Just to clarify it's hitting "s" AFTER the attack. Not before. Doing it before is a great way to last hit though. (not sure what you meant so I posting this anyway)

Correct.

It is amazing as it sounds.

I just downloaded that app and see there are like 15 heroes I've never even heard of.

This game will be so awesome when it's done.

I hope they never get added unless they are finally balanced. Heroes such as rubick, phoenix, and wisp are so ridiculously OP. They can be played terribly and still dominate. Phoenix is such a joke having a huge 2.5 second disable that works as a blink with huge AOE and damage. Having a nuke that heals for 360 aoe + do damage for 360 in another aoe is lame. Even new heroes such as Bat and Shadow Demon are incredibly strong and make older heroes obsolete.

I wish they would buff certain heroes phasing out. Give doom maybe 2 base armor or increase his starting int by 2 or increase his int gain. Both seem trivial but would probably bring doom back into the competitive play.

I really hope they buff Axe also. They show him in the trailer but he will never sniff competitive play with his skill set now. He needs to be revamped a lot just to get him some playing time. His ult is also pretty useless considering the new hero Tuskar's ult is basically the same thing but with more damage and versatility.

Standard I guess. =/

How new are the heroes though? Things like the Gambler and that one hero that had tornadoes were added but then removed due to being stupidly overpowered.

My best K-D game ever was with Gambler. I went 65-1 in a 90 minute NON stomp game. That hero was easy to just feed with, but when the stars aligned he was SICK.

@printingmoney,

While I agree that old heroes look obsolete in comparison... I really like the new skills the new heroes have. They are very cool and fresh, and are a positive direction I like to see for the game. I mean, how many target based projectile stuns can you have before it gets incredibly old?

Also just fyi, attack animation is really important for most heroes but heroes such as Viper and enchantress really utilize this. It is the same concept but it is called orb walking. Basically you would manually cast the spell such as impetus, that triggers on auto attacking by using the hot key and once it casts, you follow it up immediately with movement once the spell casts but before the animation finishes. This maximizes the number of attacks you will output.

I agree, I like the way the new skills are. Phoenix is a really nice idea but why would anyone think a nuke that triggers on a target AND at the same time around your hero that heals / damages for 360 be balanced. Oh and it is AOE. It is basically an omni purification but with further range and versatility.

Why is shadow demon's ult a 400 damage nuke that slows and purges the enemy. The way he is designed 400 damage nuke + slow is strong enough but they decided to give it a purge ability as well.

I am not saying I hate these heroes but they can be easily "more" balanced at least.

I like the idea of most of the new heroes besides tuskar. They are all fresh ideas and I can see them working in the game but they just need to solve the balance issues. I remember when Kunkka came out. That hero was designed very well. He was extremely OP at first but then they nerfed him version after version after version. Now he isn't even played by pros and rarely by pubs.

Wisp has been out for over a year now I think. I forgot about shadow demon but he has been out for a while as well. Phoenix and Rubick have been out for at least a few months. I never designed a game or tried troubleshooting but I mean is it that hard to make something that does 360 damage do 200?

Rubick steals the last spell casted by an enemy hero in the game which is just insane. You get to hold onto the spell one at a time but basically you would steal an enigma's Bhole, use it. Then when the other team's Tide or w/e drops a ravage you steal it and drop a ravage for your team. Clearly a hero that can use two ultimates is probably gonna be OP.

He also has a chain lightning nuke with infinite bounces that reduces damage by 20 or so which makes last hitting a bitch at the earlier stage.

Yeah Rubick is pretty imba in the right hands. I haven't found Phoenix as imba IME actually. I think because attacking his ult is so much fun and often has led to easy kills.

Personally I've had more problems against phoenix than rubick. Phoenix's ult in combination with a bhole or tide's ult is extremely strong, however, a lot of noobs play phoenix and use the ult in the worst situations. Those net easy kills but in the hands of a decent - good phoenix it is a huge problem. Something like a Dive into an ult and when the other team tries to kill it have your tide or enigma blink in is probably going to lead to a team wipe unless the other team is really coordinated.

The reason why phoenix is so OP is combination of his aoe nuke / heal but mainly his dive. It is basically a blink that has huge range in addition to a large AOE 2.5 second + damage. He also had / maybe still has one of the highest base damage in the game. I've laned against a couple of phoenixs solo mid and got completely destroyed farm wise since I couldn't harass him but he could harass me. It also didn't help that I was ganked yet he wasn't.

Morphling used to have Spellsteal (copy any spell) and it was removed because it was OP.

Why would they do that again?

I want this beta soooooo badly!!!! I used to be so good at this game, PotM ftw! If anyone has an extra key, pls pls pls ship it!

Also, any suggestions on how to get a key? I signed up through steam months ago but still havent gotten a response .

No one should even think about getting a rad until they have at least 100 games under the belt

It's counter intuitive to me, but if you turn mouse acceleration all the way to the right, it behaves normal.

Best way to get a key is to ask a friend. I only know 3 people who got invited. 2 of which got it through the mass beta invites so it is still fairly exclusive.

I played my 2nd game last night and failed hard. I somehow managed to buy 2 wrong items. I also barely used my manta since I kept forgetting I had it. This never happened to me in the past. I hate how the items are in the bottom right corner instead of the middle. I also have a hard time determining how much life/mana I have

Last night I was playing in a group with Inso0 (thanks!) and picked Shadow Fiend. It was just the next in my Agility heroes that I'm going through.

After I beefed him up a little bit I started doing a lot better, but I was nervous playing in a group since I'm such a noob. haha

I rarely use Vent and didn't know that they were talking to me so much. Plus, the ingame sounds/music were so loud that sometimes I couldn't hear what was said - until I lowered it. Just when someone would say something to me to get back or whatever, the game would blast me with sound and it drowned out the voices.

Anyways, one thing I like to do is plan for what I want to buy, so when I get the gold I instantly pan back to the shop and buy it (just in case I die, I don't lose the gold).

Well, last night I did that to buy 2 Wraith Bands. I heard the sound effect when I bought them. Then I was thinking "hmm maybe I'll try using the courier" so I clicked on it, but then realized it was too confusing at that moment and went back to killing creeps. I only saw 1 in my stash, so I bought another one thinking maybe it didn't register.

When I finally went back, I only had 1 in my inventory and was confused. So I bought another Wraith's Band.

Then later in the game I wanted to spend my gold, got the Black King Bar, and then wanted something else. So while we were pushing on the enemy's base I had a lot of time to figure out what I was doing with the courier so I figured I'd try it again.

I click the courier and realize that my Wraith Band items went to the courier!!!! So I basically bought like 3 or 4 Wraith Bands (I can't remember exactly how it happened).

So I eventually figured out how to sell all of that stuff I didn't need anymore and had so much more money to buy the fun items. haha I think at the end there I was about to buy the Desolator (is that what it is called?)

Yeah dota has a steep learning curve. But like I said yesterday, the biggest help that a noob can be to his team is to NOT DIE. Playing like a pussy is okay, especially if you aren't sure what the other guy in your lane is capable of. Like for instance, when sniper hit level 6 and you were sitting behind the creep waves with 150 life left. You're going to get assassinated there 100% of the time. We all noticed it but by then it was just too late and you of course died. =)


Also, to help solve vent volume issues, do this: How to normalize your ventrilo settings. I think I play with the game sounds at like 10%, because Dota seems absurdly loud.


One feature in Dota2 that you will probably find very useful is the "quick buy" window in the bottom right of your screen just above your inventory. You can drag an item from the shop into that window and then make use of a "quick buy" hotkey to buy them without having to click the shop button.

I have mine set to mouse button 4, right where my thumb sits. This lets you purchase items VERY easily so you can focus on your hero instead of the shop. You just repopulate your quickbuy window with whatever the next item you plan on buying once you've purchased the current one.

Also keep in mind that the courier has a hotkey, too. Mine is comma for some reason, so if I need to get items I can just hit comma, click grab-all on my stash, and then hit D and R to make the courier sprint over to me.

I was so concentrated on the game that it didn't hit me that you were talking to me about getting back from that Sniper until a split second before he nuked me. I was just assuming you were all talking to each other, and I didn't realize that you were willing to help me as much as you did.

My vent was fine, it was just the Dota sound was too loud. I fixed those settings, so maybe if we play again I'll see if they worked.

I'll have to check out that shop stuff. I don't know all the tricks to the game. I don't even have my inventory hotkeys setup. I should change them to using the number keys though. I always use F1 to recenter on my guy so I don't need the numbers.

Can you put multiple items in the quick buy feature? In regular dota I would always be able to buy my items before dying, but in dota2 I can't even find some of the items I wanted.

Does anyone know for items like wraith band are you allowed to just buy the item in one go or do you need to manually click all three components?

Like if you're trying to buy an aghanim's scepter, you drop the scepter itself into your quick buy and it'll put all 4 components in there. So if you have 2100g and you're about to die, you just mash your button twice and it'll grab two of the 1k items and you only lose 100 gold.

Same goes for a wraith band or mekansm or something. Just drag the final item into the quickbuy bar and it'll show all of the individual components.

Sometimes it can screw you over because it tries to spend as much money as possible. So if the recipe is more expensive than one of the components, it will buy the recipe even though you don't have everything needed to make it yet. You can still right-click the individual items in the quickbuy bar though to manually select which you want.


edit: rofl I was just reading something about schindler's list and my brain decided it would type "jew" instead of "screw" in that third paragraph. Awesome. Edited it out to protect the easily offended.

Seems interesting. I'll need to look into this since I am having a hard time buying stuff quickly.

I also dislike how my hero portrait isn't on the top left screen unless I am physically controlling it. I was waiting last night after one of my deaths for like 2 minutes and was wondering why I never spawned. Needless to say my hero was just sitting by the fountain doing nothing.

Does anyone know how to kick leavers or intentional feeders? The game I played last night started out 4v5 then 5 minutes later some guy joins hits level 2 and just leaves. By the end of the game he accumulated close to 4500g with a couple of items on him that were muted so we couldn't sell them or use them. The fact that we weer playing down a person without extra gold sucked.

Well, if they leave or go afk, after 5 minutes the game will tell you that "it is safe to leave" and you can just leave yourself without getting any abandon counts.

Is that at any time during the game? I always finish my games unless some sort of emergency comes up. Cause the guy joined at maybe the 4:30 mark I believe and someone mentioned about being able to leave. But I didn't notice anything.

It shows up on the left hand side of the screen when it's safe to leave.

I think it stays in the combat log.