Styg has always been the best value for damage. its not that useful in the competitive scene because manta is just that much better. BH and SG are the only heroes id use desolater on.

Must play against scruba if you have enough time and farm to go into wraiths before building.core items. not having manta is a big mistake.

^ I go manta too, in fact that was my standard build before. It was not as much fun though... Also, you might be right about wraith before core, I think I might stop doing that.

Something I've found when going for Manta is that it's really hard to get that ultimate orb after yasha. Need to work on my mid-game farming.

Having support heroes in pubs doing their job is a very rare thing too. thats the problem most of the time imo.

Are there any good youtube channels like day9 which give awesome lessons for dota2?

Id just watch replays and shoutcasts. you learn so much from them. watch some like dendi talks dota. its about 2 hours long but teqches u how to play solo mid. denying , blocking (bloooorking in dendi talk) rune control etc. By your name you could be aussie? there is a guy called GoDz who does a lot casts. he is also a irl friend. he is on gosugamers and own3d tv in his casts. very knowledgable player and caster.

Anyone have a extra dota 2 beta key invite that they want to sell. I can trade via pokerstars and will go first if you have good rep

Haven't played DotA or cared about it at all for a few years, I will probably give DotA2 a try though. Questions:

What's the latest estimated release date?

Is it going to be free-to-play or what kind of price are we looking at?

How many people still play WC3 DotA?

I'm stuck on "Preparing to launch Dota 2"

Game update?

steam failure, can't play any games

Fixed it by following these steps:

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/commen...unching_dota2/

Man, US West matchmaking still down?

any other chen users out there? I normally go:

RoB
headress
boots
Mek
arcane boots
scepter
drum

and im pretty much a walking fountain. as long as my team doesnt suck balls then i can get scepter at around 25 mins by just jungling/ganking with creeps stun+chens slow, and once I get 3 creeps I start crushing towers.

edit: imjoshsizemore that avatar is ****ing awesome, that play was sooooo sick, never seen anything like it. the fact that he sticks the landing is just great

anybody else have any other builds?

Mask of madness is horrible. You want to make Sniper even more fragile?

This is the best equivalent caster to Day9 for english speaking http://www.youtube.com/user/LuminouStudios . No idea on the price.

Some speculation is that open beta may start in 3 months but no one is positive. Dota US pool is not very high, but in Asian countries it is still a power house. It may also still be big in Europe but I am not that familiar with the European scene. I doubt it will be free2play because if you do that the game loses the competitive nature as an e-sport.

Don't play Chen but if you play a serious match you should start off with wards or/and chick and a smoke.

It is a pub game so MoM is "ok". I have seen some snipers in pro games get MoM (note most pros will rarely if ever play sniper now) but that is because they are very confident in how their team will perform. It is much easier to rely on a good player on your team to lay down a stun for protection compared to some random pub.

Pipe insight is a must imo. Could even through in Vlads and force staff.

Yes. Yes I do. The idea is to never get hit, by using MoM to run away/position yourself more quickly to where your team can protect you. The Berserk + Headshot is a very nice combo.

P.S. I'm not saying this is the best Sniper build. Obv not saying that. I'm just putting a build out there that is different than the standard ones. I like to spice it up and play non-standard builds.

yeah, good call. that is definitely better than the drums aura (cant remember the name of it), ill try fitting that in at the end. im sure itll def. improve my chen game, thanks!

I know you guys are talking about a pub game Chen build but that is still a large amount of farm. You really shouldn't ever have that much farm unless you are carrying the team with chen. By that I mean getting hero kills and receiving a ton of assist gold. Also you are probably neglecting ward buying.

Unless you are farming like a beast a lot of times the mek and pipe user are from different people so that they can get out these very useful items out quicker. Stock piling it up on one hero can cost you the game at times.

Another thing is if you are going mek into scepter into pipe you might be getting ganked mid game which may leave you with an unfinished pipe.

Jango is also a very good item because of the item components. All very cheap and useful for basically every hero.

Chen has the jungle to himself.....

i jungle/gank with chen and push towers like crazy when i get 3 creeps so i wind up getting a ton of farm. i also buy wards as often as needed to help out the team. i usually have scepter by 30 mins. i havent played in any tournies, so im just speaking from pub experience.

I agree that against certain line ups preventing a Chen push is extremely hard. You will definitely farm a lot of gold especially if you last hit the towers.

To the comment of Chen having the jungle to himself, I am not quite sure what is your point? Are you implying that he has free farm the entire game? If you play with any decent - good players Chen farming in the jungle should be one of the easiest ganks to net a free kill.

There is a lot of variance in the level of pubs. In the higher tier leagues you could expect that most pubs will at least try to gank a jungler.

Against a hero such as Lycan, I have seen people ward the entire team's jungle just to stop him from jungling. No one would do this against Chen but my point is that the game is not so simple as to follow a step by step plan and execute it one by one. Dota is all about adapting to the heroes in the game and the players themselves.

Lolwut. pubs are full.of terrible players. any decent chen player will farm neuts gank the solo lane and push. the supports deward and ward. A good chen in a.pub will win the game for his team.

Also, plz dont try and tell.me what dota is and how to play.

You are saying that everyone in a pub will lose to a good chen player? It must be nice to play in a game where you never got ganked in the jungle. You must have played an unbelievable amount of games with everyone besides you being "terrible" to have you think that. I have seen a lot of chen / enchantress players who were "decent" and failed to use their creeps effectively.

When did I even say I was telling you what dota is and how to play it? I am referring to the remark about pipe / force staff being better than jango. Even decent teams decide on which person should buy which item. If there is a chen or WR who buys the mek? Since you are only talking about pubs what happens when the other team is strictly all carrys? Pipe is still a good choice?

Based on the comment about having scepter by 25 mins and at the latest 30mins you are talking about RoB 500g, arcane boots, 1500g, mek 2300g, and aghs 4200g. That is 8500g already. Since you are a "good" chen lets throw in a chick and at least 2 sets of wards. That is at the bare minimum 600g being extremely generous since you say supports also deward. That is 9000g+ already.

To put that in perspective that sniper build above lists treads 1450g, double wraith 1000g, MoM 1900g, Yasha 2150, and hyper 2100g which is about ~8600g. If some pub sniper had those items on my team at 25 min or even 30 min I would actually be damn happy for once.