A tangent

You may have noticed that despite pledging months ago that this blog would be about mock guides about supporting, I haven’t actually posted any yet. Maybe the reason that I haven’t was because it was a lot of work. Thing is with mock guides, for the best effect they need to be true. They have to have a sort of distorted truth for maximum effect. I can’t just pull up a guide for Sandwraith and have it say “buy wards and an Astrolabe” and leave it like that. I have to think carefully. The guides have to function.

As a result I will write guides for Mid Wars. I’ve been playing a lot of Mid Wars since it was released so I am very experienced with heroes and builds. I won’t lie to you and guess for heroes I am not experienced with.

Bear in mind that the vast majority of heroes will build differently from their proper game builds because the primary form of farm is from hero kills. Also a lot of hard supports will be able to gain a lot of gold. This gives them to opportunity to push themselves into one of their lesser roles much harder. Reversely, some heroes who existed in the limbo of Support and Carry via nukes will find themselves sliding closer to support.

To get things started, I will produce a list of items that I strongly would not recommend, and then if I remember, list a set of items that might have been overlooked.

Items to try to avoid

Alchemist’s Bones. Mid Wars games end more swiftly than normal games. As a result the item won’t repay themselves back as quickly. You will rarely ever get any quiet farming time, so the niche of these gloves are virtually none-existent. I would only build them for heroes that have literally no way of gaining farm; Warbeast. Then again, why even play Warbeast in Midwars? You will also want to put your gold into an item that makes you: Tankier/Damagier/Usefulier.

Codex Level 2/3/4/5.Codex level 1 is fine for heroes that want a bit of extra burst, like Thunderbringer, Parasite, Fayde etc. Like normal games it’s not advised to level it up further. This would be at the cost of building for survivability, more consistent damage or more utility. Basically the more you rank up the codex, the less value for money it is.

Mock of Brilliance*. This has an * as it’s  not entirely un-advised. It’s a great pick up early game if you happen can afford it. It provides a scary amount of early game auto attack damage and a painful AOE magic aura for squishy enemies. Bear in mind if the enemy is stacking magic armour. Mock in some regards helps Sandwraith establish himself as not being useless. It is useful to interrupt Portal Keys. Build it under the same circumstances as a normal game, but be aware that you’re in mid wars now. The pace of game is different. It shouldn’t be made for the sake of pushing and farming.

Doombringer. If it’s a stalemate, and your team can’t be bothered to itemise to adapt, don’t make a Doombringer to make you think you can win. You’ll just die and give the enemy the Doombringer. Doombringers ruin Midwars. Doombringers are made by pricks who then throw the game because they were reckless and arrogant. Don’t be a prick. Don’t throw the game. Don’t build a Doombringer.

Nome’s Wisdom. In less you’re building it as part of a certain build, don’t build it. Its effect will be unnoticeable.

Puzzle Box. Great for revealing and does a lot of damage. Very long cool down though and given max ress timer is 15 seconds, 3/4 end game team fights you won’t have the item. There are better options.

Restoration Stone. Same argument as above, but it has a much much longer CD. If you believe that chaining two Vortexes as Tempest can let you win then make it. Otherwise it’s just another button to use.

Shrunken Head. This is the big one. All your life you have been taught to build a Shrunken head most occasions in normal games. Then suddenly in the context of Mid Wars I am telling you to not make it. Reason being, the effect is very nice. Supper nice. Unfortunately, it has a cooldown. A long cooldown. In normal games, you use it and genocide the enemy/get genocided. Then there’s a wait for 65 before the next major engagement begins. In the time it comes off CD (like the previous abilities that I disrespected due to cool downs). Sadly in Midwars, the ress timer means that fights happen more often especially in the late game. Meaning it’ll be on CD when you need it. Another problem is that generally the enemy team will have a superior magic/physical stun of some form. Even if they have heroes without them, eventually one of them will build a Savage Mace or Brutaliser. So if you were going to use it to pull off your ult without worry, you’d still have to worry. It’s best practise to have perfect positioning.

Now for the list of items to Consider

Barbed Armour. If you’re not a carry, you will be building tanky. You will be very likely against enemy carries with low health. Pop Barbed Armour when they attack you and you will punish them. Either they will hurt themselves a lot or refuse to attack you so much.

Void Talisman. Is a mid game option. Late game you’re better off going pure damage sponge for the tank-style as there will be some sort of magic damage flinging around.

Anti-Stealth Items. There will be some enemy trying to be smart and Build a Shroud or Genjuro.

Gravelocket/Sacrificial Stone. The charge stays permanently even if you die.

Brutaliser. You will be against someone trying to carry. Make their job harder by building this. I’d build it when there’s a 0.75 attack speed delay (including the Attack Speed form the Agility bit) and you’re melee. This means you will definitely stun them for 1 second every 3 seconds. There’s a cooldown of 2 seconds.

Tablet of Command/Windspirit. Utility items that scale. A disable or positioning manipulation will always be effective regardless of damage and defence. Barrier Idol and Astrolabe do go obsolete quickly for example as it’s a static damage absorb and heal.

Insanitarius. Since a lot of traditionally none-Carry heroes, especially Strength have to option to push for a more carry build (after a few of their traditional items), Insaniterious becomes an option. For an example. Take Behemoth. Insanitarius+Runed Axe+Rift Shards+Enrage = A horrific amount of damage. I’m not saying that’s the build you should go as Behemoth. But it is potentially painful.

Stay tuned for guides and my philosophies.

Stay Merry!

Support Wars

As of over a fortnight ago, S2 unleashed an official Mid Wars map to the world. All the joys of constant suicides and snarky Flint Beastwood players in a format that awards pitiful amount of silver coins if you win and not much less if you lose. From a Silver coin collection point of view, you may as well throw the game to make your team lose quicker. You can do this as these games are unmonitored so… have fun being a dick.

Hopefully this will be my most sincere guide to date. But feel free to bet how long it takes me to lie. I mean, be sarcastic.

Midwars supporting is different from normal supporting. Here, all heroes have the potential to have epic farm. There is no point in baby sitting. No creep camps to stack, and generally not being anyone’s bitch. It’s one giant team-fight with a lot of ‘Playing Chicken’ in the start. It’s all about teamwork and shizzle. Use your abilities to prevent your team from dying (denying the enemies gold and exp). The majority of exp and gold comes from the constant massacre of heroes, so if you can kill the enemy, and keep your team alive, you have a great chance at winning. This might sound obvious, but tell that to my team mates.

 

There are some use of wards in this mode.

• Common ward site is giving vision of the only rune spot. This lets you see immediately what rune it is and warns you if the enemy is going for the rune as well.
• If the enemy has traditional jungling hero that can take the Orange camps at level 1, then use a ward to keep this camp perma-blocked. The jungling hero will gain exp and gold advantage if they’re able to kill this camp every x:00 on the clock. Also it means there are only 4 heroes mid to share the creep experience. This means your team will have a 20% experience advantage over the enemy. Action in the start is small, often trading spammy AoE spells soyou can afford leaving your team a man down. Often the jungling hero is useless at low levels anyway, hence why they’re often jungling in proper games.
• Ward the enemy TP exit area thing. Lets you gank freshly spawned enemies. Useful for sitting down on a dangerous enemy (like Flint). Also provides defensive vision for pushing and usual ward yadderness.
• Ward around the Transmutenstein area. This might not be worth it. Only advantage is defence against sneaky enemies trying to flank you whilst you pay attention to mid. It lets you see if the enemy is doing it, the enemy would gain Tokens of Sight (true sight AoE on the carrier) and all runes  for 1 person (DD, Haste,Illution, Regen, Invis(?)). You can ‘deny’ yourself here if you are low healthed and it’s quicker to die to a neutral than run back. It means the enemy won’t gain gold/exp for your death. Sight will let you see a low hp enemy go here and perhaps you can murder them.

 

Damage in Midwars is often higher than normal games due to people’s builds and the intensity of gold generation. Defensive support items like Astrolabe/Barrier Idol are situational for being built. They are very strong early game and may even let you tip the balance to win, but chances are you will replace them near the end. 400 magic absorption is great at low level and farm. It’s not great when you have a MQ chain bouncing for 1k first target. Magic damage is the least of your worries then.

This is why Active Support items like:

• Windspirit
• Tablet of Command
• Hellflower/Sheepstick

are awesome. They are support items whose effects scale. Windspirit is immunity to all damage and a disable. Tablet is useful for control of positioning. Hellflower/Sheepstick controls. Hellflower increases damage taken whilst Sheepstick disarms.

 

 

Not everyone in Mid Wars will get farm. Melee heroes instantly have the disadvantage as they have a smaller early game presence than ranged heroes. If they risk grabbing the last hit on a creep they may find themselves dead due to being ‘out of place’ and the enemy took the opportunity. Likewise with fights. You can risk engaging to get the killing blow on a hero, but chances are you’ll be instantly focused on. Melee heroes must rely on the efficiency of their ranged allies or the stupidity of their enemies. Once they do get farm, they will rip heroes apart. But will they ever get there? My thoughts are with you Sandwraith.

In a strange sense the Ranged capable heroes are the baby sitters of the melee exclusive heroes.

If a melee hero can never get the farm to be useful (Sandwraith), they can build supporty-items to be of some use. Ironically, the guides I do plan to create at some point which were meant to be sarcastic, can be applicable to Mid Wars. Quite ironic ey?

PS Make an Energizer.

Ward of Wardcraft

Before I start inventing these incredibly informative and factually correct hard core support guides, I need to first explain a few mechanics of supporting. There is no use being a support if you don’t know what exactly you’re doing. One thing which some supports choose to do sometimes, is ward.

Warding is a strange activity which some players seem to want to happen. There something to do with seeing at which end of the map a ‘rune’ appears. Apparently instantly knowing where it is (you only seem to need sight of one spot and use deduction to know shockingly) saves a lot of time usually for the Mid hero. Maintaining ‘control’ (blatant stealing) of the runes is a good way to stop dying. A lot of mess happens when a hero has access to double auto attack damage, maximum movement speed (which cannot be reduced), full heal  and mana restore and some annoying illusions. Illusions are the worst rune. They give you illusions of your character which can be used to scout with, be temporary wards offering sigh or be used to help harass/deny/last hit/kill. See? Utter wank. So yes, make sure your team have the runes, otherwise you’ll be complaining at mid for no ganks or at your support for not warding.

Supports shouldn’t on any account ward. It’s 100g for an item that offers little advantage. Further more, it can be destroyed if you’re able to reveal its location by various means (Wards of rev. Bound eye. Scout’s Eye ability). So that’s 100g you could invest towards more supportive items that helps keep your team alive or that Codex to ensure the enemy team doesn’t stay alive.

If you’re stupid enough to buy wards, bare in mind that the place ‘you should place them’ changes through out the game. What towers are standing dictates where to place your non-wards. Towers like wards offer useless vision of the surrounding area on the mini map. And unlike normal wards which you shouldn’t buy, they are very angry. The enemy tends to avoid these psychotic ‘wards’ in till time has passed that they creed they must be obliterated. Wards give stupid vision of behind the tower as a safety precaution so you get early warning of the enemy coming to defend. Conversely, they can be used defensively based on your towers to see if someone’s coming to reap your soul as your  team farms all game in the jungle.

Sometimes general vision of the enemy’s ancient creeps or jungle isn’t useful. It means you can get some easy gold and experience as there are often stubborn players who enjoy farming in the murky darkness of lack-of-map-vision. On the flip side, defensive wards for your team in similar places are nice, though they tend to give vision of passage ways rather than actual creep camps (having more vision of your jungle’s entrances is significantly more useful than instantly knowing if a big tasty Alchemist’s Bones target has spawned.) Kongor wards are useful in the late game. Don’t for God’s sake plonk a ward on the river’s floor. There’s a ledge to the right which you can use for rune warding which offers sight of Kongor’s cave entrance and the ancient’s shelf. Basically, the more visual information you can obtain with a ward, the better the position. That’s if you’re gullible enough to ward.

If you are unsure if you’re meant to ward or not depends on your hero: I won’t get good in till late game:- Ward. The game will end by then anyway.

I can kill steal from people easily/The longer I survive, the more I can support my team:- Don’t ward. A squishy support will only feed the enemy’s support.

Sandwraith wards. Witchslayer doesn’t.

Easy.

If you are warding, it’s a good idea to buy all the wards physically available to you. You don’t want some random twit buying a ward and placing it in a stupid place. You want all the wards. ALL THE WARDS. It also helps you get silver coins which you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten playing Sandwraith in a 20min game.

(I have deliberately contradicted myself in this article many times)

The Blame Game

I’m having trouble deciding how to start my mock-guides so they won’t start for a while. However, today I got the inspiration of another preliminary post. It takes some of the ideas from my general guide and expands on them.

The topic this time, is The Blame Game.

It is well established that Heroes of Newerth is a team game. Each player has their own role to perform based on their hero choice. Each player must do their duties to the best of their ability to maximise their chances of winning. Sadly you have been mislead. This is just a clever rouse. Heroes of Newerth is infact a single player game. Just like a single player game it is never your fault when you lose.

To help you play Heroes of Newerth better, you need to learn who to blame. The sooner as a team you can pin the blame of an individual for your loss, the sooner you can be redeemed. You never did any mistakes didn’t you? I will give you a series of factors to consider when blaming someone by lane and then by game stage. Factors that are common I won’t repeat, much.

 

SIDE LANE (2 players)

It is mid’s fault for not ganking

It is mid’s fault for not getting runes

It is mid’s fault for not farming

It is S2′s fault for creating OP heroes

It is S2′s fault for not balancing OP/UP heroes.

It’s other lane’s fault for not calling SS (fast enough)

It is my lane partner’s fault for:

dying

not creep pulling

not harassing

not being aggressive enough with spells

being too aggressive with spells

pushing the lane

auto attacking creeps (this is applicable to the above)

not farming

not denying

 

Lane (Tri)

Not iniating/harrasing enough

Carry not farming enough

 

Lane (Solo side)

OP combo

Jungler not creep pulling

Jungler not counter warding the warded creep pull spot potatoes

Mid not ganking

Jungler not ganking

 

Mid

Side lanes feeding

No one wards the creep spots

Side lanes push too hard

Side lanes permanently OOM

Side lanes not ganking mid

Side lanes not denying rune control

Side lanes denying you rune control

 

Team Fight/Roamy Stage

Blame the player who is too busy farming to help in team fights

Blame the player who was taking part in team fights and not farming

Blame lack of wards

Blame the player who goes to ward when you’re team fighting

Blame the player who dies when warding

Blame the player who doesn’t initiate

Blame the player who keeps dying due to being focused. They’re such a noob!

Blame the player who keeps kill stealing off you. As a Pyromancer, you’re a harder carry than The Dark Lady.

Blame the lack of upgraded courier

Blame the players who didn’t help you solo push

Blame the players who didn’t help you kill Kongor

What are counter wards?

 

 

I hope you appreciated my conditions for blame. Knowing who to blame is the first step to being a proper Heroes of Newerth player.

As mid when ganking,  gank the hero with least carry potential. They tend to die quickly. As long as you get kills, it doesn’t matter if the enemy carry gets farm.

 

How to Play Heroes of Newerth

Before I start my series of support guides (traditional supports will get something different, don’t worry), I thought it might be a good idea  to introduce people to how to play Heroes of Newerth. I could write a few paragraphs describing it but I fear I might bore you. You’re here to learn how to get started playing, not be read the blurb at the back of the digital box or read a very boring game review. I’m sure your typical game review site will have a very bare description of the game and some uninformed opinions to match. Enjoy Googling.

Now, onto the guide:

You always want to play Match Making. Don’t bother with the Tutorial, it teaches you nothing except how easy it is to play as Pyromancer. Don’t bother playing No Stats to learn, the only thing you’ll learn is that players will leave a game if they can. Think of it as an easy way to realise that the human race are cowardly or are too self-righteous.

When you get into a game, always pick what hero you want to play first. Yes it’s a team game and ideally you’ll want a team composition that works, but you also have queued as solo and most likely everyone else is playing for themselves. Besides, players will cry if you play certain heroes with a bad Kill-Death ratio. So play lone wolf, don’t die. Take lots of kills. Everyone else is doing it. Just go with the flow. Once you’ve picked your hero, you’ll assume one of the following roles.

1) Carry – You are item dependant. You have very little activating damage abilities. You often have a passive that makes stat increases more effective, or you have a really good stat gain when leveling up. Your aim is to get as much farm as possible. The easiest way is to auto attack creeps in the lane phase. Most players will argue this is bad practise, I would disagree. You see, auto attacking increases the likely hood of landing a killing blow. If you keep hitting the enemy creep, it will eventually die. Remember, stay in enemy hero harassment range. This is the distance which the enemy can auto attack/cast on you. The more time they spend attacking you, the less time they’re getting last hits/denying. This means you’ll get a farm advantage. If you die at any point in the game, complain about lack of wards/support/team play.

2) Support/Babysitter - You’re not item dependant but you still need farm. For a start there’s a lot of support items that will make you a more effective support. AoE heal, AoE speed boost with unit walking, temporary invulnerability, crowd control etc… these are all support items that will make you a very good support. Ignore the cries of protests from your carry, he’s just being selfish. What he doesn’t realise is that longer his support survives, the longer the support can support for!

3) Ganker – You’re in between Support and carry for item dependencies. Some gankers are more item dependant and evolve into the semi-carry role. Semi-carries are heroes with more activating damage abilities than the carry and no-scaling passive. Gankers have abilities that can stun/slow/silence some sort of crowd control that will make a group gank be executed flawlessly. Gankers can overlap with support. Hard carries can even gank themselves when farmed enough. Gankers tend to go mid for the level advantage. The majority of gankers become early-mid game killing machines when they get their ultimate. If you’re mid don’t forget to complain about the lack of wards. If you’re roaming ganking, also don’t forget to complain about lack of wards if you see no victims or are too scared. You can lane as a ganker but this means you forsake the level advantage. You may devolve into simply support or ‘nukey thing’. Your main role as a ganker is to gank the enemy to halt their rate of farm and give your carry and advantage, and to complain about lack of wards, when it should be you warding most likely.

 

Don’t forget, when you kill someone, insult their skill in /all chat. They’ll appreciate the constructive feedback. If they kill you, blame your horrible lag or their amazing luck. If you win the game, claim victory was down all to you. You carried your team to victory and without you they would be rolling on the floor drowning in their own dribble singing “Oh Danny Boy”. If you lose however, it’s because your team fed/the enemy had OP heroes/the stars aligned and executed your World Tree.

 

Have fun playing HoN.

An introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog. I am Merrymaker Mortalis. This blog will be about all things dry and sarcastic. There will be sincerity, but it will be hard to see amongst the dry humour. As a result, you needn’t feel bad for not laughing at little jokes you didn’t find funny because ‘I may have been serious’. I did have a blog on Blogspot under the same name, but some posts got a little too personal. For some reasons I thought random people on the internet would want to read about the personal lives of someone they didn’t know. They probably would, but the sensible ones wouldn’t.

I will hopefully carry on the ‘feature’ that spawned from the old blog where I ‘ripped apart’ idiotic forum posts (from the World of Warcraft community). It will most likely be themed around Heroes of Newerth this time now as I’ve stopped playing WoW and I’m not familiar enough with SWTOR to have a leg to stand on when judging others.

On the subject of HoN (Heroes of Newerth) I hope to provide a sincere collection of guides teaching players how to support; with heroes who are not strictly support heroes. This is going to be partly sarcastic as this idea spawned from the number of games I’ve played when solo queued with the Matchmaking, picking a hard carry, and ending up having to ward or my team shafts me so badly I am never in the position to carry, ever. So these guides are for those players who are stuck in a rock and a hard place where they are cornered into supporting with a hero that simply does not support. Usually when the penny drops when said players realises they’re the support, they’re not in a position to mentally process how to start supporting. My guides will remedy this. As Heroes of Newerth is a team game, then every hero has the potential to support.

Don’t worry, I may still post rant posts, they’ll hopefully contain less caps lock and swearing.

See you on my first proper Blog post.

May you stay merry.

That’s an awful catchphrase.

Merrymaker Mortalis