Wulff

:) :)

:)

fuck.

If you're worried about a level 1 gank, grab Firefly at level 1, if not - grab Sticky Napalm. You want to be maxing Sticky Napalm over anything else, it is essential for laning and you should be spamming it in teamfights, after you've lasso'd and your other spells are on cooldown. In regards to a skillbuild further into the game, I personally prefer maxing Flamebreak over Firefly (Get 1 point in Firefly at level 2 though). Firefly is mainly a positioning tool and the only thing that changes when you level it up is the damage over time from standing in the fire. Flamebreak doesn't get anything other than damage from levelling up either, but having a potential 300 damage AoE burst at level 9 is no laughing matter. Regarding items. Blink is 100% core on him. After that it depends on the game. Force Staff is a great pickup, as you can blink in, lasso someone, and then force staff out with them in tow. I'd dare say it is 100% core on Batrider along with Blink. If you're being bursted by magical nukes, Hood of Defiance is a viable pickup, if you're being destroyed by melee damage it could be worth grabbing a Mekansm for the extra stats, + armor and on-demand heal. Ghost Scepter is also an option. Eul's Scepter is also great on Batrider, by the way. More Int is always good, gives great movement speed and its active can help you escape/line up enemies for an easy Flamebreak. Lategame items should be Scythe of Vyse and/or Shiva's Guard. If you're worried about their carries, Scythe of Vyse is the way to go. As for boots, I used to pick up Tranquil Boots on Batrider all the time, but since they have been nerfed I don't know how well that works anymore. They lost a lot of + Move Speed and Batrider sorely needs that to get around before/during fights. Honestly all boots are viable on him. Treads for some extra tankiness, Phase for quickly getting around in teamfights, Arcanes if your team is lacking them and of course Boots of Travel in the lategame or earlier if you're dominating/farming well, as they will give you fantastic +ms and near enough global map presence. These items I mentioned all work great with Batrider, but you have to remember that there is no rigid build for any hero in Dota (Except for Blink on most initiators/vlads on Lycan/Ursa). You have to analyze where the game is headed and how best to deal with the opposing heroes and build items around that.

Seriously though, the place is a cesspool. Stay out if you value your sanity.

I agree.

IF you let people get within the Marksmanship radius range of you. "Deathcannon" potential is still there. People are going to have to play Drow Ranger more like Sniper, staying at max range and orbwalking the enemies as much as possible. Smart people will try and get ontop of you of course and I do think that Drow will end up being played much less because of this change. If anything it will make Shadowblade even more core on her than it was before, so that you can quickly position yourself around in a teamfight. I think maybe going for fast Boots of Travel for crazy early game MS could also be an option. Considering you can get BoT's at ~6 minutes if you farm well and get them as your first item. We'll see in a while if it was too much.

Not my experience. A "drooling retard" can do well with Nyx just as easily as they could with Drow, because Spiked Carapace is a get out of jail free card. There is also no point in exaggerating, even without the Marksmanship bonus, Drow will hit hard - She just needs more farm before she turns into a potent right-clicker. Her stats still scale semi-decently and she is still going to be getting items. Like I said, I too think the Drow nerf is looking a bit harsh considering how easy she is to destroy with burst and stuns - but to claim her completely useless without the Marksmanship bonus is just not going to be true and that is also assuming she won't get the Marksmanship bonus. People will just have to be more careful with Drow and position themselves better and make sure they have their team in front of them during fights as much as possible.

Even if I think the Drow nerf looks excessive on paper, I'll wait to see how she fares in actual games before making final judgement on her changes. Other than that, I'm just glad Icefrog isn't making knee-jerk reactions and over-the-top changes.

Don't even joke about that. I am already sorely disappointed in Legion Commander's lack of giant moustache.

:)

Chances are it might be a female in Dota 2. TIME WILL TELL.

can't wait until all the current heroes are ported and we only see 1-2 heroes every year, if even that. Gonna have to step the bitching up.

u kno' it.

10/10 gameplay

If you by any chance mean "Where did that paring come from and I don't mean which artist", it's because Omniknight and PA are deadly together in lane and Omniknight really compliments PA in general. Blinkstrike into Purification is great lane harass and PA can participate in fights way earlier and even potentially mix up her item build because of Repel in general. Not to mention that Degen Aura + Stifling Dagger makes it easy for PA to stand there and beat up her super-slowed opponent whilst Omniknight fusses over her hair.

I'll agree to an extent, but there are most definitely other reasons for heroes being picked and banned. Pro teams do not pick heroes because they are "Flavour of the Month", they pick and ban them because they can be useful to/heavily disrupt their strategy and they end up becoming FOTM because they have been proven to work against the heroes they are usually picked against. Pro teams play it safe in 90% of the games, that is why picks and bans been the same over the past months. It works. In scrims it is way different. I was watching Dignitas scrim the other day against VP and VP absolutely crushed them with a Huskar. If you want to see the actual testing of heroes that pro teams do, I'd recommend you stop watching tourney games and start watching scrims. Batrider for example is banned/picked a lot these days because Nai'x is the most commonly used carry and with Lasso going through BKB it makes him perfect for dealing with that hero. Bans and picks are all about what you want to do with your team or what you think your enemy is going to do with their team. I do believe that some heroes fill that "You wouldn't pick any other hero if this one wasn't banned". Heroes like that (In my opinion) are Magnus and Keeper of the Light. You basically can't ask for better initiation with a Magnus, considering RP stuns through BKB, he has great health from his Strenght growth, good nukes and power-boost your carry. Even with all that, Enigma is sometimes picked up over him due to his fast Jungle or more rarely, but still at times, Tidehunter for his ability to offlane. Keeper of the Light, while an extremely versatile and powerful support, is currently seeing as much play as he is, because he shines in trilanes. He can keep the trilane supported with constant mana and has the potential to land huge nukes on all enemy heroes in the lane, but if the "meta" (I dislike that word, but I can't think of anything else) was to shift to say a roaming/ganking meta, I can almost guarantee you that Kotl wouldn't be picked nearly as often. There are way too many equasions in Dota 2 to reliably say "X hero is the pinnacle of its role, you should always pick it."

Watch replays of your games. If you're serious about getting better about your gameplay, taking an hour to watch over some replays and see the moments where you died, of if you remember a situation that left you puzzled, figure out what happened. Your positioning, enemy positioning, your hero, enemy heroes, your items, enemy items etc. It's something I carried along from when I was playing Starcraft very seriously in S1. Of course you can just continue to play the game and have fun, but if you want to improve, doing some replay-analysis can really do wonders for your understanding.

Support or mid are my favourites.

I have to agree with Magickus. Comp TF2 is very hard to understand and get into, compared to Dota 2... Coming from a guy who used to be really "in to" comp TF2, it also gets pretty boring, pretty fast.

Normally I'd say that Facade's answer is concise enough, but I have 30 minutes to kill before my train arrives. First of all, make sure you get yourself a solo lane. Broodmother is a hero that benefits highly from levels and is great at tying up multiple heroes in a lane because of how evasive she can be if you're smart about it. Make sure to get a pair of Sentry Wards and the Soul Ring Recipe in your starting items. If a support can throw you the Sentry Wards, cool, if not buckle up the money and get them yourselves. Smart opponents WILL bring Sentry Wards in a lane against a Broodmother because she is practically shut down completely by detection and seeing as she also practically needs to be in her webs to live in the early game, it's usually pretty easy to zone her out. Use your Sentry Wards to counter-ward their Sentry Wards. If you lucked out and you're laning against idiots and/or newbies, the Sentry Wards can be used to potentially to De-Ward later in the game, or maybe the enemy team have some invis heroes. Soul Ring should be obvious. Broodmother has one reliable nuke that she will be using throughout the entire game. Unfortunately she is also an Agility hero with a shitty Intelligence growth, so the extra reliable mana-on-demand is great for making sure you can always harass/burst in lane/fights. Also the health regeneration the ring gives passively makes you a regen beast in your webs. Spread your webs CLEVERLY. Expect the enemy laners to have brought Sentry Wards, expect them to expect you having Sentry Wards (AKA They will try and kill your sentry before you can kill theirs and if there is more than one enemy hero in lane, they WILL win that fight). So in the case that you cannot avoid their Sentry Wards, at least your webs will be spread enough that you have some corner(s) to hide in. It's better than nothing. Use your webs to knock down trees! Those things take down all trees in their area of effect (Granted they grow back again) but it will make it extremely easy to spot ganks coming from the jungle. Do not leave your lane. This is one thing that is a problem for Broodmother in pub games. One of two things happen: A: The enemy team focuses the large majority of their efforts on shutting you down. If you're good/lucky that will win you the game as your team takes advantage of this. If you're unlucky, your team have no idea of how to utilize the pressure being directed towards you and call you a feeder. B: The enemy team abandons your lane early, leaving you to your own devices, allowing you to push and farm with extreme efficieny. If you're good/lucky this can win you the game. You'll be farming well and getting good items for carrying in the mid/late-game and your team will be doing okay fighting 4v5 in teamfights for a long time. If you're unlucky your team will buckle under the pressure of being a hero down in basically any fight that goes down outside of your lane and you will be called useless. The thing about Broodmother is that there is a fine line between sticking to your lane and helping out. Ideally you don't want to leave the safety of your webs until you've pushed a couple of towers and gotten some big items so you can actually do something in a fight. It's easier when playing with a stack because you're communicating and you have a better understanding of how dire the situation might be without you there. It probably the hardest part about playing Broodmother if you ask me, juggling that balance of pushing/teamfighting.

Artstyle returns to Na'Vi and performs magically.

Ixmike's moustache wins another game. What will Europe do to stop this menace?

Necrobook is great on Clockwerk. - Strength is of course a delicious stat for him. More health, more regen and more auto-attack damage. - Intelligence helps the mana issues he suffers from, being a Strength hero who relies a lot on his spells. - Necro-units are extremely powerful with mana burn and high damage on their auto-attacks, that combined with the fact that Clockwerk has potential to lock people in with them for up to 7 seconds makes them extremely deadly. Necro units are of course also useful outside of Cogs, for general pushing power and detecting enemy heroes/wards at level 3. I wouldn't build Necrobook as a first item on Clockwerk, but maybe as a third or fourth item, after Blademail/Drums/Aghanims etc. If you badly need invis detection or if you're going for a fast pushing strat it would probably be wise to get it earlier. Depends on the game.

I love solo queue, it's way easier than stacking.