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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,
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.Originally Posted by Castigador
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
Thanks to Comma for this information.
THIS 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.
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 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.
Last edited by Senatic; 07-07-2010 at 06:00 AM.
2. HoN essentially has a dynamic metagame, meaning the core game play is not always constant, may be it doesn't vary with that much. When I'm saying this I am talking about the impact that each hero has on the game and not the game itself without considering the heroes. When people talk about the metagame they sometimes make it sound like a constant, it's not. The game play, pace and expected game time changes with each player and the hero he plays. This, at least as far as I'm concerned, is what gets people hooked on this game, you're playing a variation of the same game each time you play. What I want to do here is simply making you aware of that you, or rather your team as a group can easily affect the overall metagame on purpose by being aware of what impact you yourself have as a player and what impact the hero you choose to play have. As a single player your effect is minimal but as part of a team you make up half the heroes in the game and those picks affect how the game is played. Keep in mind that the viewpoint of this is not that of a professional player or that of a clan member but that of a pubber or casual gamer.
A. So that's ridiculous right, I can't affect what happens in a game just by picking a hero. I mean that Arachna was gonna gank me in the woods no matter what hero I picked. Yes you're absolutely right and that's not at all what I'm saying. Obviously you can effect specific events by picking different heroes but as far as I know seeing into the future is a superhuman ability which makes it pretty damn hard to base picks on specific events. What I instead want you to focus on is the game as a whole and not as a line of specific events. What you can influence is the games pace and the way others are going to play.
For example, lets say your team mates picked Chronos, this hero is a late game carry. How can my picking affect the metagame in a way that positively influences Chronos. Well Chronos is pretty item dependent when you think about it and he has no good way of farming, A pair of enhanced marchers/steam boots, elder Parasite/ Firebrand. charged hammer and geometers bane and he's on the verge of fulfilling his role as a carry. Which means his main problem is really getting to that point fast. Now in order to make the picks and their affects absurdly obvious lets say you decide to pick Pebbles, you think well I can compliment Chronos's low mana pool by doing the usual ring of sorcery build while tanking and crowd controlling with my stun. That should make it easy for him.
Now, what just happened was that you picked a hero who's abilities make him a farming machine, to lane with a hero that needs money. In public games pubers rarely let the other person get the last hits which means Chronos will get no last hits because pebbles base damage is to high and when raising higher in level pebbles will start farming wave after wave after getting ring of sorcery. You effectively turned the metagame for you and Chronos into more of a farming game then a ganking and roaming game, which negatively affected Chronos. Of course Pebbles can just not use his skills to farm but this would ruin the game for Pebbles who is going to play a more important role in the early game. Since Pebbles also is such a strong pusher you will most likely be spending a lot of time close to the enemy towers, which is something you don't want to do with a hero like Chronos. You want to have the safety of your own tower within a time leaps distance because losing money by dying is something you definitely don't want to do with a hero that has minimal farming capabilities. You could argue that Pebbles own role as a roamer is extremely beneficial to Chronos, and yes it is but not when pebbles is laning with Chronos.
If you had instead picked Nymphora what would have happened? Well Nymphora is a pure support hero and should be played as such, she would keep Chronos's HP and mana up enabling him to keep farming instead of running back to base or waste money on pots or other regeneration items. You created a metagame which is a bit slower paced and more directed towards roaming and ganking in the beginning which suits Chronos a lot better as he needs his teammate while ganking more in the beginning, your pick allowed him the time out on the lane he needs to gain the experience and money he needs to become the carry in late game.
B."-Okay well I can agree that as the lane partner my pick will affect the metagame for my co player, but what if I'm not laning with the guy, my picks wouldn't affect his metagame directly then would it?"
Every hero pick on your team will in some point of the game affect the other players individual metagame, as this guide will assume you are not a beginner it is safe to say that you are well versed in heroes and their different roles. Nukers, Crowd Controllers, DPSer's, Tanks, Carry's, Initiators and supporters are the different classes we generally categorize different heroes in. As you very well know carry's are dependent on the tanks to take the damage and the supporters to control enemies and replenish the carry's hp and mana among other things. What you need to keep in mind is that just as the metagame will change depending on heroes it will change with each hero depending on what phase in the game you're in. If you're not laning with Chronos Pebbles might be an excellent choice, his mid game roaming is gonna be highly effective for Chronos letting him farm as much as possible and in the late game when he becomes more of a tank if played correctly he allows Chronos to do his thing. My main point when it comes to the team metagame is that while in the early phases of the game you may not have an immense impact on the rest of your team, once the game moves into the roaming/ganking phase your impact increases. When the game goes into the team oriented phase where running without the rest of the team is equal to asking for a gank your role with the rest of the team becomes even more pronounced.
C. To conclude this concept of the dynamic metagame I want to just summarize my thoughts and what I wanted to say with it. When picking heroes in pubs the primary focus is usually heroes who counter the ones the other team picked with very little thought to how it affects your team mates, countering alone is not enough you need to be able to pull trough as a team or that individual counter will be useless. While it might be wise picking a tank depending on your team mates picks the tank you pick should affect the metagame in a way that is positive for the rest of the team.
3. Spatial Awareness. (Original Guide by Ironfisto, link to the original guide can be found at the end. I have merely rewritten this guide in a HoN perspective.)
A. So, Spatial awareness, what is it?
Simply put it's the awareness of your immediate surroundings, a lower form of map awareness. There are different aspects to this concept and I will cover these aspect, as the original guide did, one by one.
B. Area of Influence,
this is defined by two things. The maximum range of your attack as well as the maximum range of your longest spell range. As you understand from this each heroes AOI is different, while melee heroes have extremely low melee range they might have a big AOI because of a skill, take for example Magebane. The skill in his arsenal that has the longest range is Flash, 1150 units making his AOI pretty big as seen in this image;
The image depicts an approximation of Magebanes maximum Flashing range and as you can see his area of influence is pretty big.
Here you can see Vodoo Jester is intentionally staying just outside of Magebanes AOI, meaning If Magebane was to flash he could not reach Vodoo Jester and it would be a easy thing for Jester to stun, curse and ulti Magebane who could not blink back. before the damage was done. This is a good usage of Magbanes AOI by Jester.
When several heroes space together they essentially create "hot zones" in their AOI, meaning the area in which their AOI coincides is a very dangerous place to be in for an enemy. When moving you should always try to imagine seeing where the edge of your AOI is currently at and how it moves with you, on the screen as well as on the mini map. This helps you a lot in terms of positioning effectively.
Here you see Electrician and Mr.Awesome A.K.A Hammerstorm and their AOI's, Electrician's is the red circle and Hammerstorm's the yellow circle. These are the maximum ranges of static grip and hammer throw. If Jester where to enter one of these AOI's he'd be in trouble for sure, and entering the coinciding area of their AOI's would mean sure death. The main purpose of this is to show you when you have the best opportunity to engage an enemy and kill him while not giving him any chance of escaping. In most situations this will be when at least you and one more of your allies have overlapping AOI's.
C. All-Round Defense /Offense and how it concerns to AOI.
As the original guide says "The idea of an All-Round Defense /Offense is that of a formation." The basic idea is to create as many hot zones as possible whilst moving and yet not moving to close together to prevent AOE attacks, you should be able to scatter easily. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that all spells have a buffer range after triggered, if the heroes moves (In DotA it was 300 units) outside of the maximum range of the skill it will generally fail, there are however exceptions to this rule, Plague riders ultimate for example. Moving correctly like described here will allow you more easily to chain stun/disable your enemy and ensure that they do not escape.
The original guide also talks about tagging positioning, something I touched briefly on in the beginning of this guide. I will here quote the original guide.
"Another important aspect of All round defense/offense istagging. This happens occasionally when you go deep into enemy territory eg their Neutral creep camp or locations beyond their undestroyed towers. Heroes with no escape mechanism (blink/Invis/Timewalk) should not attempt to go alone. If a gank is needed deep inside enemy territory, the optimal tagging positioning will be a non stunner/disabler going in first while a stunner follows his back around 400-600 distance in between of them. In any event when the leading hero sees an opponent, he should quickly assess whether to attack or not.
Usually, an opponent gets all excited and immediately spam his spells on you. Retaliate back. He will be surprised when he sees your stunner ally coming. If he is alone, it is highly possible that he will lose the battle. Be careful when you are against high level players though. Just like you, they may have allies as back-up 400-600 range behind them."
D. Now then lets talk about player's field of view. When we're talking about the FOV we're not talking about what a player can see trough the FOW but rather how he positions his screen, most players will position their screens in such a way that they can see as much of the action as possible, like this;
They have a blind spot behind them, experienced players might have learned that not moving your screen is equal to poor map awareness but at certain points most people tend to keep their camera in approximately the same place. Attacking from any of these directions, even with a melee hero, would allow you to move in really close before being detected. Experienced players will ward and notice any traditional approach on their mini map, be creative, attack when they are engaging the laners, at points like these people lose focus on the mini map and you can move in. But also remember that each player have a different FOV and a different blind spot depending on where they are, if one hero is in front of the other, the one in the front might not notice you attacking the one in the back for several seconds.
E. Entry of battle. The original guide divided this into two sections. Order of entry and initiator & follow up attacks.
We will, just as the guide, start with order of entry. So who should go first into a battle, if possible the tank should always move in front of the group and take the initial damage, after that the casters and last the DPSer. The DPSer's are the ones with the big target on them as such they should always go in last because you want your enemies to target them the least. You also benefit by the carry not being hit by any early crowd controlling spells and most players won't think to much about saving CC skills for the actual threat that is lurking behind the shadow, quite literally. In cases of experienced players enemies will not attack the tank as easily which can be both a good and a bad thing, but the easiest way to rectify this is to simply make them attack you by being aggressive.
Heroes with any sort of ability to move from one place to another instantaneously have an a lot easier time of deciding when to enter the actual battle, meaning they do not have to follow a particular entry sequence. If you are playing legionnaire with portal key you should still not enter first because you want your enemies to cluster and they are likely to do this when attacking one of the other players. Also you want the rest of the players to get in range before jumping in and doing your almighty roar. Some players likes to buy portal key on almost every hero they play, this mostly happens in public games and they usually do this because they don't know how to follow the order of entry sequence to well. So daggers are a cheap substitute to make up for their mistakes or lack of knowledge. Always remember when using a blinking skill that the idea is to create as big a overlapping AOI as possible when the battle engages. Also remember that using skills in combination with items might increase a players AOI significantly, for example a Magmus with a Portal key has a AOI of 1200+700 units when using it in combination of his lava surge.
Initiator & follow-up attacks.So entering the battle first and striking first is not the same thing and is important to keep in mind, especially for melee heroes without blinking or invisible abilities. Even if you are Hammerstorm, initiating the battle yourself is extremely redundant because you lose time. It is better if the caster behind you throws the first AOE stun so that you can get to your target and dish out as much punishment as possible. The caster has to be careful though not to draw more attention to himself then necessary, take a few steps back after throwing the first stun, your enemy then have to reconsider what target to go for and likely the tanking Hammerstorm in the middle of the bunch will be an inviting one.
F. The original guide then talks about Escape Route Management and map awareness. I've already covered map awareness earlier in this guide so I will skip that part and just say a few words about Escape Route Management. When performing a gank one of the keys is cutting off your enemies escape route. As this guide assumes that you are not a beginner I will not talk about this in much detail, suffice it to say that attacking from different angles is a good way of cutting of your enemies movement to stop him from an easy escape.
4. EHP or Effective hitpoints.(Original guide by SsxDoTS, link at the bottom of this guide.)
So lets take an in depth look at EHP, what is it, how does it work and how can it help you to understand how it works. This is not my guide I'm merely rewriting it for the benefit of the HoN community. While this guide is game play focused this part will be more about game mechanics, in particular armor and health point mechanics and how they relate to each other. I'm gonna try to put this as simple as possible but this is a bit of a complicated subject so bear with me. I will however not bother with being to detailed with proving this as the original guide did because this is pretty much accepted common knowledge, I will simply quote the guide.
Small side note, mechanics is a tricky subject to discuss partly because we are not yet sure of all the mechanics in HoN as the game is still being developed. If I have made a mistake somewhere please point it out and I'll have it corrected.
A. Definitions
-So what does EHP or Effective Hitpoints mean, well EHP is defined as the total amount of damage your hero can receive after factoring in damage reduction before its HP hits zero, in other words how much damage it takes to kill a hero when you account for the armor.
-MHP is short for maximum hit points which is always displayed on the unit in question.
-Diminishing returns, or Diminishing marginal returns whichever you prefer.
At the moment of writing this I'm not aware of a particular mechanic in HoN that uses diminishing returns, while I'm sure there are several mechanics that do use this system. I will therefore take the DotA example mentioned in the original guide.
So in layman's terms, the more you buy of something the less output it gives, the common misconception being that the more armor you buy the less it "stacks" or protects.For example, a second basher gives you 12.75% chance of bashing as compared to 15% to bash on the first, but that is on probability though(the concept is the same).
B. Facts
- Armor does not stack with diminishing returns.
If an extra 10 armor protects you from X additional amounts of attacks from a source with static damage then 20 armor protects you from 2x amounts of additional attacks. For example, Scout starts off with 4.94 armor. If he takes physical damage from a source whose damage is static, meaning always the same, and that damage is 85 he can take 9 hits if he is level 1 and didn't put into an attribute. Now if you add 4.94 armor(5 armor) he can take 11 hits, increasing how many hits he can take by 2. If you add another 5 armor he can take 13 hits, increase by another 2. And so on. This is one of the key parts to EHP and we will explain this later on. EHP is calculated via the following formula which will be explained later. EHP: MHP + 0.06(armor)(MHP) = MHP [1 + 0.06(armor)]
THIS is instructional video showing you how armor stacks in HoN.
- Damage reduction from armor is different from armor type reduction. They are independent of each other. There isn't much point with going into detail with armor type reduction but you should know it exists.
- Melee bashes are reduced by the armor type magic resistance and not physical armor while ranged bashes are physical.
- Spell damage ignores physical armor and is reduced by magical armor.
- Damage reduction (both physical & magical) is calculated as : 0.06*Armor/(1+0.06*Armor)
The formula above only applies for positive values. For negative values, it is calculated differently;
- (negative armor): Damage Increase = 2 - 0.94^(-[armor]) or Damage Reduction = 0.94^(-[armor]) - 1
Both formula will give you the same answer, with the first one as positive value and second one as negative.
C. Armor types and armor value
There are 2 types of reduction in HoN, one is armor type, and another is armor value. Armor value is what that is covered in this guide, while Armour type will be skipped, you should however know that it exists. If you want more information on armor types go to :
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/sh...ad.php?t=55347
D. Defining/Calculating EHPSo now we get down to what this is all about EHP, in layman's terms each point of armor adds 6% of your MHP to your EHP.
Meaning if you have 600 hp and 10 armor your effective hit points = 600(1+0.06(10)) = 960
Another way to calculate your EHP is by realizing and remembering that each point of armor equals a 6% increase in yourEHP which means that 10 armor gives 10*6=60% increase in your EHP. If you have 1000 hp this means your EHP equals 1000 + 600 = 1600, meaning in order to kill you your opponent have to deal 1600 physical damage.
I will quote the original guide for those of you who are interested how this is calculated shortly. But first I want to make a few examples of how this works
Example 1
How much physical damage do you need to inflict on a hero with 0 physical armor and 100 hp to kill him? Easy right, 100 damage would kill him.
Example 2
Okay well, how much physical damage do you need to inflict on a hero with 1 physical armor and a 100hp then?
lets check the formula. EHP = 100(1+0.06(1)) = 106 damage is required to kill this hero.
Example 3
A hero with 1000 hit points and 6 armor. 1000(1+0.06(6)) = 1360 physical damage would be required to kill him.
And so on...
Note that EHP is calculated with physical damage in mind and not with magical damage, unless you use magic armor to calculate against magical damage. I will here quote the original guide for the proof and the original authors own example of how it works out of respect.
So why is this important, well it helps in showing you at what point it is more effective to buy HP and at what point it is more effective to buy armor, if you have 1500+ HP and <10 armor then it might be wise to invest in more armor as buying even 5 armor will increase your EHP by 450 EHP, buying a platemail at this point would increase your EHP with 900EHP. There is no item that will give you that kind of survivability at that point for 1400gold making armor, at this particular point in the game, the most cost effective choice. At other points it might be a lot more important to buy HP but always remember that the armor you buy early on keeps increasing your EHP as your own HP increases.Proving
DReceived = Damage Received (after damage reduction)
DReduction = Damage Reduction
DDealt = Damage Dealt (before damage reduction)
To find out how much EHP per point of armor adds,
DReceived = (1-[DReduction]) * DDealt
DReceived = (1- ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor])) * DDealt <- DReduction formula added in
Assuming that the damage dealt brings the MHP directly down to zero,
DReceived = MHP
DDealt = EHP
MHP = (1- ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor])) * EHP
EHP = MHP/(1- ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor])) <- Divide both side by (1- ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor]))
Since we are finding the EHP per point of armor, armor = 1.
EHP = MHP/(1- 0.06/1.06)
Now we have to simplify the denominator, (1- 0.06/1.06).
EHP = MHP/(1- 0.06/1.06)
EHP = MHP/[(1.06-0.06)/1.06]
EHP = MHP/[1.00/1.06]
EHP = MHP*1.06
Therefore, each point of armor adds 6% (0.06) of your MHP to your EHP. To confirm, use EHP = MHP/(1- ([armor]*0.06)/(1+0.06*[armor])) to find the EHP of a additional second armor.
The formula can be simplified as EHP = MHP + 0.06*[armor]*MHP or EHP = MHP(1 + 0.06*[armour]).
Simplified Explanation
In layman's terms, each point of armor adds 6% of your MHP to your EHP.
We will try this out on a hero with 0 armor and 100 hitpoints. Ok, obviously 100 damage to kill.
With the damage reduction formula, a hero with 1 armor has 5.66% damage reduction. With 100 hit points, the amount of damage needed to kill him is (assuming x is the amount of damage needed to kill him):
x * (100% - 5.66%) = 100
x = 100/94.34%
and we get the magical value:
x = 106 damage to kill
A hero with 2 armor and 100 health will need
x * (100% - 10.71%) = 100
x = 100/89.29%
and the magical value:
x = 111.99999999999999999999999999989 = 112.
And to see whether it really is linear, we do it at 50 armor, which is supposed to give 300% EHP, so 300 extra for 100 hitpoints.
50 armor gives 75.0% damage reduction.
x * (100%-75.0%) = 100
x = 100/25%
x = 400
OMFG ARMOUR'S SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIMINISHING RETURN. <- Proven wrong. Armour stacks with diminishing returns linearly, provided that hitpoints is a constant. And if you have noticed, it increases by percentage so in fact, your EHP increases exponentially with increase in actual hitpoint or max hitpoint.
Don't believe what I said? We use 200 hitpoints 5 armor as an example.
From the equation, 5 armor will give 23.08% damage reduction.
And 5 armor = 30% EHP. On a 200 hitpoints unit, it will be 260 EHP.
x*(100%-23.08%) = 200
x = 200/76.92%
x = 259.99999999999999999999999999992 = 260.
The following graph was not created by me and is taken directly from the original guide.
This graph can give you a better understanding of at what points adding armor/hp is the most effective showing MHP on the y-axis and armor value on the x-axis.
Overall Guide Conclusion.
Well that concludes this guide. I hope that I have been able to share with you some good viewpoints and handy tips and tricks to improve your HoN gaming.
As I said in the beginning of the guide, if you have anything you think I should add, change or remove please pm me and I will revise it. One last pro tip; Have fun playing, it is after all just a game!
The original guide on Spatial Awareness by Ironfisto; http://forums.dota-allstars.com/inde...owtopic=146885
The original guide on "using waypoints" by Totallnewbie; http://forums.dota-allstars.com/inde...owtopic=243864
The original guide on EHP by SsxDoTS; http://forums.dota-allstars.com/inde...owtopic=67285/
If I have in some place in this guide unwittingly made a direct quote or used a definition of a term and not referenced the source from which I took it this is by accident, if you have information on who created certain concepts that I have not included in this guide I ask you to PM me with this informations so that the rightful people get credit for their original work. Also remember that some definitions may vary depending on who you ask and where they are from.
Last edited by Senatic; 01-14-2010 at 05:43 AM.
Very nicely written. I was wondering why a post this organized and well though out didn't have any replies, it was posted this morning!
good guide. would be nice to edit it a bit better, like making the headline bigger or something to break it up a bit.
im gonna tell my clan mates to read this
This looks a lot like IronFisto's guide.
ARE YOU IRONFISTO IN DISGUISE?
Juking is the art of delaying your death (and potentially avoiding it) by abusing fog and/or your own & your enemies' movement (ex. juking a Blink). That's probably the most basic definition of juking; your definition is more of something called a "turnaround" (a type of mindgame).
Also in the title:
An Amateurs Guide To HoN/DotA Strategies And It's Terminology.
It's -> "its", "Amateurs" -> "Amateur's" and you shouldn't capitalize small words that are used often like "to", "and" and "its" in the title. But that's just grammar/spelling nitpick lol
Last edited by ElementUser; 11-15-2009 at 12:16 PM.
S2 Games: Dedicated employees serving dedicated gamers. Continuous development. Never-ending improvement.
-----------------------------
Tech Support and Customer Support: https://www.heroesofnewerth.com/support/
Look for my highlighted text (important information) and grey text (interesting but not required information).
There, I cleaned it up corrected some errors and added another definition of Juking as what I was describing was apparantley maybe not the primary usage of the word Juking. Also I'd like to correct the thread title but can't edit it, would any moderator kindly fix the spelling errors pointed out by elementuser, I'd be grateful.
Also yes the original guide on Spatial Awareness is by Ironfisto on the old DotA forums, as I clearly stated in the Guide everything about Spatial Awareness is his work I have merely rewritten it with HoN Heroes and images for the convenience of the HoN players.
Last edited by Senatic; 11-15-2009 at 01:08 PM.
woah well thought on, going to read the second part now(just diagonal read the 1st one)
I hope it was beneficial and made for some interesting reading :-)
Adding this to my signature for really helpful posts. This is great, thank you
Good guide!
Great guide! Can you expand a little on Orb walking? Does that mean arachna's webbed shot doesn't make her stop while chasing? Or do you mean it just doesn't aggro creeps when in a lane?
edit: Okay, on Orb Walking I answered my own question off of the HoN Terms guide:
"Orb Walking - Using an attack modifier, such as Web Shot to attack, get closer, attack, get closer, attack and so on. Because you are using a skill you do not gain creep agro"
edit: also, animation canceling... I think I can do this to help lasthitting, but I'm not sure how this helps while chasing heroes?
Last edited by cannibowl; 11-16-2009 at 06:33 PM.
If you use webbed shoot as an auto attack, meaning you right click the skill to put it on "use every time you shoot" and then simply attack a hero arachna will;
Shoot, stop for a moment, then move forward to continue chasing the hero. If/when she gets in range to attack again this procedure will repeat itself.
If you manually use the skill by pressing the designated hotkey and then targeting the hero arachana will;
shoot, move forward. Then repeat this proccedure when she gets in range.
While she is shooting Arachna always stands still, as does any hero, but when auto attacking she waits longer before starting to move then what she does while using orb walking. Using skills also does not aggro creeps which is why people use orb walking as a harassing measure as well. As you might understand from this you lose less ground in a chase by using orb walking. This exactly what happens with animation canceling as well.
Instead of
attack-stand still- move forward-repeat
While using animation canceling or orb walking it is
attack-move forward- repeat.
animation canceling serves no purpose in last hitting creeps, for that you should use the hold command because while moving your hero is using an animation which takes a small amount of time to abort, when holding the hero simply stands by waiting for the next action which reduces the time it takes for him to react enabling you to easier get the last hit or deny.
I hope this cleared it up for you a little better
Thanks, that did clear it up.
You're very welcome
This guide is epic man. How long did it take you to do this?
I put maybe 7-8 hours into it, I was thinking of updating it with some demonstrating videos in the near future, maybe this weekend if i get some free time.
I'm glad you liked it!
Thanks man for a really great guide!
Just what I've been looking for.
Thanks again!
My pleasure.
*BUMP*
-Updated Guide with videos to complement and help guide players to easier understand the tactics.
-Fixed spelling errors.
-General format and layout improvement.
-Added paragraphs to Juking as well as other places.
Truly one of the best "beginners" guide ever pusblished.
You made things sound clear and concrete. Thanks
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