you put some thought into it.
Notice how there are two wards for the Legion and Hellborne that are in the same spot. Each faction has the opportunity to block creeps from spawning with one of those wards, so it is even and fair. The Legion can block a creep spawn with the top rune ward, and the Hellborne can black a creep spawn at the bottom rune spawn at the Legion's jungle.
I've even went as far as buying wards of revelation and putting them in almost all of the enemy's creep spawns. This blocks anymore creeps from respawning while that ward is placed there. It's not something that will have great purpose, however it will help if you use it right. Like spawn blocking the creep camps that you don't have your ward of sight on. This forces them to get some small amount of farm from the creep camp that your team has vision of so you can easily gank them there since there will be nothing to farm anywhere else. Odd tactics like this are things that make you grow as a player just from toying around with them.
Last Hitting Tactics!
I want to cover some last hitting information that a lot of people don't recognize. This game will work the same every time you play it. A tower will hit a warlock two times and it will be in last hit range. A melee hero with a logger's hatchet can last hit it after that, but if you are a weak range hero without much stats, you might need to hit it twice from that point. Knowing things like this, you can get the first hit at the beginning, its a constant in the game. Constants never change.
Another thing to know about last hitting is that there can be mind games to it if both opposing heroes have an auto attack that hits about as hard as eachother.
However sometimes you find yourself in a very bad match up. If you are a ranged hero who only has a bottle without stats, there won't be any mind games at all. You need to have a competitive auto attack, because you won't always be playing against someone you are far better than. You also won't always have perfect rune control to fuel your bottle, which means you won't be able to harass them to the point where they can't go in to last hit. So on top of everything mentioned, if your auto attack can't even contest theres, then you have nothing to fall back on, and will lose that laning trial.
The Laning Mindgame (or lack thereof)
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/pebsvoom.jpg?t=1274673118
Take a look at this for a moment. Pebbles has gone mid against a Bubbles, and he came armed with a logger's hatchet, some regen, and either stats, iron buckler, or a guardian ring that he'll later turn into his ring of sorcery. If Bubbles is running that bottle, there is definitely no way he's going to get any last hits. When I find myself in a situation like this, I tell my friends that I'm going to count how many entire creep waves I can last hit in a row before i miss one. When I'm on the unfortunate end of this scenario, I'm having a miserable time, usually fighting against a Bloodhunter who I can't do anything to because he just last hits everything and is constantly being healed as a result of it. In any case, if Pebbles is packing a logger's hatchet, his damage will be so much higher than his ranged opponents that there won't be a mind game at all. In example, if Pebbles does 100 damage and has a hatchet, and Bubbles does 60 damage, Pebbles will just wait until a creep is around 110 health and just safely and easily last hit when Bubbles won't even have the opportunity to try. Now I'm going to cover what mind game I'm talking about in this next part.
Range vs Range Mind Game
When you and your opponent are both ranged auto attackers, there's a small mind game that can have a huge impact on who's dominant, and watching this unfold will easily show who the better last hitter is. It is based on your damage output and your attack's projective speed. There is a set time that you need to auto attack so that you last hit a creep, and when two ranged attackers are against each other, they have to stretch it so they are hitting exactly when the creep's health is in range by the time their projectile reaches that creep. Now there's two effective mind games that can be used.
The first, and slightly less effective the higher skilled your opponent is, since range vs range makes both players auto attack slightly earlier, you last hit normally until you are both having trouble with the timing. What usually happens is similar to when you are in a pub and your selfish jerk of a lane mate is competing for last hits with you. I bet you know what I'm talking about, you both try to get it as soon as it might be in range, you mess up the timing a bit too early, and a creep gets it because you left a creep with 5 health after you attacked it, but right before your lane mate attacked. This happens the same way when two ranged characters go head to head, they attack too early half the time and as a result, a creep ends up getting it.
There are two things that help solve this problem and can put it into your favor. The first way is to simply have the faster auto attack, that will make the opponent forced to try and get it too early. The second thing that can win you this war is to simply get closer to the creep than your opponent. Corrupted Disciple would beat Pollywog Priest easily if both players were at the same skill level, and the same distance away from their target. Pollywog has a better chance of getting it if he is standing in melee range of the creep.
Now the second and much more effective way is... don't even hit that creep! That's right, the next level to this mind game showdown is to appear as the less dominant person. You simply auto attack first, however, attack the creep standing to the side of the creep that is about to die. When your opponent sees you starting up your attack animation, he'll start to do his, because like I mentioned before, the person who moves second will win in that case. However, you aren't hitting that creep, you are aiming at the one next to it with full health. This makes it so your opponent will think you are the lame-o who went first, then he'll hit it early, trying to nab the kill before the creeps normally would get it. So you just use your first auto attack on any other creep, and immediately hit the creep that is about to die. I hope this isn't too complicated for anyone to grasp, I promise it's effective.
I remember one of the greatest performances in mid that I ever saw was by bkid. It was a tournament match and he was blacksmith. He had an immaculate creep score and it was the talk of the game. When he was interviewed after his amazing performance he was asked how he was so good at last hitting, he replied that he's just really good at this game. Last hitting mind games and tactics like the ones I mentioned are part of how he is so good at it. Those are things that make him so great at it, just simple knowledge like I have mentioned.
Juking and Fog of War
There are a few different ways of using fog of war to your advantage. You can become very good at juking by knowing how the mind games work, and paths set out between trees, and what new paths open up just by knocking one down.
The mind games with juking are successful when they are down either a bit smarter than your opponent, or one step dumber. Let me show you what I mean starting with one step smarter.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/juke1.jpg?t=1274682441
This is at the hellborne neutral creep spawn that gets pulled to behind the first tower in the lane. Not everyone knows about every single nook and cranny in the map. Even a single practice mode game can help you find the majority of the good hiding spots if you just browse around the map. Having more awareness if the map on a fundamental level like this can put you leaps and bounds ahead of your opponent. I've personally never even seen anyone else even use this spot before, but to me it's a big life saver when I'm running away from ganking the enemy team's carry in the jungle.
Before I go on to the next form of juking, I want to note how important it is to always have a homecoming stone on you at all times aside from the first few levels of the game. You'll need them to evade deaths and protect towers and team mates who are getting tower dived on, or at least to get the revenge kill. Not all heroes even have stuns to stop you from porting back to base, so with a homecoming stone, you won't even have to juke yourself into a safe place to port back to base. Heroes like Armadon, Bloodhunter, Predator, and Arachna can't even stop you.
Now for the second kind of juke mind games. The step below average intelligence, or at least it seems. It's a last resort tactic that I use when I simply don't have the spacing allowed for a normal juke. It is effective because it's uncommon, therefore unexpected. When they think they have a guaranteed kill, and normally would, this little trick works pretty much all the time. The secret is... run towards them instead of away.
That's right, I said it! Sounds very stupid doesn't it? It usually is unless you have just about no spacing between you. It even works when they have marchers at level 5 and you don't! (Swiftblade comes to mind). Let me show you how it's done.
http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo255/willyoutrust/hirojuke.jpg?t=1274686211
Now in step one. We're a bit limited on space to flee or juke. In this particular situation you could be any level from 3 to 7, and Swiftblade loves starting with those marchers. There isn't time or space for a normal juke. You would just keep running west until you can go south through the trees into you lane and hope for the best, and probably end up dying. What you need to do in these almost certain death situations is find the nearest tree that sticks out enough for you to bend around the corner for as little as half a second of being hidden in fog. Once you can't see them, that means they can't see you either, so you pause about one forth of a second, and start running towards where he is coming from, and then some. That is what happened between step one and two. Step three in this case would be for you to successfully get back to your tower, eat some trees while sucking your thumb, and get over it. When you get it, it'll be sweet. you friends watching will start laughing out loud and breakycpk will be praising you for it over the next half hour if you're in a tourny match. But don't even let it get to your head, eventually this becomes a dime a dozen to you, and most other people will keep having their jaws dropped in amazement every time they even see a mediocre juke. That's not important, what is important is that over time you'll become more confident with yourself and you'll know you're getting better at this game. Trash talk will effect you a bit less because you'll become secure and sure of how skilled you are. If you keep an open mind after that, you will only get better. However keeping an open mind means realizing that you still have so much you can become better at.
Attitude and Composure
Composure is King in this game. Folks, this has got to be the most rage inducing game that's ever existed. A novice simply heading towards the wrong lane will get him cussed out in ALL chat. The most important thing to remember in this game is to stay calm, for more reasons than one. When people are about to go in for a gank, or if someone who had an invis rune pops all their abilities on you out of nowhere, a lot of people get jumpy and panic. If you stay calm you can get out of a bad situation a lot easier and faster. When people jump in on me now I just stay very calm, tap my stormspirit hotkey, click on them, and there you have it. Now I can just trap them in some voodoo wards, bind them inside of it, jolt ftw, and there you have it. I just successfully turned a gank around, and now my wards will remain there to take out all the creeps present. If I'm lucky enough to be close to the jungle, I'll grab some neutrals and pull them to my wards. now I'm 400 gold richer because I stayed calm and had a second to analyze the situation instead of just panicking that I was getting bursted and trying to run away.
Another reason to stay calm is because if you have a crappy early game, your late game will be even worse if you and your team are just gloomy about not being in the lead. Early game gankers and pushers do their jobs, and that's okay. The begining of the game being 7 kills down 14 minutes in doesn't matter at all really. The game ends up being about the team make up. I've always been great at any game I picked up. Back in Halo 2 I'd feel bad if I didn't have 7 more kills than deaths. I'd be 10-10 and feel horrible.
That brought me no good coming into this game, if you are support on the winning team you can even have a negative KDR, just don't let it get you down and keep your chin up. You'd be surprised what you can come back from.
My current KDR is probably like 0.8-1 KDR and my PSR recently dropped to 1460 after playing with some rl friends that don't know about teamwork yet. That's okay too, I've been as far as 1670's before without even trying. I've had a 1.2 KDR on my smurf account in the beta phase. I realized my KDR on my smurfs were far better than my normal account because I would get stressed out worrying about some lame stats. It isn't worth it, as long as you know that you're pretty good, that's all you'll need to get back up on your feet. I'd probably be 1550 again already if I weren't writing this guide right now, haha.
Plus, it's even in the game hints that pop up on the loading screen; if you direct anger towards people and start barking out orders, they won't even listen. If you're calm and you suggest good ideas, only the baddies and scrubs will ignore you. Even then you have a chance of getting their attention.
Your attitude alone can change everyone else's. If I hear my best friends sighing because they just both got double tapped, it drags me down in spite of everything I already know about the game and how composure works.