<3 commending the throwers out of karma

Man just reading this sentence was tilting LOL. I swear whenever there's somebody on my team doing something where it would've been far better if they had just never come to my lane, it's like 90% a Pudge player

Something I've been doing lately is griefing the griefers. If I see a battle over mid where it's the top MMR player wanting mid vs some Invoker player, and the top MMR player eventually gives up, I'll select Kunkka and run dual mid with the Invoker. The thing is, I'm not actually doing a super sub-par thing, because I just purely use auto-cast Tidebringer damage to deny all the creeps, I still let the mid player get the LHs. But what ends up happening is the mid player will get extremely tilted because their brain is too small to understand that I'm not doing such a bad thing really, the worst part is that I'm making them level much slower but at the same time the enemy mid gets denied a ton of farm. Warning, only so many times this can be done because it can tend to garner a lot of reports.

Mid is about levels, so yeah I can see why that gets you reported a lot.

Level 7 mid without a lot of farm > level 4 mid with an extra 1k net worth.

maybe the scenario you presented isnt accurate, but i think id rather be the lvl 4 hero

Start 6-0-6 pudge, safelane free farm. 0 game sense ****** drow. lose.

Start 5-0-4 nyx, safelane free farm. 30 minute radiance naga, doesnt know how to use Q to split farm with the item. lose.

seriously this is the most punishing ****ing game ever

would say the level difference is not that big because i can get just about every deny and gain exp that way as well. if i wasn't doing it to grief the griefer i would also run around and grab runes. the auto-cast tidebringer never goes on cd if it's only used for denies so it's pretty effective

@josh there is only one thing to do, play core only!! (inc 5 core games)

top post on reddit rn but man shadow shaman mid seems pretty legit. he has the 35% xp talent and he has 2 talents that benefit wards. lvl 25 shaman with aghs (attacks 2 targets now WTF) and refresher at a certain timing seems impossible to beat.

Literally tp to opponents base with one lane pushing and you rax guaranteed.

https://www.joindota.com/en/news/564...-above-average

Is this really true? I'm at 5100 now after like half a year of grinding. I was really good at Heroes of Newerth and calibrated around 4k when i started dota. But still I feel like im not even close to the playing level that i was in Hon. I feel like 5k would be something like top10%.

The one thing about MMR grind though that if u can hold up your own in every position/lane, and barely never tilt, u will eventually get higher mmr with even 52% winrate.

It's about right. You having played HoN at a decent level put you already in the top 10% before you even worked out what was going on probably. Some ex HoN pros were 7k within a month of their first game of dota 2 or something. 5k is way above top 10. More like top 1%.

Shadow is a really solid meta pick who I too have had success with without a lot of experience on him. The main thing about rasta imo, is that he is very weak against silence and stun. The uber skill that is shackles is the main reason to pick him so if they have easy ways to stop it or protect his target then he is really bad. fwiw my standard skill build is like ewqqqrqeee or eqwqqrqeee. I often hold that 2nd skill point to avoid lvling the frog if its not needed.

But doesn't he always lose middle (plus easy to gank)? I love playing support shaman, level 1 and 2 ganks with shackle are extremely satisfying. I need to go find this on twitch.

The +%XP abilities in general have a negative win rate in pub games

That's because people don't fully commit. Have to tunnel vision that midas to get full value.

XP tomes and bounty runes too

I tried it last night. Went Aghs BoT on Rhasta mid. Got an early Midas as well. Our team got DUMPED on in just about every aspect of the game. Down by 25ish kills at 30 mins. We won anyway on the back of just shy of 17k building damage on my part.

It felt awful.

And again... only 12k building damage that time. Equally ugly win, but it's hilarious to see how many items/ults you can get out of a team that sees a Rhasta hobbling up a lane toward their base after they've seen you burst down buildings. I died without using wards 3 or 4 times, or they'd be "wasted" out of range of buildings, but in the process would get Global Silence, Doom, and/or Boat out of Kunkka while my team was marching down a different lane. With the enemy load blown on me, the team would get an objective uncontested.

What item progression do these people do?

I did Null, Bottle, brown Boots, Aghs, into BoT. Then continually pushing lanes and looking for opportunities to port and drop Wards on something. Rushing the Refresher is awkward because I only have 1200 mana when it shows up. Can't even use a Mango to bridge the gap.

My game last night I used a Shivas to get the mana pool, but this time I just bought a casual Soul Booster.

Gotta fit a Blink in there somewhere as well because of how unbelievably slow Rhasta is. If the enemy team has solid vision, you'll never get in range to even drop surprise wards without that blink.

I will say though, it's better than doing this rat strategy with a Clinkz or Furion. It comes online so much sooner. With the Aghs, even level 2 Serpent Wards can melt a T3 and both Rax with shocking speed.

nice... yeah it seems pretty OP. if it's picked as a pocket strat last pick, i feel like there's probably nothing the enemy can do, or very little. need some high attack speed high range heroes to take out those wards (sniper is best probably), or maybe some super stunners or silencers to just make sure rhasta is never able to get wards off.

pretty sure we'll see one or two core rhastas at TI, maybe more


here's the dotabuff from the game demon played that was on reddit: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3322791172/builds

i know he plays a lot of core rhasta so i would say his build is legit. he went boots -> bottle -> arcanes -> aghs -> blink -> refresher -> BoT -> necro

Lost 150 mmr overall, but I won all 4 of the Rhasta mid games I've played today.

In fact, I don't think I won a single other game. 3k too hard.

hero spamming is well known to be the best way to climb (jk i'm forever 4k Kappa )


The 40 minutes+ change to runes spawning at both locations means waiting for favorable taking high-ground runes is probably a thing now. DD/Arcane, maybe Illusion provide a lot. I suppose this evens out with the base shrines making it easier to hold high.

picking Crystal Maiden and hoping for the best is actually a very very game winning move

I vehemently disagree with this statement.

If you're playing 4, you can pretty much always pick SB (57% WR 4-5K, 56 5K+). Shaman is a way better 5 for solo Q than CM IMO.

Actually, Spirit Breaker has the highest - 3rd highest win rate at all skill brackets. Teammates tend to actually follow up on your initiation since it's so telegraphed for them.

yea SB is way better. when i don't wanna play a support but it would be best for the game, i much prefer picking some kind of ez support that can make impact just by existing. SB might be the best at that. CM, lich are not bad also in that regard

My issue with CM is that level 1 Frostbite got nerfed INTO THE GROUND with the massive mana increase.

If you decide to go ganking build, you have no mana pool. If you're playing mana battery, you can't sustain yourself anymore in jungle without heavy investment in clarities, and she's just a garbage hero for zoning with no movespeed and 35 damage right clicks.

My favorite 3k build was surprise mid CM. Her stats have been nerfed a lot since then, but you'd go 2/4/1/0 by level 7 and rush Phase and Urn. Almost always get first blood because people see a CM and tower dive like idiots, even though Frostbite is ridiculously good. Transition into a gank machine. But at the end of the day, a 15-1-6 CM at 20 mins is still just a CM, and odds are your safelane Slark rushed a naked Skadi. Still... fun times.

Not sure if you are trolling, but your initial build should always include a Mango and 2 clarities, and that should easily get you to lvl 2 (Aura) and then you head directly to mid. Jungling CM shines at lvl 3, not Lvl 1, zone them out until you hit 2 and then gank/jungle. CM has to be the most powerful lvl 1 hero in the game, a guaranteed lock-down and with any team composition (veno/PA/Sven) can destroy a lane from the beginning...