I just discovered how amazing the combat log is. You can even filter it by attacker and target, which is super helpful for looking at the real numbers in terms of damage dealt, after hero spell reduction/armor/block etc.

It's color coded very nicely and really easy to read.

Using it with a replay of mine right now, it just showed me that I actually am not doing the avalanche/toss combo completely perfectly, as I actually miss the first tick of avalanche damage (for the double). I feel like it's deceptively hard to actually get the double damage on all 4 ticks of the avalanche.

edit: also watching Puppey stream Treant mid vs SF and it completely dominated SF with his high base dmg. SF couldn't compete in last hits at all.

From what I remember last time I took a foray into dota 2 mechanics, the max combo dmg is actually 2.25x ava dmg, rather than just 2x. But it's not something you can consistently pull off, I would even go so far as to say that getting the full 2.25x dmg is purely luck.

Since avalanche has a small delay before the first tick, I suggest waiting about a half second or so after your ava and then casting toss. This should net you the 2x ava dmg.

I may run some tests myself if your own research doesn't give you the all the answers you need.

ups, i guess tossing first is problem

The actual mechanics are a little tricky. I might be wrong, but I think avalanche checks to see if it's target is tossed or not. I'm going with this rather than the reverse since the combat log shows the avalanche damage increasing, rather than it being from a different source. If the check is a positive, then it adds another tick of avalanche damage.

It checks this every 0.25 seconds, toss lasts 1.02 seconds, so normally if you time it properly you will get 4 extra ticks of avalanche damage, but that extra 0.02 seconds makes it possible to get 1 more additional tick in, resulting in that 2.25x ava dmg.

edited my post a bit since I'm not 100% sure about everything.

I'm trying to do research but there isn't much about this in dota 2. And running tests would be really time consuming since I would need a pretty large sample to check for that extra 0.25x damage, if it still exists.


Found this from 2009. dota 1 mechanics ofc.

Not sure about that extra tick, I'm pretty sure in DotA 2 avalanche is 4 ticks of dmg.

Yep, it's definitely 4 ticks normally. Was just trying to figure out how the actual trigger worked, and whether the extra tick exists in dota 2.

extra info
Avalanche lasts a total of 1.75s, the first damage tick (each tick also stuns for 1s I believe) occurs 0.75s in. Tiny has a cast animation of 0.01s, Toss lasts a total of 1.02s.

edit: I guess cast animation is 0.001s actually, so it's negligible for these calculations.

Off topic but does anyone know if the avalanche toss combo was intended? I assume it was unintentional for avalanche to hit twice, but icefrog decided to keep it since the limitations of wc3 and perhaps he liked the way it worked.

Def remember hearing it was a bug at first with how the WC3 spells were coded, but they decided to keep it. In one version of DotA 1 it actually doubled if u tossed at any point during the avalanche, so you could avalanche then toss on the last tick and still get full double damage.

So if Ava duration is 1 second, and toss air-time is 1.02 seconds, then it'd be a short window to do it perfectly, a 0.02 buffer I believe...

Yeah 99% sure it was a bug. I think it was related to Ava programmed to hit both high and low and when you're tossed you count as both, so you take both sources of damage.

yep, originally unintended. But without it Tiny was rather weak.

Who do you guys think is the strongest carry in the game with a full inventory (even if lone druid counts as 12 slots)? I mean this in the sense of going 1 v 5 vs the other team.

I find it very interesting that the Chinese teams don't seem to pick or ban pl and wisp even though euro teams are saying pl should be nerfed.

i would say gyro

I think void is still pretty ridiculous. But Lone Druid, Gyro, PL and Void are my top 4.

Also

http://g1.2p.com/dota2/caster/ayesee.shtml

Sex on a stick. Puppy+Aysee.

Cool, thanks for the heads up. Watching it now.

PPY's insight is just the nut high. Its amazing what he knows.

nice combination, thanks for the link

I've heard puppey cocast a few times before, and I think he was drunk every time. It was amusing, but far from insightful.

oh wow, I'm watching lgdint vs orange right now, and I just saw the greatest fight ever in game 3 @ about 24m. Haven't even finished the game yet, but that fight was ridiculous to watch. Talk about walking the razor's edge.

He jokes a lot but he says what each team has to do if they want to win. He explains it so simple as well.

I really like Helm of Dominator lately on Tiny, mainly because you can dominate a Centaur and then run your own toss/cent stun/tiny stun combo from 1300 range. (The key is to hit the Cent Q stun in mid-air.)

for trolling that sounds hilarious, but I hope it's not a serious build. Although satanic tiny must be monstrous in team fights. I feel like the lifesteal from hotd is rather negligible, but satanic of course isn't.

Nah the lifesteal is not to be underestimated from it IMO. Aui2000 often gets it on tiny as well. It's really good on him also since it helps with his low armor.

Also messing around with the dominate is so much fun. I stole beast master's boar the other day and turned it on him, so satisfying. Feel that slow BM! (I ended up dying chasing him to tower then got roared rofl)

Helm of Dom+ Divine is the standard all eggs in one basket strat

^ you only need the mask if all you want is passive lifesteal. Why spend the extra 950 gold if you're only getting rapier and not satanic?

15% passive lifesteal is really only useful for healing off creeps imo... pretty negligible in team fights. Whereas satanic, activated, is 200% lifesteal. Aegis on a 35s cooldown.

I really don't even get hotd early-mid anymore unless I need to stack ancients myself. Or maybe as a counter to necrobook.

For 950 gold, you get +20 damage, 5(?) armor and 5% lifesteal. When you have +600 damage, that 5% can make a difference. I dont think I've ever seen just a morbid mask when getting lifesteal paired with divine. I've only ever seen HotD and MoM.