day9
12-09-2009, 05:18 PM
(Preface - this is guide is still very much in flux, I will be adding things as I think about/read them)
1.Intro Why I am writing this guide. Why I feel it's important. Why you should read this guide
2.Experience income
3.Money flow
4.Hero utility and function (aka WHOS MORE IMPORTANT)
1. Intro (Why I am writing this guide. Why I feel it's important. Why you should read this guide)
One day I was playing with my friends, and one of my friends picked pyro and proceeded to destroy the entire team. He went well over 10-0 as the game went on, and the tide turned. We had an incredibly powerful early game and still managed to lose. Why did this happen? Because of two things: We did not manage the flow of gold properly, and we built our heroes incorrectly. Commonly these two parts of the game go hand in hand, and they aren't really things that we think about during the game. But we should.
When spectating games, there are two very important stats that I like to keep an eye on, and more often than not I can predict the victor of a game just from these stats. They are overall team gold earned, and experience earned. The function of experience is to increase your characters base abilities. The function of gold is to allow you to augment your characters base stats and abilities while adding entirely new features. To consciously manage your team's income of both experience and gold is absolutely necessary to being in control of the game, and ultimately, winning.
The more you are aware of these factors, the more strategically aware you can become. In a highly competitive team game, you should not ignore anything that might give you an advantage.
2. Experience Income
There are essentially five zones on the default map that reward experience: the three lanes, and the two forests. Gaining control of a lane and the location of the creeps in that lane essentially give you the ability to be gaining experience there. And this, of course, is what you want. The most experience your team can be gaining at any given time means that your team's heroes are going to be getting stronger faster. Moreover, keeping control of these zones out of your opponent's hands is going to increase the deficit of experience even further.
At any given time, if your team is not pushing or retreating, you should keep your eyes open for possibilities to go to a zone and farm. Think of each of these zones that are unutilized as potential experience. Ideally you want to end a game with 0 potential experience last, that is, no creep should die without someone on your team getting experience from it. Obviously this will never realistically happen, but it's a good goal to keep in mind.
Now what this doesn't give you free reign to start demanding a lane be given to you just so that you can get experience from it. You must realize that certain heroes should be given importance as far as experience goes. Having a Hellbringer, for example, with his ult first can be more beneficial than say a Night Hound in team fights. It's always important to make sure that the heroes that are getting the most experience and gold on your team are the ones that will make the biggest difference in team fights and ultimately the game, but I will talk more about that later.
A few times I had been in a lane and been stuck debating whether or not to tower dive to kill the enemy hero. There are situations where this is beneficial and where it is a bad idea. If you are 2v1 (two on your side) then the benefits are that even if you die, your teammate will hopefully get experience for the kill, and if not your teammate will still be getting experience from the lane creeps, and potential experience for the other team will be lost entirely because there is no one there to get it. In a 2v2, I never think that tower diving is worth it, because you aren't forcing them to lose any experience.
Hero killing! Killing heroes gives you experience! One of the most important concepts to remember in any heroes of newerth game is just KILLING your opponents. Now obviously you'd think anyone would do this, but it's important to not get caught up farming when you could be killing a hero. There are some situations where it's better to have a carry sit and farm when you are pushing the first tower so that they can gain more experience and gold faster, but generally it's always going to be better to jump out and get a kill, both gold-wise and experience-wise.
Lane control is a very important concept to understand, and I'm sure there's another guide out there that deals specifically with it. In a nutshell, lane control means controlling where the battle of the creeps is happening in a lane. If your first tower is up: you want it just out of first tower range so that you can last hit and have a defensive backup if you're about to get ganked. If your second tower is up but your first tower is down, you want it to be anywhere between the second tower and where the first tower was, generally any farther than that and you risk being ganked. (Also note here: These are just general guidelines, you must always look at the minimap and BE AWARE of where enemy heroes are. If there are four missing, you should get the hell out of there)
What you DON'T want to happen is to push your lane any earlier than you have to. Pushing a lane early is almost universally a bad idea, unless you're trying to end the game early. (which is not always a good strategy... in fact this can backfire pretty easily if you aren't careful about it) If you push a lane, the positioning of the creep battles are almost always going to be in enemy territory, which costs you potential experience and gives them a much easier time farming the lane. The positive side of killing a tower is that it directly gives you and your team a boost. However, getting a single 500 gold boost is not always worth the potential 6-7 minutes of free farming and getting every single creep kill from a lane.
The forests are interesting, in that there is no movement. You know when the creeps are going to spawn, and you know they aren't going anywhere. With two well placed wards you can guard yourself from being ganked (especially easy on legion side) and basically free farm depending on your hero. Doing this with tempest or war beast is particularly rewarding, because you are basically giving another hero the ability to solo a lane while losing almost none yourself (depending on how well you jungle). I can jungle spectacularly with Tempest and keep my experience on par, if not ahead of our soloers. If the other team does not waste time trying to gank you, they leave you in an excellent position to jump them because you are regularly out of sight. There are many tricks you can use while jungling (creep pulling, warding, counter-warding) and it is certainly a viable strategy if the player can execute. But the reward is incredibly beneficial if pulled off correctly. Your team as a whole gains much more experience than the other team, unless they are also jungling.
3. Money Flow
Another extremely important and yet overlooked aspect of gameplay is money flow. Now you may ask, what the hell is money flow? Money flow is another way of controlling who on your team is getting stronger and in what ways (I'm going to cover preferential treatment after this section). It is absolutely necessary to allow people who need items to get gold over people who don't need items. Now obviously every hero benefits from having items, but some heroes benefit more.
The simplest way to do this is to (in a double hero lane) assign one person to focus on denies and one person on getting last hits on enemy creeps. The person on denies should obviously be the hero who benefits less from the gold gain. The person who needs the gold more should get a hatchet to have an easier time with last-hitting. I'd even recommend the denier to get one as well because it allows them to increase the experience deficit easier.
Now some people may have a problem with this next part I'm going to mention, especially in pubs, but it's important. The person who is getting the creep kills, or who needs items more, should also be getting the hero kills (if this is at all under your control). If you have the option of letting your carry get the kill, you should do it. I know that every single hero needs gold, but I need to restate this, certain heroes need it more than others. Kills are just gold and experience and numbers.
If at all possible in killing heroes, towers, neutrals, creeps, etc... let the heroes who need the gold actually get the gold. Don't deny yourself money, because everyone needs some level of items to be successful, but don't be an idiot. I'm going to get into specifics about items next.
4. Hero Utility and Function (aka WHOS MORE IMPORTANT)
Now some of this will probably be controversial and for good reason. Not everything I say here should be blindly followed, because situations are always going to vary. Carries and heroes thats utility is based on the damage that they do with their attacks should always be given prevalence when it comes to money flow. The quicker they get the items they need to do their job better, the quicker they will be unstoppable. In order of prevalence after carries, it should be heroes that need to add an extra function to their hero to perform their job effectively, and after that it should be heroes that need a staff of the master or an item to increase survivability or add a new function. In laymans terms, I would rank importance of money flow in this way:
Carries >= Initiators > Support
This is arguable, but having a farmed support hero really doesn't do your team much good compare to a farmed carry. And really the only item your initiators need is the one that helps them do their job (most often blink dagger). Support's items really only help them support more, which is important, but usually during a team fight your support heroes aren't running out of things to do anyway. If you can multitask and quickly decide who/where you should cast all of your spells before they're off cooldown again, kudo's to you, but the money is still better off in the hands of a hero whose job is less based on abilities and more based on attack damage.
I'd also like to help define carry, at least within the context of this argument. Your carry, or primary target for gold, should be someone whose damage scales well in the entirety of the game. A very good example of this is madman or puppetmaster, because their damage is going to be exponentially higher as time goes in within the game due to their passive bonuses.
The next thing I'm going to talk about is who should be getting experience, and this is mostly for early-mid game, because beyond then there's not much you can do about map control. At that point map control will be largely decided and that means that you're not going to have much of a choice who gets the experience. Early game you want people whose damage and utility is based on their USABLE SKILLS to get ahead of the game. Unless your madman has double damage, he's not going to do as much damage as a valkyrie with both nukes at level 9.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading my guide, I hope you learned something, or at least questioned the way you play with your team. If I have made you think about your team's style of play at all, even if you don't agree with me, then this guide will have largely achieved its goal. Please feel free to correct me if I have made some mistakes, and also please leave your input here. Anything you guys might have to add or discuss is much appreciated.
~Day9
1.Intro Why I am writing this guide. Why I feel it's important. Why you should read this guide
2.Experience income
3.Money flow
4.Hero utility and function (aka WHOS MORE IMPORTANT)
1. Intro (Why I am writing this guide. Why I feel it's important. Why you should read this guide)
One day I was playing with my friends, and one of my friends picked pyro and proceeded to destroy the entire team. He went well over 10-0 as the game went on, and the tide turned. We had an incredibly powerful early game and still managed to lose. Why did this happen? Because of two things: We did not manage the flow of gold properly, and we built our heroes incorrectly. Commonly these two parts of the game go hand in hand, and they aren't really things that we think about during the game. But we should.
When spectating games, there are two very important stats that I like to keep an eye on, and more often than not I can predict the victor of a game just from these stats. They are overall team gold earned, and experience earned. The function of experience is to increase your characters base abilities. The function of gold is to allow you to augment your characters base stats and abilities while adding entirely new features. To consciously manage your team's income of both experience and gold is absolutely necessary to being in control of the game, and ultimately, winning.
The more you are aware of these factors, the more strategically aware you can become. In a highly competitive team game, you should not ignore anything that might give you an advantage.
2. Experience Income
There are essentially five zones on the default map that reward experience: the three lanes, and the two forests. Gaining control of a lane and the location of the creeps in that lane essentially give you the ability to be gaining experience there. And this, of course, is what you want. The most experience your team can be gaining at any given time means that your team's heroes are going to be getting stronger faster. Moreover, keeping control of these zones out of your opponent's hands is going to increase the deficit of experience even further.
At any given time, if your team is not pushing or retreating, you should keep your eyes open for possibilities to go to a zone and farm. Think of each of these zones that are unutilized as potential experience. Ideally you want to end a game with 0 potential experience last, that is, no creep should die without someone on your team getting experience from it. Obviously this will never realistically happen, but it's a good goal to keep in mind.
Now what this doesn't give you free reign to start demanding a lane be given to you just so that you can get experience from it. You must realize that certain heroes should be given importance as far as experience goes. Having a Hellbringer, for example, with his ult first can be more beneficial than say a Night Hound in team fights. It's always important to make sure that the heroes that are getting the most experience and gold on your team are the ones that will make the biggest difference in team fights and ultimately the game, but I will talk more about that later.
A few times I had been in a lane and been stuck debating whether or not to tower dive to kill the enemy hero. There are situations where this is beneficial and where it is a bad idea. If you are 2v1 (two on your side) then the benefits are that even if you die, your teammate will hopefully get experience for the kill, and if not your teammate will still be getting experience from the lane creeps, and potential experience for the other team will be lost entirely because there is no one there to get it. In a 2v2, I never think that tower diving is worth it, because you aren't forcing them to lose any experience.
Hero killing! Killing heroes gives you experience! One of the most important concepts to remember in any heroes of newerth game is just KILLING your opponents. Now obviously you'd think anyone would do this, but it's important to not get caught up farming when you could be killing a hero. There are some situations where it's better to have a carry sit and farm when you are pushing the first tower so that they can gain more experience and gold faster, but generally it's always going to be better to jump out and get a kill, both gold-wise and experience-wise.
Lane control is a very important concept to understand, and I'm sure there's another guide out there that deals specifically with it. In a nutshell, lane control means controlling where the battle of the creeps is happening in a lane. If your first tower is up: you want it just out of first tower range so that you can last hit and have a defensive backup if you're about to get ganked. If your second tower is up but your first tower is down, you want it to be anywhere between the second tower and where the first tower was, generally any farther than that and you risk being ganked. (Also note here: These are just general guidelines, you must always look at the minimap and BE AWARE of where enemy heroes are. If there are four missing, you should get the hell out of there)
What you DON'T want to happen is to push your lane any earlier than you have to. Pushing a lane early is almost universally a bad idea, unless you're trying to end the game early. (which is not always a good strategy... in fact this can backfire pretty easily if you aren't careful about it) If you push a lane, the positioning of the creep battles are almost always going to be in enemy territory, which costs you potential experience and gives them a much easier time farming the lane. The positive side of killing a tower is that it directly gives you and your team a boost. However, getting a single 500 gold boost is not always worth the potential 6-7 minutes of free farming and getting every single creep kill from a lane.
The forests are interesting, in that there is no movement. You know when the creeps are going to spawn, and you know they aren't going anywhere. With two well placed wards you can guard yourself from being ganked (especially easy on legion side) and basically free farm depending on your hero. Doing this with tempest or war beast is particularly rewarding, because you are basically giving another hero the ability to solo a lane while losing almost none yourself (depending on how well you jungle). I can jungle spectacularly with Tempest and keep my experience on par, if not ahead of our soloers. If the other team does not waste time trying to gank you, they leave you in an excellent position to jump them because you are regularly out of sight. There are many tricks you can use while jungling (creep pulling, warding, counter-warding) and it is certainly a viable strategy if the player can execute. But the reward is incredibly beneficial if pulled off correctly. Your team as a whole gains much more experience than the other team, unless they are also jungling.
3. Money Flow
Another extremely important and yet overlooked aspect of gameplay is money flow. Now you may ask, what the hell is money flow? Money flow is another way of controlling who on your team is getting stronger and in what ways (I'm going to cover preferential treatment after this section). It is absolutely necessary to allow people who need items to get gold over people who don't need items. Now obviously every hero benefits from having items, but some heroes benefit more.
The simplest way to do this is to (in a double hero lane) assign one person to focus on denies and one person on getting last hits on enemy creeps. The person on denies should obviously be the hero who benefits less from the gold gain. The person who needs the gold more should get a hatchet to have an easier time with last-hitting. I'd even recommend the denier to get one as well because it allows them to increase the experience deficit easier.
Now some people may have a problem with this next part I'm going to mention, especially in pubs, but it's important. The person who is getting the creep kills, or who needs items more, should also be getting the hero kills (if this is at all under your control). If you have the option of letting your carry get the kill, you should do it. I know that every single hero needs gold, but I need to restate this, certain heroes need it more than others. Kills are just gold and experience and numbers.
If at all possible in killing heroes, towers, neutrals, creeps, etc... let the heroes who need the gold actually get the gold. Don't deny yourself money, because everyone needs some level of items to be successful, but don't be an idiot. I'm going to get into specifics about items next.
4. Hero Utility and Function (aka WHOS MORE IMPORTANT)
Now some of this will probably be controversial and for good reason. Not everything I say here should be blindly followed, because situations are always going to vary. Carries and heroes thats utility is based on the damage that they do with their attacks should always be given prevalence when it comes to money flow. The quicker they get the items they need to do their job better, the quicker they will be unstoppable. In order of prevalence after carries, it should be heroes that need to add an extra function to their hero to perform their job effectively, and after that it should be heroes that need a staff of the master or an item to increase survivability or add a new function. In laymans terms, I would rank importance of money flow in this way:
Carries >= Initiators > Support
This is arguable, but having a farmed support hero really doesn't do your team much good compare to a farmed carry. And really the only item your initiators need is the one that helps them do their job (most often blink dagger). Support's items really only help them support more, which is important, but usually during a team fight your support heroes aren't running out of things to do anyway. If you can multitask and quickly decide who/where you should cast all of your spells before they're off cooldown again, kudo's to you, but the money is still better off in the hands of a hero whose job is less based on abilities and more based on attack damage.
I'd also like to help define carry, at least within the context of this argument. Your carry, or primary target for gold, should be someone whose damage scales well in the entirety of the game. A very good example of this is madman or puppetmaster, because their damage is going to be exponentially higher as time goes in within the game due to their passive bonuses.
The next thing I'm going to talk about is who should be getting experience, and this is mostly for early-mid game, because beyond then there's not much you can do about map control. At that point map control will be largely decided and that means that you're not going to have much of a choice who gets the experience. Early game you want people whose damage and utility is based on their USABLE SKILLS to get ahead of the game. Unless your madman has double damage, he's not going to do as much damage as a valkyrie with both nukes at level 9.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading my guide, I hope you learned something, or at least questioned the way you play with your team. If I have made you think about your team's style of play at all, even if you don't agree with me, then this guide will have largely achieved its goal. Please feel free to correct me if I have made some mistakes, and also please leave your input here. Anything you guys might have to add or discuss is much appreciated.
~Day9