Dota 2 item giveaway!

Greeting dota fans!

This is the first of many item giveaways you’ll get here, on your beloved “all about dota 2” blog.

This week’s item giveaway consists of a mythical courier and three common items:

Naked Greevil – mythical courier

              Staff of the Tusk-Bereft

 Cyclopean Helm of the Mono Militis

Back-Ache

The rules are quite simple:

1. Share any of the posts (Dota Wisdom, dota 2 hero build – Shadow Fiend,  Dota 2 MMR – Basic knowledge or dota 2 item giveaway) on any social network;
2. Post a comment below
3. The winners will be randomly chosen (the first one will get the Naked Greevil – mythical courier, second one – Staff of the Tusk-Bereft, third one – Cyclopean Helm of the Mono Militis and the fourth one – Back-Ache)

Have a great time!

dota 2 hero build – Shadow Fiend

As another week passed, another post makes its way to you.

On this series of posts you’ll get as many hero builds as you wish.

I invite you to try my personal preferences and see if they fit you and your playstyle:

This week, Shadow Fiend!

This hero has huge potential and, if played accordingly, it can unleash hell on foes.

Let’s get right to it:

Shadow Fiend  is an agility hero pertaining to the dire side. Shadow Fiend in two words: glass canon.

The glass canon term describes this hero the best since it has a very low health pool but hits like a truck.

Shadow Fiends’ stats:

Health (lvl 1):	435	Movespeed:	305
Mana (lvl 1):	234	Base Atck. Time:	1.7
Damage:	35-41	Missile Speed:	1200
Atck. Range:	500	Attack Anim.:	0.5 +0.54
Atck. Speed:	1.43s	Cast Anim.:	0.67 +0.4
Armor:	1.8	Sight Range:	1800 800

Abilities:

Shadowraze

 

This is a very powerful skill that empowers Shadow Fiend in the early game since it can deal 900 damage at full level.  In the mid/late game this skill scales pretty decent compared to other nukes but you should pack quite a punch with your right click by then.

Shadowraze consists in three separate abilities that can be used at different distances (get used to this skill in practice sessions so you won’t get flamed in pubs/pro games).

Necromastery:

This ability is a passive one which comes in aid if you’re not that good of a last hitter(just kidding.It helps, though!).

Necromastery provides the ‘black powder’ to your canon as it stores 2 damage per killed unit (including denied ones!) and 12 for enemy heroes… note that it has a limit of 36 units (72 damage).

Presence of the Dark Lord:

The passive skill that considerably  reduces the armor of any foe (excluding buildings). It goes whitout saying that you’ll need this skill against bulkier enemies in order to cut them open like a hot knife through butter.

Requiem of Souls:

If the first three abilities didn’t impress you, this one will.

This makes you the biggest, baddest mofo in town 🙂 by unleashing all of the spirits you have captured in Necromastery, while severely damaging the enemy units, slowing their attack speed and their damage. All alongside an awesome animation time of 1 second.

Shadow Fiend builds:

You can build a hero like Shadow Fiend in two simplified ways:

1. The “Glass canon” build:

Hero build – Necromastery – maxed followed by the Presence of the Dark Lord and stats (you can choose for Requiem at level 9 – 11 -16).

Item build – you can go phase boots for extra damage early on, followed by Medalion/Desolator + Daedalus (you can proc some deadly critical hits by doing so).  My favourite Shadow Fiend build combines the damage you get from the items mentioned above with the extra attack speed that Mask of Madness provides.

(I know what are you all thinking about MoM and – armor stacking, but here’s a hint:

if you put MoM in your inventory before you put the Desolator, then you get the lifesteal and just the extra damage the Desolator gives. But if you put the Desolator first, then you get the minus armor from the Desolator and the 100% extra attack speed from the MoM)

2. The defensive carry hero build is soon to follow, stay tuned fellas!

 

Dota Wisdom

Here you’ll get the latest tips and tricks that revolve around our beloved game.

General facts in dota 2:

• Dota 2 is just a remake, not a sequel of D.o.t.A.

• Use ‘Move’ command on an enemy with Lycan’s Wolves to have a moving observer ward on them, at least untill they go near a tower / back to base.
• Illusion Rune clones can scout a much larger area if you use the ‘Patrol’ command.
• Enter bottom right creepcamp from the north by cutting down tree. Fight mobs slighly above the cut tree. A second pack can now spawn while you’re fighting current pack.
• If you’re gonna random a hero, please wait untill a few of your teammates got their heroes. “5 melee, no stun”-team rarely works out.
• You can activate Lothar’s while channeling certain ultimates, like Freezing Field and Death Ward, without breaking channeling.
• A big hp bar doesn’t mean alot of hp. It’s not the size that counts, but the numbers.
• Orb-Walking is a lot more effective than waiting for a second cast. Example, the Enchantress with her Impetus spell. Throw one, move a step, throw another. Consecutive successive casts will be faster than auto-attack and waiting. Do not get carried away, usually while orb-walking you get too focused on a target to notice surroundings.
• Eul’s Scepter of Divinity’s ‘Cyclone’ ability can be used on yourself, useful to escape damages that deal over time such as Epicenter(if you didn’t manage to cancel his cast). This can also be used to dodge Mirana’s ‘Elune’s Arrow’ ability if you are unable to with maneuvering in time, this does not work for Pudge’s ‘Meat Hook’, your entire tornado along with your hero will be dragged to him. This though will make the damage of the hook not occur.

• Spells and abilities which you want to target on self also work through portrait for your hero, so that you wont hit that tombstone with soul rip accidently.
• If you die early make sure that you buy a TP, levels are important for any hero early game.
• Escape TPs are best used in fog, learn where the fog is near the secret side shops.
• Lycan’s wolves trick can also be used for illusions and roshan, i.e. illusions who tank roshan.
• You can draw creep aggro by right clicking an enemy when being within 500 range from enemy creeps, useful for farming with a melee hero vs 1-2 ranged opponents.
• You can double-click on alot of items (Eul’s, Forcestaff, Dagger, etc.) to use them.
• As soon as you get the sufficient money to buy an item, buy it at base. You never know when ganks might come.
• When TP-ing to a tower, if you get time, just don’t double clik on the mini map, try to land precisely where you want to : don’t give easy hooks/arrows.
• Don’t forget to shift-queue after TP for immediately moving, instead of waiting some time, being afraid of cancelling the TP.
• Treants armor can be cast on buildings.
• Troll’s melee mode gives bonus move speed so when running away be sure to go melee.
• At higher levels Kunkka’s X takes longer than Torrent, be sure to account for the delay.
• When charging with SB hit C again to stop the charge up to head toward your enemy sooner for short distance stuns, like when approaching an enemy from behind.
• Razor’s link keeps stealing damage while Skel King or anyone with aegis reincarnates.
• Urn works on allies/enemies in Bane’s Nightmare without breaking it.
• Morphling’s “Morph” skill not only continues to work while disabled but can be turned on or off as long as you aren’t silenced, hexed, or paused. For example, if you’re stunned and right-click the skill then it’ll start working even though it won’t look like it.
• Metamorph based skill can dodge some stuns but you stilll get damaged.
• You can use Death Ward to block paths.
• Silence silences Last Word silence.
• All silence except Doom doesn’t Silence items.
• You can escape Ensnare and Pit using Ghost Scepter but can’t with BKB.
• Juggernaut can do physical attacks on buildings and the Glaive Thrower/Meat Wagons while in bladefury. If you try attacking other creeps/heroes you do 0 damage but are able to proc things like maim/chain lightning etc. and place buffs on them from deso and skadi.

• Farming tips:
• Full HP ranged creeps die from 3 hits of a tower (first level). Try to sneak in one hit before the second tower projectile hits the creep. Hit the creep immediately after it for another easy 50 gold.
• Full HP Catapults and Balistas can tank exactly three tower hits (first level) and still live. Last hit them afterwards, easy 80 gold.
• Don’t hesitate to hit a creep a few times to get a feeling for your impact on their health bar.

More to come, stay tuned !

Dota 2 MMR – Basic knowledge

The MMR refers to MatchMakingRating, which shows you in what bracket you are placed among the other competitive players.
This mode is aimed at experienced players who want to play in a more competitive environment and know their matchmaking rating (MMR). Dota 2 matchmaking has always calculated MMR and used it to form matches; in ranked matchmaking the MMR becomes visible.

Here’s what you need to know about ranked matchmaking:

• Ranked matchmaking is unlocked after approximately 150 games.
• All players in the party must have unlocked the mode.
• Currently, only All Pick, Captains Mode, and Captains Draft are available.
• You may not participate in ranked matchmaking while in the low priority pool.
• Coaches are not allowed in ranked matchmaking.
• Matches played in normal matchmaking do not impact your ranked matchmaking MMR, and vice versa.
• Your ranked MMR is visible only to you and your friends. The MMR used for normal matchmaking is not visible.
• When you first start using ranked matchmaking, you will enter a calibration phase of 10 games. During this time, your ranked MMR will not be visible.

   Your Matchmaking Rating (MMR)

Dota 2 uses standard techniques to quantify and track player skill.Each player has an MMR, which is a summary metric that quantifies your skill at Dota 2. After each match, your MMR gets updated based on what happened in that match. In general, when you win, your MMR will go up, and when you lose, your MMR will go down. Win/loss is the primary criteria used to update MMR, but individual performance also plays a role. It is possible for an individual MMR to increase after a loss or decrease after a win, but in general the winning team’s average MMR will increase and the losing team’s MMR will decrease.

New accounts and those playing in Ranked Matchmaking for the first time have high uncertainty. Higher uncertainty allows larger adjustments after each match, and lower uncertainty leads to smaller adjustments. Together, the MMR and uncertainty can be interpreted as a probability distribution of performance in your next game; the MMR itself serves as the mean of this distribution and the uncertainty is its standard deviation. If the match outcomes (both the win/loss and individual performance) repeatedly match the expectations, the uncertainty tends to decrease until it reaches a floor. A surprising match outcome will tend to cause an increase in uncertainty.

There are actually four types of MMRs for each player:

• Normal matchmaking, queuing solo
• Normal matchmaking, queuing with a party
• Ranked matchmaking, queuing solo
• Ranked matchmaking, queuing with a party

Each of the two ranked MMRs has its own calibration period. Under certain circumstances,  the calibration may need to be recalibrated,  if Valve thinks the MMR is inaccurate.

Note that this distribution is from normal matchmaking. The players who participate in ranked matchmaking will be more skilled, more experienced players. Any given player will have different expectations and play the game differently in ranked matchmaking compared to normal matchmaking.

The ultimate goal of automated matchmaking in Dota 2 is for players to enjoy the game. The matchmaker seeks matches with the following properties (listed in no particular order):

• The teams are balanced. (Each team has a 50% chance to win.)
• The discrepancy in skill between the most and least skilled player in the match is minimized. This is related to team balance, but not the same thing.
• The discrepancy between experience (measured by the number of games played) between the least experienced player and the most experienced player is minimized. More on this below.
• The highest skill Radiant player should be close to the same skill as the highest skill Dire player.
• Each team contains about the same number of parties. For example, the matchmaker tries to avoid matching a party of 5 against against 5 individual players.
• Players’ language preferences contains a common language. Lack of a common language among teammates’ language preferences is strongly avoided. Lack of a common language across the whole match is also avoided, but less strongly.
• Wait times shouldn’t be too long.

What About Parties?

When parties are involved, things get a bit more complicated. Parties often contain players with a wide discrepancy in skill and experience. For the purposes of measuring the goodness-of-fit criteria listed as #2 and #3 above, the matchmaker assigns each party aggregate skill and experience numbers. It is these party numbers that are used rather than the individual. In general, when a party with a wide skill range is matched with a solo player, the solo player will have skill and experience near the average of the party. If you notice that one player seems to be significantly less skilled than the other players in the match, it is very likely that they are partied with a high skilled player.

Also, when players are in a party, they typically perform better than players of equivalent skill who don’t know each other. We account for this in two ways. First, your skill is tracked when queuing alone separately from when queuing in a party. Second, the effective MMRs is adjusted based on the number of players in the party and the distribution of skill within the party.

Conclusion

Hopefully this blog post has given you some insight into how the matchmaker currently works, as well as how the success is evaluated. Like most everything else, matchmaking is subject to constant reevaluation. Matchmaking will never be perfect, don’t give up easily !

Long time no see…

Glad to welcome you into the coolest hangout. This is the place for veterans to share stories of long fought battles while satisfyingly engurgitating chunks of meat (just kidding, any junk food is just fine…but seriously, eat healthy). If you are, by chance, a newcomer to the world of dota, you have your spot reserved right near the more experienced ones. There are some ground rules, though:

1. Enjoy your stay;

2. Have fun while you learn as much as you want to learn;

3. Be awesome! (any sign of non-belligerent behaviour will be rewarded with free items);

4. Share your wisdom;

5. Keep your head up every time (low morale sucks) – just think about how lovely my horse is: 

Until next time, watch out for hooks and arrows!