Monday, April 12, 2010

Stop being a scrub! be a pro! Play in Banning Draft/Banning pick game mode

Most of the time I play all pick/single draft game mode. Since I'm playing alone, it's either I get to play with a decent team or play with scrubs. The problem when you play with scrubs is that it's auto lose eating your hard earned psr. It's hard if you're playing carry and you don't have much support. Or you're supporting your carry but he simply can't play carry coz his skill level is not that good.

Now, to remove all of these excuses (playing with scrubs and all that), better play in banning drafts or banning pick. As a bit of FYI, Banning Draft (BD) is something new in HoN where two players - Blue and Pink (who serves as captains for both teams) will ban four heroes from a pool of 24 drafted heroes, then alternate ten picks from the remaining pool of 20 heroes. The sequence would be 1-2-2-2-2-1. Banning Pick (BP) on the other hand is almost the same. This was used in DotA in Captain's mode so I'm pretty sure all of you guys know this. The only difference of BP in BD is that you will ban 3 heroes and pick from all of the heroes in HoN.

Either way, these game modes make the lineup of heroes pretty much balanced. (Well that is if you ban and pick the right heroes for your team and by the way, this is not a guide for playing BD/BP but to encourage you guys to use this game mode or join this game mode in public games)

So yeah! Here are some of the benefits that I can see:

Learn how to pick. Of course this will be the first benefit when you play using these game modes. Banning and picking heroes is quite complicated than it seems. It's like playing chess, you need to think 10 moves ahead. You need to always think why did the other team picked that hero. And of course you need to decide on what strategy your captain would decide on. You will be like a in marionette shows or puppet shows and your captain will be the puppeteer. Always trust on your captain and do what he wants. Believe in him and everything will be alright. What heroes work with each other? What are the imba combos that needs to be stopped? Do you have solo laner? Is your lineup a clash lineup? focused on gank? focused on AOE? focused on pushing? etc etc etc...

Here are some examples of counters:

  • Hellbringer can counter Tempest (his ultimates can stop Tempest’s ultimate from long range even if tempest has bkb)
  • Electrician counters Hammerstorm and Jeraziah (Electrician’s ultimate - commonly known as purge, removes Protective Charm aka Repel and Hammerstorm’s brute strength)
  • Vindicator counters a lot of heroes esp Magmus, Tempest, Torturer and any other channeling heroes (Vindicator’s ultimate silences all heroes)
  • Pestilence, Rampage counter any heroes with invisibility (Pestilence’s ultimate exposes invisible heroes, Rampage’s Charge does as well)
  • Thunderbringer counters heroes that needs blink to cover better area of effect (Behemoth, Tempest, Magmus, Engineer etc.) Once you've used his ulti, these heroes can't blink in within 4 secs..



Experience playing with the pros. The more you play with more experienced players, the more knowledge and experience you can gain from each game. It's better to play one or two games with pros than 10 games with noobs.

When I was a newbie in DotA, I can still remember that everyone were just bashing me. I learned from those experiences. I noted their items, their movement, play style, skill build, hero combos etc. I guess the most obvious thing here is that you won't gain anything by pawning noobs/pawning unskilled pub players.

Learn new play styles and item builds. This goes hand in hand with experience with playing with pro players. When I was a noob, I read forums for item and skill builds. Thing is you can't research all of that information that you need. There's no perfect build for every hero. You need to adapt to your enemy heroes. Adapting might be hard coz you need experience. I've played with some players that looks kinda good in early game but in mid/late game, it seems that they're not that good. For me, the biggest difference between a pro and a noob in HoN would be doing the right thing at the right time. This is kinda debatable coz we have different views on what is right and what is wrong. You will know the answer of course after the game. You might even consider watching your replays to see if you're efficient in handling your hero. If you are a farmer, how fast did you farm? Were you able to support your team while farming your items? Or you simply dragged your team down early game? If you are a ganker/support, did you had a successful gank? were you able to stop their farmer from farming? etc etc.

So yeah. That's about it. Play with the pros to be pros. Good luck and have fun everyone. :)

1 comments:

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