Theoretical lineups

[Salem1]

I can't play HoN right now so instead I'm gonna dream about what me and my buddies are gonna do when we play and let you in on it. What do you think?

Lineup 1: Corpse Carnival

+ - - +

I started with Grave and Balph since I think their ultimates are hilarious (feeeed the DAAARKNESSS!!!) and went from there, only adding Hellbourne heroes. Slither and DS aren't corpse themed but 1) I ran out of corpse heroes 2) they fit well, particularily DS - and who wants to lane against Slither + Grave?

This team looks pretty good now that I'm thinking about counters to it, the foremost weakness is probably skirmishing when you need to think about whether it's worth blowing an ultimate or not, it's strong both in lane and team fights. It doesn't have the sickest aoe burst damage you can get, it doesn't really have a carry and so on but the heroes mesh really well and it should be really enjoyable to play. Slither, Grave and Balph - if they get their spells off properly - will wipe out a team no problem, and there's Devourer to force them to engage when we push unless they want to take the risk of someone getting picked off.

[[Ints]`Alexandr]

You can counter with, Thunder mid, Solo valk + Solo wreched, Parasite Roaming your jungle + Chutulu Jungle. As you have no carry the enemy team got to turtle untill mid / lategame, Dual junglers as your lanes are so specific, you get 1 out and the hero get ganked, both solo heros will snowball as hell, and you can't push hard because of Parasite nuking down slither, grave or Demented, Chrulu + wreched + valk + thunder nukes will instant kill any hero, also Chtulu + valk + wreched nukes can easy kill a big creep wave. GG

Also you can change parasite by a roaming andro, (get andro to short lane, then at lv3 she can roam) andro will gank Mid with thunder, and Valky lane so easy, wreched lane will be long, so Andro can ask chtulu to get and gank that lane.

[PrestonLee]

Lineup 1: Corpse Carnival

+ - - +

Granted I know it's just a lineup for fun, your main weakness in terms of drafting is you have ZERO AoE stuns. Having no stuns becomes problematic in limiting the movement of enemy heroes/teams, they can just do whatever they want (especially cheesy things like backdooring with Warbeast/Wildsoul etc) and you won't be able to stop it. You do have some decent combo slows to work with though, which can allow your Gravekeeper to nail his ultimate, followed by Slither+Balphagore ults to follow up.

Your main weaknesses are getting shitstomped by AoE burst nuke/AoE stun combos, especially Behemoth as he can just stop your push just by showing up to the tower and stunning. Tempest, Pyro and/or Torturer will probably eat push setup alive and outpush you. Another weakness is late game it seems quite easy to just outcarry your setup, if the enemy team manages to make it to barrier idols/Shrunkens on their initiators/carries your team won't have much to play off of except Demented ulti (which you won't have much to play off it as you don't really have a dedicated physical DPSer).

It does look very likely to be able to stomp uncoordinated teams though, you have some nice pushpower with Balph+Demented+Slither, and you do have Gravekeeper+Demented stuns and Balph silence to run over lone/farming heroes in a pubtrain sort of fashion which makes it looks incredibly fun. It seems like if you're able to dominate lanes early, you could probably snowball really easily into an early rax situation (picking up say two Sorceries, an Abyssal/Plated on Balph, Bulwark and Astro on whoever, possibly Barrier on Devourer).

[Salem1]

Great, long, juicy criticism Preston, I really like reading such fairly in-depth analyses, I can only hope you (and everyone else who reads this thread - yes, YOU!) comment on this lineup too

A Gathering of Power
Lineup 2

Long lane: +
Middle lane:
Short lane: +

I made a more... punch-packing one this time. I wanted to create a strong, interesting (ie. not based on safe picks) lineup which has both excellent late gaming and excellent team fighting and is based on heroes I know my buddies can play (well, except Chronos, but how hard can it be with that last hitting damage and a leap).

The short lane heroes are the crust of this lineup, here is what makes our carrying and team fighting, and the lane isn't bad. Tundra has the very important role of shoring up the team's ganking phase and like Chronos he is good against shrunken head bearers that CD will struggle with. The long lane is practically ensured to get a few kills unless they're facing two heroes with escape mechs that don't have a long cooldown (so most notably Valkyrie will not be safe for example).

Chronos + Plague Rider want to face a solo hero like Valkyrie so ideally the enemy team gets a jungler. This lineup would want to face something like - - +. Heroes that need to be banned are Magmus so he doesn't lane with Valk and cause counter-initiation problems, Jeraziah because he counters Conduit and then we have two bans left.

What do you think about it? What are the counters to this lineup, what will it have to watch out for? I'm thinking that its success will be highly dependent on how it does in the laning phase. If it wins there it will truly be very good the rest of the game but if it loses, the only way it can win is by the enemy team feeding a pair of R + R + R comebacks - but at least it has that contingency trio of very dangerous R's even if the laning doesn't go well.

Muhehehe... I can't wait to use this one.

[[D0G]chaR`]

Thinking out lineups like this doesn't really make any sense, people will just counterpick you & you can't counterpick them when needed.
You can have a general idea of what you want to draft.

Your drafting "strategy" doesn't make any sense either.

You want to ban magmus when you plan on picking tundra, which is about the hardest counter there is to magmus. Since you plan on picking up tundra, you could even bait the opposing team into picking magmus & then leave other crucial heroes open on the board, such as plague rider. If they firstpick magmus, you'll counterpick him, if they don't, you'll get him yourself.
You claim you want to face a jungler+valk, but any aggresive jungler like ophelia/parasite/tempest will destroy your PR+chronos in combination with valk.
You also say you want to face a witch slayer, which is probably the best support to pick against a chronos.

You don't seem to account for the fact that plague rider currently is permabanned. If you have first pick, the enemy team will ban him, if you don't have first pick, you will probably be forced to ban him in the majority of your games.
Chronos is a sub-average carry aswell.
Corrupted Disciple is mainly picked up as a counterpick to armadon I believe, outside of that he's quite average & there are better ranged agi carries to get over him.
When you play with a Chronos, magmus makes way more sense than behemoth aswell.


In general, the fact that you even think out a lineup that you want to face is just so useless (which on top of that, is far from anything you actually want to face).
I honestly don't understand why you would want to face torturer either. He's an insanely strong hero, regardless of what lineup you face.
And I don't get why you would want to face a valkyrie as chronos either. Nothing is more annoying than valk ult countering chronos ult when you don't have any form of revelation on you.



Tl;dr: You can't just make a lineup like that. Drafting is one of the biggest (and quite frankly most enjoyable) mindgames there is to dota/hon.
On top of that, you're drafting (and the lineup you desired to see for some reason) aren't anywhere near good.
If you just want to draft a lineup with heroes you like to play for fun, you do whatever you want. But if you're talking about serious drafting for inhouses, amateur tournaments, etc... you're a long way off.

[Salem1]

Thanks for your post . If you want to understand better what this thread is about so you don't think I'm just being defensive, skip to point 11. If you on the other hand think non-competitive (ie. not spamming as many OP safe picks as you can) drafting is a waste of time then don't bother.

EDIT: I wrote this thinking that Chronos+PR will be on the long lane when they should be on the short lane. But they should always face the solo enemy if there is one.

1) I'm banning Mag because Mag + Valk is a popular lane and one of the few lanes that has a chance against CD + Behe. We only have Chronos to follow up if Magmus is spotted and then you're taking the risk that he Qs or PKs faster than Chronos Rs since he can see him leaping (yes I know you can shift-que, it can still be screwed up).

2) How? Chronos leaps out, PR has one of the highest MSes in the game combined with an aoe slow. Let's assume it's Ophelia or Parasite because Tempest + Valk really can't kill PR before PR and Chronos do so much damage that Chronos can chase and kill Tempest. Let's assume that their pull has been blocked, this means that the lane will be pushed in favour of my side because of extinguish, combine that with some sense of positioning from PR (don't stand near the jungle) and the best that Parasite/Ophelia can do is do a lot of damage to one of them. BUT if PR gets hit by a jav and/or the lane is somehow pushed, PR is of course dead, I give you that. Otherwise I don't see how you can expect either of them to die without either one of the gankers dying or taking severe damage.

3) WS, like the rest of that lineup, is just an example. But to go with it he is at least squishy and valuable enough to be focusable in Chronofield. Not to mention the 25% chance he has of wasting WS's ulti if he uses it on Chronos. I don't see what makes WS so devastating against Chronos in particular over most other melee carries.

4) I know PR is fp/fb. It's worth the risk and we get him often simply because many/most teams we face don't.

5) Chronos might be a sub-average carry but he's a carry by himself but he's a carry who's got one of the best setup ultimates in the game. Tradeoffs and all.

6) Funny, when I play CD (which I do quite often with 18% most played) I consider myself counterpicked by Armadon, there are probably few heroes better at making CD useless than an Armadon. Stay in range of Conduit and you'll get spines stacked on you which will not only severely damage or kill you, it'll make chasing Armadon if/when he flees into a suicide attempt. Don't use Conduit and you'll be as useful as an underfarmed Flint without R. Take too many snot storms and anyone with physical damage can suddenly turn to focus you while you can't move and go down like a wet fly no matter if you have shrunken or not. Using CD as a counter to Armadon is about as smart as using Predator as a counter to Armadon imo. I agree that there are safer picks than CD, but as I said at the beginning of my post the point of this lineup is to not be based on safe picks.

7) Magmus is only better with Chronos than Behemoth if Behemoth can't time PK>R at all. What's so bad about stunning them after they survive Chronos's ultimate and doing massive damage instead of just doing massive damage immediately? Behemoth is also there because of the ridiculous laning he has with CD which you don't get if you put Magmus there. Besides, counting on getting one fp/fb is enough imo, if I want 2 it means that I take the risk that they get one even if we do get the fp and they don't ban them, now I can fp all I need.

8) I put the frighteningly OP Torturer there to balance out having Plague Rider. I believe that planning for a worse situation than what could/will occur is useful.

9) Prism doesn't activate fast enough to save people from a double tap Chronofield + Plague Carrier in lane and the majority of Valkyries that I personally see for don't even get it before level 10-11 for some stupid reason. If it's a team fight we have Shiver to spot if they pre-use it and if they don't we can use it on Valkyrie, who will likely stand quite close to supports like WS that you also want to focus so you can lock both.

10) Yeah it is, that's why I'm doing it since I can't play atm.

11) If I wanted to draft competitively I wouldn't make this thread. Any moron can put together the OP safe picks, it's not hard or interesting in the least to draft or play, I don't waste my time on it. This should help you understand my reasoning a bit better. I don't face competitive players, I face teams of ~1550-1650 where most things are possible but you still want strong picks if you expect to win against non-trash teams.

[PrestonLee]

Not taking into account drafting, assuming all-pick, I just don't see the reason why corrupted should be put into it. From what I can see, his position screams Forsaken Archer for many reasons.

1. fa can combo much better with behemoth in lane via double stun, behe+cd Requires that behe nail a perfect stun for cd to do anything, otherwise as far as I can see the lane isn't strong at all
2. fa can ulti combo with Chronos and get huge results for almost no effort, just point click the ult and get double-kills/hat-tricks D:
3. I just don't see the reason why cd is in the lineup.. Maybe he's able to gather conduit and ult charges easily with Chronos ult, but I just don't see that worth it over just picking fa and annihilating everyone in Chronos ult early, IMO there isn't a need for cd as both Chronos and tundra are going to be your dedicated anticarries along with behe stuns to finish off whatever didn't get annihilated by Chronos+plague(+the potential fa ult). Fa can assume the role of glass-cannon ranged dps with more utility and aoe burst than corrupted can, while arguably being able to farm faster than cd as well.

Sorry i don't have time to say much more at the moment, but the cd pickup was my only gripe with it, i just feel fa would synergize so much better with that team lineup as he provides an extra immobilize to follow up with Plague, behe, tundra, and chronos slows/stuns/ults, and obviously the chronos+fa ult combo is a no brainer to me. I like the tundra mid because his early ult makes him very capable of ganking easily with the rest of your team setup, and tundra's bird makes nailing those essential Chronos ults that make or break this strat easy as cake due to all that imba vision it gives.

[[D0G]chaR`]

Thanks for your post . If you want to understand better what this thread is about so you don't think I'm just being defensive, skip to point 11. If you on the other hand think non-competitive (ie. not spamming as many OP safe picks as you can) drafting is a waste of time then don't bother.

EDIT: I wrote this thinking that Chronos+PR will be on the long lane when they should be on the short lane. But they should always face the solo enemy if there is one.

1) I'm banning Mag because Mag + Valk is a popular lane and one of the few lanes that has a chance against CD + Behe. We only have Chronos to follow up if Magmus is spotted and then you're taking the risk that he Qs or PKs faster than Chronos Rs since he can see him leaping (yes I know you can shift-que, it can still be screwed up).

CD+behemoth isn't that strong as a lane. It's nothing more than a regular lineup really.
The game is far more than just a laning phase aswell. Like I pointed out, tundra counters mag really hard outside of the laning phase.
If you're afraid of that lane, you're way better off banning valk for reason I mentioned already.

2) How? Chronos leaps out, PR has one of the highest MSes in the game combined with an aoe slow. Let's assume it's Ophelia or Parasite because Tempest + Valk really can't kill PR before PR and Chronos do so much damage that Chronos can chase and kill Tempest. Let's assume that their pull has been blocked, this means that the lane will be pushed in favour of my side because of extinguish, combine that with some sense of positioning from PR (don't stand near the jungle) and the best that Parasite/Ophelia can do is do a lot of damage to one of them. BUT if PR gets hit by a jav and/or the lane is somehow pushed, PR is of course dead, I give you that. Otherwise I don't see how you can expect either of them to die without either one of the gankers dying or taking severe damage.

Because you have 2 slows, no stuns & chronos has close to zero laning presence.
You're making up hypothetical scenarios without any rational argument behind it aswell.

I don't get where the idea comes from that chronos & plague rider can pull of so much dmg. Leap does 25/75/125/175 damage, which is really really shitty. Contagion is a generic nuke with a slow, with above average damage.
I don't exactly see how you think you can "outnuke" a tempest/valk (2 ranged heroes) + 3/6 elementals + 2 stuns +call.
If you leap offensively for the damage on top of that, you can be pretty sure that you're going to die as your early manapool only supports 1 leap iirc. Maby I'm missing something, but I honestly don't see where the heaps of damage from chronos come from.

When you're facing a decent support, he'll deward the pullward aswell. Sure you'll still have some lanecontrol as PR, but that's about it.

Parasite will catch up with creeps to a PR aswell & if you are forced to hug the other side, you can easily get forced into either eating an arrow or getting caught by para.
Ophelia can


It's like you're making up such a hypothetical scenario, but you don't seem to have thought this true at all. In any decent game, facing a good jungler will probably be more of a burden on your lane than facing a regular 2V2 scenario would be.
The best you can do is block more camps & hope he goes to the opposing jungle, in which case your other lane will be up vs a trilane & your mid will become more vurnable to ganks.

3) WS, like the rest of that lineup, is just an example. But to go with it he is at least squishy and valuable enough to be focusable in Chronofield. Not to mention the 25% chance he has of wasting WS's ulti if he uses it on Chronos. I don't see what makes WS so devastating against Chronos in particular over most other melee carries.

Because a good ws will stay out of sight & disable chronos during his entire ult.
He's one of the longest disablers ingame, without having the risk of channeling like many others have.

4) I know PR is fp/fb. It's worth the risk and we get him often simply because many/most teams we face don't.

Then you aren't facing that many good teams.

5) Chronos might be a sub-average carry but he's a carry by himself but he's a carry who's got one of the best setup ultimates in the game. Tradeoffs and all.

That depends entirely on the game. A chronos with a behemoth is far from an optimal combination.

6) Funny, when I play CD (which I do quite often with 18% most played) I consider myself counterpicked by Armadon, there are probably few heroes better at making CD useless than an Armadon. Stay in range of Conduit and you'll get spines stacked on you which will not only severely damage or kill you, it'll make chasing Armadon if/when he flees into a suicide attempt. Don't use Conduit and you'll be as useful as an underfarmed Flint without R. Take too many snot storms and anyone with physical damage can suddenly turn to focus you while you can't move and go down like a wet fly no matter if you have shrunken or not. Using CD as a counter to Armadon is about as smart as using Predator as a counter to Armadon imo. I agree that there are safer picks than CD, but as I said at the beginning of my post the point of this lineup is to not be based on safe picks.

Your E procs from every snot to begin with.
Your W stacks over 10 seconds, in a 10second. window he can cast 3 spine bursts and you'll have leeched pretty much all of his attack damage.
In many hightier games you can see CD being counterpicked against armadon aswell.

7) Magmus is only better with Chronos than Behemoth if Behemoth can't time PK>R at all. What's so bad about stunning them after they survive Chronos's ultimate and doing massive damage instead of just doing massive damage immediately? Behemoth is also there because of the ridiculous laning he has with CD which you don't get if you put Magmus there. Besides, counting on getting one fp/fb is enough imo, if I want 2 it means that I take the risk that they get one even if we do get the fp and they don't ban them, now I can fp all I need.

Because doing massive damage immediatly is simply better...?
You should see the hero beyond his ultimate aswell. He's a massive pain in the ass stunlocking machine if you don't focus him after the ult.
I don't really get either why you are so bent on a CD/behe lane. It's a strong lane, but nothing special really.

8) I put the frighteningly OP Torturer there to balance out having Plague Rider. I believe that planning for a worse situation than what could/will occur is useful.

"balance out"
I don't really see why you want to "balance out" anything. What's the point.

9) Prism doesn't activate fast enough to save people from a double tap Chronofield + Plague Carrier in lane and the majority of Valkyries that I personally see for don't even get it before level 10-11 for some stupid reason. If it's a team fight we have Shiver to spot if they pre-use it and if they don't we can use it on Valkyrie, who will likely stand quite close to supports like WS that you also want to focus so you can lock both.

2.5/2/1.5 second fade time, not exactly hard to be prepared for the chornos leap & pop it insta when he does.

10) Yeah it is, that's why I'm doing it since I can't play atm.

11) If I wanted to draft competitively I wouldn't make this thread. Any moron can put together the OP safe picks, it's not hard or interesting in the least to draft or play, I don't waste my time on it. This should help you understand my reasoning a bit better. I don't face competitive players, I face teams of ~1550-1650 where most things are possible but you still want strong picks if you expect to win against non-trash teams.

Oh lord. You should really watch some vods of top tier drafters & rethink that sentence.
Games can be purely decided on the picking screen.
Drafting in 1500-1600 might not be the most interesting thing, because people simply are clueless about certain basic game concepts still in that bracket. Let alone that they actually know anything about drafting mindgames.

[Jenova26]

I've been having a great deal of success lately running line ups centered around Maliken & Flux. For instance, Mali/DS short, Bubs mid, Flux/Slither long.

Also works with swapping Rhap for any ranged stunner (tort/rhap), Bubs for any AOE initiator (Krak), and Slither for any other strong ranged long-laner (Tort/PR) or swapping Slither for Magmus.