joeltee
01-12-2010, 02:10 AM
Let me open with saying that for every 1 -cm clan war being played there are ~100 pub games. It's safe to say that a lot of us play pubs a lot of the time. And while it's very debatable, I actually believe that if you play -ab pub games long enough, your rating will start to reflect your skill level. As opposed to playing with 4 mates and stomping noobs to falsely inflate yourself.
So, how do you win pub games, you ask? I always get noobs on my team, you cry! The enemies always have good teamwork and better picks, you scream!
Remember, there is no honour in pub games, who cares if someone thinks something is op, the other team won't give a **** and won't hesitate to bug abuse / verbal abuse / do anything to win. Do not expect to meet nice people on your team or to have friendly interactions with your enemies. If a fight starts, your best defense is ALWAYS to say nothing at all in response, ever.
I'm writing this guide to hopefully give you a bit of insight into how to pick an effective hero to meet the needs of the game you're playing, and how to play the hero to the best of its ability, filling the role that is required.
1. Picking
A lot of pub games are decided before the countdown even begins. Firstly, I would recommend developing a repertoire of strong heroes that you are comfortable playing. Find yourself a strong pick in each class - strength (eg. :keep::pebb::pest::phar:), agility (eg. :fors::sand::mage::corr:) and int (eg. :temp::wret::soulr::thun:)
Any of those 12 heroes will be helpful to your team in a pub (there are lots others these are examples of decent ones). However, their worth will diminish if your team already has the role covered or they don't synergise well.
For an example, I'll take the 3 heroes I find I pick the most often in pub games: Deadwood, Magebane, Tempest. All arguably 'op' in some way, all heroes who fill their role very well (ganker, carry, support/initiate) and one of each str/agi/int.
So you're sitting there, waiting for people to make their choices or random. More than likely, there will be 1-2 people who instantly pick. Then slowly everyone picks, until a few select people pick within the final 5 seconds. At this point I will say that if you know what you want to pick at the beginning, pick it at the beginning. If you're going to pick a farmer like magebane, don't wait until 5 seconds, because chances are everyone will pick a farmer and your team will lose.
Have in your mind an idea of what your team is picking. Think about who is melee and who is ranged? How many int heroes do you have? Who is playing support? Who will be the carry?
Generally, if there are more than 2 melee already chosen, I will always pick ranged, just for the sake of laning. If the carry role isn't filled after 3 picks and we are melee heavy, I will take corrupted disciple instead of magebane. Usually melee carry is picked already, so tempest is a good pick for me in a melee heavy team. If we have an int hero or 2 already, and the carry role is filled, then it's a strength I choose, the nicely powerful ganker deadwood. And of course in the rare occasion where there isn't yet a hard carry - magebane.
The importance of having 3 distinctly different ideas in your mind of what you will play depending on situation (with backups), is that you will end up with a hero that you are comfortable with, and will be of maximum assistance to the team. So figure out your 3 and I hope the technique works for you :).
2. Gameplay - Filling your role
Ok, so you've picked well, and make no mistake your one good pick can heavily influence the outcome of the game. Now it's time to fill your role.
Ganker
So you've got yourself a ganker (:witc::arac::fors::glac::hamm::slit::pebb::valk:: thun::andr:+). The ganking role is a fun one if played correctly. Your core items usually will be boots, bottle, bracers, homecoming stone(!). And your game plan is 'roaming', which means you are not going to be sitting in the lane all day farming with your nukes. You will always have a homecoming stone 100% of the time, so that when a gank happens on your team mate you can tp to save him / turn the tide on the over-aggressive pub enemy, and so that when you are deep in enemy territory and get into trouble, you have a way to escape.
Be on top of the runes. Every 2 minutes you are there waiting to nab the rune.
Identify who the enemy carry is and locate them on the map. They will probably be 'short' (bot if the carry is legion, top if they are hellbourne). And when they disappear from that lane, they are most likely heading to the jungle to kill neutrals. Make it your mission to kill this hero as much as you can. However, be sensible and encourage other gankers on your team to join you, don't be rambo and try to bumrush into their jungle alone in mid game as you will probably end up feeding him. Early game its fine (level 5-6 is a good time to be hunting).
You will either be successful or unsuccessful in your ganking. Forcing them to go back and heal a lot is good, killing them even better, dying to them is your worst outcome. But if you succeed in keeping their carry on his toes and you work well with your fellow gankers and supports, their team will be busier trying to keep you guys at bay, while your carry quietly farms in safety.
Carry
(:dark::sand::wild::warb::zeph::moon::pupp::bloo:: pred::chro:+) Very simple. If you can last hit well, have good map awareness and know when to be aggressive and when to back off you will succeed in this role. Core item usually is whispering helm (first item is the +5 armor, +3 regen, very useful in early laning) to farm with. A lot of people get runed axe as well but i think this is overkill. Again, you need to assess who you're up against and what they are going to use against you. If they are aoe heavy, then andromeda's bane may not be viable, but I would recommend it in a lot of cases. In pub games when people see a hero 3 times, rather than try to kill it they'll often target somebody else because they don't want to waste their nukes on an image. The stats on andro's are powerful as well for a carry.
Get logger's hatchet early. And the poor man's shield. (start with stat items + regen from base, then buy these items from outpost)
Learn how to make double spawns of neutrals!!!!!
Always have your escape planned if you're being aggressive. And if you feel endangered, retreat back into the neuts or tp across the map to the other side closer to your team if the enemy may be incoming. The whole point of playing the carry is to maximise xp/min and gold/min so time not farming is time wasted, however being dead is vastly worse. Practice makes perfect.
In pub play, particularly below the 1675 level, you will often find someone playing a support who is hogging neutrals, nuking down waves you're about to farm etc. Explaining to them how the game works generally doesn't work, as they respond with something like "**** you you're not the only one in the game eat my **** everyone needs farm you selfish ****". The only thing you can do is just do your best to work around them. Sadly someone like this can cost your team the game, so being a good example for others is all I can think of (eg. saying 'TDL go bot' when you notice a nice juicy wave building up, rather than going and getting it for yourself.)
Support/Initiator
(:hell::thun::plag::poll::behe::jera::accu::temp:+ ) The support/initiator is one of the least picked roles in pub play and one of the worst played. This can be your key to winning pub games. A good support player WILL turn games around and WILL win games. A well played ulti from one of these guys will decimate enemies, especially over-aggressive pubbers.
Your core items (if not blink) are things like bracers, homecoming stone, plated greaves, mekansm, barrier idol, hex, puzzle box (look at your enemies, they have invis? get a puzzle box, pubbers don't expect it and often don't even know it detects invis).
Don't be stingy, get a courier and share it with your team. This will promote a positive vibe straight off the start. The other players will see you're playing your role properly and will be more likely to play together as a team. Upgrade it later and buy a set of wards, further showing your commitment to supporting. Having the 2 runes warded at all times will DRASTICALLY shake up your pub games. You may not see any tangible benefit, but trust me it will be the difference between win and loss a lot of the time.
Be aware of who is the initiator on your team, and who is the initiator on their team. It may be you. If you aren't sure, ask.
Knowing this means that when you see your initiate jump in on 3+ enemies, it's time to get into the fray, use your big spells, pop your meka etc. And likewise if their initiate jumps to your team do the same.
So find a support hero that you are comfortable with and show the pubbers that you are there to support them. Don't steal farm from the carry, ward the runes and buy the items that help your teammates.
3. Gameplay - General Advice
Laning
Often in pub games the lanes are a total disaster. People have their own idea of where they want to go and aren't thinking about the big picture. Look at your team at the start and offer a suggestion of lane make up:
"Plague mid
Forsaken, Pred bot
Pyro, Hammer top"
Generally I find people will actually listen and follow the suggestion. Just try to put a melee with a range and if a 2 melee lane is unavoidable put them on the short lane.
Ganking
Carry a homecoming stone and keep your mana up so that you can tele to a tower and gank those trying to kill your team mates.
When initiating a gank on a lane, ping the lane before you arrive but DO NOT spam it. If the enemies are being too cautious, don't risk it by diving them, just wait til they come into the lane or something happens, or leave and try somewhere else.
Pushing
Pushing is a good idea when done properly. Killing towers is a great way to make gold. Map awareness is very important. I recommend killing the outer 3 towers systematically, then the next 3 later on. DO NOT get over cocky and try to push through 2 towers too early, especially if some ultis / mana / hp is burned killing the first. This is almost always a recipe for disaster. Killing the 3 outer towers is a nice amount of gold, then with the items/xp an assault on the next layer can begin providing the team fights are going well.
In the later game when getting into the base, it is absolutely vital that you know when to go back. Often the tower will fall and the raxes will be oh so tempting, but having the scoreboard open at this time is vital. When 3 or more of the enemies have respawned, and you know your team has burned most of their abilities and mana in the fight previous to kill them, it simply isn't worth trying to rax. So often a pub team will die and lose because they overstay their welcome in the enemy base. There is no harm in going back, waiting for cooldowns and regen (+ extra items from the tower and kill gold) and then pushing in again to rax it.
Kongor
Controlling Kongor is very important to winning the game. It is not absolutely vital, but it is very important, especially in pubs because when the carry dies once he is often overlooked as he pops back up and rapes everyone. Having wards up at all times will stop the enemy from being able to ninja Kongor from you, and allow you to kill him with some degree of safety.
The best time to go for Kongor is straight after a winning clash, when all 3 lanes are pushing in your favour, or when at least 2 enemies are visible on the other side of the map. It is important to get everyone on board, as 5 people beating him down will take very little time and you will be most ready for the enemies if they come. Be watching the minimap to see if you can spot one or two of them suddenly break away from creeping to head towards you.
Who gets the aegis? Simply put the aegis should go to the person who is on the biggest killing streak, but who is still viable at that stage of the game. So if deadwood is 15-0 but the game is now 50 minutes long, the aegis goes to the carry who can do more with 2 lives, even though deadwood dying will give the enemy a great amount of gold.
Finally
So I hope someone at least will read this and not be too upset or compelled to flame. Remember that pub games will always be plagued by horrendous happenings, noobs, people who have no idea and people who only want to talk trash. We cannot control these things, all we can do is our best to win the game by showing that there is a higher class of pubber. Rising out of the rank, decaying sewage and standing tall.
See you out there.
So, how do you win pub games, you ask? I always get noobs on my team, you cry! The enemies always have good teamwork and better picks, you scream!
Remember, there is no honour in pub games, who cares if someone thinks something is op, the other team won't give a **** and won't hesitate to bug abuse / verbal abuse / do anything to win. Do not expect to meet nice people on your team or to have friendly interactions with your enemies. If a fight starts, your best defense is ALWAYS to say nothing at all in response, ever.
I'm writing this guide to hopefully give you a bit of insight into how to pick an effective hero to meet the needs of the game you're playing, and how to play the hero to the best of its ability, filling the role that is required.
1. Picking
A lot of pub games are decided before the countdown even begins. Firstly, I would recommend developing a repertoire of strong heroes that you are comfortable playing. Find yourself a strong pick in each class - strength (eg. :keep::pebb::pest::phar:), agility (eg. :fors::sand::mage::corr:) and int (eg. :temp::wret::soulr::thun:)
Any of those 12 heroes will be helpful to your team in a pub (there are lots others these are examples of decent ones). However, their worth will diminish if your team already has the role covered or they don't synergise well.
For an example, I'll take the 3 heroes I find I pick the most often in pub games: Deadwood, Magebane, Tempest. All arguably 'op' in some way, all heroes who fill their role very well (ganker, carry, support/initiate) and one of each str/agi/int.
So you're sitting there, waiting for people to make their choices or random. More than likely, there will be 1-2 people who instantly pick. Then slowly everyone picks, until a few select people pick within the final 5 seconds. At this point I will say that if you know what you want to pick at the beginning, pick it at the beginning. If you're going to pick a farmer like magebane, don't wait until 5 seconds, because chances are everyone will pick a farmer and your team will lose.
Have in your mind an idea of what your team is picking. Think about who is melee and who is ranged? How many int heroes do you have? Who is playing support? Who will be the carry?
Generally, if there are more than 2 melee already chosen, I will always pick ranged, just for the sake of laning. If the carry role isn't filled after 3 picks and we are melee heavy, I will take corrupted disciple instead of magebane. Usually melee carry is picked already, so tempest is a good pick for me in a melee heavy team. If we have an int hero or 2 already, and the carry role is filled, then it's a strength I choose, the nicely powerful ganker deadwood. And of course in the rare occasion where there isn't yet a hard carry - magebane.
The importance of having 3 distinctly different ideas in your mind of what you will play depending on situation (with backups), is that you will end up with a hero that you are comfortable with, and will be of maximum assistance to the team. So figure out your 3 and I hope the technique works for you :).
2. Gameplay - Filling your role
Ok, so you've picked well, and make no mistake your one good pick can heavily influence the outcome of the game. Now it's time to fill your role.
Ganker
So you've got yourself a ganker (:witc::arac::fors::glac::hamm::slit::pebb::valk:: thun::andr:+). The ganking role is a fun one if played correctly. Your core items usually will be boots, bottle, bracers, homecoming stone(!). And your game plan is 'roaming', which means you are not going to be sitting in the lane all day farming with your nukes. You will always have a homecoming stone 100% of the time, so that when a gank happens on your team mate you can tp to save him / turn the tide on the over-aggressive pub enemy, and so that when you are deep in enemy territory and get into trouble, you have a way to escape.
Be on top of the runes. Every 2 minutes you are there waiting to nab the rune.
Identify who the enemy carry is and locate them on the map. They will probably be 'short' (bot if the carry is legion, top if they are hellbourne). And when they disappear from that lane, they are most likely heading to the jungle to kill neutrals. Make it your mission to kill this hero as much as you can. However, be sensible and encourage other gankers on your team to join you, don't be rambo and try to bumrush into their jungle alone in mid game as you will probably end up feeding him. Early game its fine (level 5-6 is a good time to be hunting).
You will either be successful or unsuccessful in your ganking. Forcing them to go back and heal a lot is good, killing them even better, dying to them is your worst outcome. But if you succeed in keeping their carry on his toes and you work well with your fellow gankers and supports, their team will be busier trying to keep you guys at bay, while your carry quietly farms in safety.
Carry
(:dark::sand::wild::warb::zeph::moon::pupp::bloo:: pred::chro:+) Very simple. If you can last hit well, have good map awareness and know when to be aggressive and when to back off you will succeed in this role. Core item usually is whispering helm (first item is the +5 armor, +3 regen, very useful in early laning) to farm with. A lot of people get runed axe as well but i think this is overkill. Again, you need to assess who you're up against and what they are going to use against you. If they are aoe heavy, then andromeda's bane may not be viable, but I would recommend it in a lot of cases. In pub games when people see a hero 3 times, rather than try to kill it they'll often target somebody else because they don't want to waste their nukes on an image. The stats on andro's are powerful as well for a carry.
Get logger's hatchet early. And the poor man's shield. (start with stat items + regen from base, then buy these items from outpost)
Learn how to make double spawns of neutrals!!!!!
Always have your escape planned if you're being aggressive. And if you feel endangered, retreat back into the neuts or tp across the map to the other side closer to your team if the enemy may be incoming. The whole point of playing the carry is to maximise xp/min and gold/min so time not farming is time wasted, however being dead is vastly worse. Practice makes perfect.
In pub play, particularly below the 1675 level, you will often find someone playing a support who is hogging neutrals, nuking down waves you're about to farm etc. Explaining to them how the game works generally doesn't work, as they respond with something like "**** you you're not the only one in the game eat my **** everyone needs farm you selfish ****". The only thing you can do is just do your best to work around them. Sadly someone like this can cost your team the game, so being a good example for others is all I can think of (eg. saying 'TDL go bot' when you notice a nice juicy wave building up, rather than going and getting it for yourself.)
Support/Initiator
(:hell::thun::plag::poll::behe::jera::accu::temp:+ ) The support/initiator is one of the least picked roles in pub play and one of the worst played. This can be your key to winning pub games. A good support player WILL turn games around and WILL win games. A well played ulti from one of these guys will decimate enemies, especially over-aggressive pubbers.
Your core items (if not blink) are things like bracers, homecoming stone, plated greaves, mekansm, barrier idol, hex, puzzle box (look at your enemies, they have invis? get a puzzle box, pubbers don't expect it and often don't even know it detects invis).
Don't be stingy, get a courier and share it with your team. This will promote a positive vibe straight off the start. The other players will see you're playing your role properly and will be more likely to play together as a team. Upgrade it later and buy a set of wards, further showing your commitment to supporting. Having the 2 runes warded at all times will DRASTICALLY shake up your pub games. You may not see any tangible benefit, but trust me it will be the difference between win and loss a lot of the time.
Be aware of who is the initiator on your team, and who is the initiator on their team. It may be you. If you aren't sure, ask.
Knowing this means that when you see your initiate jump in on 3+ enemies, it's time to get into the fray, use your big spells, pop your meka etc. And likewise if their initiate jumps to your team do the same.
So find a support hero that you are comfortable with and show the pubbers that you are there to support them. Don't steal farm from the carry, ward the runes and buy the items that help your teammates.
3. Gameplay - General Advice
Laning
Often in pub games the lanes are a total disaster. People have their own idea of where they want to go and aren't thinking about the big picture. Look at your team at the start and offer a suggestion of lane make up:
"Plague mid
Forsaken, Pred bot
Pyro, Hammer top"
Generally I find people will actually listen and follow the suggestion. Just try to put a melee with a range and if a 2 melee lane is unavoidable put them on the short lane.
Ganking
Carry a homecoming stone and keep your mana up so that you can tele to a tower and gank those trying to kill your team mates.
When initiating a gank on a lane, ping the lane before you arrive but DO NOT spam it. If the enemies are being too cautious, don't risk it by diving them, just wait til they come into the lane or something happens, or leave and try somewhere else.
Pushing
Pushing is a good idea when done properly. Killing towers is a great way to make gold. Map awareness is very important. I recommend killing the outer 3 towers systematically, then the next 3 later on. DO NOT get over cocky and try to push through 2 towers too early, especially if some ultis / mana / hp is burned killing the first. This is almost always a recipe for disaster. Killing the 3 outer towers is a nice amount of gold, then with the items/xp an assault on the next layer can begin providing the team fights are going well.
In the later game when getting into the base, it is absolutely vital that you know when to go back. Often the tower will fall and the raxes will be oh so tempting, but having the scoreboard open at this time is vital. When 3 or more of the enemies have respawned, and you know your team has burned most of their abilities and mana in the fight previous to kill them, it simply isn't worth trying to rax. So often a pub team will die and lose because they overstay their welcome in the enemy base. There is no harm in going back, waiting for cooldowns and regen (+ extra items from the tower and kill gold) and then pushing in again to rax it.
Kongor
Controlling Kongor is very important to winning the game. It is not absolutely vital, but it is very important, especially in pubs because when the carry dies once he is often overlooked as he pops back up and rapes everyone. Having wards up at all times will stop the enemy from being able to ninja Kongor from you, and allow you to kill him with some degree of safety.
The best time to go for Kongor is straight after a winning clash, when all 3 lanes are pushing in your favour, or when at least 2 enemies are visible on the other side of the map. It is important to get everyone on board, as 5 people beating him down will take very little time and you will be most ready for the enemies if they come. Be watching the minimap to see if you can spot one or two of them suddenly break away from creeping to head towards you.
Who gets the aegis? Simply put the aegis should go to the person who is on the biggest killing streak, but who is still viable at that stage of the game. So if deadwood is 15-0 but the game is now 50 minutes long, the aegis goes to the carry who can do more with 2 lives, even though deadwood dying will give the enemy a great amount of gold.
Finally
So I hope someone at least will read this and not be too upset or compelled to flame. Remember that pub games will always be plagued by horrendous happenings, noobs, people who have no idea and people who only want to talk trash. We cannot control these things, all we can do is our best to win the game by showing that there is a higher class of pubber. Rising out of the rank, decaying sewage and standing tall.
See you out there.