Entering the world of Dota 2: Part 10

                Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 10

                                     

Welcome back to part 10 of entering the world of dota 2. I'm very sorry but I don't have much time to do blogs cause I have to do my internship and stuff. Well this part is a special part where I will be talking about trading. Yes although I said I was gonna write something about hero roles but i'll leave that for later. . Dota 2 is free if you just want to play the game. But of course like most things in the world some stuff is not free. The game has a cosmetics system, where the player gets to dress up their heroes in cool cosmetics items. Of course each hero has their own unique sets of items. And you can get these items either from buying them off of the Dota 2 store or by getting them as a drop after the end of the game or from watching tournaments. However if you want to watch online tournaments you have to buy the ticket before your able to watch those games. Now I know like I do you guys wants free stuff. Who would want to spend money on a game you plan to play for free right? Well that’s where trading comes in. There are many websites that is used to trade items but the website that I mainly use is dota2lounge. http://dota2lounge.com/

It is quite easy to use, there is an add to steam button where you can add people directly into your steam account without having to search them and then adding them, giving a lot of convenience when it comes to trading.

Now you are probably wondering who are you to teach me how to trade? Well I started from basically nothing except for a fireborne odachi and I’m able to make around 3000-5000 baht selling those items afterwards. So yeah a fireborne odachi probably cost around 120 baht. So yeah from a single item I’m able to slowly but gradually trading them into other items. So I’ll give you some small little tips if you want to trade for real.

The first tip is to stay on dota2lounge at all times. Although this may seem very boring but once you get into the Trading addiction you will be constantly checking this website more than Facebook trust me on this because this has happened to me.

The second tip I want to give you is to find someone who has a lot more experience than you in terms of trading and ask them whether your trades are worth it or not. Remember you yourself have to learn the basics and prices of items in the market to don’t just wait to only ask your experienced friend. Because what happens if you get a really good offer but your friend is not online? Chances are someone else is going to steal your offer and you won’t get it.

My third tip to you is to don’t store things unless you really want to. Always be open up for trades even if it means breaking your set. If you are sure you can get those items back then go for it. It is better to get a good trade then to leave your items in your inventory and leave them to rot in the long wrong. This is a mistake many people make, they wait and wait for the one and best offer and the prices of their items go down. It is better to get rid of your items as fast as possible to get other things that can get you better things. 

My fourth tip is to use the search tool. This tool will get you rocking and turn you into an expert trader in no time. This is the best tool in the website; do not only wait for offers. Every second tons and tons of people refresh their trades thus bumping down your trade. Thus you have to use the search tool to find other people’s trade that are similar to yours and if you find a good offer add that person straight up and try to get that trade done before the other person trades it.

My fifth tip is to try to keep keys instead of items. Keys do not drop in price but items do. Although some item goes up but most will drop down, there prices are not very stable thus holding keys is the best if you want new items. But do not hesitate to get keys or else you would not have many items to trade.

My sixth tip is to try to use your rares to trade for new items, and complete a set. Since a complete set can be sold for keys but if you want to get keys for your random rares the price is around 6 random rares to 1 key. What I usually do is to trade 1 rare for 1 new common item, 2 rares for 1 new uncommon item, and use 1 key to trade for the rare of that set. This ensures that you will get profit although it looks pretty slow but it is quite fast if you keep it up. And of course you can always try to get new commons/uncommons using old commons/uncommons. This will give you a lot of profit. Remember to be ready to pay a higher price for a higher profit than to pay the lowest price for a profit. Because if you want to pay the lowest price you will be waiting forever for someone who will be willing to trade with you, since everyone wants a cheap price for everything, but in some cases you have to loosen the knot and part ways and half/half.

My seventh tip is to keep up with the market. Always check for updates or else you might not be able to keep up with the market and once your item’s prices starts dropping you will be losing a lot of profit. Always remember the weekly updates of Dota 2. And try to check the 5 favorite workshop items on youtube as much as possible to stay tune for what is going to come up next. Although not all the items in the 5 favorite workshops are guarantee to get in the Dota 2 store but their chances of getting in there is quite high.

My eighth tip is to try to focus on items that you want to wear at first then once you get those items you can continue to trade for just keys to get expensive items such as dragonclaw hook, or just to get keys for new sets that are going to be in future releases.

My ninth and final tip is to enjoy trading and you will love it. Don’t forget that once you quit dota 2 like me you can sell them for real money.  

That brings me to the end of my blog on how to trade. The rest is up to you and lady luck on how much of a profit you can gather from trading. Thank you for reading and GL HFJ. Well in my next part I'll probably continue with hero roles. 

Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 9

                     Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 9

                                        

Welcome back to Entering the world of Dota 2 part 9. In this part I will explain the usages of wards why their needed and why buy them? What are wards?you might ask. Wards are nifty little things that cost 200 gold for sentry wards and 150 gold for observer wards. So your looking at this and saying why am I wasting 200/150 gold for something that doesn't help my hero get stronger? LOL Well let's look at the differences between the two types of wards. The first type of ward is sentry wards. They let you see invisible units or other wards. They have unlimited stock thus you can buy tons of em at a time. They last 2 minutes per ward. Spending 200 gold gives you two pieces of wards to place at a desired location. The second type of wards is the observer ward. They cost only 150 gold. They come in 2 pieces and last a whopping 6 minutes. They give you 1600 AOE of sight around the area it is placed. However there are only a maximum of two sets of wards in the store which means you can have only up to 4 wards placed in the game unless you haven't placed some old wards that you buy. They take 6 minutes to restock in the store. So now why are they so good? They give you vision over an area usually the runes. Thus you can see your enemy's movement in that area. So you can know to avoid there or you can see an incoming gank so then you can tower hug. Wards can be both defensive and offensive. Offensive wards are placed in the enemy's lane or jungles to prevent them from farming or to watch them if their going to use a smoke of deceit and come in for a gank. Defensive wards are placed on high grounds and in one's jungles to make sure that no ganks are coming that way.

Here are pretty much all the position warding locations. The wards with little lines to them are used to block neutral creeps from respawning. Thus you can block off an enemy pull easily making them hard to find your ward. So yeah do buy them cause they only cost 150 gold and then last 6 minutes. Usually its up to the supports to buy these wards for the team. 

Sentry wards are used to pick off enemy heroes who have invisibility skills, or to deward. Dewarding is the act of using a sentry ward which has infinite stocks to take out observer wards which has only 2 stocks and takes 6 minutes to restock. Thus if you can take out those 4 wards the enemies have on their map. Their map will be totally dark and ganking them will be much easier. Sentries wards are also used to help lane control against heroes who who has invisibility skills which can be annoying sometimes such as bounty hunter, nerubian weaver, and broodmother. That's all I have to say about wards. Do buy them for your team because they are very very very usefull. Thanks for reading this and stay tune up my next part where I will be explaining about the roles of heroes.

Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 8

                   Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 8

                                      

Welcome back to part 8 of entering the world of Dota 2. It's been four days since my last post. Well today i'm back and yes in this blog I'm going to discuss about starting your first Dota 2 game. So your finding a match and going into your first dota game. What should you do what heroes should you play? What do you buy? First off if your new try not to play alone go play with some friends. Even though they are gonna flame you for being a noob it is much better to play with friends. If not then go all out alone. The easiest hero to play in my opinion is probably skeleton king. His a tank/carry with a single skill which is hellfire blast. The other three skills are all passives. His easy to play because you just need to learn to use only one skill. But yeah his a carry so it might not be too good for new players to play a carry when they don't even know how to last hit properly yet. So it be easier to play support heroes. Support heroes doesn't need to last hit but they need to ward, buy couriers, and die to help their carries if they need to. They might look fairly easy to play but in reality there not easy to play at all. Because if your playing a support but you do not know what your doing chances are you be supporting the other team instead of supporting your team. A fairly easy support to start with is vengeful spirit. She has three skills which are fairly easy to use. 

Magic missle - a single target stun with some decent damage

Wave of terror - a map opener that also deals a bit of damage to the enemies and does - armor

Command aura- An aura that increases 36% damage calculating from base damage

Nether swap - swaps the target hero with the vengeful spirit 

She's easy to use but hard to master. So pick her up buy the suggested items and have a few glances with her. Buy a courier if your team doesn't have one buy some wards when needed try to around and gank. That's pretty much all I can tell you. I'm going to end this blog right here as of now. My next blog will be talking about warding Why is it good to ward and de ward and i'll also give you popular places to ward/de ward. Thanks for reading my blog. 

Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 7

                          Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 7

                                    

Welcome back to part 7 of Entering the world of Dota 2. Again sorry for not updating much but exams are finally over and I only have two projects left to deal with. This part is totally dedicated to surviving the hard lane. Now Hard lane doesn't mean you will always be facing a three man lane but it also means sometimes your up against a solo hero so it can also work like solo mid but except without runes. First off let's look at why a hero can solo the hard lane. A hero who can solo the hard lane usually needs a farming ability, an escape mechanism, or an ability that allows them to safely farm from afar. A good example of heroes who can survive the hard lane is mirana or what most people referred to as PotM. She has starfall which she can use to farm and harass, she has leap which is a good escape mechanism. She's got 600 range which means she can safely farm from afar. She is indeed my most successful hero and usually I have no problem farming hard lanes which a set of wards. The only problem I encounter is when up against heroes with silences. Bloodseeker is a good example of a hero who would wreck havoc on hard lane heroes, due to a simple 6 second silence. Your hero will not be able to use any skill. Thus you can't escape, so if you get stunned your automatically dead. If this happens its better to go an all out offensive trilane where you put three heroes into their easy lane. And put your hard lane hero in your easy lane. A list of good hard lane heroes are as follows. PotM,Windrunner,Darkseer,Puck,Beastmaster,clockwerk. As you can see each heroes have either an escape mech, a longrange nuke, or both. Now say I'm playing clockwerk how do I safely farm? Clockwerk has cog which isolates him from other heroes, and he has rocket flare which can be sent to any part of the map thus. He can safely use it to farm from afar. Cog also mana burns enemies who gets close to it. Now wards are very important in a hard lane where you have to fend off three heroes. 

This is an old picture but it shows where to ward if you want to survive this lane. However most experienced   babysitters (supports) will usually carry a sentry ward and they know that this is a classic spot to ward thus they can just easily de ward this spot and you will be left in the dark. There is no way of stopping this so sometimes its better to not ward this spot yet and let them waste their sentries. 

This is an example of warding the radiant's creep camps so that the enemy can't pull. This camps has to be warded if you want to easily farm. Or else the enemy supports can pull this and pull other creep camps towards your creeps thus denying you of the money and experience which you could have gotten from these creeps. Once you have wards down your ready to face the hard lane. There not much to it. Map awareness is your friend always have your eyes on the map while focusing on last hitting and denying. Try to last hit as much as possible because its not easy to last hits especially when you can barely walk near your creeps. If necessary attack the creeps so their hp is even and then use a skill to clear them up. This is an easy tactic though it is mana consuming you will be able to farm. Grab a ring of basilius early because you will need that little mana regen to be able to use your skills when you need to. You can disassemble it into a boots of tranquil to so that you won't have to waste gold on salves and then disassemble it back to ring of basilius. Boots of tranquil is a very good item for heroes who have to hard lane unless your bottle crowing. Which is good since you will be able to continuously spam your skills. Your positioning is very important to surviving a hard lane. Move pass the river only if your sure there aren't any supports hiding behind the bushes if there are quickly go back. Do not use your escape mech if its not needed only use it when you really need it because the 20 seconds on your escape mech can means death for you. Surviving hard lanes can be frustrating just remember to not die, get some gold, and get some levels. If you can't do both and your hero can neutral go for it. Its better to give em free last hits and take down towers then to waste time staying there and dying. Getting around 30 + creep kills in 10 minutes is good enough for a hard lane hero. The more the better though. So that concludes my short guide to solo hard lanes. The rest is up to you to practice. Just takes time to learn and get used to. Don't cry if you get kill you will get better as  you practice. My next blog will be talking about the actual game play experience and your first Dota 2 game. 

Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 6

                      Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 6

                                        

Welcome back part 6 of Entering the world of Dota 2, sorry for the slow entry I was quite tired after exams so I stopped for a few days. In this part I'm going to talk about lane controlling and how to dominate a lane. Last hitting, and denying doesn't help you to win lanes, in some situations you have to harass the enemy hero(es) using either your right click damage, or your skills to bring there hp low so that they would be discourage to come near your creeps or towers. 

I will talk about the three lanes separately because dominating/surviving each lane is different because in each situation your facing different numbers of heroes or your facing either a single melee hero or your facing 2-3 range heroes. The first lane I would like to talk about it the top lane aka the long lane. This lane usually consist of the enemy's carry with 1-2 supports in their neutral camps waiting to strike you in case you went to far into their territory. This lane is the hardest lane to lane control/dominate because there is no way you can win this lane. The best you can do is to get some farm and as much levels,denies as possible. But the main purpose is to get levels and not die. Dying in this lane gives experience/gold to three heroes. Which is not a good thing at all. If you can survive the lane, get a bit of farm (30+ creeps in 10 minutes) and not die at all, you're already giving your team the upper hand.There getting less money, less exp, and almost nothing done if they can't kill you. I'll talk about this lane in more detail later because there're many things you have to consider in a hard lane. Now let's talk about the middle lane. In the middle lane your usually up against a single hero. Heroes who benefit the most from a higher level (ex they can dominate the game with a few level leads) are the best for this lane. Usually heroes who can gank are put into the middle lane. Some examples are, Storm Spirit, Queen of Pain, Pudge, Templar Assasin. 

Some heroes are better than others, some heroes can even counter the enemy's mid lane hero. Thus it is important to get the best 1-1 setup when looking at the middle lane. For me I would say the middle lane is the most important lane out of the three lanes. Because if you lose the middle and following in levels the other team's mid lane can easily grab a rune and go gank the side lanes disrupting your carry's farm or killing off your hard lane hero. Thus this lane requires a lot of skills if your going to come mid lane. You have to be able to grab last hits, denies, harass the enemy's hero, grab runes, and gank. Looks a lot eh? 

Being aggressive in mid lane can totally scare the enemy's hero. If your facing against a melee hero standing on the enemy's range creep can be very intimidating. Forcing them tower hug and not be able to come close to their creeps at all. If your facing this then the best way is to go straight up and start doing right click damage. Do not let the enemy dominate your lane. If you have skills blast them up with a few skills and their force to regenerate or else they might die. The most important thing in a mid lane is to not fear the enemy.

 If all your doing is tower hugging you've already lost your lane. 

There is a thing called crow bottling that is buying a bottle and having your flying courier run it back to your fountain back and forth to refill. While you use it to get hp and mana. This ensures that you would not be dominated and you have enough mana/ hp to continually use it to clear creeps and get last hits. Since your in the mid lane most people are going to be going for runes. Runes are power ups that respawn on one side of the river either the right or the left side every 2 minutes. The first rune respawn at 0.00 of the game. Putting an observer ward on at least one side of the river is highly recommended because you can at least see where the rune respawns so that you can either go grab it or if you think your too slow then let your supports get it, and stick to bottle crowing. Getting runes can change your lane dominance. Getting a double damage rune gives you full control of the lane because no one is gonna be standing there and do a 1-1 right click war when your facing something that deals double your damage. Illusion runes gives you good lane dominance because now you have 2 illusions which can help you to deny, last hit, and harass the enemy hero. Illusions do 35% of your damage thus two illusions deals roughly 70% of your damage which is almost as much as a double damage rune. Which makes it good for lane controlling. Each heroes have their own ways to dominate lanes some heroes use their skills e.g. queen of pain, tinker,Magnus, while other heroes use right click damage, e.g. invoker,sniper, etc. But a combination of both is best. 

Now let's look at the last lane the easy lane. Controlling the lane here is fairly easy. Since most of the time your up against only a single hero. Just have your two supports go aggressive and stand around the bushes waiting to surprise the hard lane hero. A single surprise is enough to make them fear you and force them to stay in their towers. Most hard lane heroes will carry wards with them and ward the creeps camps and the rune. Just de ward them using sentries and they will fear you and only stay near their towers. 

Here a neat little picture about creep pulling that I found from google.

This brings me to the end of part 6 of Entering the world of Dota 2. These are the basics of lane controlling training and practicing will help you a lot more than just reading. Read and put them into practice will make you better. In my next blog I will talk about surviving the hard lane, I'm giving this topic a blog of its own because I myself usually play the hard lane role thus I can give you a lot of tips on how to survive it. Thanks for following my blog and keep it up!

Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 5

                     Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 5

                                              
Welcome back to part 5 of Entering the world of Dota 2, in this part I will discuss about last hitting. First off what is last hitting? Last hitting is landing the last hit on a creep, hero, tower, or Roshan. This grants the player with gold, last hitting is easier said than done. It requires a lot of time to practice, and get used to. There is however an item called quelling blade which gives a hero 32% more damage for melee and 12% more damage for range heroes. This extra damage only applies to creeps. For people who has perfect last hitting and timing quelling blade is really needed, because it is harder to last hit while under the tower if your hero is carrying a quelling blade. There isn't many tricks to last hitting. Its more of getting used to each hero's animation and base damage. However there is a trick when last hitting under towers. For melee creeps during the early levels hitting the creeps once when its hp is full and waiting for the tower to attack it 4 times and then hitting it again will grant you the last hit. For the range creep you hit it once and wait for the tower to attack two times before last hitting it. Now although all heroes needs gold. Some heroes need more golds than others. These heroes are the carries(they carry the game and lead you to victory). Supports are responsible for taking care of their carries and denying and harassing enemies who try to disrupt the carry's farm. Supports needs gold but they shouldn't steal their carry's last hits. Now I mentioned denying right? denying is like last hitting but instead of last hitting the enemy's creeps you last hit your own creeps denying the enemy of the gold and also lowering the amount of experience that the hero can get from that creep. Denying a lot of creeps will prevent the enemy from getting both gold and experience.There's also a tipsy little technique you can do with last hitting creeps instead of running around waiting for the creep's hp to fall you can use the S button to cancel your attack animation until the creep's hp is low enough for you to be sure you can get the last hits.This ensures that you will get the last hit even when the enemy team is trying to deny your creeps.  Last hitting is the bread and butter of lane controlling. I'll tell your more about lane controlling and how to safely farm, how to control lanes, and how to dominate lanes in my next blog. Thanks for reading and spread the word so more people can get a chance at reading this. Remember questions are always welcome.

Entering the world of Dota 2: Part 4

               Entering the world of Dota 2 : Part 4

                                   

Welcome back to part 4 of Entering the world of Dota2. In this blog I will talk about gold. Gold is one of the most important aspects of the game. You need gold to buy items for your hero, or revive your hero. You lose gold when you get killed, respectably you also get gold when you kill an enemy hero. But there are also other means of getting gold. 

Starting Gold:

A player is given 603 gold if they choose their hero, or 853 gold if they random the hero. Gold is separate into two categories reliable gold, and unreliable gold. Reliable gold is gained from killing heroes, global gold from taking down towers killing Roshan. 

Unreliable gold is basically everything else, killing creeps neutrals, etc and every 0.8 seconds you get 1 unreliable gold. Now there is also a small different between which gold is spent first. Buying item uses your unreliable gold while buyback (instant reviving your hero) cost reliable gold first. The good thing about reliable gold is that when you die you won't lose them you can only lose unreliable gold when dying. At the beginning gold were the same. But games were getting boring and more of who can farm faster, so Icefrog decided to change the gold system so that it encourages ganking and taking down towers.

Skills/items that earns you gold:

 Apart from owning gold from killing heroes some skills or items also gives gold. From skills such as Alchemist's goblin's greed which gives you more gold for each last hits you do. Another skill is doom's devour skill which instantly gives the player gold and also gives the creep's initial bounty once it is digested. These two skills gives unreliable gold because they deal with creeps. Now there are also skills/items which gives reliable golds. The first skill is bounty hunter's track which gives gold to both the player and allies. The second skill/item is the hand of Midas's transmute. Which earns you 190 reliable gold. Unreliable is given to the player if they manage to last hit creeps,towers, and Roshan. so we had enough of unreliable gold let's talk about the bounty per each heroes killed. 

Kills:

The picture above depicts a firstblood. Obviously as the name suggest this happens when blood is first drawn on the battlefield. The hero who gets the first blood gets an additional 200 gold. 

The first time a hero is killed by a non-neutral/non-ally unit it will give a bonus 200 reliable gold to the killer; this is called First Blood

When there is only 1 assist to a Dire or Radiant kill, the kill is instead given to the hero that assisted in the kill. When there are multiple assists to a Dire or Radiant kill, the gold is split amongst all heroes that have assists.

Every time you kill an enemy hero you are awarded with

(Current streak of dying Hero)+200+(Dying Hero's Level)*9 reliable gold

Where current streak is:

• 0 if the hero has no kills since last respawn
• 0 if the hero has killed another hero and not died yet
• 0 If the hero has two kills in a row
• 50 Killing Spree (Three kills in a row)
• 100 Dominating (Four kills in a row)
• 150 Mega Kill! (Five kills in a row)
• 200 Unstoppable! (Six kills in a row)
• 250 Wicked Sick (Seven kills in a row)
• 300 Monster Kill!!! (Eight kills in a row)
• 350 Godlike! (Nine kills in a row)
• 400 Beyond Godlike! (Ten or more kills in a row)

Heroes that are in a 1000 area and not being the killer will be granted a certain amount of reliable gold, depending on total heroes in that area.

• 1 Hero: 125+12*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 2 Heroes: 40+10*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 3 Heroes: 10+6*(Dying Hero's Level)
• 4 or 5 Heroes: 6*(Dying Hero's Level)

Its quite long so I just got these from http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Gold 

So yeah that's gold from kills in a nutshell. 

Losing gold:

Buying items, dying, or choosing heroes can lose you gold. 

Re picking a hero will lose you 100 gold so you will start with only 503 gold instead of the regular 603 gold.

When you die you lose 30*(level of your hero) unreliable gold. However if you only have reliable gold you won't lose anything. The only way to not lose gold is to buy a bloodstone which reduce the gold you lose by 25 per each charge.

Not waiting until your hero respawns and paying the buyback fee

Buyback fee = 100 + (Level*Level*1.5) + (GameTime*15), rounded down to a multiplier of 50.

This will take away from your reliable gold pool first.

So that brings me to the end of my blog featuring gold. Its finally time to get into the real stuff in my next blog. In my next blog I will be talking about last hitting. Thanks for all the supports keep reading and you'll one day become an expert.