Senatic
11-15-2009, 08:06 AM
An Amateur's Guide to HoN/DotA Strategies and its Terminology.
Now then, I will begin shortly by describing the purpose and my intent with this guide followed by a more detailed description of what I want to cover in it. But first before I get underway I want to make some things perfectly clear.
First of all, this is not a beginners guide, this guide is directed at the players who have grasped the basics of the game and now want to step up their game a bit. This means I am not going to cover the very basic stuff like denying, last hitting and etc. While some of the things I'm gonna go trough are very basic for experienced players there will be a few things that bears reading even for you guys as you should never forget the basics and getting other perspectives on certain concepts is always a good idea. This guide is also going to be purely game play based, we will not be looking at any specific heroes more then when I am making examples, therefor this is not about building a hero, or using specific skills but more a general guide over how to behave with all heroes.
Secondly, I want to clarify right at the start that most of the topics I will discuss was not created by me, some things might have my personal viewpoints and somethings may be entirely created by other people and I will of course provide links and reference to the original guides and the creator(s) when that is the case. Links and references can be found at the end of the guide. I am not in any way trying to take credit for other peoples work. I do however not remember where or from whom I read or learned all of these things so you'll have to excuse me if I do not always do this. I also realize that some of the topics I'm going to cover are already out there on the forums, however I wanted to put them together into a guide for easy access and future reference.
Now then, I'm going to divide this guide into two sections. The first one is going to be about some basic concepts, this part is more aimed at amateurs, the second part is going to be about some more advanced ways of looking at aspects of the game. I might also update, revise and add things as time goes on and per requests. If you think I have missed something feel free to pm me and I will consider adding it to the guide. In order to make easier to find particular parts I have color coded the terminology. Blueish for the basic stuff and green for the advanced.
The basic HoN strategies and their terminology.
1. Juking, what is it and how is it performed?
2. Jungling, maximize your farming.
A. The basics of Jungling.
B. Double spawns.
C. Creep pulling.
3. Spotting/Baiting/Tagging.
4. Animation Canceling.
5. Orb walking.
6. The FOW(Fog of War)
7. Spacing.
8. Creep leeching.
9. Map awareness/Minimap awareness.
10. The Art of shift queuing. (Originally by Totallnewbie, original guide can be found at the end.)
A. Introduction.
B. Tango Juking.
C. Using items.
D. Bottling Runes.
Some more Advanced tactics, ideas and concepts about the game.
This next section is primarily going to be about what's called spatial awareness. This is not the same as map awareness which is a common misconception. I'm going to try to stay as close to the original guide as possible without directly copying it, I will however try to put it in more of a HoN perspective and the way I think aboutit personally.Please remember again that I did not create this concept and I am not trying to take credit for it.
1. Hero picking/Hero roles.
2. HoN and it's dynamic Metagame.(By myself.)
A. The Individual MetaGame.
B. The MetaGame Of A Team.
C. Conclusion.
3. Spatial Awareness. (Original Guide by Ironfisto, link to the original guide can be found at the end.)
A. What is Spatial awareness.
B. Area of Influence (AOI)
C. All around Defense/Offense.(Playing in formation.)
D. Players Field of view.(FOV)
E. Entry of Battle.
F. Ganking.
4. EHP (Original guide by SsxDoTS, link to the original guide can be found at the end.)
So lets get started shall we.
Some Basic HoN Strategies and terminology
1. Juking,
-to make a deceptive move
-to move deceptively in a competitive sport so as to induce an opponent to move in a way that brings about an advantage.
This is the general concept of the word, however it is implemented in different ways and some players only know one side of what Juking is.
Juking can be done in a lot of different ways- all from masking heroes with the FOW to luring an overzealous player into a tower, to aborting a stunning projectile by using another skill. HoN is a game of fast pace and the offensive player always have the advantage of that after initiating an action, the passive or defensive player always have an reaction time. Really good players have extremely low reaction times which is often detailed by good microing and high APM. I will be talking firstly about the art of turning a chase around in different ways and then make a short note of what Juking spots and prolonging your survival time.
So what is relevant when Juking besides hero level and items? Well, mainly the Fog of War(which will hereby be referred to as the FOW) and the players Field of View (which will hereby be referred to as the FOV). I will talk about both in much greater detail later on in this guide. Now lets imagine the simplest of all situations.
Example 1.(both players are amateurs)
You are playing as Pyromancer versus an Arachna in the middle lane. Arachna is a harasser as we all know and will try to harass you. When closing in on level 6 you let her hit you a few times bringing you down to circa 60% of your maximum Health Pool. Arachna will realize that when she hits level 6 she can kill you. Now the tricky part in this particular example is the extreme slowing effects of Arachna and in this case positioning is the key, you need to position yourself in such a place that you can draw Arachna into the towers range but yet not close enough to make her think she won't have time to kill you. The towers range is 700 and Arachna's range is 600 therefor a position of approximately 500 units away from the tower would mean Arachna will have to move 400 units to enter the towers range. Now in order to do this you need to have good reactions because if you start moving at the instance she throws her ultimate this will work and if not it's gonna be a close call at best. For the sake of the example this player succeeds in pulling her into the tower where it's a simple matter of blasting off your skills to kill Arachna.
Yes this situation is unlikely to fool a experienced player against which you will have to use a lot more then their overzealousness to trick. But, in public games and in the heat of battle a lot of people will be overzealous and tricks like these can score you a lot of skills. What you also need to realize is that when doing as in this example, allowing yourself to take damage, you are essentially taking a calculated risk. HoN is a game of risk and taking the right ones is often the difference between winning or losing.
Example 2.
This example will describe a very simple and general example of how to use the FOW to your advantage.
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3369/jukingchase1.jpg
Here an unwitting Chronos is chasing down a weak Hellbringer, unaware of the danger of the Arachna and Jeraziah outside of his FOV. Hellbringer will here stop, be healed by Jeraziah, then proceed to cast life void and unholy shackles on Chronos, in the meantime Arachna's ultimate will have hit Chronos trough the FOW. The combined slowing effects will now be enough to stop Chronos even if he time leaps. He can try to leap into a area that is inaccessible to others but Hellbringers ultimate would level the trees and Chronos would be dead never the less.
Another definition of the word is losing the enemy heroes hunting you by using juke spots (places in the forest where you can stand to appear to have vanished.) or forest paths to confuse and lose them. This describes the two primary types of Juking (most other types are just variations on these). Notice that Juking is very similar to what is generally also called baiting in the examples.
An example of skill Juking is for example if a Hammerstorm throws a stun on Madman and Madman uses his stun just before the impact of Hammerstorm's stun, this will effectively abort the stun tossed by Hammerstorm giving madman a better chance of surviving, there are a lot of ways to Juke skills, I can't detail all of them because that would take to much time, I therefor suggest using common sense. In the example of madman and hammer storm the Juke works because under the duration of Madmans stun he is invulnerable, as such you can figure out what other skills might have the same effect vs a projectile skill, an example of a skill that works similarly is Pharoh's ulti.
Video removed due to the recent patch 1.63 making many of the disjoints demonstrated impossible to perform.
2.
A. Jungling,
the first question we might ask ourselves is of course what is Jungling. Again very simply it is the art of killing neutral creep spawns in the forest instead of going to a lane. Lets start by talking about the pros and cons of Jungling and then proceed to answer the question, what heroes are suitable to Jungle with?
Pros,
-You do not share money or experience with your teammates which is a bonus to both the player doing the Jungling as well as the player left soloing on the lane.
-The enemy team do not have an exact fix on your position, they know you're somewhere in the forest but unless warding do not know exactly where. This makes it easy for you to gank the lane.
-The enemy has no idea of your progress, primarily item wise but a lot of times players will also forget to keep an eye on your level progression as well.
Cons,
- You alone take all the damage.
- Unless playing with a summon the tougher creep spawns will either force you to drink a lot of health potions or return to base.
- If you do get ganked you have no teammates to help you survive, which makes you an easy target for roamers.
So based on this information what heroes are suitable to Jungle with? Well as I hinted at in the cons heroes that can summon or control other units are excellent Junglers as the hero need not take any damage and can stay out Jungling till his or her mana pool is empty. Heroes without this ability often start out on the lane and go into the woods after they've hit level 3 or higher. Example of such heroes are Legionnaire and Zephyr.
There are 3 different types of hero spawns, in order of easiest to hardest they are marked as yellow-orange-red on your mini map.
B. Creating double spawns,
well actually you can create triple and even quadruple spawns. This is often done in competetive play and is generally refered to as creep stacking, often teams will stack several spawn of ancients in an attempt to gain fast money, this is a risky maneuver as enemies may notice you stacking them and take your creeps. All you need to do this however is a basic understanding of the mechanics behind creep spawns. Creep stacking is particularly useful later on in the game when your hero can quickly kill large groups of creeps without breaking a sweat. So what are the conditions for spawning neutral creeps?
Neutral creeps start spawning the first time at 00:30 and after that they spawn every whole minute, meaning at 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 and so on. Neutral creep spawns will not spawn if there is a unit in the spawning area at the time of the spawn. Meaning neither you nor the neutral creeps may be in the area of the spawn when the clock hits the minute mark. What you do is aggro the creeps five or six seconds before the minute mark and pull them away from the spawn. If you manage to get them far away enough another wave will spawn and you now have 2 spawns in the same place. For a hero like legionnaire this is key to good farming as he does more damage with more sources of incoming damage.
I want to point out that you can create a double creep spawns from 2 different spawns at the same time in the legion lower right corner. You do this by opening up the lower spawn with a rune of blight(eating a tree to open a passage) and then simply pulling them both away at the correct time.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1466/spawningcreeps.jpg
If you have a summon you can also create a double creep spawn in the legion lower right corner by creep pulling(I will explain this next.) and blocking the return of the creeps with yourself and your summon on their way back. Notice you can only do this by pulling the legion creeps that spawn each 00:30 second and not with the ones that spawn at the minute mark.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/3751/14108107.jpg
C. Creep pulling,
well you might have gotten the jest of it from that last picture. The idea is dragging your own creeps in with the neutral creeps into the forest by first dragging the neutrals out on the lane and then letting them run back with your own wave. The good thing about this is that you rob your opponent by experience while gaining XP and money yourself. I will depict later on in the guide how creep aggro work.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04eJXSmF63Y) is a short instructional video showing you an example of how creep pulling is done. Click the link to watch it.
3. Spotting/Baiting/Tagging.
Call it what you will, these are all slight variations of the same thing basically, luring your enemy into attacking you while your friends are staying just out of the enemies field of view. There really isn't much more to it, I will cover battle entrance and formation running later on while detailing Spatial Awareness which is one thing you should keep in mind while doing this.
4. Animation canceling,
this one is a bit trickier and takes some microing skills. Whenever a hero performs an animation the animation usually takes longer then the action itself. For example a basic melee attack. After the damage is done the animation continues for a very brief time. Instead of allowing this animation to continue you right click to move your hero effectively canceling the rest of the animation. This is mostly important while chasing heroes as the time you spend doing the animation could be better used moving forward to keep up with the hero. If done correctly you can gain several hits in a chase and this is vital in the beginning of a game before heroes have started accumulating large amounts of health. You should however always do this as there is no reason not to.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Jo130u5Ys) is a instructional video showing you how it works in game, click the link to watch it.
5. Orb walking,
this is very similar to Animation canceling in some ways. Certain heroes have skills with no cool down, the prime example being Arachna's webbed shoot. Now instead of putting the webbed shoot on auto attack what you do is fire it manually, and then click to move. What happens is essentially the same thing as with animation canceling the only difference being your using a skill instead of an attack command to do it. This allows you to move forward in between shoots which enables you to get in more shoots in a chase. The name Orb walking, as far as I know, comes from the fact that in DotA Drow Rangers frozen arrows was an orb effect. You also will not draw the aggro of the enemy creeps while using skills which enables you to harass without losing HP yourself.
In DotA, there were a large number of heroes with 'orb-like' Autocast abilities ala Silencer, Drow Ranger, Viper, Clinkz. Some of these heroes (Especially Silencer) had a very good attack animation. Thus you can utilize the orb-like autocast ability to throw a projectile, cancel the animation with a move command and effectively, attack on the run. Whilst a lot of heroes could do this without orbs, the autocast abilities made it considerably easier.
Thanks to Comma for this information.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEjF9eBfhSw) is a short instructional video showing you how Orb Walking works. Click the link to watch it
6. So the FOW or the Fog of War..
This is an extremely powerful aspect of this game, one that might be forgotten or even neglected by a lot of players. I want to take a moment to make you realize that what a lot of people take for granted and don't really think about that much is one of the most powerful tools in this game if used correctly, and failing to understand it and using it correctly can mean the beginning or end for any battle. The key of using the FOW is mainly experience and knowledge of the map. I am not planning on going into detail in this subject because it would simply take up way to much space. The only way to learn how to use it is really to explore it, explore every shadow and every tree. This is something we can't teach new players but just as learning hero skills they have to explore it themselves. Hiding in the right place when being chased can save your life, likewise attacking from the right place can ensure you can kill a hero without them ever seeing you. So go out there and explore it!
7. Spacing,
or keeping your distance between other units is something you should always keep in mind. Grouping together with your allies serves absolutely no purpose unless you are a melee hero who needs to get in close. I will cover formation running and how you should move more specifically in the advanced tactics later on.
8. Creep Leeching.
Now, to understand this concept we first have to understand how basic aggro works in HoN, this may be apparent to most but I'll run trough it quickly so go ahead and skip to the next paragraph if you know what I'm about to say. Now then, every unit in HoN have an aggro radius, the radius vary depending on the unit. Your hero will attack any unit that enters this aggro radius instantaneously unless you are already engaging another unit or if you've issued a hold command. The same conditions applies to all units.
This is an approximation of your heroes aggro radius.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/3034/aggroz.jpg
Now, creeps belonging to Hell Born or Legion have a priority concerning heroes and this priority is what we use to Creep Leech. If an enemy hero issues an attack command on an allied hero the creeps whos aggro radius the enemy hero is currently occupying will target the enemy hero instead of their current target. This means if you issue an attack command on a enemy when standing close to a enemy creep wave you will effectively draw the aggro of that whole wave, this is the first step. You then move away from the wave and the creeps will follow you for a short period. You've now leeched the wave, or pulled it. If you repeat this process you can for example pull the wave behind your own tower. This is particularly useful when facing harassers or heroes stronger then you. Another thing, notice how when I explained how to draw the aggro of the creeps I didn't mention where the enemy hero was located? That's because it doesn't matter. I will repeat the condition for you.
If an enemy hero issues an attack command on an allied hero the allied creeps, whos aggro radius the enemy hero is currently occupying, will target the enemy hero instead of their current target. This means if you issue an attack command on a enemy when standing close to a enemy creep wave you will effectively draw the aggro of that whole wave. This means that you can creep leech a wave by issuing an attack command on a hero on another lane, you will still draw the aggro of the creeps, the enemy heroes position is irrelevant because it's not part of the condition.
9. Map Awareness,
you've heard it said but what is it really, and what's difference between Mini map Awareness and Map Awareness. Well lets start with the first one. Map Awareness is basically the awareness of your surroundings. When we talk about Map Awareness we are usually thinking about being aware of places that enemy heroes might be trying to gank you from. We are also talking about being aware of the enemies you can see on your screen, as well as creeps and other factors. Mostly we are talking about movement.
Mini map Awareness is as simple as it sounds, namely being aware of the mini map. Falling prey to a gank is not really the fault of the laner who forgot to call his miss, it's very easy to move out into the FOW, TP to another lane and perform a gank in a matter of seconds, in this time most people won't call a miss for practical reasons, you can't say miss every time you can't see someone. So you need to be playing with half a eye on the mini map constantly, if someone is missing for suspiciously long it's always a good idea to take a defensive stance. Wards also help.
10. The art of shift queuing. (Originally by Totallnewbie, original guide can be found at the end.)
A. Shift queuing is how we line up multiple commands that is to be executed after each previous command has been completed. Holding shift and right clicking to move will create a way point, your hero will run to this way point and then stop. If you create two or more way points your hero will run to the first and then immediately run to the second and then the third and so on. The part people often forget or just don't care to use is that you can also shift queue skills and items. Doing this is extremely effective because it doesn't allow for any error, doing things manually allows for the human factor but shift queuing will never make a mistake. There will be no miss clicks and you won't abort a channeling skill before it's complete if you use shift queuing. I will depict some useful situations for this.
B. Tango Juking means very simply to issue a queue command to consume a tango and then a way point after the tree. Your hero will run towards the tree, eat the tango and immediately continue running froward. This is effective while being chased because if your in a hurry you might miss click or fumble and lose speed which will get you killed.
C. Using items in combination with skills is a lot easier with shift queuing. I'll take the prime example of using the tactic with Magmus to use a portal key to blink in after he started the ultimate. Instead of waiting and guessing when the ultimate is ready charging, which is fine if you're a pro player and can do it easily. If your not you might wanna hit the ultimate and shift queue the blink, that way immediately after the ultimate is done you will perform the blink. You won't lose any of the time off the ultimate and you won't abort it prematurely. Another prime example is teleporting in to a tower as Night Hound with enemies nearby. The enemies will gather and start preparing to stun you, if you shift queue a smoke it will smoke as soon as you arrive and you get the necessary time you need to go invisible. There are a lot of these examples, you'll have to play around and figure them out as you go.
D. One particular example I want to share with you is the bottling a rune while being chased. People often start fumbling with their buttons and skills while doing this, they lose speed and get caught and in worse case scenario they didn't even bottle the rune. Shift queue the bottling and a way point, that way you will instantaneously bottle the rune and keep moving. No errors, and no loss in movement speed.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JofbFO750s) is a short instructional video showing you how shift queuing works. Click the link to watch it.
Some more Advanced tactics, ideas and concepts about the game.
1. Hero picking/Hero Roles.
A. So lets talk a little bit about hero roles and picking. Firstly, how do we divide heroes into different categories? Well, usually as follows(main roles followed by sub roles);
Tanks(not really a role but more of an attribute.) (mostly strength heroes, zephyr being an exception because of her wind shield)
-Crowd controllers
-DPS'ers (not very common, Maliken comes to mind.)
-Semi Carrys
-Initiators
Carrys(almost always AGI heroes with scaling late game abilities. There are however exceptions to this as well, puppet master comes to mind.)
-DPS'ers
-Semi crowd controllers(The ability to crowd control individuals or groups with skills like Chronos ulti.)
-Initiators
Supporters(Usually int heroes with healing abilities and or crowd controlling or other things that increase your EHP(Effective Health points i.e armor boosting for example.)
-Crowd controllers
-Initiators
Nukers
A kind of a sub role, basically anyone with a high damage magic that is easy to spam can nuke, however some int heroes are designed to dish out high amounts of magic damage fast, for instance witch slayer/Pyromancer/Thunderbringer etc.
Gankers/Roamers and Warders are things that any hero can do but some heroes are more suited for then others, therefor they aren't generally considered "roles". Generally supporters ward and DPS'ers/Nukers roam/gank.
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I wanna take a moment to share in detail with you how I personally look at and divide heroes into categories,
may be it differs from some people but I think this is the general way people look at heroes and hero roles.
Tanks
Yes, what makes a good tank.
- Well of course health points so str heroes are obvious choices.
- The ability to draw fire in some way. Legionnaire is one of the best tanks in the game atm for this very reason.
- an ability that helps deflect or reduce incoming damage in some way. Armaddon for example. It can also be armor increase such as Keeper of the Forest's Natures protection.
Carrys
- although there are different kinds of carrys, anti support/nuke carrys (magebane, madman), anti tank carrys (predator) anti carry carrys (chronos) etc. There is mostly one universal truth to a carry hero, he must have scaling late game abilities, meaning his damage output should not come to a halt mid game like a nukers magic, it should have the ability to continue getting stronger. Critical attacks are an example of this, or predators procentual life damage since HP increases constantly so does his damage.
Supporters
- usually int heroes.
- crowd controllers, meaning skills that can stun/silence/immobilize etc.
- Healing or mana regeneration skills.
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B. So, building a team, while it's not always all about the classes but rather certain skills possessed by certain classes. We will for the sake of keeping it as simple as possible not dive to deep into this subject, I will give you the basics and something to stand on so that you can learn to understand and make out what is needed yourself.
Building a team your team should generally consist of;
- 1 or 2 tanks with nuking and crowd controlling abilities and at least one of them should have initiating capabilities.
- Minimum 2 ranged, preferably 3 where of 1-2 should be supporters and 1 should be a nuker.
- 1-2 really good carrys, DPS'ers with scaling late game abilities who can carry the team late game.(If the player is good and he chooses a good carry hero then 1 will most definitely suffice.)
Team legion lineup example;
- Tempest (The support/pusher/crowd controller who will forest in the beginning of the game and gank the lane at random intervals.)
- Hammerstorm (The tank DPS'er with aoe CC capabilities who will solo bot)
- Chronos (The agi carry with scaling late game capabilities top)
- Demented shaman/plague rider (The supporter/baby sitter who will lane with Chronos in the start to ensure his survival and farming)
- Corrupt disciple (The early game "carry" who can dish out high DPS and is a good roamer in the start making him a great early game ganker. Beginning middle)
This is an example of a good strong lineup that can both push fast and do well in ganks as well as 5v5 battles. You may notice from my picking that 3 of the heroes have AOE CC abilities. Tempest ulti, Hammerstorms stun, and Chronos ulti. Controlling your enemies in a 5v5 battle is key to winning the battle, there are a lot of viable combinations of heroes to do this with and this is by no means the best one. It's a well balanced team, with Corrupt disciple bring up the slack for tempest and Chronos early game and going into more of a pure DPS role late game.
Now then, I will begin shortly by describing the purpose and my intent with this guide followed by a more detailed description of what I want to cover in it. But first before I get underway I want to make some things perfectly clear.
First of all, this is not a beginners guide, this guide is directed at the players who have grasped the basics of the game and now want to step up their game a bit. This means I am not going to cover the very basic stuff like denying, last hitting and etc. While some of the things I'm gonna go trough are very basic for experienced players there will be a few things that bears reading even for you guys as you should never forget the basics and getting other perspectives on certain concepts is always a good idea. This guide is also going to be purely game play based, we will not be looking at any specific heroes more then when I am making examples, therefor this is not about building a hero, or using specific skills but more a general guide over how to behave with all heroes.
Secondly, I want to clarify right at the start that most of the topics I will discuss was not created by me, some things might have my personal viewpoints and somethings may be entirely created by other people and I will of course provide links and reference to the original guides and the creator(s) when that is the case. Links and references can be found at the end of the guide. I am not in any way trying to take credit for other peoples work. I do however not remember where or from whom I read or learned all of these things so you'll have to excuse me if I do not always do this. I also realize that some of the topics I'm going to cover are already out there on the forums, however I wanted to put them together into a guide for easy access and future reference.
Now then, I'm going to divide this guide into two sections. The first one is going to be about some basic concepts, this part is more aimed at amateurs, the second part is going to be about some more advanced ways of looking at aspects of the game. I might also update, revise and add things as time goes on and per requests. If you think I have missed something feel free to pm me and I will consider adding it to the guide. In order to make easier to find particular parts I have color coded the terminology. Blueish for the basic stuff and green for the advanced.
The basic HoN strategies and their terminology.
1. Juking, what is it and how is it performed?
2. Jungling, maximize your farming.
A. The basics of Jungling.
B. Double spawns.
C. Creep pulling.
3. Spotting/Baiting/Tagging.
4. Animation Canceling.
5. Orb walking.
6. The FOW(Fog of War)
7. Spacing.
8. Creep leeching.
9. Map awareness/Minimap awareness.
10. The Art of shift queuing. (Originally by Totallnewbie, original guide can be found at the end.)
A. Introduction.
B. Tango Juking.
C. Using items.
D. Bottling Runes.
Some more Advanced tactics, ideas and concepts about the game.
This next section is primarily going to be about what's called spatial awareness. This is not the same as map awareness which is a common misconception. I'm going to try to stay as close to the original guide as possible without directly copying it, I will however try to put it in more of a HoN perspective and the way I think aboutit personally.Please remember again that I did not create this concept and I am not trying to take credit for it.
1. Hero picking/Hero roles.
2. HoN and it's dynamic Metagame.(By myself.)
A. The Individual MetaGame.
B. The MetaGame Of A Team.
C. Conclusion.
3. Spatial Awareness. (Original Guide by Ironfisto, link to the original guide can be found at the end.)
A. What is Spatial awareness.
B. Area of Influence (AOI)
C. All around Defense/Offense.(Playing in formation.)
D. Players Field of view.(FOV)
E. Entry of Battle.
F. Ganking.
4. EHP (Original guide by SsxDoTS, link to the original guide can be found at the end.)
So lets get started shall we.
Some Basic HoN Strategies and terminology
1. Juking,
-to make a deceptive move
-to move deceptively in a competitive sport so as to induce an opponent to move in a way that brings about an advantage.
This is the general concept of the word, however it is implemented in different ways and some players only know one side of what Juking is.
Juking can be done in a lot of different ways- all from masking heroes with the FOW to luring an overzealous player into a tower, to aborting a stunning projectile by using another skill. HoN is a game of fast pace and the offensive player always have the advantage of that after initiating an action, the passive or defensive player always have an reaction time. Really good players have extremely low reaction times which is often detailed by good microing and high APM. I will be talking firstly about the art of turning a chase around in different ways and then make a short note of what Juking spots and prolonging your survival time.
So what is relevant when Juking besides hero level and items? Well, mainly the Fog of War(which will hereby be referred to as the FOW) and the players Field of View (which will hereby be referred to as the FOV). I will talk about both in much greater detail later on in this guide. Now lets imagine the simplest of all situations.
Example 1.(both players are amateurs)
You are playing as Pyromancer versus an Arachna in the middle lane. Arachna is a harasser as we all know and will try to harass you. When closing in on level 6 you let her hit you a few times bringing you down to circa 60% of your maximum Health Pool. Arachna will realize that when she hits level 6 she can kill you. Now the tricky part in this particular example is the extreme slowing effects of Arachna and in this case positioning is the key, you need to position yourself in such a place that you can draw Arachna into the towers range but yet not close enough to make her think she won't have time to kill you. The towers range is 700 and Arachna's range is 600 therefor a position of approximately 500 units away from the tower would mean Arachna will have to move 400 units to enter the towers range. Now in order to do this you need to have good reactions because if you start moving at the instance she throws her ultimate this will work and if not it's gonna be a close call at best. For the sake of the example this player succeeds in pulling her into the tower where it's a simple matter of blasting off your skills to kill Arachna.
Yes this situation is unlikely to fool a experienced player against which you will have to use a lot more then their overzealousness to trick. But, in public games and in the heat of battle a lot of people will be overzealous and tricks like these can score you a lot of skills. What you also need to realize is that when doing as in this example, allowing yourself to take damage, you are essentially taking a calculated risk. HoN is a game of risk and taking the right ones is often the difference between winning or losing.
Example 2.
This example will describe a very simple and general example of how to use the FOW to your advantage.
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3369/jukingchase1.jpg
Here an unwitting Chronos is chasing down a weak Hellbringer, unaware of the danger of the Arachna and Jeraziah outside of his FOV. Hellbringer will here stop, be healed by Jeraziah, then proceed to cast life void and unholy shackles on Chronos, in the meantime Arachna's ultimate will have hit Chronos trough the FOW. The combined slowing effects will now be enough to stop Chronos even if he time leaps. He can try to leap into a area that is inaccessible to others but Hellbringers ultimate would level the trees and Chronos would be dead never the less.
Another definition of the word is losing the enemy heroes hunting you by using juke spots (places in the forest where you can stand to appear to have vanished.) or forest paths to confuse and lose them. This describes the two primary types of Juking (most other types are just variations on these). Notice that Juking is very similar to what is generally also called baiting in the examples.
An example of skill Juking is for example if a Hammerstorm throws a stun on Madman and Madman uses his stun just before the impact of Hammerstorm's stun, this will effectively abort the stun tossed by Hammerstorm giving madman a better chance of surviving, there are a lot of ways to Juke skills, I can't detail all of them because that would take to much time, I therefor suggest using common sense. In the example of madman and hammer storm the Juke works because under the duration of Madmans stun he is invulnerable, as such you can figure out what other skills might have the same effect vs a projectile skill, an example of a skill that works similarly is Pharoh's ulti.
Video removed due to the recent patch 1.63 making many of the disjoints demonstrated impossible to perform.
2.
A. Jungling,
the first question we might ask ourselves is of course what is Jungling. Again very simply it is the art of killing neutral creep spawns in the forest instead of going to a lane. Lets start by talking about the pros and cons of Jungling and then proceed to answer the question, what heroes are suitable to Jungle with?
Pros,
-You do not share money or experience with your teammates which is a bonus to both the player doing the Jungling as well as the player left soloing on the lane.
-The enemy team do not have an exact fix on your position, they know you're somewhere in the forest but unless warding do not know exactly where. This makes it easy for you to gank the lane.
-The enemy has no idea of your progress, primarily item wise but a lot of times players will also forget to keep an eye on your level progression as well.
Cons,
- You alone take all the damage.
- Unless playing with a summon the tougher creep spawns will either force you to drink a lot of health potions or return to base.
- If you do get ganked you have no teammates to help you survive, which makes you an easy target for roamers.
So based on this information what heroes are suitable to Jungle with? Well as I hinted at in the cons heroes that can summon or control other units are excellent Junglers as the hero need not take any damage and can stay out Jungling till his or her mana pool is empty. Heroes without this ability often start out on the lane and go into the woods after they've hit level 3 or higher. Example of such heroes are Legionnaire and Zephyr.
There are 3 different types of hero spawns, in order of easiest to hardest they are marked as yellow-orange-red on your mini map.
B. Creating double spawns,
well actually you can create triple and even quadruple spawns. This is often done in competetive play and is generally refered to as creep stacking, often teams will stack several spawn of ancients in an attempt to gain fast money, this is a risky maneuver as enemies may notice you stacking them and take your creeps. All you need to do this however is a basic understanding of the mechanics behind creep spawns. Creep stacking is particularly useful later on in the game when your hero can quickly kill large groups of creeps without breaking a sweat. So what are the conditions for spawning neutral creeps?
Neutral creeps start spawning the first time at 00:30 and after that they spawn every whole minute, meaning at 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 and so on. Neutral creep spawns will not spawn if there is a unit in the spawning area at the time of the spawn. Meaning neither you nor the neutral creeps may be in the area of the spawn when the clock hits the minute mark. What you do is aggro the creeps five or six seconds before the minute mark and pull them away from the spawn. If you manage to get them far away enough another wave will spawn and you now have 2 spawns in the same place. For a hero like legionnaire this is key to good farming as he does more damage with more sources of incoming damage.
I want to point out that you can create a double creep spawns from 2 different spawns at the same time in the legion lower right corner. You do this by opening up the lower spawn with a rune of blight(eating a tree to open a passage) and then simply pulling them both away at the correct time.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1466/spawningcreeps.jpg
If you have a summon you can also create a double creep spawn in the legion lower right corner by creep pulling(I will explain this next.) and blocking the return of the creeps with yourself and your summon on their way back. Notice you can only do this by pulling the legion creeps that spawn each 00:30 second and not with the ones that spawn at the minute mark.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/3751/14108107.jpg
C. Creep pulling,
well you might have gotten the jest of it from that last picture. The idea is dragging your own creeps in with the neutral creeps into the forest by first dragging the neutrals out on the lane and then letting them run back with your own wave. The good thing about this is that you rob your opponent by experience while gaining XP and money yourself. I will depict later on in the guide how creep aggro work.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04eJXSmF63Y) is a short instructional video showing you an example of how creep pulling is done. Click the link to watch it.
3. Spotting/Baiting/Tagging.
Call it what you will, these are all slight variations of the same thing basically, luring your enemy into attacking you while your friends are staying just out of the enemies field of view. There really isn't much more to it, I will cover battle entrance and formation running later on while detailing Spatial Awareness which is one thing you should keep in mind while doing this.
4. Animation canceling,
this one is a bit trickier and takes some microing skills. Whenever a hero performs an animation the animation usually takes longer then the action itself. For example a basic melee attack. After the damage is done the animation continues for a very brief time. Instead of allowing this animation to continue you right click to move your hero effectively canceling the rest of the animation. This is mostly important while chasing heroes as the time you spend doing the animation could be better used moving forward to keep up with the hero. If done correctly you can gain several hits in a chase and this is vital in the beginning of a game before heroes have started accumulating large amounts of health. You should however always do this as there is no reason not to.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Jo130u5Ys) is a instructional video showing you how it works in game, click the link to watch it.
5. Orb walking,
this is very similar to Animation canceling in some ways. Certain heroes have skills with no cool down, the prime example being Arachna's webbed shoot. Now instead of putting the webbed shoot on auto attack what you do is fire it manually, and then click to move. What happens is essentially the same thing as with animation canceling the only difference being your using a skill instead of an attack command to do it. This allows you to move forward in between shoots which enables you to get in more shoots in a chase. The name Orb walking, as far as I know, comes from the fact that in DotA Drow Rangers frozen arrows was an orb effect. You also will not draw the aggro of the enemy creeps while using skills which enables you to harass without losing HP yourself.
In DotA, there were a large number of heroes with 'orb-like' Autocast abilities ala Silencer, Drow Ranger, Viper, Clinkz. Some of these heroes (Especially Silencer) had a very good attack animation. Thus you can utilize the orb-like autocast ability to throw a projectile, cancel the animation with a move command and effectively, attack on the run. Whilst a lot of heroes could do this without orbs, the autocast abilities made it considerably easier.
Thanks to Comma for this information.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEjF9eBfhSw) is a short instructional video showing you how Orb Walking works. Click the link to watch it
6. So the FOW or the Fog of War..
This is an extremely powerful aspect of this game, one that might be forgotten or even neglected by a lot of players. I want to take a moment to make you realize that what a lot of people take for granted and don't really think about that much is one of the most powerful tools in this game if used correctly, and failing to understand it and using it correctly can mean the beginning or end for any battle. The key of using the FOW is mainly experience and knowledge of the map. I am not planning on going into detail in this subject because it would simply take up way to much space. The only way to learn how to use it is really to explore it, explore every shadow and every tree. This is something we can't teach new players but just as learning hero skills they have to explore it themselves. Hiding in the right place when being chased can save your life, likewise attacking from the right place can ensure you can kill a hero without them ever seeing you. So go out there and explore it!
7. Spacing,
or keeping your distance between other units is something you should always keep in mind. Grouping together with your allies serves absolutely no purpose unless you are a melee hero who needs to get in close. I will cover formation running and how you should move more specifically in the advanced tactics later on.
8. Creep Leeching.
Now, to understand this concept we first have to understand how basic aggro works in HoN, this may be apparent to most but I'll run trough it quickly so go ahead and skip to the next paragraph if you know what I'm about to say. Now then, every unit in HoN have an aggro radius, the radius vary depending on the unit. Your hero will attack any unit that enters this aggro radius instantaneously unless you are already engaging another unit or if you've issued a hold command. The same conditions applies to all units.
This is an approximation of your heroes aggro radius.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/3034/aggroz.jpg
Now, creeps belonging to Hell Born or Legion have a priority concerning heroes and this priority is what we use to Creep Leech. If an enemy hero issues an attack command on an allied hero the creeps whos aggro radius the enemy hero is currently occupying will target the enemy hero instead of their current target. This means if you issue an attack command on a enemy when standing close to a enemy creep wave you will effectively draw the aggro of that whole wave, this is the first step. You then move away from the wave and the creeps will follow you for a short period. You've now leeched the wave, or pulled it. If you repeat this process you can for example pull the wave behind your own tower. This is particularly useful when facing harassers or heroes stronger then you. Another thing, notice how when I explained how to draw the aggro of the creeps I didn't mention where the enemy hero was located? That's because it doesn't matter. I will repeat the condition for you.
If an enemy hero issues an attack command on an allied hero the allied creeps, whos aggro radius the enemy hero is currently occupying, will target the enemy hero instead of their current target. This means if you issue an attack command on a enemy when standing close to a enemy creep wave you will effectively draw the aggro of that whole wave. This means that you can creep leech a wave by issuing an attack command on a hero on another lane, you will still draw the aggro of the creeps, the enemy heroes position is irrelevant because it's not part of the condition.
9. Map Awareness,
you've heard it said but what is it really, and what's difference between Mini map Awareness and Map Awareness. Well lets start with the first one. Map Awareness is basically the awareness of your surroundings. When we talk about Map Awareness we are usually thinking about being aware of places that enemy heroes might be trying to gank you from. We are also talking about being aware of the enemies you can see on your screen, as well as creeps and other factors. Mostly we are talking about movement.
Mini map Awareness is as simple as it sounds, namely being aware of the mini map. Falling prey to a gank is not really the fault of the laner who forgot to call his miss, it's very easy to move out into the FOW, TP to another lane and perform a gank in a matter of seconds, in this time most people won't call a miss for practical reasons, you can't say miss every time you can't see someone. So you need to be playing with half a eye on the mini map constantly, if someone is missing for suspiciously long it's always a good idea to take a defensive stance. Wards also help.
10. The art of shift queuing. (Originally by Totallnewbie, original guide can be found at the end.)
A. Shift queuing is how we line up multiple commands that is to be executed after each previous command has been completed. Holding shift and right clicking to move will create a way point, your hero will run to this way point and then stop. If you create two or more way points your hero will run to the first and then immediately run to the second and then the third and so on. The part people often forget or just don't care to use is that you can also shift queue skills and items. Doing this is extremely effective because it doesn't allow for any error, doing things manually allows for the human factor but shift queuing will never make a mistake. There will be no miss clicks and you won't abort a channeling skill before it's complete if you use shift queuing. I will depict some useful situations for this.
B. Tango Juking means very simply to issue a queue command to consume a tango and then a way point after the tree. Your hero will run towards the tree, eat the tango and immediately continue running froward. This is effective while being chased because if your in a hurry you might miss click or fumble and lose speed which will get you killed.
C. Using items in combination with skills is a lot easier with shift queuing. I'll take the prime example of using the tactic with Magmus to use a portal key to blink in after he started the ultimate. Instead of waiting and guessing when the ultimate is ready charging, which is fine if you're a pro player and can do it easily. If your not you might wanna hit the ultimate and shift queue the blink, that way immediately after the ultimate is done you will perform the blink. You won't lose any of the time off the ultimate and you won't abort it prematurely. Another prime example is teleporting in to a tower as Night Hound with enemies nearby. The enemies will gather and start preparing to stun you, if you shift queue a smoke it will smoke as soon as you arrive and you get the necessary time you need to go invisible. There are a lot of these examples, you'll have to play around and figure them out as you go.
D. One particular example I want to share with you is the bottling a rune while being chased. People often start fumbling with their buttons and skills while doing this, they lose speed and get caught and in worse case scenario they didn't even bottle the rune. Shift queue the bottling and a way point, that way you will instantaneously bottle the rune and keep moving. No errors, and no loss in movement speed.
THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JofbFO750s) is a short instructional video showing you how shift queuing works. Click the link to watch it.
Some more Advanced tactics, ideas and concepts about the game.
1. Hero picking/Hero Roles.
A. So lets talk a little bit about hero roles and picking. Firstly, how do we divide heroes into different categories? Well, usually as follows(main roles followed by sub roles);
Tanks(not really a role but more of an attribute.) (mostly strength heroes, zephyr being an exception because of her wind shield)
-Crowd controllers
-DPS'ers (not very common, Maliken comes to mind.)
-Semi Carrys
-Initiators
Carrys(almost always AGI heroes with scaling late game abilities. There are however exceptions to this as well, puppet master comes to mind.)
-DPS'ers
-Semi crowd controllers(The ability to crowd control individuals or groups with skills like Chronos ulti.)
-Initiators
Supporters(Usually int heroes with healing abilities and or crowd controlling or other things that increase your EHP(Effective Health points i.e armor boosting for example.)
-Crowd controllers
-Initiators
Nukers
A kind of a sub role, basically anyone with a high damage magic that is easy to spam can nuke, however some int heroes are designed to dish out high amounts of magic damage fast, for instance witch slayer/Pyromancer/Thunderbringer etc.
Gankers/Roamers and Warders are things that any hero can do but some heroes are more suited for then others, therefor they aren't generally considered "roles". Generally supporters ward and DPS'ers/Nukers roam/gank.
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I wanna take a moment to share in detail with you how I personally look at and divide heroes into categories,
may be it differs from some people but I think this is the general way people look at heroes and hero roles.
Tanks
Yes, what makes a good tank.
- Well of course health points so str heroes are obvious choices.
- The ability to draw fire in some way. Legionnaire is one of the best tanks in the game atm for this very reason.
- an ability that helps deflect or reduce incoming damage in some way. Armaddon for example. It can also be armor increase such as Keeper of the Forest's Natures protection.
Carrys
- although there are different kinds of carrys, anti support/nuke carrys (magebane, madman), anti tank carrys (predator) anti carry carrys (chronos) etc. There is mostly one universal truth to a carry hero, he must have scaling late game abilities, meaning his damage output should not come to a halt mid game like a nukers magic, it should have the ability to continue getting stronger. Critical attacks are an example of this, or predators procentual life damage since HP increases constantly so does his damage.
Supporters
- usually int heroes.
- crowd controllers, meaning skills that can stun/silence/immobilize etc.
- Healing or mana regeneration skills.
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B. So, building a team, while it's not always all about the classes but rather certain skills possessed by certain classes. We will for the sake of keeping it as simple as possible not dive to deep into this subject, I will give you the basics and something to stand on so that you can learn to understand and make out what is needed yourself.
Building a team your team should generally consist of;
- 1 or 2 tanks with nuking and crowd controlling abilities and at least one of them should have initiating capabilities.
- Minimum 2 ranged, preferably 3 where of 1-2 should be supporters and 1 should be a nuker.
- 1-2 really good carrys, DPS'ers with scaling late game abilities who can carry the team late game.(If the player is good and he chooses a good carry hero then 1 will most definitely suffice.)
Team legion lineup example;
- Tempest (The support/pusher/crowd controller who will forest in the beginning of the game and gank the lane at random intervals.)
- Hammerstorm (The tank DPS'er with aoe CC capabilities who will solo bot)
- Chronos (The agi carry with scaling late game capabilities top)
- Demented shaman/plague rider (The supporter/baby sitter who will lane with Chronos in the start to ensure his survival and farming)
- Corrupt disciple (The early game "carry" who can dish out high DPS and is a good roamer in the start making him a great early game ganker. Beginning middle)
This is an example of a good strong lineup that can both push fast and do well in ganks as well as 5v5 battles. You may notice from my picking that 3 of the heroes have AOE CC abilities. Tempest ulti, Hammerstorms stun, and Chronos ulti. Controlling your enemies in a 5v5 battle is key to winning the battle, there are a lot of viable combinations of heroes to do this with and this is by no means the best one. It's a well balanced team, with Corrupt disciple bring up the slack for tempest and Chronos early game and going into more of a pure DPS role late game.