Dota 2 - Common Support Laning Mistakes

Supporting in Dota is hard.  You need good game knowledge, good map awareness, a fundamentally team-play driven mindset and the ability to eek by with the bare minimum of items.  Learning to play support well takes a lot of time and effort, as you have to grow your capabilities in multiple directions: you need to learn how to support your teammate in lane, how to gank, how to counter-gank, how to ward, how to find whatever farm you can... it's easy to get caught going down one track (warding for instance) and neglecting others.

Which is to say; it's fairly easy to sink a ton of hours into learning support and still miss out on some things which are actually pretty fundamental.  This post will cover some of the basics supports should, or, more accurately, should not be doing in the laning stage; the kind of things that you see all the time in public matchmaking, and that can drive carry teammates up the wall.  An unhappy carry is a distracted carry, and no-one want them making mistakes late-game because they've had their morale upset early.  Carries are delicate creatures!

1. Ineffectual Leeching

This is the #1 thing a support does that incenses their lane-mate: standing behind the carry, possibly attempting to deny creeps.  It's hard to emphasize how terrible this actually is.  Hiding behind the carry, the support contributes nothing to the lane: they do not harass the enemy hero(es), and are not in a position to act if a potential kill situation occurs.  Crucially, they also take half the XP from the lane.  They are literally making the lane worse for the carry than if they weren't there at all.  A support who spends the first few minutes roaming around accomplishing nothing is actually better for the lane than one who sits in it, actively having a negative impact (by stealing experience from the core).  The normal outcome to a two-vs-one lane where the support does this is that the enemy hero gains a level advantage, then kills one or both of the dual lane.

Grand Theft Auto 5's bullying is a problem its creators must finally address

The doctrine of "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" is a useful defense for cynical purveyors of shoddy products. They would prefer that you move along and keep your opinions to yourself.

When used in video games, this cheap line usefully reduces the relationship between products and humans to a base financial transaction. The product has no meaning for those who do not consume it, or so we are supposed to believe.

Dota 2 - Quick'n'Dirty Support Primer

This is a rough outline of things I do most games as support.  If you are clueless about how to play support then following this will set you on the right path. After you do it a few times you'll start to work out what is going on, and should diverge off it as you see fit.  This is for hard support, i.e. farm position 5.

Farm priority is a system to designate who gets farm when more than one player is in the same place. Each player has a number: the lowest number gets the farm. So 1 is the hard carry in the safe lane, 2 is mid, 3 is the offlane or jungle, 4 and 5 are typically supports.  The 4 saves up and gets Mek, while the 5 buys wards.

Start items I buy for practically every support hero is: Courier, Wards, Tango, Salve, Clarity.

Dota 2 - OCD Item Slots (or How To Stop Forgetting Where Your Dust Is)

Following a discussion on reddit, and a missed kill last night, this is just a short post on how I arrange my inventory.  The exact positions are set based on where the hotkey for that slot is; some keys are easier/faster to push than others, so which slot is used for each thing can vary by player based on their fingers and preference, but the point of the post is not which individual slots are used; rather, it is to advocate keeping things consistent so that when you need to use something in a hurry you can do so instinctively, rather than having to think about it and possibly losing your opportunity.

Progenitor revision 2013.11.03 changelog

Progenitor changelog 2013.11.03


Nerfs/buffs:

Adaptive Shielding	Decreased Energy from +0 to -1.
Atom Reclaimer	Decreased Energy Requirement from 3 to 2.
Charibdis	Now only lets you destroy cards owned by the player with the most Energy.

Grand Theft Auto V - Loading Screens

These are all the images that slideshow past as you wait for the game to load.  Anomalies detected...

Do not appear in game	Playable character and  trainable dog
Character	Playable character
Character	Playable character
Character	Playable character
Does not appear in game	Playable character
Character	Playable character

In summation:

Characters	in loadscreens	that appear in game	who are playable
Male	6	6	3
Female	3	0	0
Canine	1	1	0
Total	10	7	3

Progenitor - Tempo: Purging & Turnover

In the last couple of posts I've discussed some key mechanics of Progenitor, and how gaining cards affects tempo.  Here I'll put the two together, analysing the tempo gains/losses of a purge and a turnover.  First up, let's look at purging.

When you purge you get to gain cards from the board, trigger any purge effects, then destroy all cards you have in play.  Each of these steps can change your tempo, so working out the tempo change for a purge is probably the most convoluted calculation applicable to Progenitor.

First, you add up the tempo you get for any cards you gain, which is the Energy Requirement of each card plus one.  Then add any tempo changes from purge effects.  Finally, you destroy all cards you have  in play, and thus subtract tempo for all the Energy and Primes you lose.  It doesn't matter how a card leaves play, be it an opponent destroying them with a card effect or you purging, you still lose the tempo in exactly the same way.  This would seem to imply that building up and purging is a massive waste of time, as almost all the tempo you gain with your plays will be lost again as soon as you purge, but the purge is letting you gain cards from the board, and it's this gain of cards which is the overall tempo increase you are scoring.

Let's look at the example I used before, where you have 2 Charge (0ER, +1, [starting deck is made of these]) cards and a Supply Shuttle (1ER, +1, +1 Prime) in play, giving you a total of 3 Energy and 2 Primes.  When you purge in this sitation you have four different options as to what you take from the board.  You may gain: