Be unconventional. Defeat noobs using Ring of Sorcery | Panda and Hammer Storm Discussion

What kind of Sorcery is this? LOL ARE YOU DAMN SERIOUS NOOB! WHAT A BUILD NOOB! - these are some of the reactions when I use this build.

Well to be honest, I'm no longer playing in a very competitive manner but I'm a bit challenged to raise my MMR. I started to play public games again without mates. It was fun. My new favorite item is Ring of Sorcery.

It's a noob build but it was effective when I played Panda and Hammer Storm. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Goodbye mana problems! The main problem with Panda and Hammer is that both of these heroes don't have much mana. Buying Ring of Sorcery eliminates that because it will greatly improve your mana pool. Hammer can now use his stun 2x-3x in a clash while panda can do most of his combos without fret. 
2. More Experience for you! Because you can buy health potions in the secret shop and you have unlimited mana, you won't go to the fountain most of the time. You will gain more xp when you stay at the lane but just make sure that you have wards. :)
3. Gank more. Unlimited mana means continuous ganking. If your team have three support heroes, you can supply them with mana and you can roam and kill anyone you can encounter.
4. Farm more. You can stack creeps and use your spells on them without thinking that you won't have mana for stunning if you will gank later. You can also use your spells in creeps at the lanes for faster pushing.
5. Ring of Sorcery vs Blood Chalice. Well, you may say that why go for the ring where you can save when you buy blood chalice. The answer gentle men is that chalice gets a portion of your life. The main objective here is to gain more xp while not being prone at being ganked. You will think twice to use chalice because it drains health for mana, therefore, you still won't spam your spells etc. A hammer or a Panda with half health early game would be normally around less than 800 health and can be killed by 2 heroes easily.

Cons:

We can say that ring of sorcery is a luxury item to begin with. Since Hammer and Panda are both semi tanky heroes, you can't tank that early because your item is for your mana. But through teamwork, it can win you a public game.

Again, this is effective against noobs but not for pros unless you played it very well. What do you think? Let me know if you used this unconventional build for other heroes.

Cheers!

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Posted in: HoN strategy,HoN Tips

Is it OK to lose? hell yeah!

I was on a losing streak this week. Looks like I'm kinda stuck in the 1650++ psr Level again. sigh

*Let me just share with you how my psr went down. My psr used to be 1800++ then my friends kinda borrowed my account because I stopped playing for a year. Then Garena made a major reset on the stats so everything went to 1500.

You can easily get to 1600 in just around 10 games. But the thing is you will be playing with a lot of noobs so you need to step up. If you lose, it's more than OK. At least you learned something. We learn from our own mistakes. You can ask the same question to great players like AngryTestie, Yoda, H4nn1, Chu etc. They also experienced big losses in the past.

So why am I promoting losing games? LOL Everyone wants to win!

Well here are some of my points:

We lose sometimes becase we experiment. I also tried experimenting on builds in some heroes. The best way to learn is to try something and try to mess it up. If you won, then you try it again. If you win by doing the same thing, you can say that it's a 'core' build. When I say core, you can do it in every game. Like in pebbles, it's tried and tested that you need a Portal Key. Something like that. Or for casters in general, I would go Bottle + Blood Chalice. I understand that this game demands adaptation all the time. There is no constant item/skill build that would work in every game.

We lose because we value our stats that much. Everyone is afraid to lose because they care about their psrs and kdrs. Some would just play one or two games. If they win, they will stop playing. Some people would just concede because they're feeding because they chose all carry heroes. Some players when playing support don't want to sacrifice themselves for the team, thus not fulfilling their roles in the game. There is no downside if you will lose today but win more tomorrow. It doesn't really matter. You will find that if you're less worried about your stats, you will enjoy more, have fun and end up learning more.

I can site a lot of examples but there's one funny experience that I really want to write about. Here it is:

There's one game where we have an all carry lineup - Scout, Aluna, War beast, Gladiator and Emerald Warden. I was playing Gladiator that time. Everyone was feeding because our enemy is kinda balanced their heroes were - Fayde, Pyromancer, Zephyr, Dampeer, Flint beastwood.

It has been 30 minutes and Aluna still doesn't have items. Scout has a runed axe while our WB only has shrunken and abyssal skull. We're still losing in clashes, everyone wants to concede. I tried explaining to them how big our chances are when we are playing defensive. Good thing they believed me. Started warding and playing defensively. The other team is very cocky so by the 50th minute of the game, we were able to win two clashes. Two genocides. Got kong and won the game. :)

We lose because we don't wanna be blamed by others. All of us don't wanna be called noobs or to be blamed because we didn't do what was expected from us. But sometimes, it's ok to be blamed (just think that it takes 5 to lose). At least you know what to do next time. Some players don't want to be blamed so they just take it to the exteremes. E.g. you're playing carry and you will just farm for 40 minutes before hunting. Or you're playing support. E.g. Tempest. You will blink in if you can only get 4 in your ulti. But by the time you got in, your team mates already fell. LOL I guess, the moment you see the opportunity to help your team mates, just go for it.

So! I guess after reading this post, just go out and play and have fun. You may lose tons of games but the more you lose, the more you learn. By the time you lost a lot you've gotten better!

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Posted in: HoN strategy,HoN Tips,tips on playing HoN

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. :)

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Posted in: Heroes of Newerth,HoN,HoN strategy