MrTortoise1
09-28-2009, 06:04 PM
Ok this is a guide by a noob (who likes explaining stuff) for uber noobs that haven't really played before, or have played a game or 2 and realised just how far over their heads they are. Been there, done that and survived the abuse you are no doubt getting.
I am trying to describe whats going on in the order you encounter it. Hopefully it will work, no doubt replies will give me a rude awakening.
HON is great fun and has so much depth to it once you get the basics. I am learning stuff every game.
Contents
1.0 Most Important Rule In HON
2.0 General
3.0 Character Selection
3.1 Stats
3.2 Melee vs Ranged
3.3 Abilities
4.0 Selecting units and Moving
5.0 Items and the Shop
6.0 Laning - currently part of Character but deserves its own section
7.0 Ganking
8.0 Jungling
1.0 THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN HON - learnt from hard experience.
Do not die, it is that simple. Dying is the worst thing you can possibly do. Do not chase to try and get a kill because if you both die then you have just cost yourself gold and given experience to the other team. However if you die and the other guy doesn't (which is what often happens) you will have lost gold and given the other team experience which will just make it harder to kill them next time. It is very very rare that sacrificing yourself will actually be a positive thing - some characters are designed to get into the middle of a fight and do los of damage, however you *really* want to have your escape planned or else you will become less effective over time and that is a downward spiral leading to 2 kills 12 deaths. If you die early it can be almost impossible not to die over and over again because you will miss experience from the creeps whilst you are dead and then again for the time it takes you to get back to your lane (this is also why the most important item in the game is the homecoming stone, closely followed by the courier - which you can use to bring you items, health and mana whilst you stay in lane to get experience)
But i would add one important thing that has to be your rule number one.
If you are new ask for everything. What would be good to buy. What hero you should pick as beginner. Wich lane you should choose and so on...
Often at the start when i feeded all other guys started to call me names and told me how bad iam, but when i asked them after this what iam doing wrong and how i could play my hero better all became way more friendly.... - Drogg
Also do not play EM ... deaths in EM are even harsher then normal mode I have found. Also agi heroes tend to dominate in it.
2.0 GENERAL
The aim of HON is to destroy the opponents Shrine or make them concede.
It is generally played as a 5v5 game
The game is played 5v5 generally and is usually on a map with 3 lanes, names top, middle and bottom.
Usually you get 2 characters going into each of the side lanes and one in the middle lane
Each lane has 3 towers defending it which are deadly early game and a harrassment later on.
Each lane also has a mele and ranged barracks which produce units every 30 seconds starting on the 00 mark. these then run along the lane to the opponents shrine unless they get killed first.
Killing stuff (LAST HITTING) is what gets you gold, being in the area that something is killed will get you experience. the gold earnt for a kill is in yellow numbers wheras the experience earnt from a kill is in blue numbers. You can also kill your own units when they are low on health. This is called DENYING because you deny your opponents the gold and some of the experience.
3.0 Character Selection:
There are also about 40 heroes to choose from who can buy many many items which are used to give your character a customised feel to how it plays. EG some characters can be played as support or as highly offensive attackers - many would argue that one play style is wrong and out of character. But if you want you can force a hero into any role you want - the guides you will find are usually aimed at developing a characters natural strengths and mitigating its weaknesses.
3.1 Stats
The heroes have 3 stats, strength, intelligence and agility.
Each hero will also have one of these stats chosen to be its primary stat. This means that adding points to this stat will increase that heroes damage output. It is also generally true that when the character gains a level from gaining experience from the kills happening around him that the character will gain more of that stat than the others meaning that by the end of the game that stat should be significantly higher than the other stats and hence the characterisatino of being one of those types of hero.
When you are choosing your hero you can see how much of a stat you gain per level, some agi heroes gain a lot more than others - but will have weaknesses in other stats. these weaknesses relative ot other heroes can be tweaked as the game goes on via items or choosing to boost stats over an ability when you level up.
As a general rule you do not want more than 2 of any type of hero in a team and you want at least 1 of each type.
when you add +1 stat to a characters primary stat you gain +1 damage as well as the bonuses that stat would normally give you
3.2 Melee vs Ranged
Once you have chosen what stat you want to be primary you then need to decide if you want a melee or ranged character. Remember HON is a team game, and a balanced team is essential. If your team has 2-3 melee characters you will probably find you do very well if you pick a ranged hero.
these 2 types result in different roles in a lane.
Because there are 3 lanes and 5 heroes you often find that one goes mid to solo (he gains more exp faster) and 2 heroes go to each of the side lanes (these 2 heroes then share the experience).
The majority of the game is about being in a lane killing the creeps to get money and experience. You are also trying to kill your own creeps to stop the enemy heroes from gaining as much gold + exp, this is called farming and denying rspecivley. This is what results in the fun part of the game, namley heroes killing each other mercilessly.
You can imagine a lane with 2 melee heroes against 2 ranged heroes and it is fairly obvious that the mele heroes are going to have a very hard time of it. They have to get close to the creeps and enemy heroes to harm them wheras the ranged heroes can stand back and gradually wear them down. the ranged heroes have the problem that they dont really do much damage and if the melee guys get close they are goign to be in a world of pain - however you definatley want to be on the ranged side of things. Obviously as with everythign there are exceptions - which is where playing the game lots comes in. after 20 or so game syou will start to notice heroes that work well together - I am just pointing out crude guidelines.
If you end up with one ranged and one melee hero in the lane then the ranged hero should really be focussing on harassing the enemy heroes to keep them away so that your mele hero can get some farm in. This will help *both* heroes bcause when the mele is ready to do some damage he will be confident that you will back him up because you have been whittling away and everything works smoothly. I cannot stress how important it is for a ranged hero to look after his melee team mate. You really dont want the melee guy having to stand next to you because he is getting owned when he goes to last hit - you have no chance of a hero kill like this. Controlled aggression is the name of the game - do not die, they may have a nuke or stun saved for when you over commit.
So we can see how hero selection effects how a lane will play out - and this changes every game.
3.3 Abilites
Each hero also has 4 abilities. 3 normal abilities and 1 ultimate that can be levelled at lvls 6, 11 and 16. you can also boost stats. the order in which these are done is often key to success with a character. If you have a low mana pool then you generally do not want to boost abilities that will consume more mana, boost an ability that has constant mana usage - or boost stats to gain extra mana, damage, mana regen, as well as hit points. Its all about balance. For some characters eg moon queen or swiftblade doing this early (because only their first skills are very importnat early on) can give you a perceptible advantage. Another example would be laning with say swiftblade because if you take the ability or character with a stun (Eg voodoo jester, puppet master, glacius) then it is likley that you will start to get some very early hero kills in your lane.
Remember HON is a team game, so abilities that can disable an enemy hero or heroes are very very valuable - eg chronos field, voodoo jesters stun or magmuses surge. they allow you rteam to either focus fire that hero or another hero that is even more threatening. Other abilities that are very importnat but are overlooked are abilities that help your team out. EG Scout or the tree (keeper of the forest - also has an area of effect that holsd characters) magic eyes that can reveal enemy units at key locations - these skills re so important that they should be prioritised and used. Aura effects are also very helpful - eg glacius has a mana regen aura. Other characters have damage auras - whilst these are very good late game they are not so good early game becaus nobody does enough damage yet to make 15% extra really hurt. 15% of 200 dmg matters, 15% of 50 does not so much. Ie you get a larger damage boost if you level these around lvl 11+. the mana boost is valuable because most characters will be needing mana regen.
Stuns are great because a 2 second stun is just that early game and late game. Wheras an ability that does 100 dmg looks amazing early game when the majority of heroes will have <900 hp but late game when they have 2000 hp it sucks. This idea of scaling is also why %age modifiers are so good in comparison to straight one off gains - which look a lot more appealing early game.
4.0 SELECTING UNITS AND MOVING
in general left click will select a unit or building in game or activate an ability or spell, it will also apply that ability or spell to the next thing you left click on if it can effect anything other than yourself.
A right click will issue a move or attack order to whatever is selected. If you have an ability selected it will cancel its selection
You can bind units to the number keys by selecting the units, holding control and pressing the number to bind it to and you can then select this unit at any tiem by pressing this number ... double tap to immediatley goto that unit.
This is important with the courier as you can select and move it indpendantly of your hero.
You can also queue up commands by using the shift key. This could be used to eat a tree and keep on going or to tell your courier to give you several items and go back to base. Useful stuff ...
your ability hot keys are bound to Q,W,E,R
also you can tell your character to hold position and not move with H
5.0 ITEMS AND THE SHOP
When the game starts the items you should buy the majority of the time are
1. Courier ... left click on it to activate it. Now bind yourself and it to hot keys.
2. 4x stat booster
3 2xrunes of blight (these allow you to eat trees to regain health)
then a couple of minutes into the game you may want to buy 2 mana potions (100gp) and get the courier to bring them, after this you probably want to build some of the initiation stat boost items. If you are melee against melee you may want to consider a shield as well (350gp total).
That should get you 10-15 mins into the game all set to start buying items for your build.
when you increase a stat by 1 point this is what you get.
Str: +1 str = +19hp and +0.03 hp regen
Agi: +1 agi = +0.14 armour and +0.01 attack speed
Int +1 Int = +13 mana and +0.04 mana regen
do the maths but for 212 gold you get a hell of a lot - especially relative to your starting stats.
As a general rule in HON you get more per gold for the cheap tems than the expensive ones. the reason why you buy the expensive ones is that you run out of slots - or they give you some kind of ability that you would find useful.
You also want to have Marchers by level 11 at the latest with most heroes also - some like swiftblade they maybe an item you get very early on (although soulscream rings may be better for last hitting = more cash quicker).
But you can see that adding agility doesnt add much armour and so armour items are worth the money, also it takes a lot of agility to increase attack speed, so if you want attack speed then the items for it are worth the money. Wheras if you want hit points or hp regen then maybe you want to buy a +str item because then you get the hit points and a small amount of regen in one?
In short you can easily tell that if you are not agility then you probably don't want to boost it in favour of int or str. An agi char boosts agi because he also gets the damage from it but will often buy attack speed items. However a str hero may want to boost int if he finds mana is low or just buy a mana item.
So as a general rule you want to be buying items that increase your characters primary stat. However the point of the game is that each is different. One game you may find that hit points are a serious problem and so you may buy some str items even though you are an int char or alternativley you might choose to buy some armour to reduce the damage taken (obviously use maths or trial and error).
6.0 Laning
This is really covered in far more detail than i can ever do justice in other guides. so rather than do a crap job, go and find them.
Here is a link to Nome's Basic Laning Guide
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2625
7.0 Ganking
Always keep an eye on the minimap ... it will save your ass over and over again.
You will quickly discover people shouting whenever an enemy hero leaves a lane, this is something you should do - even if you know hes going for health because you do not know where that hero may pop up next. Moreover if the lane that he appears on isn't warned someone will likley die and as I mentioned above that is the number one crime in HON. Do not die. This is called ganking and is what many people will say the game is all about. That is because laning quickly becomes second nature - your attention quickly moves towards preparing for a gank.
when you are laning the line of creeps pushes too and fro between the towers. If you have openings into the rest of the map behind you and inbetween you and a tower then you are liable to get ganked and need to be extremley careful. this means that you have to be keeping track of heroes going missing by looking at the mini map adn generally beign aware of what is happening around you. I'm not going to go into howto gank simply because that is the least of your worries - the last thing you want to be doing is running around the map missing out of gold and experience. the most important thing is never to let yourself get on your own because then you will get targeted. Keep it simply until you are not spectating most of the game waiting to respawn - the key to HON is not dying (and keeping up with gold and experience - which you can do in lane).
Because of this need for your back to be defended you *really* want the creep line to hover just in front of your tower. This means that you want to be - as a team - last hitting your own creeps (which will push the line into their tower) and denying to cancel out the last hitting damage. When you want it to move back you shuold focus on auto attacking your own creeps. However the most important thing is to always get the last hits. If you go for the deny and fail you may help the enemy last hit and also not get any gold.
Once this early game phase draws to an end because people start ganking the enemies that get too deep - yes by not attacking early you help early game ganks. Knocking a tower gets the team gold and the person who knocks it down gets a 200 bonus, this is a lot of gold and is valuable. It has disadvantages because now the creep line will on average (unless you deny like a madman) be further away from your base meaning you will be pushed into their territory which exposes you to gankage - do not be the guy who pushes on his own and dies over and over. Once a tower goes down its often best to move to another lane. this is when the teams start to group and team fights begin.
8.0 Jungling
Jungling is when a character strts in the jungle from level 1 (this is the area with neutral creeps that you can kill). I am not referring to this. When the team fights start you may find that all of your creeps are pushed into their territory and its too dangerous to go and kill them on your own. At this point if you can you can go into your jungle and start killing creeps there so that you are still gaining exp and money. However you have to pay attention because you really need to get back with the team to be pushing (often in this situation you will be waiting for people to spawn or for the enemy to push the creeps back).
Aside from all that ... really you need to read other guides but i am hoping that this covers the basics as you start a game and get into it.
This is a work in progress (obviously) constructive comments are welcome but remember I am trying to aim it very low and dont want to get into a lot of maths - i regret putting in the str,agi and int gains already.
It needs structure - I am not entirely happy with the order and havent really gone into last hitting in lanes very much.
Other Guides I think might be useful
Heroes of Newerth Basics: - this is a good objective information based guide with a lot of work put into it.
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=5465
revision:
29/9 - added contents + font sizes + added links to some other guides
I am trying to describe whats going on in the order you encounter it. Hopefully it will work, no doubt replies will give me a rude awakening.
HON is great fun and has so much depth to it once you get the basics. I am learning stuff every game.
Contents
1.0 Most Important Rule In HON
2.0 General
3.0 Character Selection
3.1 Stats
3.2 Melee vs Ranged
3.3 Abilities
4.0 Selecting units and Moving
5.0 Items and the Shop
6.0 Laning - currently part of Character but deserves its own section
7.0 Ganking
8.0 Jungling
1.0 THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN HON - learnt from hard experience.
Do not die, it is that simple. Dying is the worst thing you can possibly do. Do not chase to try and get a kill because if you both die then you have just cost yourself gold and given experience to the other team. However if you die and the other guy doesn't (which is what often happens) you will have lost gold and given the other team experience which will just make it harder to kill them next time. It is very very rare that sacrificing yourself will actually be a positive thing - some characters are designed to get into the middle of a fight and do los of damage, however you *really* want to have your escape planned or else you will become less effective over time and that is a downward spiral leading to 2 kills 12 deaths. If you die early it can be almost impossible not to die over and over again because you will miss experience from the creeps whilst you are dead and then again for the time it takes you to get back to your lane (this is also why the most important item in the game is the homecoming stone, closely followed by the courier - which you can use to bring you items, health and mana whilst you stay in lane to get experience)
But i would add one important thing that has to be your rule number one.
If you are new ask for everything. What would be good to buy. What hero you should pick as beginner. Wich lane you should choose and so on...
Often at the start when i feeded all other guys started to call me names and told me how bad iam, but when i asked them after this what iam doing wrong and how i could play my hero better all became way more friendly.... - Drogg
Also do not play EM ... deaths in EM are even harsher then normal mode I have found. Also agi heroes tend to dominate in it.
2.0 GENERAL
The aim of HON is to destroy the opponents Shrine or make them concede.
It is generally played as a 5v5 game
The game is played 5v5 generally and is usually on a map with 3 lanes, names top, middle and bottom.
Usually you get 2 characters going into each of the side lanes and one in the middle lane
Each lane has 3 towers defending it which are deadly early game and a harrassment later on.
Each lane also has a mele and ranged barracks which produce units every 30 seconds starting on the 00 mark. these then run along the lane to the opponents shrine unless they get killed first.
Killing stuff (LAST HITTING) is what gets you gold, being in the area that something is killed will get you experience. the gold earnt for a kill is in yellow numbers wheras the experience earnt from a kill is in blue numbers. You can also kill your own units when they are low on health. This is called DENYING because you deny your opponents the gold and some of the experience.
3.0 Character Selection:
There are also about 40 heroes to choose from who can buy many many items which are used to give your character a customised feel to how it plays. EG some characters can be played as support or as highly offensive attackers - many would argue that one play style is wrong and out of character. But if you want you can force a hero into any role you want - the guides you will find are usually aimed at developing a characters natural strengths and mitigating its weaknesses.
3.1 Stats
The heroes have 3 stats, strength, intelligence and agility.
Each hero will also have one of these stats chosen to be its primary stat. This means that adding points to this stat will increase that heroes damage output. It is also generally true that when the character gains a level from gaining experience from the kills happening around him that the character will gain more of that stat than the others meaning that by the end of the game that stat should be significantly higher than the other stats and hence the characterisatino of being one of those types of hero.
When you are choosing your hero you can see how much of a stat you gain per level, some agi heroes gain a lot more than others - but will have weaknesses in other stats. these weaknesses relative ot other heroes can be tweaked as the game goes on via items or choosing to boost stats over an ability when you level up.
As a general rule you do not want more than 2 of any type of hero in a team and you want at least 1 of each type.
when you add +1 stat to a characters primary stat you gain +1 damage as well as the bonuses that stat would normally give you
3.2 Melee vs Ranged
Once you have chosen what stat you want to be primary you then need to decide if you want a melee or ranged character. Remember HON is a team game, and a balanced team is essential. If your team has 2-3 melee characters you will probably find you do very well if you pick a ranged hero.
these 2 types result in different roles in a lane.
Because there are 3 lanes and 5 heroes you often find that one goes mid to solo (he gains more exp faster) and 2 heroes go to each of the side lanes (these 2 heroes then share the experience).
The majority of the game is about being in a lane killing the creeps to get money and experience. You are also trying to kill your own creeps to stop the enemy heroes from gaining as much gold + exp, this is called farming and denying rspecivley. This is what results in the fun part of the game, namley heroes killing each other mercilessly.
You can imagine a lane with 2 melee heroes against 2 ranged heroes and it is fairly obvious that the mele heroes are going to have a very hard time of it. They have to get close to the creeps and enemy heroes to harm them wheras the ranged heroes can stand back and gradually wear them down. the ranged heroes have the problem that they dont really do much damage and if the melee guys get close they are goign to be in a world of pain - however you definatley want to be on the ranged side of things. Obviously as with everythign there are exceptions - which is where playing the game lots comes in. after 20 or so game syou will start to notice heroes that work well together - I am just pointing out crude guidelines.
If you end up with one ranged and one melee hero in the lane then the ranged hero should really be focussing on harassing the enemy heroes to keep them away so that your mele hero can get some farm in. This will help *both* heroes bcause when the mele is ready to do some damage he will be confident that you will back him up because you have been whittling away and everything works smoothly. I cannot stress how important it is for a ranged hero to look after his melee team mate. You really dont want the melee guy having to stand next to you because he is getting owned when he goes to last hit - you have no chance of a hero kill like this. Controlled aggression is the name of the game - do not die, they may have a nuke or stun saved for when you over commit.
So we can see how hero selection effects how a lane will play out - and this changes every game.
3.3 Abilites
Each hero also has 4 abilities. 3 normal abilities and 1 ultimate that can be levelled at lvls 6, 11 and 16. you can also boost stats. the order in which these are done is often key to success with a character. If you have a low mana pool then you generally do not want to boost abilities that will consume more mana, boost an ability that has constant mana usage - or boost stats to gain extra mana, damage, mana regen, as well as hit points. Its all about balance. For some characters eg moon queen or swiftblade doing this early (because only their first skills are very importnat early on) can give you a perceptible advantage. Another example would be laning with say swiftblade because if you take the ability or character with a stun (Eg voodoo jester, puppet master, glacius) then it is likley that you will start to get some very early hero kills in your lane.
Remember HON is a team game, so abilities that can disable an enemy hero or heroes are very very valuable - eg chronos field, voodoo jesters stun or magmuses surge. they allow you rteam to either focus fire that hero or another hero that is even more threatening. Other abilities that are very importnat but are overlooked are abilities that help your team out. EG Scout or the tree (keeper of the forest - also has an area of effect that holsd characters) magic eyes that can reveal enemy units at key locations - these skills re so important that they should be prioritised and used. Aura effects are also very helpful - eg glacius has a mana regen aura. Other characters have damage auras - whilst these are very good late game they are not so good early game becaus nobody does enough damage yet to make 15% extra really hurt. 15% of 200 dmg matters, 15% of 50 does not so much. Ie you get a larger damage boost if you level these around lvl 11+. the mana boost is valuable because most characters will be needing mana regen.
Stuns are great because a 2 second stun is just that early game and late game. Wheras an ability that does 100 dmg looks amazing early game when the majority of heroes will have <900 hp but late game when they have 2000 hp it sucks. This idea of scaling is also why %age modifiers are so good in comparison to straight one off gains - which look a lot more appealing early game.
4.0 SELECTING UNITS AND MOVING
in general left click will select a unit or building in game or activate an ability or spell, it will also apply that ability or spell to the next thing you left click on if it can effect anything other than yourself.
A right click will issue a move or attack order to whatever is selected. If you have an ability selected it will cancel its selection
You can bind units to the number keys by selecting the units, holding control and pressing the number to bind it to and you can then select this unit at any tiem by pressing this number ... double tap to immediatley goto that unit.
This is important with the courier as you can select and move it indpendantly of your hero.
You can also queue up commands by using the shift key. This could be used to eat a tree and keep on going or to tell your courier to give you several items and go back to base. Useful stuff ...
your ability hot keys are bound to Q,W,E,R
also you can tell your character to hold position and not move with H
5.0 ITEMS AND THE SHOP
When the game starts the items you should buy the majority of the time are
1. Courier ... left click on it to activate it. Now bind yourself and it to hot keys.
2. 4x stat booster
3 2xrunes of blight (these allow you to eat trees to regain health)
then a couple of minutes into the game you may want to buy 2 mana potions (100gp) and get the courier to bring them, after this you probably want to build some of the initiation stat boost items. If you are melee against melee you may want to consider a shield as well (350gp total).
That should get you 10-15 mins into the game all set to start buying items for your build.
when you increase a stat by 1 point this is what you get.
Str: +1 str = +19hp and +0.03 hp regen
Agi: +1 agi = +0.14 armour and +0.01 attack speed
Int +1 Int = +13 mana and +0.04 mana regen
do the maths but for 212 gold you get a hell of a lot - especially relative to your starting stats.
As a general rule in HON you get more per gold for the cheap tems than the expensive ones. the reason why you buy the expensive ones is that you run out of slots - or they give you some kind of ability that you would find useful.
You also want to have Marchers by level 11 at the latest with most heroes also - some like swiftblade they maybe an item you get very early on (although soulscream rings may be better for last hitting = more cash quicker).
But you can see that adding agility doesnt add much armour and so armour items are worth the money, also it takes a lot of agility to increase attack speed, so if you want attack speed then the items for it are worth the money. Wheras if you want hit points or hp regen then maybe you want to buy a +str item because then you get the hit points and a small amount of regen in one?
In short you can easily tell that if you are not agility then you probably don't want to boost it in favour of int or str. An agi char boosts agi because he also gets the damage from it but will often buy attack speed items. However a str hero may want to boost int if he finds mana is low or just buy a mana item.
So as a general rule you want to be buying items that increase your characters primary stat. However the point of the game is that each is different. One game you may find that hit points are a serious problem and so you may buy some str items even though you are an int char or alternativley you might choose to buy some armour to reduce the damage taken (obviously use maths or trial and error).
6.0 Laning
This is really covered in far more detail than i can ever do justice in other guides. so rather than do a crap job, go and find them.
Here is a link to Nome's Basic Laning Guide
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2625
7.0 Ganking
Always keep an eye on the minimap ... it will save your ass over and over again.
You will quickly discover people shouting whenever an enemy hero leaves a lane, this is something you should do - even if you know hes going for health because you do not know where that hero may pop up next. Moreover if the lane that he appears on isn't warned someone will likley die and as I mentioned above that is the number one crime in HON. Do not die. This is called ganking and is what many people will say the game is all about. That is because laning quickly becomes second nature - your attention quickly moves towards preparing for a gank.
when you are laning the line of creeps pushes too and fro between the towers. If you have openings into the rest of the map behind you and inbetween you and a tower then you are liable to get ganked and need to be extremley careful. this means that you have to be keeping track of heroes going missing by looking at the mini map adn generally beign aware of what is happening around you. I'm not going to go into howto gank simply because that is the least of your worries - the last thing you want to be doing is running around the map missing out of gold and experience. the most important thing is never to let yourself get on your own because then you will get targeted. Keep it simply until you are not spectating most of the game waiting to respawn - the key to HON is not dying (and keeping up with gold and experience - which you can do in lane).
Because of this need for your back to be defended you *really* want the creep line to hover just in front of your tower. This means that you want to be - as a team - last hitting your own creeps (which will push the line into their tower) and denying to cancel out the last hitting damage. When you want it to move back you shuold focus on auto attacking your own creeps. However the most important thing is to always get the last hits. If you go for the deny and fail you may help the enemy last hit and also not get any gold.
Once this early game phase draws to an end because people start ganking the enemies that get too deep - yes by not attacking early you help early game ganks. Knocking a tower gets the team gold and the person who knocks it down gets a 200 bonus, this is a lot of gold and is valuable. It has disadvantages because now the creep line will on average (unless you deny like a madman) be further away from your base meaning you will be pushed into their territory which exposes you to gankage - do not be the guy who pushes on his own and dies over and over. Once a tower goes down its often best to move to another lane. this is when the teams start to group and team fights begin.
8.0 Jungling
Jungling is when a character strts in the jungle from level 1 (this is the area with neutral creeps that you can kill). I am not referring to this. When the team fights start you may find that all of your creeps are pushed into their territory and its too dangerous to go and kill them on your own. At this point if you can you can go into your jungle and start killing creeps there so that you are still gaining exp and money. However you have to pay attention because you really need to get back with the team to be pushing (often in this situation you will be waiting for people to spawn or for the enemy to push the creeps back).
Aside from all that ... really you need to read other guides but i am hoping that this covers the basics as you start a game and get into it.
This is a work in progress (obviously) constructive comments are welcome but remember I am trying to aim it very low and dont want to get into a lot of maths - i regret putting in the str,agi and int gains already.
It needs structure - I am not entirely happy with the order and havent really gone into last hitting in lanes very much.
Other Guides I think might be useful
Heroes of Newerth Basics: - this is a good objective information based guide with a lot of work put into it.
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=5465
revision:
29/9 - added contents + font sizes + added links to some other guides