True Dota 2 - The Roam Position: A Thought

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• The Roam Position: A Thought
• Is DP back in the meta?
• Biddin is back, maybe! (Wait, who are you?)
• How to prevent Tiny from tossing me?
• Thoughts on this lycan build I've been trying out
• When should I max Q, and when should I max W on Gyro?
• What hero is good against tiny in the mid lane?
• Sumail Nullifier pickup on Medusa (EG vs VP Dreamleague)
• Lone Druid offlane

The Roam Position: A Thought Posted: 02 Dec 2017 11:26 AM PST A short article related to the "Some Thoughts" series. Unlike the "Some Thoughts" articles, these will generally just be me posting something that happens to be on my mind, and although they may still get rather long, I won't be spending nearly as much time on them. This is very rough right now, I wanted to put it up before i left for a previous engagement, and i expect i'll have time to touch it up tonight or tomorrow morning, I do think it has at least most of the content I intended to include, but to be honest, i Havn't read it yet It's been a very long time... Big shoutout to any returning readers, if such a creature exists. The Roaming Role Roaming is a very sharp style of play, and a mistake or two, or even just a bit of bad luck can put you in a difficult position going forward; in fact, i would say that in order to play a roamer, you need to be able to win the games where you get behind, expect to be behind, play scrappy, get the most out of every bounty rune and be ready to find plays that make something out of nothing. It can be a very rewarding play style, I've played this way, on and off, for most of my career. Key Differences From Normal Lane Play The roaming role is a support role, and as such is very different from any core, but it is also different from more static babysit roles in a number of key ways. Experience is usually tough to come by, and we are expected to make an impact just as much as, or perhaps even more than, our counterpart static lane supports. A Note on Hybrid/Roaming I am, in general, not a huge fan of this style of play. As noted above, we are a support, and a support is there to give the cores a better game, not the other way around. Roamers are often not strong in lane at level 1 and 2, and if we stay in lane till we hit level 2/3 we may not be contributing much, and when we leave, our core won't thank us for leaving them solo with half XP. The static support is a guardian, the roamer is a hunter if you intend to roam, it's often best to try to find a way to do it from the start of the game. The Fountain is Your Friend I've lately been trying a technique where i walk out with no regen at all, just, say, windlace, orb of venom, (sometimes both! if i'm lucky) maybe blightstone, if we're ranged, because for a roamer, going back to fountain, sometimes even if it's at level 1, although not ideal, can be fine, and often you can pick up a set of tangoes at that point The Shrine... Try to avoid shrining alone when it's not absolutely necessary, usually this kind of thing should be a last option, if going back to fountain isn't acceptable, and you don't have a way to run yourself a mango or salve. Remember, again, that the roamer is a support, and although good cores make things easy on their supports, at the end of the day, like the name implies, we're there to give them a better game, not the other way around. Fog is Cheaper than Blink Dagger Use the fog. Use the fog, use the fog, use the fog. Behind trees or cliffs fog, up ramps fog, out of range fog, night time fog, use early, often, and keep using them. Keep an eye on the day/night cycle, and understand how far the enemy creeps can see. When you're setting up a gank, pop out of the fog as close to them as you can. If they try to turn on you, use the fog to limit how much damage they can do to you, and make them guess if you're coming back or moving on to another lane, and if you're coming back, make them guess where you'll come RUNES! GET THEM! Bounty runes are amazing! Whenever you can, try to be on top of a rune as the 2 minutes roll over (all the better if that rune happens to be on the opponents' side of the river). Be active with your communication, let your side lanes know when they will spawn, and which ones you'd like them to move over and grab. If a rune spawn pops and your team gets 3 of them, that's important, if it can happen 2 or 3 times in the first 10 or so minutes in the game, that's a big deal! Common Item Ideas There are many roamers, and there probably exist the same number of item builds as the sum total of every hero played by every roaming player. However, there are a couple of items and item concepts i'd like to touch on here, as i think they show up a lot, and are nearly always worth consideration. This is as much an item suggestion as an illustration of how to think about which items you ought to purchace. Again, we may have to play poor for a long portion of the game, depending on how it plays out, and we need to be able to win games, and be an impact player for our team, even in those games where we feel starved for funds. Tranquils This item is a godsend, for roamers. The speed and regen as you traverse the map are tailor made for this style of play. The item is also very cheap, and made of at least 2 items that we really want anyway (windlace, boots). Getting involved in a little scuffle with these and going down below half health, bugging out, wandering over to an enemy rune spawn with all that bonus movespeed, and picking up that rune, and then the one on your side of the map, while healing up to full? If you experience that twice in your life, that ought to be enough to convince you of the worth of this item. So Now We Just Need Mana!(?) Sort of true. We do need mana. I think magic wand and soul ring are popular choices to see to that need as well as urn of shadows. All are perfectly reasonable. However, I would have everyone considler this one instead, as, since trying it, (on a bit of a whim) I've found myself regretting it nearly every time i do not buy this item on a roamer. Drumroll Please.... AQUILA!!! (WTF???) Yeah, yeah, i know, fine, hear me out, ok? Aquila has some disadvantages, and that much is very clear. It's more expensive than most of the other choices, particularly magic wand. It gives less mana than most of the other choices, particularly soul ring and magic wand. Why then, aquila? because for only marginally more than its competitors, (well quite a bit more than magic wand) it gives you far far more than just a mana item. The mana is, of course, important, but it's also got 3/9/3 stats and 10 damage on it, not to mention 2 armor aura and 1 armor on the item. that's gonna be good for about 17.5% EHP against attacks and other physical, and 60 extra flat health, not to mention 9 attack speed and 13 damage (19 for agi, even more for riki:P) there's also 3 int, which comes with some flat mana, and (if memory serves) 6% increased mana regen, which interacts well with the basilius aura. Why Not (Insert Other Item Here) Instead? Biddin n00b! Downvote! Ok, ok, can we put the pitchforks down, for a moment? As i said, there are as many builds as there are players and heroes those players play. The ones i have here i get frequently on a variety of heroes, because i find that they have a few attributes (some listed above, some more general will be touched on here) that make them ideal for the role. Slot Efficiency Normally, cores like to talk about this, but in the case of the roaming support, sure, we don't have the kind of money a core would, but at the same time, we really don't have slots. If we carry wards, that's a slot, if we carry dust, that's a slot, we must have a TP on us at all times, and we probably can't afford to keep it in the backpack, because we may need to TP to react to a gank at a moment's notice, so that's a slot. Count those up now, dust or wards(we'll be generous and say we only need to carry one of those) boots of some sort, tp scroll is 3. Well, that's half our slots already. Most roamers are going to have a single 2-3k item that they want to buy at some point during the game, as well, for example a slardar may want a blink, so that's going to eventually be a slot. that leaves us only 2 slots for little value items. By the Numbers I mentioned earlier, orb of venom or blightstone, and also windlace, are very strong value items to get just about as early in the game as you can manage, to help you be more effective in your roaming and ganks, and reduce your dead time as you move across the map, and potentially back to fountain. Tranquils were already a very strong choice, so wrapping our windlace up into tranquil boots makes us a slot. once tranquils are done, our inventory plan looks something like "tranquils, tp, wards, blightstone or oov, and 2 empty." Unfortunately upgrading blightstone or oov isn't really on the table, and both items are still strong later in the game, even as we start buying more expensive items; we'd really rather not be backpacking that oov when we finish our blink. In this case, we really have only 1 free slot, in which we need to put an item that helps us with mana (for most heroes) but we don't want to put a cheap value item, at the risk of not having a dense enough item suite. This is one of the reasons aquila continues to impress me, during my play, and why i would recommend anyone playing this role give it a thought. You pay a bit more into that item slot but you get something that is reasonably slot dense, very flexible (important because of our lack of available slots) and really makes our ensuing buildup much more comfortable. If it's not aquila, I encourage roaming players to consider an item in one of their slots that has some similar properties, in terms of flexibility and slot density, that they might instead incorporate into their play. (And of course, if you have ideas about this, by all means share them!) Map Movement Well, we wouldn't be roamers without this, would we? Perhaps the most difficult thing to teach, talk about, and certainly learn and play, in the roaming role, and indeed, in dota, is effective map movement, and how to approach it. I'm sure someone could write until they filled google drive, with ideas about how to approach movement on the map, when to do it, how to do it, what the goal of map movement ought to be, and a thousand other things, and when they finished, they might feel like they hadn't quite touched on everything. That being said, let's at least cover some conceptual things about map movement, and the kinds of things you should be considering when you do it. When To Rotate Basically, you should be looking to rotate all the time, from this position. Although being patient is important, if you show yourself in a lane, your effectiveness in that lane, as a roamer, is diminished. That sudden +1 out of the fog from an unexpected direction is your primary weapon to offset potentially being behind on levels, and likely not having much in the way of farm. Of course, if you're going to rotate, a few things do need to allow it. You need to have some idea that your presence where you are now isn't absolutely vital to protect a hero in the lane. You would like to avoid, if possible, rotating out of a lane with no other heroes in it, until whatever hero the lane belongs to returns (soak xp, do your best to keep tower health up, etc). Most importantly, you need to have somewhere to go to. The map... you know.... what's it called... the small one? Yes, that's right, the minimap. It's truly a wonder of the dota UI. A quick glance at that is usually enough to tell you if there's enough space in another lane between enemies and enemy tower that there's reason to think you could make a play on them. It can also tell you where your enemies are in even manpower situations in lane, that you can suddenly swing into outnumbered situations with your gank. (for example, as long as mid stays 1 on 1, it's a pretty good target) Assuming your wards are up, it can even tell you if your opponents are moving around the map in a way you can exploit (say a support ported from safelane to offlane, leaving the safelaner isolated) When your current rotation plays itself out, your next look usually ought to be at the minimap. The Clock Every 2 minutes starting at 0: 4 bounty runes spawn. starting at 2 minutes, a power-up also spawns. Roamers ought to be keenly aware of these timings. The roamer is best positioned to quickly take bounties, on either side of the river, and to make life difficult for enemy supports, or low life offlaners, who try to do the same. It also provides time where the roamer is off the map, in the fog, and the enemy team does not know where he is, without wasting the roamer's time, as the bounties will help you continue to progress in gold and XP. Every minute starting at 1, neutral creeps spawn at all empty camps. Depending on lineups, a roamer may find that he is in the best position to stack camps during the laning phase, for clearing at a later point by a core. This is lineup dependant, but again, we move around a lot, and have a lot of dead time, so it's best to find as many ways as you can to make that dead time productive. every 4 minutes starting at 4, the day/night state alternates. Nightstalker needs to be keenly aware of this, obviously, but actually, since, as noted above, fog our main advantage, and the strongest point of our role, the beginning and end of night time is something a roamer should be keenly aware of. All roamers, not just NS, are more dangerous at night, because we can more easily get closer before being seen, as well as more safely loiter close to a potential target, waiting for an opportunity. The Alternative Don't forget that although we're a roamer, and i did mention to roam early, often, and basically as long as you think you can, if there isn't anywhere to go, or you feel your presence is still required, there is this slightly different option of roaming back to the same lane you're in right now. If it's overused it'll lose a lot of its punch, but if you spend a lot of time off the map, showing up at different places, then if you go on something in a lane, can't complete the play, and back off into the fog, they may assume you are moving on, and come back out. If you can stay hidden, you may get an even better opportunity on a lower health target, the next time around. If you use this a lot, you may not be able to get the kills, but even this has 2 key benefits: If you do leave, and they think you havn't, they may play passively, scared, back at tower, even though they may be perfectly safe. On the flipside, they may delay reporting to their teammates that you've moved on, giving you an extra few moments of unprepared enemies in another lane... Final Thoughts This is one of my favorite roles in dota, i feel like it rewards a certain level of scrappyness and "grit" in your game. It isn't for everyone, and it's very different from a lot of other roles, but it can be a very rewarding role to play, and if done well, can be one of the highest impact roles in the game. Anyone with anything to add should comment below! PM me if you'd like me to notify you when new segments are released! Credit to Everthins for the inspiration for this piece Special Thanks to /r/truedota2 (Subscribe!) submitted by /u/goblinbiddin [link] [comments]

Is DP back in the meta? Posted: 02 Dec 2017 11:54 AM PST It may just be her talents, it may also just be that I could win three games in a row with a bit of effort, or maybe I'm just disillusioned. Is Death Prophet in? And how would you build her this time round? submitted by /u/muqlo [link] [comments]

Biddin is back, maybe! (Wait, who are you?) Posted: 02 Dec 2017 10:05 AM PST Hey guys, A long time ago i did a bit of a text only style article series I called "Some Thoughts" and I thought it was received very well, which i obviously appreciated a great deal. But for... some lame excuses no one need hear, i haven't touched dota writing in... I'm really not even sure how long, maybe 2 years? Most of you probably won't even know me, anymore, but, sort of by accident, I ended up writing another segment, almost to completion, before i realized it. I remembered, while doing that, how much fun I always had putting those articles together. Within about a half hour, the new segment entitled "The Roam Position: A Thought" Should be up on /r/truedota2, and i hope this is the start of more writing for me, and i hope some of you will give it a read, and enjoy it! -biddin thanks to /r/truedota2 submitted by /u/goblinbiddin [link] [comments]

How to prevent Tiny from tossing me? Posted: 01 Dec 2017 09:04 PM PST So tiny is a hero with toss, and despite turning off help in the scoreboard area, i couldnt prevent him from tossing me? is there anyway to stop him from continously tossing me into the enemy and making me feed? submitted by /u/SwissPandaa [link] [comments]

Thoughts on this lycan build I've been trying out Posted: 02 Dec 2017 12:03 PM PST Basically you start, ring of regen, branch, tangos, healing salve Skill priority wolves > passive aura > howl You rush a hotd. You should be able to finish it up in time to grab the 5minute cart and do some pushing with lvl 2 or 3 wolves. Afterwards you pick up drums as a boots substitute. Yeah I skip boots. My reasoning is, 1) when you are in ult form move speed granted by items is irrelevant for lycan 2) 20 movespeed isn't too bad for the times when you don't have ult 3) the stats mix on drums vs power treads is comparable 4) The move speed aura benefits wolves at all times 5) The active attack speed buff is very good for pushing All in all I like this opening very much. The gold cost is virtually the same as treads + necro 1. I think the hotd + drums opening is stronger. Thoughts? I'm playing at 3400 MMR for reference. submitted by /u/CardAnarchist [link] [comments]

When should I max Q, and when should I max W on Gyro? Posted: 02 Dec 2017 03:27 AM PST I've seen 2 builds on gyro recently. First one is Arteezy build with max rocket and flak. Second one is the more old school build with maxed barrage and flak. When is the best game to max rocket? Gyro is in my top 10 heroes but I always went for QE build. submitted by /u/resont [link] [comments]

What hero is good against tiny in the mid lane? Posted: 02 Dec 2017 04:58 AM PST He just cleaves through you even if you are ranged just because you want to go for a creep, also his tree grab is low manacost and is just free harass submitted by /u/obssesed_stickman [link] [comments]

Sumail Nullifier pickup on Medusa (EG vs VP Dreamleague) Posted: 02 Dec 2017 02:54 AM PST second time i'm making a thread like this but i swear this is a pure coincidence lol. So basically nullifier really interested me ever since they added it, but I, as well as other people, still can't figure what heroes would like to buy it. Well, sumail answered that question. Information: bought at 56 min after pike, skadi, butterfly, bloodthorn. I couldn't pay much attention to the actual fights as I was busy doing something, but my guess is needing to keep ramzes weaver from using bkb after universe's lasso or fear's winter curse. submitted by /u/AkiAdagaki [link] [comments]

Lone Druid offlane Posted: 01 Dec 2017 09:17 PM PST The hero received alot of buffs lately. How viable is he offlane right now? submitted by /u/Ndz_ [link] [comments]