2009's DotA Cram School - Death Prophet [Eng Subbed]
Uploaded by hideopalescent on 03.08.2012
Transcript:
Hello all. This is 2009, and welcome back to another episode of DotA Cram School.
Today's featured hero is one that I've never covered previously.
Death Prophet. I think I'll have this up by July 3rd, and it'll be followed by 3 new VODs on the 5th, 7th, 9th.
I hope everybody's enjoying the summer, and I hope everybody will forget their annoyance at my prolonged lack of new VODs.
Well then, DP... her low pick rate isn't because she's weak, but because she requires specialized lineups/strategies to reveal her true monstrous potential.
(TL: reading some of the hero backstory)
This hero's stat growth is actually pretty good; combined growth of 6.6. 600 range, and a decent base attack damage of 44-56. A bit of a spread.
Let's talk about this hero's role. She's position 2 (semi-carry), but her carrying potential stems primarily from her ability to destroy towers extremely fast.
She can actually occupy position 1 (primary carry) as well. It's just that her pure lategame strength is relatively weak.
If she's matched with compatible heroes, her tower-razing speed is incredible, and she excels at territorial battles (pushing and defending towers/base).
Ok, so we know her role now... her strength lies in AoE damage output, pushing towers, and kiting. Let's move on to her abilites.
Her 1st ability is carrion swarm. Basically, max it first. There's really not much to say about it.
Very large area of effect, short cooldown nuke. It starts at 8s, but shortens to 4s after leveling her passive.
That's that. Her 2nd ability is silence. Pretty simple too.
An interesting aspect is that the AoE increases dramatically. For example, lvl1 the radius is this small...
Actually, the casting range is ridiculously long.
You can silence all the way over there.
So... I think most everyone underestimates this ability. Those players with exceptional hero control/micro can probably utilize it to shocking proficiency.
Say for example, the enemy team is sieging your tower. The enemy VS runs up trying to swap you, and you intercept her with a silence. She'll stop in her tracks dumbly and probably get killed.
Or how about when Viper is orb-walking you, and you silence him. His initial state will be to just stand there staring at you for a second or so.
If his casting animation gets canceled, he'll pause there for a significant moment, and even longer if the player futilely continues to try to cast on you.
The effect is almost as good as a stun, because he'll momentarily stop attacking, stop moving.
So early on, you can allot 1 point to it for its utility in small skirmishes. It only costs 80 mana.
Later on, the AoE and range are enormous. So it remains a very strong skill. Don't ignore its usefulness.
Her third ability, the passive, is also very important. We can see that this hero really comes into full strength around lvl12, 14, 16.
The passive buffs her movespeed, and reduces both cooldown and mana cost of her first 2 skills.
Her ultimate can be considered like a transformation ability. She unleashes many spirits...
Leveling this skill, increases the spirit count.
At level 3 ult, with passive maxed, that totals to 24 spirits. Frankly terrifying and awesome to behold.
Let's pop it and take a look... quite a spectacle.
When the spirits return to you, they'll heal you for 25% of the damage dealt.
This can lead to some pretty funny situations.
So... now let's talk about skill build...
Basically, carrion swarm should be leveled up first, an optional point in silence depending on the situation, passive next, ult whenever possible, max silence after that. Stats are out of the question.
This hero, honestly, only has 2 active abilities. Her ult doesn't really count.
So to master this hero, you must grasp hero positioning and your use of these 2 skills fully.
Things to take note of. Your cast point is quite long. When people are chasing with DP, we frequently see some embarrassing occurrences.
I highly recommend that you always target ground.
If you're trying to nuke fast movers/jukers or you spot an opportunity to catch multiple heroes, you can always cancel the animation with stop command and re-target.
Silence, a very powerful skill. Everyone should discover the possibilities for themselves.
For example, silence -> tp out. Or... you spot a gank, feign ignorance, silence them at last possible moment and reverse kill them while they're in disarray.
There are many ways of using this ability.
A sand king hiding in sandstorm, you can silence him out of it.
Let's talk more about her role now, and get to item builds last.
Hero role, we first have to see what the hero's strengths are...
That passive movespeed buff is the first thing... she moves quickly.
Second, her AoE nuke has extremely long range. You can combo with teammates' long range abilities to kill from a distance.
It also means that she can defend towers extremely well, and that she can push out lanes to towers at a high tempo.
These are the core strengths of her nuke.
Say your team is trying to defend a tower. Nobody can step forward beyond the tower because they'll get initiated on and killed off.
In situations like this, heroes with long ranged AoE nukes provide a very effective means to defend towers.
When you're pushing towers, combining with a teammate's nuke, you can 2-shot every creepwave which really speeds things up.
Besides all that, 300 damage isn't a low figure.
So, a 4s cd AoE nuke... she's automatically a giant source of magical DPS, very much like Pugna.
On top of that, you add the big physical DPS component from her ult. Thanks to this, she's an extremely potent semi-carry around lvl14, 15, 16, 17.
With high natural MS, a long-range nuke, and the way her ult works, kiting comes very naturally this hero.
During her ult, these little spirits will randomly select targets in an area around you.
If you run very fast and enemy heroes can't catch up, you can guarantee a safe distance while continuously grinding away at them with your spirits.
If there is only a single opponent in your vicinity, the DPS is extreme.
It's the same with towers... if you clear the creeps and the enemy team doesn't want to engage, your ult can demolish towers very fast.
Moving on to her items...
Krob's itemization is extremely situational... I boil it down to 2 categories.
One style is more focused on the individual... I personally really like this set of items: phase boots + drums.
The appeal of this set is that early game, your last hitting becomes extremely accurate (with phase boots).
With drums and phase activated, your movespeed becomes extremely high. We can do a little experiment.
OK...when we hit phase, her MS is 473.
It nears max MS.
If you activate drums, then phase, you're up to 507, virtually max MS.
With this style of DP, your escaping and your chasing are both extremely strong.
It lets you abuse good positioning, and maximize the impact of your ultimate.
I really recommend this build, but it's a style where the emphasis is on your individual skill.
Its effectiveness is strongly dependent on how good your positioning is and how good your micro is.
Another great item build is arcane boots + mekansm.
This build is much more team-oriented, but it also has necessary pre-conditions.
Your team needs to provide enough disables that you no longer need high MS maintain your safety.
It's because DP still requires some protection. She's afraid of being focused down.
So... arcane + mek is a strong build. Your main contribution is as a pusher, and the constant mana/hp replenishment is very complimentary.
It also provides a lot of protection to teammates. You might even think about adding a pipe later on.
This build is very team-based.
There are plenty of more exotic builds, but they're way too many for me to introduce.
Really, you can play extremely impressively with almost any of these small items.
It all comes down to how mature your understanding of items is.
The 2 builds I mention are more mainstream. Now on to items for the midgame...
I can recommend a couple of paths.
If you want to show off your micro/control, then consider these 3 items: ghost scepter, force staff, eul's.
These should be situationally selected.
Say the enemy team has a long silence... then you'd definitely go for the eul's to dispel the silence.
But actually, I guess this hero doesn't really fear silences.
If there are some spells that really counter you, or extremely damaging spell combos that can burst you down, you can use eul's to dodge them.
If the enemy has very strong holds and disables, you can use force staff to counter that.
If the enemy has extremely high physical DPS, you can block that with ghost scepter.
With these 3 item choices, you can grant yourself a period of invulnerability, the ability to flee nasty situations...
Complimenting your ult and your nuke to increase your fighting power.
If you want to be a more down-to-earth, steady person, then you can conscientiously build your hood/pipe/mek/vanguard, those types of reliable tanking items.
Of course, shiva's is also an excellent item. Another one that I particularly like is bloodstone.
There are often times when you want to farm the lanes infinitely and never have to go home. Besides, it has a nice team component as well.
Then, you have more whimsical items like lothars for example that I can't really recommend.
Once you reach the lategame, your item selection should really depend on the circumstances of the match.
The primary theme should definitely be "tank"; tankiness is a priority. If you want to play non-standard though, then you have cool options like refresher orb.
Ok... well that wraps it up for my hero explanation. Let's go to the matches.
Hi again. Today there are 2 matches. Originally, I was supposed to have 3 matches for this VOD...
When I was going through my recorded games, I found an exciting DP match and an SF match, because lately, I've been working on these heroes' VODs and have been recording a lot.
These 2 matches I didn't save properly to my folder, and I accidentally deleted them.
Really regret it, but that's why I've only got 2 matches for this episode.
Both matches went very smoothly. Both of them I solo-queued on the public ladder.
Hopefully, those players who don't have a regular stack to play with can watch this and think about their approach to pubs.
In pubs, the priority is on your individual play and rhythm. If you can let your base skill level shine through, then your teammates will not be disappointed.
Lately, a topic worth discussing is what heroes counter the trending hero, naga siren.
Personally, I think DP is a great candidate. There are several points.
Firstly, naga fears a lot of AoE. DP has a 4s cd, 300-dmg AoE nuke.
Next, naga's song puts you into a state of invulnerability, which is exactly what you want as DP so your ult can ceaselessly do its thing.
If you want to kill a naga, you must have a silence. DP's got that covered too.
In competitve matches recently, naga has been scoring a very high winrate.
The hero is just ferocious in teamfights, and she can push lanes extremely safely with illusions + riptide.
Her lategame is also very strong. Quite well-suited for competitive play.
Whether she's fighting head-to-head or taking down towers, she excels at both.
Anyways, managed to get a random gold DP. Everyone knows I'm recording for a VOD, so there's a lot of pressure.
Bought the chicken, going mid.
The courier cost was decreased a while ago, so it's pretty cheap now.
I've started with a blades of attack. I think everyone realizes that I'm aiming for the phase + drums item route I talked about.
So... lane opponent is goblin shredder. Shredder with a stout shield.
In some previous VODs, I kept on mistaking this guy's model for legion commander. Really embarrassing.
Tagged him 3 times in this initial phase.
That's the 4th hit. Continuously auto-attacked him 4 times, but I did a poor job of creep blocking, so it was all low ground vs high ground. Small loss for me.
This matchup, I've decided to not take silence. I feel that the passive has better value at this point in time.
The mana cost reduction will help me a lot right now from lvl2, versus delaying it to level 4.
You can see that spending the gold for +12 damage wasn't a waste. Even though he's got a shield, my harass is taking its toll.
Also, I'm continuously monitoring his status. I don't know if you've noticed it.
Why? Because I need to see if he's leveled his passive.
If he's leveled his passive, every time I attack him, his armour increases.
If he hasn't leveled his passive, then I'll harass aggressively. If he levels it, I'll back off and focus on last hitting.
Everybody should see that he hasn't leveled it, so I'm being highly aggressive.
At the edge of tower range, you can abuse DP's attack animation to get in extra hits.
It feels like you can hit really far. The release point is quick, but the projectile travel time/distance is long.
Right now, I feel like buying another blades of attack.
Due to his stout shield, it feels like my auto-attacks aren't painful enough.
Ah... see, he's already popped a salve.
A teammate has looped in from the back. I didn't notice him early enough.
He's honestly quite difficult to kill though, with an innate escape mechanism.
If there are trees nearby, shredder is pretty hard to kill.
I want to emphasize that item builds need to be tailored to the situation. Going against such-and-such heroes, go for such-and-such items.
At solo mid, early laning phase, if you're matched up against a melee, usually he has very little ability to harass down your hp pool.
This would be the time to think about buffing your damage so that you can more effectively suppress him.
WRT regeneration, even a single set of tangoes is sufficient.
He's playing timidly now. He probably felt he had too much mana and wanted to use timber chain to dodge my carrion swarm.
This is a strong method, because I've already noted the 3 heroes at top and 1 at bottom, so I'm in a very safe position.
Of course, if you want to use this aggressive positioning, there are pre-conditions.
You have to make sure that there aren't any threats present like ES, VS, or CM that have strong roaming.
I'm still debating: should I go straight for phase boots? or should I add a bottle first?
My HP is fine right now, so I kept thinking about it.
Things are going smoothly enough that I opt for phase.
I try to nuke him, but he's dodged it with the disjoint from timber chain.
He chains again, grazing me.
I skill up 3rd level of nuke, but he chains!
Ahh... heh, he screws up.
Originally, he was supposed to kill me, and then get struck down by the tower, in the end profiting from the exchange.
But he misses the chain.
We can see that he had a very strong desire to kill me, so he didn't skill up his passive, maxing timber chain instead.
Everyone could see that the CD was very short. When he hit 5, he must've had lvl3 chains, and popped it 3 times in a row.
The first 2 times connected, but he missed with the 3rd.
A massive loss for him, and a virtually perfect early phase for me.
I've got a really early phase boots.
I decided to delay the courier a bit, because this bottle is really important to me right now.
I've also shipped out a clarity.
Wasted a bit of courier time.
If you're really confident in your mid solo laning, you can cover warding and courier costs yourself.
Also, TPs. For a skilled mid player, these 3 things are god-tier tools.
This match, my teammate helped me upgrade to flying courier.
Alright, I'm lvl7 now. With phase active and 2 levels of passive, I move really quickly now. Just straight up nab this invis rune.
It looks like my teammates at top are playing pretty aggressively.
After popping the invis, I loop around behind him. First, clear out all of his creeps.
This way, he's caught in an awkward position, being threatened from both front and rear.
He decides not to juke into our jungle, using the river path instead.
One more auto and a carrion swarm to take him out.
So... why I managed to get a counter kill the first time, and a solo-kill the second time... there's actually a small detail here that I don't know if everybody noticed.
Both encounters, I carefully ensured that all his creeps were cleared out. What benefit does this provide?
The first time, when he chained in, he got pummeled by the tower, because he had no creeps.
This is one of the strongest aspects of DP's laning; the AoE of her nuke is extremely long, even longer than DK's fire breath. Abnormally expansive.
The second time, he was being attacked by creeps from the front, and an invis DP suddenly appeared at his back, causing him to confusedly panic.
So the second time, I created another killing opportunity.
I'm 2-0 at this point. My hp/mana is a bit depleted. Right now, bot lane is kinda far, so I decide not to go there.
I'm thinking about staying at mid and continuing my suppression.
At this time, I see that the low hp heroes are hanging around for a really long time. Longer than I had expected, so I decide to make the trip.
So there's a weaver, a juggernaut, and another who's already died.
The timing is perfect. There's even a sentry ward. Weaver dies instantly getting bounced by clock, and another autoattack finishes jugg.
This type of scenario is very rare with DP... when you happen upon a haste or invis rune. This match I luck out and get both.
Otherwise, it's really really hard to gank with DP. If you try to kill somebody in open sight without strong disables, it's very difficult.
Even though she's got a spiffy 4s nuke, she doesn't have any disables.
Therefore, it's hard to play her as a ganker, unless you manage to get some good runes.
This is one of the reasons I advocate DP going mid. Her laning strength is good.
It's relatively strong. Basically, she can suppress the majority of heroes.
Due to her natural lane pushing, creep collecting, rune whoring talent, if the opponent isn't aided by his teammates, DP can really get out of control.
Her animation and range are great for harassing, her nuke has long reach. Just great lane control.
Add to that her compatibility with runes, mid really is the best place for her.
Mid, phase boots + bottle are obvious.
I've bought a lot of stuff. I'm going for drums next, so I've built a bracer.
I've still got gold and I don't want to ditch these branches, so I decide to make a magic wand as well.
About magic wand, it's really kind of optional on DP. Check out the enemy lineup and see if they throw out a lot spells.
Like bristleback or shadow demon... that sort of hero.
It's good to get wand for that.
Jugg is 6. He's aiming for clock here. I know he wants to omnislash, so I pop my ult immediately.
Get it out early to help the CG.
Hookshot and cogs, and he's dead. I just got new items, so I successfully tanked that to the limit.
Clock with another kill... I think this guy's dead too. Dunno what potm was thinking.
Starting to go on tilt maybe. I've built a big advantage now. Checking the sidelanes, things seem to be going smoothly there as well.
The remainder of this match should be easy to predict.
When you're working with lots of mana, there's nothing wrong with nuking a wave twice to insta-clear it.
That wave clock cleared it with a rocket. I'm lvl11 already, things are going extremely smoothly.
This sobi mask here, was bought by accident. I didn't actually want one.
I was trying to buy bracer recipe hitting 'b', but I messed up my shop hotkey and got the mask instead.
But actually, a sobi mask at this point isn't a bad buy.
It's very cheap, and the return is decent for high-int heroes. I think everyone knows that percentage mana regen is derived from your int stat.
My timing is good again, entering this fight. Dodged an arrow. Catch 3 of them with this carrion swarm.
Another auto-attack takes out PotM.
Continuously kite and nuke. LoA pops his wand charges and barely lives.
He's got shield on... another nuke kills him.
It also hits shredder and takes him down to critical HP.
I've popped my ult + phase, charging forward.
Everybody can see here that my MS is very high.
Jugg couldn't keep up, and he also isolated himself such that my spirits focused him.
So lvl12 DP is already this fearsome. If you have a 12 DP at 11 minutes in, it's kind of obvious what's going to happen next.
I've already mentioned before that DP is a hero that hits maximum strength around lvl 14-16.
So I've completed another core item now... drums.
Once you have both phase + drums up, it'll be very hard for you to die in most fights.
If the enemy doesn't have some monstrous combo, in most average level rooms, you can escape very effectively.
Also, your chasing power is exceptional. You need to exercise some micro though. You can't just pop your abilities and stand there. You have to move around, and position yourself well.
Your killing power will be improved by a lot.
I've popped my drums and phase, trying to rush over there ASAP.
Because I've spotted some likely prey... ahh, screw it. I'll just kill the mirana first.
Pop phase again. It's because I think that my team has the main battle under control, so I've decided to come to the back line and collect these 2 guys.
Silence him. Ahh... I casted that a bit too late.
If I had been able to silence earlier, he wouldn't have been able to chain away again.
It's no big deal though, he's already done.
So after TPing back, let's see if we can get the weaver.
Spotted him. Missed this swarm, but it's ok... we can continue chasing.
I know he's hiding in here. Another swarm, and he's dead.
There's still a jugg left. This triple kill was kind of interesting.
I ran into their base, chasing down 2 crippled heroes, then TPed out to kill the weaver.
Well... it's kinda obvious we're dominating the enemy team at this point.
I'm thinking about getting a Eul's next. This is because when I consider itemization, I pay a lot of heed to my current gold amount.
I like to spend all of it at once on some big item that I can just barely afford.
This is because this kind of item timing has the largest potential impact on the course of the match.
I've discussed this in detail in my OD FPVOD about the economics of dota.
Basically, that time when you just complete a large core item is when you can have the largest influence on the game.
The enemy team is in the dark, and your capability has taken a leap forward.
The bird hasn't gotten to me yet, but I decide that I should enter this fight anyways, because my hp/mana are both sufficient.
Immediately fire up the ult, and it looks like it's gonna be another kill-collection pattern.
First, kill of this abbadon. Silence catches all 3 of them. Let's decide who to go after next, pop phase.
This potm... trying to TP, you're kidding yourself.
Over here on the other side, we can see that our little spirits were actually chewing away at shredder's hp too.
Another successful rout of the enemy team.
Ok... finally finish up my eul's.
This started with that mistakenly bought sobi mask early on. To be fair though, eul's is not a bad pickup.
Phase -> drums -> eul's, that item buildup you'd expect with a very smooth game, with a large advantage over the enemy team. It's also good for saving your life in nasty situations.
That's because you can use it on yourself. It can dispell debuffs, and also gives invulnerability.
This is embarrassing. Seems like I've bought 2 staves of wizardry...
Screwed up buying yet again.
You can check out my MS now. Activating phase gives 514 MS. Don't need to pop drums anymore.
That silence was late. I still don't have a solid grasp on the maximum range of silence.
Weaver's hitting me continuously. Let's back off for a bit, kite them.
Let off another wave, dodge around a bit, check out the situation.
Pop phase, and move forward to silence. See if any teammates are going to follow up.
I can just continuously spam my nuke at the clumps of enemy heroes, because I have unlimited mana now.
Clock makes a move, taking out the potm.
Let's continue pressuring them. DP has hit 16, entering her strongest phase of the match.
Cyclone him, to hold him down for a sec, and then finish him with a wave. Focused him because I noticed previously that he didn't seem to have ult.
Everybody can see that the number of spirits is pretty excessive now.
If there's no other targets to soak up the damage, the tower-destroying speed is ridiculously fast.
They've popped glyph.
I'm continuously goading at jugg, to see if he wants to initiate in, and silencing him when he moves forward.
Our veno has also littered their high ground with his wards.
Give a big silence. Potm can't let off any of her abilities, and shredder is also struck dumb for quite a bit.
Manage to pick potm again. Continuing domination.
They've actually successfully defended their high ground though.
We've lost 2 heroes. There's just me and clock left.
Clock gives me an urn charge. Urn is actually an item DP can use as well.
It's got mana regeneration and a buff to hp pool, as well as very high healing potential.
She can make decent use of it, but then again your item slots are limited. I'd at most spend 2 slots on cheaper utility items.
You've got to factor in tp scrolls and boots... Ok, maybe 3 slots for cheaper items.
Leaving one slot for a major item. Let's say you've got a magic wand and one slot empty for miscellaneous stuff like consumables and pieces. Then you've only got one space for urn/drums/etc.
Those sorts of items are dear to sell. Stuff over 500 gold.
DP with her ult on... the shredder doesn't even want to come anywhere near me.
He can only run for his life. I silence, clock cogs. He pops wand charges, and clock gets the kill.
This high ground push, all that's left is a melee rax.
My mana regen is sufficient that no matter how many times I pop ult, throw swarms and silences, I've got more to spend.
This was a pretty one-sided match. If you're playing from behind, then I highly recommend going with more reliable, tanking items.
Look at the enemy lineup, and choose magical or physical defensive items accordingly.
Physical damage you can consider vanguard, mek. Magical damage you can consider cloak, hood, pipe.
I've played a lot of solo-queue public ladder games lately. Got my individual matchmaking rating pretty high.
In individual MM, I feel that it's important you treat each and every player on the enemy team as a point to be analyzed.
You have to see which heroes counter or threaten you. You have to see the players' attitudes; which are more aggressive and which are more passive.
What are each players' styles like. If you can make accurate, quick judgments of these things, then it will be of great value to you over the course of a match.
Just wanted to emphasize these ideas for individual MM.
If you can understand the enemy players' mindsets and playstyles, it is very easy to predict their moves.
I've been working very hard lately to change how I approach games, because I primarily play in pubs now rather than CW, tournaments, etc. as before.
It's best if I can adjust my condition to adapt to effective pubbing.
Well... we'll stop here for the first game.
Alright... welcome back. Here's the 2nd game.
Looking at the lineups, our team is actually pretty strong.
I've picked DP, bought the chicken, and went mid.
If you're really confident and want to play mid solo, I've found that just picking the hero you want and immediately buying chicken is a good way of doing things in pubs.
People will usually be more than happy to let you take it.
Anyways, chicken is cheap, only 150 gold, and if you do well, you can easily afford to upgrade to flying and buy a round of wards, TP. This is an easy way to turn a match firmly in your favour.
You can be pretty successful if you train up your solo mid ability.
Let's focus a bit on the nitty-gritty of laning technique.
I've been thinking from very early on how best to tackle this subject, but it's just really complex and subtle.
You have to take into account both your own mindset, and the mindset of your opponent.
Ahh... just from that impale, we can see that this player isn't a skilled Lion user.
He has a poor grasp of the lvl1 impale's damage.
Ok! This lion's position is very risky, standing uphill because he really wants to deny creeps.
I move right up to him to attack, and he responds with an impale. He wants to trade hits with me, but I attack, nuke, move up, attack, nuke, move up...
I closely follow his movement. Another attack. Another attack. Finish with a final carrion swarm.
Let's rewind a little to break down this kill.
After the lion threw his impale, he positioned himself quite far forward.
I try to last hit a creep and he successfully denies it. He attempts to deny one more creep, but I've already started auto-ing him a couple of times.
I realize that some treants are beating on me, so I nudge to the left away from them.
Unfortunately, he doesn't realize after his impale that his health is dropping faster than mine.
When he realizes and starts to run, he somehow feels he's qualified to turn around and hit me.
In order to guarantee that I don't miss any of my attacks... because the reason why he thinks he can trade some hits, is because he's uphill and I'm downhill, so he thinks he can profit...
So instead of replying to his attack, I simply move up the hill, knowing that swarm is almost off cooldown.
At this time, he realizes the situation is bad, and starts to run again, but it's already too late.
That's a little review of the process.
I think the most important detail is that you need to take into account creep aggro when you're trading hits.
When you're deciding your positioning and pathing, it's also something to consider.
Every time you reposition yourself you need to think, why am I moving here, what does this accomplish?
Heh... he seems a bit angry. Impaling just to stop me from getting that last hit.
I remember when I first started playing on the VS platform, there was a very memorable player signature.
"My every movement is pre-meditated"
Another little detail just now, is that I use DP's short foreswing to continuously hit him while he's standing under his tower.
Actually, that last attack would have connected too if I didn't cancel the animation by retreating.
This is one of DP's laning strengths. Her animation is superior for harassment against many heroes.
I don't know what to toss right now, so I just put the bottle on the ground.
This lion... he couldn't resist the temptation and tried to destroy my bottle.
He doesn't realize that with his current attack damage, he can't destroy the bottle in a single hit.
We witness the birth of a new "actor". (TL: a jokey term for a player that unwittingly makes 2009 look good, implying that he's a plant)
A very convincing performance.
I've upgraded courier and bought my boots. It'll make it more easy to steal runes.
Lion's back, using denying to express his discontent with my 2 solo-kills.
It's ok though, I'm ready to go grab bot rune. Got my boots.
Popped a clarity. Let's see if there's an opportunity at bot.
Oh... it seems like centaur got the rune first, looped around and killed WR.
But WR managed to take down a player named "Mental health is the most important" with her.
Attack once and wave... don't know if that caught him or not.
It connected. The effect isn't too bad. Lvl3 carrion swarm on a low level lion.
I didn't manage to get the rune this time though, so my mana is depleted.
At this time, you have 2 choices. One is to send the bird over with a clarity and send your bottle back to the well for a refill.
The other is to simply wait and see if you can get the next rune spawn.
Ok... I've tailed centaur to the rune spot, missing about 2 creeps worth of experience, but I think it's worth it, because I have a chance at this rune now.
I checked to see if the centaur got any rune like haste or invis... Silence! no sweat, lion is about to die again.
He impales... he should have a hex too. Attack once, and stick to him.
This lion is going the wrong way, don't know why he chose this path.
If he simply dove into the trees, he'd have a better chance.
He's brought to his knees again. Killing spree now... another very successful early game for DP.
Control the creep aggro.
Ok, got caught by this stomp. We can see that he's got 5 wand charges. He pops them.
He probably thought that I had mana to fight.
This is an example of average skill level players doing very messy actions.
Actually, all these things can be easily improved with some simple discipline.
Ok... we can see this player is already on tilt, starting to hex ranged creeps.
I'm continuously goading them now. As you can see, their burst damage potential is actually really high.
It is possible to take me out, but because I've got a lot of confidence in my positioning, I'm provoking them a lot.
Ok we manage to get a rune. Lion hits me twice, but doesn't pursue. We can return to the lane in good condition again.
If it was just the lion, even if he came fresh from the fountain he still wouldn't be able to beat me.
Shipping out a tp and clarity.
Centaur has recovered his hp as well, while Lion is locked in combat with my illusions.
Let's attack all of the creeps so that I can clear them with a single wave. He doesn't want to come up at this point.
I see that the lion has moved up to top lane, so I decide to tank the wave a bit to encourage the centaur to stick around to play with me.
If this wave of creeps had simply ran up the hill to my tower, then I'm pretty sure that the centaur would simply leave to do other things.
If the lion had stayed mid, then of course, I would want the creep line back up nearer my tower, but he's gone top.
Ahh... this centaur has put a point in his thorns ability, really annoying because it canceled my bottle charge.
Back to my original tactic of hitting the ranged creep once, so that if the centaur approaches I'll nuke out the wave and send him running.
Especially with phase... but I don't think that nuke connected.
No rune, and I don't want to go home... let's see if there's a kill opportunity with this centaur.
Use phase to dodge his moves, oh I think there's a chance here. I've continuously hit him 4 times. One wave, and he's gone.
This is the appeal of getting an early phase boots.
Your MS is already high, and your animation is great for harassing people. It's a very similar idea to why most WRs choose phase boots too.
For a hero who's attack animation feels very usable, that +24 damage is very attractive.
I've thought about this question before... why WR prefers phase to power treads.
The reason is right here. It's not just because it makes landing shackles easier.
I wanted to attack from behind this geomancer, to see if there was a chance to kill him with my DD buff.
We can see that this meepo knows what's up, and directly flees.
Whoah! Ok... the meepo doesn't land the net. I changed direction really quickly with phase active.
They were unsuccessful depsite 4 heroes surrounding me, because the 2nd meepo was too far, and they used up the only slow in their arsenal already.
When the skill level isn't that high, some oddball situations can often appear.
A founding principle when I first began making VODs is for everyone to believe in the power of individual skill to solve any problem.
The ability of a single person can always exceed what you imagined is possible.
Even if you run into matches where you really feel helpless, where you've already played to your utmost limit... in reality, there's actually so much more you can improve upon and achieve.
There isn't a single player out there who can realize ultimate perfection.
But you can get ever closer to it, by playing with discipline and a critical eye.
These 2 guys are in a bad position. Nuke + silence hits both of them.
But I made a mistake here, paying too much attention to myself and not my teammate.
I gave the silence too late, otherwise the centaur wouldn't have been able to complete his combo.
He's guaranteed to die though. Against a lvl3 passive DP with phase boots, it's impossible for a yellow health centaur to survive.
We've caught up... I don't think I need to waste a nuke here.
I still waved trying to get the kill... but didn't get it.
Somebody got caught... let's go take a look. If I pop my wand I can still throw a wave or 2.
He popped his infernal... there's no chances here, so I'll go after the rune.
No rune. We can see that the WL's position isn't so good.
Let's see if anybody's interested.
One nuke hit 2 heroes, dodge away a bit.
Troll's used some abilities on me, but I've got 7 wand charges and a salve. It's no big deal.
Retrieved my gg branch.
Ok... got an illusion rune. Pop phase to lose this infernal, to hurry back to the battleground.
I think it might be more effective to enter this fight from the back. We see a lvl6 lion.
So it's best to play a bit more conservatively.
I don't know where this lion got the xp to lvl6.
Team is saying that WR has no mana. It'll be hard to get any easy kills, so I'm being a bit safe too.
I've got lvl4 passive now. Poke forward a bit.
I wanted to intimidate them a bit. Lion tries to stun. Ahh... it's a good thing ES had mana.
This lion once again screws up and misses the impale.
Hmmm.... this centaur popped his double-edge. Ahh... he wanted to combo with lion to instagib ES.
I decided to back off because I saw a TP coming in, but I actually didn't need to. WL doesn't have ult up.
Ahh... this carrion swarm was supposed to hit all 3 of them, but it only hit 1 of them because of DP's cast animation.
The carrion swarm has its own movespeed, and then there's also DP's animation. To use it effectively you need to predict movement.
They both fall over from my spirits' damage.
Another smooth match, with fast phase + drums.
Putting together this episode, I really regret losing that other game I was talking about. It was longer and more closely-matched.
We're starting hear some disharmonious sounds from the enemy team.
I really think doing stuff like that is lame. Talking in all chat about how terrible your teammates are is something I dislike.
If it was me... the most I'd do is just tell them what they can do to improve in team chat, because there's always the chance that they do it, and you win a match you'd otherwise have lost.
The past 2 days playing with some coworkers, we've had 2 major comebacks. Both matches we came back from 2 sets of raxes down.
If you communicate with the player on where he's failing and how to improve, there can be some benefit from it.
If you go complain to your opponents about how poor your team, you're basically throwing in the towel
I made a little slip here. I was supposed to pop my ult, then invis rune, so that I can stay invisible.
It's not a big deal though... and at this point with the cloak, it's pretty hard for me to die.
Fire off a silence.
There's still a WL left.
Team wipe.
I believe that those who will become or already are high level players, all share a characteristic. They all set very high standards for themselves.
Playing on a public ladder... anywhere below around a 2000 point rating, the things you can accomplish as an individual are pretty incredible.
An exceptional player can tackle the majority of public matches with ease. Even if the match is lost, they'll still consistently have extremely impressive scores.
This is something that I've been working on recently... shifting my attitude from getting teammates to do something to how I can improve my game individually.
This is probably the proper mindset to approach pubs.
Well... this week's episode draws to a close.
The main goal was to present some ways of playing DP, and specific details of play that should be heeded in the early game.
The enemy team has pretty much given up at this point. The level of play wasn't that high to begin with.
The problem was that it was too late when I discovered I had lost that vod.
I didn't want to release the episode with only a single game, so I hurriedly logged into a smurf account for an MM game.
It was early in the morning, and I couldn't find any matches with my main ID, so that's why I went to a smurf.
This episode's latter game phases were less interesting than usual.
DP is a hero with many strengths.
But... she requires resources and for her teammates to give her space to develop.
Only with specific lineups and during specific time periods can she fully express her potential power.
That's it for this episode. See you next time.
Today's featured hero is one that I've never covered previously.
Death Prophet. I think I'll have this up by July 3rd, and it'll be followed by 3 new VODs on the 5th, 7th, 9th.
I hope everybody's enjoying the summer, and I hope everybody will forget their annoyance at my prolonged lack of new VODs.
Well then, DP... her low pick rate isn't because she's weak, but because she requires specialized lineups/strategies to reveal her true monstrous potential.
(TL: reading some of the hero backstory)
This hero's stat growth is actually pretty good; combined growth of 6.6. 600 range, and a decent base attack damage of 44-56. A bit of a spread.
Let's talk about this hero's role. She's position 2 (semi-carry), but her carrying potential stems primarily from her ability to destroy towers extremely fast.
She can actually occupy position 1 (primary carry) as well. It's just that her pure lategame strength is relatively weak.
If she's matched with compatible heroes, her tower-razing speed is incredible, and she excels at territorial battles (pushing and defending towers/base).
Ok, so we know her role now... her strength lies in AoE damage output, pushing towers, and kiting. Let's move on to her abilites.
Her 1st ability is carrion swarm. Basically, max it first. There's really not much to say about it.
Very large area of effect, short cooldown nuke. It starts at 8s, but shortens to 4s after leveling her passive.
That's that. Her 2nd ability is silence. Pretty simple too.
An interesting aspect is that the AoE increases dramatically. For example, lvl1 the radius is this small...
Actually, the casting range is ridiculously long.
You can silence all the way over there.
So... I think most everyone underestimates this ability. Those players with exceptional hero control/micro can probably utilize it to shocking proficiency.
Say for example, the enemy team is sieging your tower. The enemy VS runs up trying to swap you, and you intercept her with a silence. She'll stop in her tracks dumbly and probably get killed.
Or how about when Viper is orb-walking you, and you silence him. His initial state will be to just stand there staring at you for a second or so.
If his casting animation gets canceled, he'll pause there for a significant moment, and even longer if the player futilely continues to try to cast on you.
The effect is almost as good as a stun, because he'll momentarily stop attacking, stop moving.
So early on, you can allot 1 point to it for its utility in small skirmishes. It only costs 80 mana.
Later on, the AoE and range are enormous. So it remains a very strong skill. Don't ignore its usefulness.
Her third ability, the passive, is also very important. We can see that this hero really comes into full strength around lvl12, 14, 16.
The passive buffs her movespeed, and reduces both cooldown and mana cost of her first 2 skills.
Her ultimate can be considered like a transformation ability. She unleashes many spirits...
Leveling this skill, increases the spirit count.
At level 3 ult, with passive maxed, that totals to 24 spirits. Frankly terrifying and awesome to behold.
Let's pop it and take a look... quite a spectacle.
When the spirits return to you, they'll heal you for 25% of the damage dealt.
This can lead to some pretty funny situations.
So... now let's talk about skill build...
Basically, carrion swarm should be leveled up first, an optional point in silence depending on the situation, passive next, ult whenever possible, max silence after that. Stats are out of the question.
This hero, honestly, only has 2 active abilities. Her ult doesn't really count.
So to master this hero, you must grasp hero positioning and your use of these 2 skills fully.
Things to take note of. Your cast point is quite long. When people are chasing with DP, we frequently see some embarrassing occurrences.
I highly recommend that you always target ground.
If you're trying to nuke fast movers/jukers or you spot an opportunity to catch multiple heroes, you can always cancel the animation with stop command and re-target.
Silence, a very powerful skill. Everyone should discover the possibilities for themselves.
For example, silence -> tp out. Or... you spot a gank, feign ignorance, silence them at last possible moment and reverse kill them while they're in disarray.
There are many ways of using this ability.
A sand king hiding in sandstorm, you can silence him out of it.
Let's talk more about her role now, and get to item builds last.
Hero role, we first have to see what the hero's strengths are...
That passive movespeed buff is the first thing... she moves quickly.
Second, her AoE nuke has extremely long range. You can combo with teammates' long range abilities to kill from a distance.
It also means that she can defend towers extremely well, and that she can push out lanes to towers at a high tempo.
These are the core strengths of her nuke.
Say your team is trying to defend a tower. Nobody can step forward beyond the tower because they'll get initiated on and killed off.
In situations like this, heroes with long ranged AoE nukes provide a very effective means to defend towers.
When you're pushing towers, combining with a teammate's nuke, you can 2-shot every creepwave which really speeds things up.
Besides all that, 300 damage isn't a low figure.
So, a 4s cd AoE nuke... she's automatically a giant source of magical DPS, very much like Pugna.
On top of that, you add the big physical DPS component from her ult. Thanks to this, she's an extremely potent semi-carry around lvl14, 15, 16, 17.
With high natural MS, a long-range nuke, and the way her ult works, kiting comes very naturally this hero.
During her ult, these little spirits will randomly select targets in an area around you.
If you run very fast and enemy heroes can't catch up, you can guarantee a safe distance while continuously grinding away at them with your spirits.
If there is only a single opponent in your vicinity, the DPS is extreme.
It's the same with towers... if you clear the creeps and the enemy team doesn't want to engage, your ult can demolish towers very fast.
Moving on to her items...
Krob's itemization is extremely situational... I boil it down to 2 categories.
One style is more focused on the individual... I personally really like this set of items: phase boots + drums.
The appeal of this set is that early game, your last hitting becomes extremely accurate (with phase boots).
With drums and phase activated, your movespeed becomes extremely high. We can do a little experiment.
OK...when we hit phase, her MS is 473.
It nears max MS.
If you activate drums, then phase, you're up to 507, virtually max MS.
With this style of DP, your escaping and your chasing are both extremely strong.
It lets you abuse good positioning, and maximize the impact of your ultimate.
I really recommend this build, but it's a style where the emphasis is on your individual skill.
Its effectiveness is strongly dependent on how good your positioning is and how good your micro is.
Another great item build is arcane boots + mekansm.
This build is much more team-oriented, but it also has necessary pre-conditions.
Your team needs to provide enough disables that you no longer need high MS maintain your safety.
It's because DP still requires some protection. She's afraid of being focused down.
So... arcane + mek is a strong build. Your main contribution is as a pusher, and the constant mana/hp replenishment is very complimentary.
It also provides a lot of protection to teammates. You might even think about adding a pipe later on.
This build is very team-based.
There are plenty of more exotic builds, but they're way too many for me to introduce.
Really, you can play extremely impressively with almost any of these small items.
It all comes down to how mature your understanding of items is.
The 2 builds I mention are more mainstream. Now on to items for the midgame...
I can recommend a couple of paths.
If you want to show off your micro/control, then consider these 3 items: ghost scepter, force staff, eul's.
These should be situationally selected.
Say the enemy team has a long silence... then you'd definitely go for the eul's to dispel the silence.
But actually, I guess this hero doesn't really fear silences.
If there are some spells that really counter you, or extremely damaging spell combos that can burst you down, you can use eul's to dodge them.
If the enemy has very strong holds and disables, you can use force staff to counter that.
If the enemy has extremely high physical DPS, you can block that with ghost scepter.
With these 3 item choices, you can grant yourself a period of invulnerability, the ability to flee nasty situations...
Complimenting your ult and your nuke to increase your fighting power.
If you want to be a more down-to-earth, steady person, then you can conscientiously build your hood/pipe/mek/vanguard, those types of reliable tanking items.
Of course, shiva's is also an excellent item. Another one that I particularly like is bloodstone.
There are often times when you want to farm the lanes infinitely and never have to go home. Besides, it has a nice team component as well.
Then, you have more whimsical items like lothars for example that I can't really recommend.
Once you reach the lategame, your item selection should really depend on the circumstances of the match.
The primary theme should definitely be "tank"; tankiness is a priority. If you want to play non-standard though, then you have cool options like refresher orb.
Ok... well that wraps it up for my hero explanation. Let's go to the matches.
Hi again. Today there are 2 matches. Originally, I was supposed to have 3 matches for this VOD...
When I was going through my recorded games, I found an exciting DP match and an SF match, because lately, I've been working on these heroes' VODs and have been recording a lot.
These 2 matches I didn't save properly to my folder, and I accidentally deleted them.
Really regret it, but that's why I've only got 2 matches for this episode.
Both matches went very smoothly. Both of them I solo-queued on the public ladder.
Hopefully, those players who don't have a regular stack to play with can watch this and think about their approach to pubs.
In pubs, the priority is on your individual play and rhythm. If you can let your base skill level shine through, then your teammates will not be disappointed.
Lately, a topic worth discussing is what heroes counter the trending hero, naga siren.
Personally, I think DP is a great candidate. There are several points.
Firstly, naga fears a lot of AoE. DP has a 4s cd, 300-dmg AoE nuke.
Next, naga's song puts you into a state of invulnerability, which is exactly what you want as DP so your ult can ceaselessly do its thing.
If you want to kill a naga, you must have a silence. DP's got that covered too.
In competitve matches recently, naga has been scoring a very high winrate.
The hero is just ferocious in teamfights, and she can push lanes extremely safely with illusions + riptide.
Her lategame is also very strong. Quite well-suited for competitive play.
Whether she's fighting head-to-head or taking down towers, she excels at both.
Anyways, managed to get a random gold DP. Everyone knows I'm recording for a VOD, so there's a lot of pressure.
Bought the chicken, going mid.
The courier cost was decreased a while ago, so it's pretty cheap now.
I've started with a blades of attack. I think everyone realizes that I'm aiming for the phase + drums item route I talked about.
So... lane opponent is goblin shredder. Shredder with a stout shield.
In some previous VODs, I kept on mistaking this guy's model for legion commander. Really embarrassing.
Tagged him 3 times in this initial phase.
That's the 4th hit. Continuously auto-attacked him 4 times, but I did a poor job of creep blocking, so it was all low ground vs high ground. Small loss for me.
This matchup, I've decided to not take silence. I feel that the passive has better value at this point in time.
The mana cost reduction will help me a lot right now from lvl2, versus delaying it to level 4.
You can see that spending the gold for +12 damage wasn't a waste. Even though he's got a shield, my harass is taking its toll.
Also, I'm continuously monitoring his status. I don't know if you've noticed it.
Why? Because I need to see if he's leveled his passive.
If he's leveled his passive, every time I attack him, his armour increases.
If he hasn't leveled his passive, then I'll harass aggressively. If he levels it, I'll back off and focus on last hitting.
Everybody should see that he hasn't leveled it, so I'm being highly aggressive.
At the edge of tower range, you can abuse DP's attack animation to get in extra hits.
It feels like you can hit really far. The release point is quick, but the projectile travel time/distance is long.
Right now, I feel like buying another blades of attack.
Due to his stout shield, it feels like my auto-attacks aren't painful enough.
Ah... see, he's already popped a salve.
A teammate has looped in from the back. I didn't notice him early enough.
He's honestly quite difficult to kill though, with an innate escape mechanism.
If there are trees nearby, shredder is pretty hard to kill.
I want to emphasize that item builds need to be tailored to the situation. Going against such-and-such heroes, go for such-and-such items.
At solo mid, early laning phase, if you're matched up against a melee, usually he has very little ability to harass down your hp pool.
This would be the time to think about buffing your damage so that you can more effectively suppress him.
WRT regeneration, even a single set of tangoes is sufficient.
He's playing timidly now. He probably felt he had too much mana and wanted to use timber chain to dodge my carrion swarm.
This is a strong method, because I've already noted the 3 heroes at top and 1 at bottom, so I'm in a very safe position.
Of course, if you want to use this aggressive positioning, there are pre-conditions.
You have to make sure that there aren't any threats present like ES, VS, or CM that have strong roaming.
I'm still debating: should I go straight for phase boots? or should I add a bottle first?
My HP is fine right now, so I kept thinking about it.
Things are going smoothly enough that I opt for phase.
I try to nuke him, but he's dodged it with the disjoint from timber chain.
He chains again, grazing me.
I skill up 3rd level of nuke, but he chains!
Ahh... heh, he screws up.
Originally, he was supposed to kill me, and then get struck down by the tower, in the end profiting from the exchange.
But he misses the chain.
We can see that he had a very strong desire to kill me, so he didn't skill up his passive, maxing timber chain instead.
Everyone could see that the CD was very short. When he hit 5, he must've had lvl3 chains, and popped it 3 times in a row.
The first 2 times connected, but he missed with the 3rd.
A massive loss for him, and a virtually perfect early phase for me.
I've got a really early phase boots.
I decided to delay the courier a bit, because this bottle is really important to me right now.
I've also shipped out a clarity.
Wasted a bit of courier time.
If you're really confident in your mid solo laning, you can cover warding and courier costs yourself.
Also, TPs. For a skilled mid player, these 3 things are god-tier tools.
This match, my teammate helped me upgrade to flying courier.
Alright, I'm lvl7 now. With phase active and 2 levels of passive, I move really quickly now. Just straight up nab this invis rune.
It looks like my teammates at top are playing pretty aggressively.
After popping the invis, I loop around behind him. First, clear out all of his creeps.
This way, he's caught in an awkward position, being threatened from both front and rear.
He decides not to juke into our jungle, using the river path instead.
One more auto and a carrion swarm to take him out.
So... why I managed to get a counter kill the first time, and a solo-kill the second time... there's actually a small detail here that I don't know if everybody noticed.
Both encounters, I carefully ensured that all his creeps were cleared out. What benefit does this provide?
The first time, when he chained in, he got pummeled by the tower, because he had no creeps.
This is one of the strongest aspects of DP's laning; the AoE of her nuke is extremely long, even longer than DK's fire breath. Abnormally expansive.
The second time, he was being attacked by creeps from the front, and an invis DP suddenly appeared at his back, causing him to confusedly panic.
So the second time, I created another killing opportunity.
I'm 2-0 at this point. My hp/mana is a bit depleted. Right now, bot lane is kinda far, so I decide not to go there.
I'm thinking about staying at mid and continuing my suppression.
At this time, I see that the low hp heroes are hanging around for a really long time. Longer than I had expected, so I decide to make the trip.
So there's a weaver, a juggernaut, and another who's already died.
The timing is perfect. There's even a sentry ward. Weaver dies instantly getting bounced by clock, and another autoattack finishes jugg.
This type of scenario is very rare with DP... when you happen upon a haste or invis rune. This match I luck out and get both.
Otherwise, it's really really hard to gank with DP. If you try to kill somebody in open sight without strong disables, it's very difficult.
Even though she's got a spiffy 4s nuke, she doesn't have any disables.
Therefore, it's hard to play her as a ganker, unless you manage to get some good runes.
This is one of the reasons I advocate DP going mid. Her laning strength is good.
It's relatively strong. Basically, she can suppress the majority of heroes.
Due to her natural lane pushing, creep collecting, rune whoring talent, if the opponent isn't aided by his teammates, DP can really get out of control.
Her animation and range are great for harassing, her nuke has long reach. Just great lane control.
Add to that her compatibility with runes, mid really is the best place for her.
Mid, phase boots + bottle are obvious.
I've bought a lot of stuff. I'm going for drums next, so I've built a bracer.
I've still got gold and I don't want to ditch these branches, so I decide to make a magic wand as well.
About magic wand, it's really kind of optional on DP. Check out the enemy lineup and see if they throw out a lot spells.
Like bristleback or shadow demon... that sort of hero.
It's good to get wand for that.
Jugg is 6. He's aiming for clock here. I know he wants to omnislash, so I pop my ult immediately.
Get it out early to help the CG.
Hookshot and cogs, and he's dead. I just got new items, so I successfully tanked that to the limit.
Clock with another kill... I think this guy's dead too. Dunno what potm was thinking.
Starting to go on tilt maybe. I've built a big advantage now. Checking the sidelanes, things seem to be going smoothly there as well.
The remainder of this match should be easy to predict.
When you're working with lots of mana, there's nothing wrong with nuking a wave twice to insta-clear it.
That wave clock cleared it with a rocket. I'm lvl11 already, things are going extremely smoothly.
This sobi mask here, was bought by accident. I didn't actually want one.
I was trying to buy bracer recipe hitting 'b', but I messed up my shop hotkey and got the mask instead.
But actually, a sobi mask at this point isn't a bad buy.
It's very cheap, and the return is decent for high-int heroes. I think everyone knows that percentage mana regen is derived from your int stat.
My timing is good again, entering this fight. Dodged an arrow. Catch 3 of them with this carrion swarm.
Another auto-attack takes out PotM.
Continuously kite and nuke. LoA pops his wand charges and barely lives.
He's got shield on... another nuke kills him.
It also hits shredder and takes him down to critical HP.
I've popped my ult + phase, charging forward.
Everybody can see here that my MS is very high.
Jugg couldn't keep up, and he also isolated himself such that my spirits focused him.
So lvl12 DP is already this fearsome. If you have a 12 DP at 11 minutes in, it's kind of obvious what's going to happen next.
I've already mentioned before that DP is a hero that hits maximum strength around lvl 14-16.
So I've completed another core item now... drums.
Once you have both phase + drums up, it'll be very hard for you to die in most fights.
If the enemy doesn't have some monstrous combo, in most average level rooms, you can escape very effectively.
Also, your chasing power is exceptional. You need to exercise some micro though. You can't just pop your abilities and stand there. You have to move around, and position yourself well.
Your killing power will be improved by a lot.
I've popped my drums and phase, trying to rush over there ASAP.
Because I've spotted some likely prey... ahh, screw it. I'll just kill the mirana first.
Pop phase again. It's because I think that my team has the main battle under control, so I've decided to come to the back line and collect these 2 guys.
Silence him. Ahh... I casted that a bit too late.
If I had been able to silence earlier, he wouldn't have been able to chain away again.
It's no big deal though, he's already done.
So after TPing back, let's see if we can get the weaver.
Spotted him. Missed this swarm, but it's ok... we can continue chasing.
I know he's hiding in here. Another swarm, and he's dead.
There's still a jugg left. This triple kill was kind of interesting.
I ran into their base, chasing down 2 crippled heroes, then TPed out to kill the weaver.
Well... it's kinda obvious we're dominating the enemy team at this point.
I'm thinking about getting a Eul's next. This is because when I consider itemization, I pay a lot of heed to my current gold amount.
I like to spend all of it at once on some big item that I can just barely afford.
This is because this kind of item timing has the largest potential impact on the course of the match.
I've discussed this in detail in my OD FPVOD about the economics of dota.
Basically, that time when you just complete a large core item is when you can have the largest influence on the game.
The enemy team is in the dark, and your capability has taken a leap forward.
The bird hasn't gotten to me yet, but I decide that I should enter this fight anyways, because my hp/mana are both sufficient.
Immediately fire up the ult, and it looks like it's gonna be another kill-collection pattern.
First, kill of this abbadon. Silence catches all 3 of them. Let's decide who to go after next, pop phase.
This potm... trying to TP, you're kidding yourself.
Over here on the other side, we can see that our little spirits were actually chewing away at shredder's hp too.
Another successful rout of the enemy team.
Ok... finally finish up my eul's.
This started with that mistakenly bought sobi mask early on. To be fair though, eul's is not a bad pickup.
Phase -> drums -> eul's, that item buildup you'd expect with a very smooth game, with a large advantage over the enemy team. It's also good for saving your life in nasty situations.
That's because you can use it on yourself. It can dispell debuffs, and also gives invulnerability.
This is embarrassing. Seems like I've bought 2 staves of wizardry...
Screwed up buying yet again.
You can check out my MS now. Activating phase gives 514 MS. Don't need to pop drums anymore.
That silence was late. I still don't have a solid grasp on the maximum range of silence.
Weaver's hitting me continuously. Let's back off for a bit, kite them.
Let off another wave, dodge around a bit, check out the situation.
Pop phase, and move forward to silence. See if any teammates are going to follow up.
I can just continuously spam my nuke at the clumps of enemy heroes, because I have unlimited mana now.
Clock makes a move, taking out the potm.
Let's continue pressuring them. DP has hit 16, entering her strongest phase of the match.
Cyclone him, to hold him down for a sec, and then finish him with a wave. Focused him because I noticed previously that he didn't seem to have ult.
Everybody can see that the number of spirits is pretty excessive now.
If there's no other targets to soak up the damage, the tower-destroying speed is ridiculously fast.
They've popped glyph.
I'm continuously goading at jugg, to see if he wants to initiate in, and silencing him when he moves forward.
Our veno has also littered their high ground with his wards.
Give a big silence. Potm can't let off any of her abilities, and shredder is also struck dumb for quite a bit.
Manage to pick potm again. Continuing domination.
They've actually successfully defended their high ground though.
We've lost 2 heroes. There's just me and clock left.
Clock gives me an urn charge. Urn is actually an item DP can use as well.
It's got mana regeneration and a buff to hp pool, as well as very high healing potential.
She can make decent use of it, but then again your item slots are limited. I'd at most spend 2 slots on cheaper utility items.
You've got to factor in tp scrolls and boots... Ok, maybe 3 slots for cheaper items.
Leaving one slot for a major item. Let's say you've got a magic wand and one slot empty for miscellaneous stuff like consumables and pieces. Then you've only got one space for urn/drums/etc.
Those sorts of items are dear to sell. Stuff over 500 gold.
DP with her ult on... the shredder doesn't even want to come anywhere near me.
He can only run for his life. I silence, clock cogs. He pops wand charges, and clock gets the kill.
This high ground push, all that's left is a melee rax.
My mana regen is sufficient that no matter how many times I pop ult, throw swarms and silences, I've got more to spend.
This was a pretty one-sided match. If you're playing from behind, then I highly recommend going with more reliable, tanking items.
Look at the enemy lineup, and choose magical or physical defensive items accordingly.
Physical damage you can consider vanguard, mek. Magical damage you can consider cloak, hood, pipe.
I've played a lot of solo-queue public ladder games lately. Got my individual matchmaking rating pretty high.
In individual MM, I feel that it's important you treat each and every player on the enemy team as a point to be analyzed.
You have to see which heroes counter or threaten you. You have to see the players' attitudes; which are more aggressive and which are more passive.
What are each players' styles like. If you can make accurate, quick judgments of these things, then it will be of great value to you over the course of a match.
Just wanted to emphasize these ideas for individual MM.
If you can understand the enemy players' mindsets and playstyles, it is very easy to predict their moves.
I've been working very hard lately to change how I approach games, because I primarily play in pubs now rather than CW, tournaments, etc. as before.
It's best if I can adjust my condition to adapt to effective pubbing.
Well... we'll stop here for the first game.
Alright... welcome back. Here's the 2nd game.
Looking at the lineups, our team is actually pretty strong.
I've picked DP, bought the chicken, and went mid.
If you're really confident and want to play mid solo, I've found that just picking the hero you want and immediately buying chicken is a good way of doing things in pubs.
People will usually be more than happy to let you take it.
Anyways, chicken is cheap, only 150 gold, and if you do well, you can easily afford to upgrade to flying and buy a round of wards, TP. This is an easy way to turn a match firmly in your favour.
You can be pretty successful if you train up your solo mid ability.
Let's focus a bit on the nitty-gritty of laning technique.
I've been thinking from very early on how best to tackle this subject, but it's just really complex and subtle.
You have to take into account both your own mindset, and the mindset of your opponent.
Ahh... just from that impale, we can see that this player isn't a skilled Lion user.
He has a poor grasp of the lvl1 impale's damage.
Ok! This lion's position is very risky, standing uphill because he really wants to deny creeps.
I move right up to him to attack, and he responds with an impale. He wants to trade hits with me, but I attack, nuke, move up, attack, nuke, move up...
I closely follow his movement. Another attack. Another attack. Finish with a final carrion swarm.
Let's rewind a little to break down this kill.
After the lion threw his impale, he positioned himself quite far forward.
I try to last hit a creep and he successfully denies it. He attempts to deny one more creep, but I've already started auto-ing him a couple of times.
I realize that some treants are beating on me, so I nudge to the left away from them.
Unfortunately, he doesn't realize after his impale that his health is dropping faster than mine.
When he realizes and starts to run, he somehow feels he's qualified to turn around and hit me.
In order to guarantee that I don't miss any of my attacks... because the reason why he thinks he can trade some hits, is because he's uphill and I'm downhill, so he thinks he can profit...
So instead of replying to his attack, I simply move up the hill, knowing that swarm is almost off cooldown.
At this time, he realizes the situation is bad, and starts to run again, but it's already too late.
That's a little review of the process.
I think the most important detail is that you need to take into account creep aggro when you're trading hits.
When you're deciding your positioning and pathing, it's also something to consider.
Every time you reposition yourself you need to think, why am I moving here, what does this accomplish?
Heh... he seems a bit angry. Impaling just to stop me from getting that last hit.
I remember when I first started playing on the VS platform, there was a very memorable player signature.
"My every movement is pre-meditated"
Another little detail just now, is that I use DP's short foreswing to continuously hit him while he's standing under his tower.
Actually, that last attack would have connected too if I didn't cancel the animation by retreating.
This is one of DP's laning strengths. Her animation is superior for harassment against many heroes.
I don't know what to toss right now, so I just put the bottle on the ground.
This lion... he couldn't resist the temptation and tried to destroy my bottle.
He doesn't realize that with his current attack damage, he can't destroy the bottle in a single hit.
We witness the birth of a new "actor". (TL: a jokey term for a player that unwittingly makes 2009 look good, implying that he's a plant)
A very convincing performance.
I've upgraded courier and bought my boots. It'll make it more easy to steal runes.
Lion's back, using denying to express his discontent with my 2 solo-kills.
It's ok though, I'm ready to go grab bot rune. Got my boots.
Popped a clarity. Let's see if there's an opportunity at bot.
Oh... it seems like centaur got the rune first, looped around and killed WR.
But WR managed to take down a player named "Mental health is the most important" with her.
Attack once and wave... don't know if that caught him or not.
It connected. The effect isn't too bad. Lvl3 carrion swarm on a low level lion.
I didn't manage to get the rune this time though, so my mana is depleted.
At this time, you have 2 choices. One is to send the bird over with a clarity and send your bottle back to the well for a refill.
The other is to simply wait and see if you can get the next rune spawn.
Ok... I've tailed centaur to the rune spot, missing about 2 creeps worth of experience, but I think it's worth it, because I have a chance at this rune now.
I checked to see if the centaur got any rune like haste or invis... Silence! no sweat, lion is about to die again.
He impales... he should have a hex too. Attack once, and stick to him.
This lion is going the wrong way, don't know why he chose this path.
If he simply dove into the trees, he'd have a better chance.
He's brought to his knees again. Killing spree now... another very successful early game for DP.
Control the creep aggro.
Ok, got caught by this stomp. We can see that he's got 5 wand charges. He pops them.
He probably thought that I had mana to fight.
This is an example of average skill level players doing very messy actions.
Actually, all these things can be easily improved with some simple discipline.
Ok... we can see this player is already on tilt, starting to hex ranged creeps.
I'm continuously goading them now. As you can see, their burst damage potential is actually really high.
It is possible to take me out, but because I've got a lot of confidence in my positioning, I'm provoking them a lot.
Ok we manage to get a rune. Lion hits me twice, but doesn't pursue. We can return to the lane in good condition again.
If it was just the lion, even if he came fresh from the fountain he still wouldn't be able to beat me.
Shipping out a tp and clarity.
Centaur has recovered his hp as well, while Lion is locked in combat with my illusions.
Let's attack all of the creeps so that I can clear them with a single wave. He doesn't want to come up at this point.
I see that the lion has moved up to top lane, so I decide to tank the wave a bit to encourage the centaur to stick around to play with me.
If this wave of creeps had simply ran up the hill to my tower, then I'm pretty sure that the centaur would simply leave to do other things.
If the lion had stayed mid, then of course, I would want the creep line back up nearer my tower, but he's gone top.
Ahh... this centaur has put a point in his thorns ability, really annoying because it canceled my bottle charge.
Back to my original tactic of hitting the ranged creep once, so that if the centaur approaches I'll nuke out the wave and send him running.
Especially with phase... but I don't think that nuke connected.
No rune, and I don't want to go home... let's see if there's a kill opportunity with this centaur.
Use phase to dodge his moves, oh I think there's a chance here. I've continuously hit him 4 times. One wave, and he's gone.
This is the appeal of getting an early phase boots.
Your MS is already high, and your animation is great for harassing people. It's a very similar idea to why most WRs choose phase boots too.
For a hero who's attack animation feels very usable, that +24 damage is very attractive.
I've thought about this question before... why WR prefers phase to power treads.
The reason is right here. It's not just because it makes landing shackles easier.
I wanted to attack from behind this geomancer, to see if there was a chance to kill him with my DD buff.
We can see that this meepo knows what's up, and directly flees.
Whoah! Ok... the meepo doesn't land the net. I changed direction really quickly with phase active.
They were unsuccessful depsite 4 heroes surrounding me, because the 2nd meepo was too far, and they used up the only slow in their arsenal already.
When the skill level isn't that high, some oddball situations can often appear.
A founding principle when I first began making VODs is for everyone to believe in the power of individual skill to solve any problem.
The ability of a single person can always exceed what you imagined is possible.
Even if you run into matches where you really feel helpless, where you've already played to your utmost limit... in reality, there's actually so much more you can improve upon and achieve.
There isn't a single player out there who can realize ultimate perfection.
But you can get ever closer to it, by playing with discipline and a critical eye.
These 2 guys are in a bad position. Nuke + silence hits both of them.
But I made a mistake here, paying too much attention to myself and not my teammate.
I gave the silence too late, otherwise the centaur wouldn't have been able to complete his combo.
He's guaranteed to die though. Against a lvl3 passive DP with phase boots, it's impossible for a yellow health centaur to survive.
We've caught up... I don't think I need to waste a nuke here.
I still waved trying to get the kill... but didn't get it.
Somebody got caught... let's go take a look. If I pop my wand I can still throw a wave or 2.
He popped his infernal... there's no chances here, so I'll go after the rune.
No rune. We can see that the WL's position isn't so good.
Let's see if anybody's interested.
One nuke hit 2 heroes, dodge away a bit.
Troll's used some abilities on me, but I've got 7 wand charges and a salve. It's no big deal.
Retrieved my gg branch.
Ok... got an illusion rune. Pop phase to lose this infernal, to hurry back to the battleground.
I think it might be more effective to enter this fight from the back. We see a lvl6 lion.
So it's best to play a bit more conservatively.
I don't know where this lion got the xp to lvl6.
Team is saying that WR has no mana. It'll be hard to get any easy kills, so I'm being a bit safe too.
I've got lvl4 passive now. Poke forward a bit.
I wanted to intimidate them a bit. Lion tries to stun. Ahh... it's a good thing ES had mana.
This lion once again screws up and misses the impale.
Hmmm.... this centaur popped his double-edge. Ahh... he wanted to combo with lion to instagib ES.
I decided to back off because I saw a TP coming in, but I actually didn't need to. WL doesn't have ult up.
Ahh... this carrion swarm was supposed to hit all 3 of them, but it only hit 1 of them because of DP's cast animation.
The carrion swarm has its own movespeed, and then there's also DP's animation. To use it effectively you need to predict movement.
They both fall over from my spirits' damage.
Another smooth match, with fast phase + drums.
Putting together this episode, I really regret losing that other game I was talking about. It was longer and more closely-matched.
We're starting hear some disharmonious sounds from the enemy team.
I really think doing stuff like that is lame. Talking in all chat about how terrible your teammates are is something I dislike.
If it was me... the most I'd do is just tell them what they can do to improve in team chat, because there's always the chance that they do it, and you win a match you'd otherwise have lost.
The past 2 days playing with some coworkers, we've had 2 major comebacks. Both matches we came back from 2 sets of raxes down.
If you communicate with the player on where he's failing and how to improve, there can be some benefit from it.
If you go complain to your opponents about how poor your team, you're basically throwing in the towel
I made a little slip here. I was supposed to pop my ult, then invis rune, so that I can stay invisible.
It's not a big deal though... and at this point with the cloak, it's pretty hard for me to die.
Fire off a silence.
There's still a WL left.
Team wipe.
I believe that those who will become or already are high level players, all share a characteristic. They all set very high standards for themselves.
Playing on a public ladder... anywhere below around a 2000 point rating, the things you can accomplish as an individual are pretty incredible.
An exceptional player can tackle the majority of public matches with ease. Even if the match is lost, they'll still consistently have extremely impressive scores.
This is something that I've been working on recently... shifting my attitude from getting teammates to do something to how I can improve my game individually.
This is probably the proper mindset to approach pubs.
Well... this week's episode draws to a close.
The main goal was to present some ways of playing DP, and specific details of play that should be heeded in the early game.
The enemy team has pretty much given up at this point. The level of play wasn't that high to begin with.
The problem was that it was too late when I discovered I had lost that vod.
I didn't want to release the episode with only a single game, so I hurriedly logged into a smurf account for an MM game.
It was early in the morning, and I couldn't find any matches with my main ID, so that's why I went to a smurf.
This episode's latter game phases were less interesting than usual.
DP is a hero with many strengths.
But... she requires resources and for her teammates to give her space to develop.
Only with specific lineups and during specific time periods can she fully express her potential power.
That's it for this episode. See you next time.