First level goes into the damage passive which actually makes her one of the easiest to last hit with. Don't level the boomerangs unless you are OK with pushing the lane. And max the nuke, lucent beam, first (practically) every game as they make up the ultimate

Well, I'm also bad. Like, I added quelling blade to my Wraith King build to make last hits easier the first couple levels, and Luna + damage passive is only slightly more damage than Wraith King without quelling blade.

also vs PA consider mid-price items that ruin her like blademail, ghost scepter and halberd

Quelling is massively worth it at low levels or on low damage heroes.

Also consider quick casting only certain item slots not all of them. More optimal imo.

Luna's got to be one of the best heroes to learn on. Good move speed, point and click spells, great farming abilities. Her biggest weakness is that she's quite squishy.

position 1: luna, phantom assassin, chaos knight
position 1/2: juggernaut
position 2: dragon knight, viper, zeus
position 3: centaur warrunner, bristleback, slardar, legion commander
position 3/4: spirit breaker
position 4: bounty hunter (might want to just avoid playing 4 to start, it takes a good amount of game knowledge to be able to play correctly)
position 3/4/5: abaddon
position 4/5: shadow shaman
position 5: lich, witch doctor, vengeful spirit, ogre magi, jakiro

Top picks out of all of them for beginners would be: luna, chaos knight, juggernaut, viper (the dota 2 definition of a solid hero, tho some find him boring), spirit breaker, shadow shaman, witch doctor.

Pretty much I would not recommend playing 3 or 4 for a new player, they are more complicated roles as to how you succeed in the game. Like sometimes it's completely right for a 3 player to die 3-4 times in the early game, although probably not at low MMR lol (since your teammates won't be utilizing the space properly).

Some other heroes not mentioned that could be good:

Clinkz (pos 1): my personal first dota hero, it's really fun to run around invis all the time and you learn how to move around the map to get pick-offs

Mirana (pos 1,2,3,4): probably won't win games playing this hero but she is really really fun and I would say within the skill realm of a beginner

Nyx Assassin (pos 3,4,5): This hero is definitely a bit more complicated but not in the super difficult micro a ton of units way, just has some interesting mechanics like her pseudo blademail spiked carapace.

Shadow Fiend (pos 2): Just another super fun hero that I would say is still within the realm of a beginning. Build up your souls and get more attack damage, buy shadow blade and pop humongous ults right on top of people. The hardest part is learning how to do combo razes.

Ancient Apparition (pos 5): This is a really good hero because you don't have to be in teamfights necessarily to have an impact. And the ultimate is super fun for beginners I would imagine. It's like you have a massive ion cannon that can reach anywhere on the map. More complicated mechanics but pretty easy to cast spells overall.

Disruptor (pos 5): Another complex mechanics hero but easy to cast spells. Just pretty much have to learn how to time Glimpse, it will transport 4 seconds previous in time, can use the lightning strike to get vision and time it. I recommend this hero because it's one of the best heroes to learn how to make plays and affect the game strategically. Just be prepared to potentially really piss some people off if you do a glimpse that ends up saving someone or something, heh.

How its done! :flex:

Don't underestimate the power of simply 1-shotting enemies with PA. Game is much easier when you do that. I use it as a counterpick mid vs enemy Invokers, but rarely outside of that circumstance. PA utterly demolishes Invoker in lane and it's easy to snowball behind Phase/Aquila/Deso by 12 mins.

I played a couple Luna games with my friend last night (who's a very good carry but played support for me) - both games wound up being pretty difficult in lane, first game we weren't able to get anything going and the other team had an Alchemist who got super leveled super fast and kinda snowballed the rest of their team.

Second game felt utterly disastrous at the start - it was me and Tusk against a Necrophos who totally zoned us out, I got no farm, but kinda roamed around and did what I could to get $$ and eventually caught up a little bit. Did some damage later in teamfights, but unless we wiped them I basically always died because I'm a.) squishy and b.) have to get in close to do damage. Once I got down to the 5 second BKB it felt difficult to stay alive for very long, I'd just get disabled after BKB ran out.

My friend thought Luna was kind of a difficult carry to learn, because you need good game sense to know when you should TP to fights vs stay away and farm, and when to charge in versus when to stay back. I had played 3-4 practice games against hard bots and steadily got better, until I went 17/0/10 in my last one, but playing against real people was quite a bit different.

We wound up barely losing the 2nd game, it was pretty wild, 90 minutes long (was a big comeback from us, their win % was like 85% only 15 minutes in lol) and back and forth for quite awhile at the end. It came down to a decisive fight in their base that would have ended it had we won it, but we didn't.

I think for carry position the easiest two to learn are Sven and Jugg, but you need to have a ranged support, pref with a stun or root. Games are so dynamic but the first thing to learn about carrying is how to last hit.

PA is probably excellent too at your tier after level 4 the harass gets way easier to deal with. But only if the enemy team has not picked strong nukers (lina, lion, skywrath, etc).

Agree with the above that disruptor is a really great #5 to learn, can totally turn games and glimpsing people back to the fountain after they TP is one of the true pleasures of dota.

it's a good thing u didn't actually win that 90 minute game, that's the kind of thing that creates Dota addicts for life 4Head FeelsBadMan 4Head

Luna is a tricky hero like all of the other carries with strong magic damage in their kit. The main advantage of these heros vs the pa type physical carries is that the magic carries have their spells to carry them through the early game. This means you either need a lot of mana and hp sustain or you need to be very sparing with your spells until it is time to kill someone.

To add an additional twist with Luna, you should often use her lunar beam to last hit early on in lanes. This means you should basically never waste her mana unless it secures a kill. In fact, if you are level 4-5 you should probably not waste 2-3 luna beams for a strong chance to kill the #4. It will generally be better to save the mana so that when you have your ulti you can confirm a kill on a core.

Be sure to buy a lot of consumables like mangos and a double mango start is probably pretty solid with her. If you find yourself in lane at level 4-5 with low mana be sure to buy more even if it slows down finishing your boots because consumables are always way more efficient in the very early game.

She really needs to build rightclick items to get the most of our glaives and ability to push. This means she has a timing window to get stuff done on the map between approx lvl 9-12, and should always be ahead of non-magic carries at this point. This is similar to Ursa where if she dies instead of killing on the lvl 6 ulti, the rest of the game is super hard. She also heavily relies on bkb after her manta style and has very little flexibility in her item build. She has super strong push, but in the late late game she will almost never be the strongest team fight hero on the map. 100% objective based gaming hero.

I mean, in dumpster tier can’t you just farm pushed in lanes and jungle until your beefy enough to carry the game? I find it hard to believe that people are 5 manning early enough in 0-2K to stop someone like Luna from getting 6 slotted, and you’ll outcarry basically anyone.

I’d suggest just watching BSJ or Purge videos on specific heroes you want to learn. They’re significantly higher MMR than anyone ITT and both are pretty good at teaching / explaining concepts and heroes. Purge doesn’t make replay commentaries enough anymore, but those are a really good place to start.

If you have the mechanical skill to farm faster than everyone? Yes. Is this a good place to start? Sure. Are 500 mmr players watching bsj and learning laning mechanics too? Yes. Are there are lot of feeder noobs with less than 200 games who throw every draft? Also yes. Will you actually learn anything that will help you at higher matches if you just jungle the first 25 minutes and solo carry your team? Probably not.

Certainly lane mechanics are helpful and a great place to start. I also suggest just sticking to a few heroes, and practicing looking at the minimap in between last hits. Map awareness, fight judgment and basic mechanics are all important imo.

e One thing that I think is difficult (and hate): I'm still eons away from even having access to ranked games. In unranked the quality of opponents I face varies wildly, and has a far bigger outcome on whether I win or lose than anything I do individually.

Once every few games in unranked, there will be a Drow or PA or whoever that just gets absurdly fat way faster than anyone else in the game and completely takes it over, and can solo like 3 other heroes without even breaking a sweat...and it's like, what am I even doing in this game? I'm not going to get better playing with or against people like that.

Play turbo until you get to ranked. It’s so much faster.

I don't think turbo helps me get to ranked, at least not any faster than regular games. It says I need level 20 to get to ranked, which I'll hit when my experience trophy gets to level 50, which according to this requires 126 hours of "competitive play" (not clear if turbos apply).

You’re probably not winning a Luna game in low tier MMR without farming efficiently and ignoring team fights that aren’t a.) around important objectives or b.) fights you are sure to win and make it worth your time.

Carry sucks in this meta. Farm efficiently, learn to creep aggro and trade in lane when it’s beneficial.

Related. Luna sucks this meta. She’s my second most played hero (520 games 57% winrate on my main). I don’t really think Luna is a good hero to learn this meta. She pushes and farms well. This meta is focused on winning lanes and team fights.

Just played a ~500 mmr game with someone who claimed to be a legend booster and was stuck at 300 mmr. Not sure if i believe but hilarious still and match history looks pretty boostery.

Game-ending chain frost an hour into a close game, none of them had buybacks, gonna fap to this all week

(that was my sentry too, Riki's level 25 talent is SO OBNOXIOUS but I was ready)

...and followed that up with one of the more dominating games I've ever played: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/4134727417 (I'm Lich obv) (and "dominating" is relative, for playing hard support and buying wards and **** I'm pretty happy with 10/2/10)

Got 2-3 kills in lane just spamming Q and chasing down Mirana/Tusk when they got too carefree with their health, then picked up kills here and there in teamfights (mostly with my ult) and had a couple hilarious jukes through trees escaping from 2-3 of their heroes when I really should have died. PL is my friend I was playing with and he was laughing his ass off at how I kept getting away. Pretty fun game.

That's a sexy gif

WTF liquid looking like they can't even qual for a minor. got 2-0'ed by mangobay

they were just being dramatic, i never had a doubt

Man I like his stream and appreciate what he does for the community a lot but.... BSJ is like the poormans EE. For some reason (mostly twitchchat?) its just hilarious to watch him get stomped in progames. Promocode BSJ, feels bad man.

Postscript, Teamteam is the best dota team name ever!!!!