i actually never realized until now that the picture is actually a smoking pipe.. lol always thought its a mask for some reason, even though it did not make sense combined with its name
Great video and a SUPER important topic in my opinion. I definitely noticed in my Dota journey that taking the time to learn more about which starting items are good in which situations has helped my laning a lot. Great job again :]
That means a lot coming from you, brother. Thanks for stopping by and leaving such kind words. It's been a joy to witness your own growing success over the last couple years and has played a major role in keeping my own nose to the grind stone to find eventual success with this channel. Here's hoping the new update brings plenty of niche game mechanics for us both to sink our teeth into for the betterment of the community :) - Phil
Couple of beasts . Guys what we noobs need is a chart or some guide to match ups and counters. Like how to counter a fed ursa, what hero or item, etc . Thanks bros
the funny thing about this is that I learned how to do this purely by sheer logical thinking, it's a topic not being talked a lot and yet is extremely important
We're continually surprised at how uncommon common sense seems to be ;) A shocking amount of people completely underestimate how important a small bump to certain stats drastically changes your power in the earliest stages of the game
@@beneaththeveili think a big reason for this is that people usually just follow the guides ingame, so they dont really think anything of it since if it is provided by the game there is no need to worry about it. If it says core items: stick boots, they just focus on getting this items in whatever order they have money the fastest
@@lilpullout yes, but still one slot that gives utility to snowball kills, increasing GPM and hitting the late game timing faster. There's not many items for less than 3k that a Sven would end up keeping in that state all game. Echo Sabre is usually upgraded to Harpoon and Mask of Madness is disassembled to build into Satanic and sometimes Butterfly. The strength of those items are they help Sven increase his GPM to then build into later game itemisation. Blink enables Sven to both close the gap aggressively to gain kills as well as widen the gap defensively to prevent himself from dying, both simultaneously increasing his GPM, one through gaining gold and one through avoiding losing it
Great video. One note I would add is that certain components are really great to buy early for offering later flexibility. The itemization needs of your team often change dynamically depending on how the lanes go and what the other heroes choose to build. As a support player, I'm a big fan of the casual wind lace since it builds into Tranquils, Eul's, Drums, Solar Crest which are all items you might want later in the game depending on if you need HP regen, control, burst teamfight threat, or sustain on your carry. I think Fluffy Hat is another strong item in this regard, for building into Force Staff, Pavise, and Spirit Vessel.
Very true! Casual small components (especially Wind Lace) are something that a lot of players overlook. It's something we'll eventually cover as its own separate topic once we've worked through the backlog of more major topics we have in the pipeline right now. Good to know there's a healthy dose of players ahead of the curve in that regard :)
@@beneaththeveil I hope you do more videos on item ordering too! One that I particularly struggle with is Glimmer Cape since both Shadow Amulet and Cloak are strong individually and I'm often unsure which I should purchase first. Other good candidates would be Khanda (Crystalys vs. Phylactory first), Force Pike (Force Staff vs. Dragon Lance first), and any of the KSY swords.
@@jackmccarthy7644 Now that we've addressed the concept, it's something that we can look to more in depth when doing dedicated item videos. At the moment we're working through items which also have a tonne of hero skills that do the same thing but Glimmer Cape is one we want to cover for sure. Too many people we see throwing games by buying Shadow Blade when really they should be buying Glimmer Cape instead. Will put it on the list just for you :)
Agreed, move speed can make such a huge difference that (particularly when playing support) if I have a spare item slot I usually stick a windlace in it, even if I'm not intending to upgrade it. Extra m/s can easily translate to effective extra range, attack speed or even effective extra dodge/hp
Thank you so much for this content! I've been playing for a year now and been recently spamming Abaddon pos5. When I started playing him, I start with the correct items (blood gernade, branches, ect). But then I fell into a bad habit of going into lane with Ring of Basillius and no stat items. No wonder I was starting to lose my lane more. I corrected that and been getting more consistent wins in the laning stage.
On strength heroes, like a lot of offlaners, playing from behind to finish bkb, I feel like the ogre club is much more value than the mithril hammer. The dmg/gold is the same and you also get 180 HP. Not to mention you get the stat boost a whole 600 gold earlier. But on a carry who is afk farming until they have the whole bkb then your reasoning makes sense.
We did make a note on it, but didn't want to talk about it too in depth as it wasn't the main focal point of the video. You're certainly on the right track with your logic there :)
Just a note about visual design; at 10:30 I initially read the text as three columns, top to bottom not left to right. I would imagine that some other viewers may have read it the same way and also would have been confused. Great video regardless
Yes, someone else said the same thing. In hindsight we could have definitely made things a bit clearer with just a few more visual choices to create separation
I really hope did your Friends know english, mine are stuck at the lowest rank and they are not able to take any advice. I I really wish that at anytime in the future they understand all the information in the video. We speak spanish and they don't believe that My tips are usefull for them
Yes, thank you as someone who used to play necro mid rushing boots who travels to lane just to farm and shove it, not great of an impact for a rush item.
8:40 I have 5.5k hours of dota and only just consciously realized... Power treads attribute item differs depending on your hero primary attribute. Wow.
To be fair: they only changed it within the last two years or so that when you queue up a treads to purchase it gives you the correct attribute component. You could still build it out of the other ones but it used to only give you belt of strength if auto queued
The other thing. Magic stick is a great bait. If you are sitting on 10 charges and having people come at you with low hp, helps you survive when you are down to the last 10% of hp and secures kills. That comes with circa 200 gold which helps get those extra items
Started playing Rank more consistently after years of on and off playing. The Nullifier vid helped me on a couple of matches. Got out of Herald and currently 70% to Guardian 2. Love the vids and the format. Playing All Roles in the Queque. Idk which one to focus on.
If you're having success and climbing playing all roles then feel free to continue doing so! When you get to the point that you stop consistently winning and climbing: that's the point to start analysing which role you have the most impact in and starting to focus on that role in particular: or you can pick the role you most enjoy playing and learn to improve your impact from that position. As a fellow all role queuer: I don't blame you for liking the versatility that comes with playing everything ☺️
@beneaththeveil TY I like a lot of heroes so playing one role all the time seems boring. I have like 2 or 3 heroes I like playing per role. Definitely my weakest has to be mid. I just default to playing Zeus or Pudge there.
@@FactorialGhost if you like a challenge, learn Meepo for mid. He can end reasonably fast and solo carry if you have a good start in lane and know how to micro. TA can also be good to play from mid in the right games but she's a bit weak in the current meta. Leshrac is also a good pusher and can play tempo or go late game if you like your spellcasters in mid. Learn how to set up your own stun off the back of a Eul's Sceptre Cyclone spell and you'll be cooking 🍳
Crazy how I have never thought about this but still inituitively did it. I never enough thought that anyone would buy boots for tranquils first its such a waste
Heres an idea, Dont get both circlet and primary stat +3 item. Instead buy either and rush your 1st item along with the wand + Up'ed boots. If you're really cheap, Hold on to stick and power out all the way till 1st item
The reason we couldn't show any example of an Immortal player doing what we were talking about is because of exactly this: they itemise correctly for the lane from the strategy phase. A Drow Ranger for example will start with tangoes, circlet, 3 branches and a Stick, then proceed to go Wraith Band first as the bump in armor early on does help with some of the harass the enemy pos 4 will usually put on to you. We wanted to talk about what to do in the situation where players itemise for the lane incorrectly and then don't realise until they get to the lane and have to improvise - making the most out of a bad situation. You're completely right though! Get your itemisation right from the very start and you avoid a lot of unnecessary headaches
I wish there was a lategame option for PT. When all Lanes are pushed you have to switch back and forth from BoT to PT or abandon PT all together for a good 6th slot. It's such a mighty item early and mid and falls off so hard. The toggle becomes meaningless due to high regen. Adding something like an ultimate orb to it to it + a recipe making the PT +30 to all stats as well a the option to teleport to your own fountain (so not aggressive just defensive) would be great.
There's been an upgrade for PTs as well as Phases in the back end for a good while now based on leaks from pre-New Frontiers. It may well be introduced in this patch.
As someone who has been playing a lot of str carries(usual bracer rush)and heroes not really needing a full magic wand(AM), I had no idea it was this imperative to finish assembling magic wand first on Agi, Int and Universal Carries. I've always just ship out 1 set of tangoes and finished components for a bracer/wraith band/null on the first courier ferry and ship out magic wand and boots of choice components on the next courier ferry. Very intriguing and insightful guide and I definitely learned a lot from it.
The real answer is to itemise properly for the lane from the strategy phase but it's very common for players to itemise thinking they're playing against a certain 2 heroes only to discover that's not the case and suddenly they have to improvise based on what's already purchased. When that's the case: not enough people think to just backpack an item to get something more important active and then start combining items to make space and get everything active again from there. Glad the video helped ☺️
Great video and I agree with most of it especially the point about BoTs, I see way too many necros build it, show up for one kill (which they don't always manage to secure with scythe) and then fall massively behind on their farm... Even when they've won their lane. The one point where I disagree is that I usually backpack my tango rather than an iron branch for my magic stick (swapping an iron branch out when I need to eat a tree) as tango gives you no immediate benefits from having them in your inventory and you usually have some warning before you need to eat them (especially in the very early laning stage where this is an issue) so in the meantime I'd rather have the extra stats (also if you're careful you get something like 3-5 extra health by your iron branch being on cool down when you swap it back in after eating a tree).. I do specify "usually" though because sometimes you do need to be able to tango faster... But then whilst you're regenning health you can swap your branch back in... Its a small difference but it has occasionally saved my life.
i notice the B.O.T strat when i was climbing in ancient i was like "wait a minute i got low cooldown i can help the team while killing and having a map presence" and some games it made it easier and some games when you get stomped you just go and adjust
This video is underrated. I was hoping no one would start doing the math about stats vs raw damage/item which doesnt really do much. But that power treads switch plus a wand is how I live + farm + kill without much regen till my 1st mid game item. Don't rush shit just coz you saw pros do it ( they got insane coordination ) instead understand the math man..
When playing Necro (especially when 7.35 dropped) it was best to rush BoT. After completing 1 Bracer. With basically unlimited health reg and mana you could farm the big map and when Ulti was off CD you could go for a gank. Plus it's a hero with one of the slowest movespeed. Later a heart than aghas was a free win. I almost had 75% Winrate during that time. A second Bracer was useful when you were offlane and not mid.
When the patch was new and no-one had any idea what was going on it was relatively easy to win your lane and then snowball with Travels which is expected. Travels is a win harder item. The biggest issue is Necro players who fall behind them go Travels and have no impact. The gold investment gives them nothing except a way to KS on a super long cooldown.
@@beneaththeveil that's true. He was heavely needed though. I play as 3-5 stacked team comps and the damage output I had at the end due to Stacks were insane. Looking back at dotabuff games the numbers are crazy. He slowly got nerfed plus people started picking AA (which you can't ban for sure anymore). I even got my stacks up with illusion kills.
bro you are giving away my early pudge strat with the tranquil tips lolol but very true, i find getting wind lace and ring of regen first helps heaps. If i hit a hook, windlace is more than enough with rot to keep them in line, and let my lane partner get the damage. I don't think i'd ever go for boots of travel, unless its kotl for me.
Legend carry player. Subbed because I never buy wand on carry. I think of that as an item for heroes who are more active on the map. Wasn't thinking about lane phase unless there's a Skywrath or Shadow Demon
As a universal hero I usually build Wand + faerie fire + blood grenade to start out with, and Amazon Prime a tango after bounty runes. As a melee hero I get tango, quelling blade, mango or faerie fire depending on hero, stat components, blood grenade. I like the iron branches, however I prefer blood grenade.
Totally fair. Am personal to 2x circlets, 2x branches, tangoes and either Quelling, third branch or a faerie fire depending on the hero but your wand build is pretty slick too if it's a good lane to start with Stick/Wand
Respectfully disagree. Have won countless games with only Tranquil Boots and upgrading to Boots of Bearing when the draft allows the team to play on tempo and end the game quickly. It's much harder in the current meta since games tend to go long and high ground can be difficult to break; but Tranquil Boots enable many melee supports especially to aggressively trade in early laning then disengage and regenerate HP faster than their opponents. That doesn't even touch on the potency of roaming between lanes more quickly.
@@beneaththeveil Def hear you on the boots of bearing. I was mostly talking about people who I see buying tranq boots instead of regen items in early game lols. Then NEVER upgrading it. When they dont upgrade it, my thought is its not good because simply other things are better most of the time. Most of the time Id rather have Boots + Bracer. Or wind lace + 2x Bracer. Substitute null talisman sometimes. I almost never get that item, personally. Unless Im 100% sure I need boots of bearing like you said.
@@suntzu6122 with that context I can see why you made your initial statement the way you did. You could make the same argument about Arcanes since some heroes still need the odd clarity/mango to top up their mana through early/mid game due to burning through so much mana you know? There's very rarely a single item in the early game that will outright fix early game regen issues. When we're eventually through all the mechanics based videos we've got in the pipeline one of the things we want to highlight is how many low elo players just simply don't buy enough regen. The amount of people I see buy a single set of tangoes and no other regen whatsoever makes me want to flip tables lol
Tranq boots rush broken for melee support in early lane....IF player knows how to abuse the disassemble mechanic. Quite simple: have boots disassembled + full health..... Engage in heavy trading...disengage and immediately unlock combining when out of attack range= 9 seconds of instantaneous heal. Disassemble boots just before time is up and go trade again. Basically a free tango every 20 seconds
@suntzu6122 It depends on the hero. I still run tranqs on bounty hunter, because it helps when roaming from lane to lane and to heal back to full between ganks. Very useful when in those early/mid roaming parts of the game.
Would encourage you to try buying stats to start in lane to secure more CS and denies and see how that treats you instead. If that itemisation is working better for you though, more power to you
"Buy Mithril Hammer before Ogre Axe as a source of damage" Me, who buys Mithril Hammer to complete the most expensive component first: yes of course because of the damage
Good video I think one small thing missed is that with boots and the order of purchase- for a hero like Bara move speed= damage so there is consideration there
i think the point with magic stick is more nuanced, it's value comes much with mana regen, you can eat cheap tangos for health at any point. if you are not casting spells the extra stat points from iron branch can be vital for last hitting which really trumps anything else
Totally agree that it's nuanced! Though if you're sitting in lane with maxed out mana you're wasting your passive mana regeneration and that's a different issue to be addressed. Something we didn't really belabour was the outplay potential that Wand gives you versus Stick. Suddenly gaining 300 HP rather than 150 HP with max charges can make the difference between a won and lost engagement. Especially in the early game when net worth and XP swings due to dying first or second are so valuable, Wand becomes very potent. You're totally right though in that sometimes the burst of mana is just what you need in order to get that last spell off in a combination to secure a kill. There's so many intricacies even in the early game
As a support player I always prioritize buying magic wand over boots(when the lane enemy hero has spammable skills), but now I guess I should think over if I will upgrade it 1st to magic wand or buy the boots. As a carry player I always rush boots 😭 easy to harrass, easy to disengaged, easy to go to camp, they cant kill you if then cant chase you but as always this video made some insights to not rush brown boots. Thanks
really good video, but it can be really benefitial to sometimes buy gloves of haste first, on heroes with high base dmg in lanes you are dominating. you can basically secure every deny vs e.g. a gyrocopter if you get gloves of haste on a lot of offlaners.
Excellent point! There's an exception to every rule :) This video was mainly getting players to stop autopiloting purchases left to right on their quickbuy and actually start actively making choices about the components they're buying and what order they're purchasing them in!
Got recommended this channel by nullifier video and just skimming through, videos are very informative and detailed. However, I feel like just putting text which you read aloud on screen and nothing else is somewhat of a waste for video format, i understand that searching for game examples is certainly hard work and editing takes time. But having them or just some stats(which are already often used, and more than welcome) with text relegated to bottom third of the screen, would be a major improvement. It's not constant issue, but to minimize it would be great. Other than that, great work, keep on keeping on.
Appreciate the feedback. You're not the first to mention this at all :) We initially did it as we'd been getting complaints about people not being able to understand what Phil was saying and this was our initial solution. Since we started getting feedback along these lines we've pulled back on our in video text elements and are now using closed captions for those who struggle to understand Phil. We now try to exclusively save text elements for corrections we realise we need to make during the editing process after Phil has done all the voiceovers. Sometimes it's that our initial research was wrong, Phil misspoke or a patch has come out during the video production process that has changed the validity of what we initially said and needs to be corrected. Rest assured we're always paying attention to the community. Again, thanks for reaching out :)
@@beneaththeveil well, to be honest I checked some later videos and noticed improvements already. So my comment was a bit premature. But thanks for elaboration :)
i started like a month or two ago so i have only about 150 hours in dota but never thought about doing magic wand later, this item just look busted especially in early, i even carry it till mid or later if i dont have any better option
Welcome, my friend: to the minority. I usually have to beg people to buy Magic Wands in general. It's excellent you're so early on in your DOTA journey and yet already understand just how strong it is. There's definite merit to delaying it at times, but in general if you're hitting max stacks without needing to pop the heal it's worth upgrading sooner rather than later.
@@novy1198 that makes sense! You're on the right track re: time to sell it. If you have Dota+ you can see how much Wand heals you for each game. Most of the time the numbers sit around 1-2k
@@beneaththeveil ye i bought dota + on the start just to have some help with what to do and i did my own characters layout for dif roles but thats pretty much it, i dont think dota + actually gives you something important in the longterm so i prefer to buy skins for example than this
how about choosing which items to sell/replace, for example, i play centa with 1 boots, 2 bracers, wand, blademail, and blink, then i need to make room for my next item in this case shiva or shroud. which should i sell? bracer or wand?
Wand is usually the first item you sell to make room for bigger items, but there are always exceptions to the rule. If you quickly hit 20 charges in every skirmish and are continuing to find value out of spamming Wand for for the 300 HP and Mana burst heal from 20 charges: then it's worth keeping the Wand and selling a Bracer. In most cases though, the enemy might only give you 8-10 charges in a teamfight and in that case the 150 HP burst heal isn't as good as the 10 Strength from the Bracer post 25 minutes which gives you 220 HP. Hope this helps give some insight :)
3:30 there's one missed advice about buying stick. No need to buy stick/wand if your enemy lane doesn't have spam skills. Immortal bracket, they usually buy stick/wand if enemy have spam skills, if not, stick to wraith/bracer/null then treads/phaseboots/arcane
Very true! In lower MMR it's harder to get people to buy stick/wand in games when they need it than it is to get them to not buy it when it's not so we thought it would be better to just not mention it as better players realise that already and adapt
also with different heroes you dont need to insta upgrade your stick, could hold out for abit until the upgrade (usually mid just use the stick for regen anyways and only upgrade it much later), the 150 gold for 1 extra attribute arent super flavorable against the likes of windranger/wraith king etc its better to save up for boots to out run their spell or actually catching up to gain a kill or what not, consider other items for the stats instead of just having a wand with 4 charges reason to why i specifically point out to wraith king and windranger is cause they both have some sort of slows and could easily connect their spell if they run at you, keep in mind that windranger usually powershot from far thus not gonna add charge to your stick. There is no right or wrong with buying any or which item, its just which item is better for you at your time of need
There's some games as pos1 where either grabbing 3 runes or getting an early kill/assist means I sometimes start lane 1/2 CS away from being able to ship in both bracer/wraith band recipe and magic wand, isn't it better at that point to delay wand by likely 10 secs tops and get the upgraded regen+damage/armor+AS early rather than delay whatever amount of seconds it takes for the non-upgraded courier to waddle back to fountain then back with the bracer recipe?
Fair question! The best answer is to actually start the lane with the correct items and already have a Stick if it's a lane which requires one, but we talked about this situation as an example since a lot of players don't itemise correctly for the lane and then have to improvise as soon as they realise. In the case of Bracer it's probably the better option if the enemy aren't going to cast that many spells right at the start of lane, so you get the benefit of the extra damage which widens the window of when you can hit a creep to secure that CS; however the extra attack speed and armour of Wraith Band doesn't really help all that much in early laning since they don't help alter your damage numbers to make CS easier, they just increase your attack speed slightly so your projectile travels faster or your melee animation is a touch quicker. In that case it's far better to gain access to the healing potential of Stick.
Hey! great contents of the video, great explaination, all I wanna point out, in my opinion and I think it might be helpful for your video format, try reducing the ammount of text, if you are already saying the whole sentece, like it can get distracting and tireing because i suppose we instictualy tend to read along and we pretty much combine our voices with your voice and sort of make a clutter in our heads ( I might be the only one here, if anyone else feels the same let's give positive feedback! )The most "agressive" you've used the text was between 5:37 and 6:32 it's almost a minute full of slideshows, which can be overwhelming for some viewers to have to look at the same type of format for too long, I don't have a statistic of how long is the attention span of Dota players, but I doubt is that big haha. Maybe you can implement a bit more footage in between, or short example clips such as *Necro travel TP CD 3-2-1 while ult is 52-51-50 as for example , something highlighting the two Coldowns. Anyway, the way you present and talk is certainly great and not boring, this is why the algorithm boosted your channel after all! Keep it up!
Appreciate the feedback! When we started out we had a lot of people saying they couldn't understand what Phil was saying so we were pretty heavy handed with text elements. Things have been getting better so we've been scaling things back now but we're still clearly a bit too heavy handed - appreciate the critique. We'll keep pulling back on the text elements and use more video and graphics based material instead :) Glad you found value out of the video despite that
Totally agree. On a semantic level: there's value for Strength and Universal heroes in getting the Ogre Axe first for the extra HP and HP regen if they still want to brawl on their way to getting BKB and don't mind the slight sacrifice in damage: but for Agility and Intelligence heroes it's a no brainer to go Mithril Hammer every time. A lot of players just see they have 1k gold and instantly purchase the Ogre Axe without really thinking about what they're getting out of the investment.
Small feedback on layout of build orders: I initially interpreted the grid of 9 as 3 columns (instead of the intended 3 rows) ie top to bottom is the build order and left to right is preference; my intuition was so strong on this that I even thought there was typos (ie damage written twice instead of damage, other) rather than recognising the intended pattern for quite some time. Solution space is large... one suggestion I think might help: highlight whatever you are verbally referencing on screen.
Appreciate the feedback! In hindsight we could have definitely made the line spacing much larger during that section so there was more of a separation between each line of text. In addition we could have made a little arrow instead of the dashes ( -> instead of just - ) to naturally guide the viewers eye left to right so they inherently understood how to interpret the information we were presenting. Totally agree we could have highlighted the information better as well - the GPU we were using was struggling a bit to render everything towards the end of the video so we decided to chill out on some of the motion graphics elements to give the hardware some room to breathe. We're continually looking into what we can do during production to make things easier for not only us and our viewers, but our hardware as well so it's something we'll fine tune over time as we look to continually improve our production practices :)
Great video! I can see the effort you made. I've always wondered when watching the pros choose their shoes, especially supports. Why do they go tranquil early, why phase boots, even sometimes I see brown boots 40 mins into the game. This video gave me a slight idea about it.
Unless they were facing a very active Phantom Assassin or Wind Ranger, probably not the best build order. Maybe they were planning on ceding farm to a greedy team composition and got kill potential early? It's kind of like rushing desolator.
Big note: Necro + bot part when you say low mmr should be itemizing more selfreliable - although you are completely correct, the wrong message is being sent. Low mmr players already rely less on teammates and a lot of them have some sort of 1v9 mentality. We should promote messages that help grow.
Appreciate the sentiment: however the point is with Boots of Travel in particular that it's only successful if you can snowball off kills with a coordinated team. This often doesn't happen in lower MMR and therefore players need to itemize more appropriately to reliably increase their GPM. Lina can snowball off BoTs more reliably simply because she can rotate and use her ult twice as much as Necrophos can so she doubles her overall opportunities to find value out of the purchase
We will definitely touch on debuff immunity! Since it's only been in the game for just over a year now, we're knocking out a few of the more established and unchanged mechanics just in case Valve decide to rework BKB again
Glad to be of help :) If there's anything you ever need clarification on or other mechanics that you'd like us to explain in future videos we're always listening to the growing community and are adding those ideas to our list for future videos
the most suffering i have is when playing support and a fcking carries chooses to skip treads wand, bracers, band, talisman. They really fck up in lane if you try to assist mid and sideline. then blame you for dying because they have no boots.
While you're completely correct that learning better positional play and coordination can significantly improve your win rate, your initial comment is a bit disingenuous. Efficient itemisation in the lane can drastically alter how the lane plays out, significantly altering the course of your mid game impact.
On the contrary, Boots + Tango is severely overrated. In lower MMR players don't trade enough to chip you down which gives you perceived value on the starting item combo. Better players know how to trade to contest space in which case starting with Boots/Tango is horrendous because you trade for less damage and can only regen as much as they can since they start with tangoes too so you lose lane control as a result if they can trade into you. Playing melee support into a ranged support who went boots first is a mild inconvenience until you hit your powerspike at level 2 or 3 which lets you close the gap with skills and feed on them. They should also win the CS/Deny battle too since you have no stat items granting them an XP advantage and even more networth which they can use to steamroll your greedy starting items and get the same items online to nullify your perceived advantage at the start of the lane. Calling other low gold cost items "garbage" speaks volumes about your inherent understanding of their benefits. High tier DOTA is about understanding and exploiting every small advantage. There are memes about heroes gaining or losing one base armor or base damage for good reason. In high MMR gameplay, that difference completely dictates how those heroes trade in laning and set up their team for the rest of the game.
Great vid and lots of good tips. Absolutely loved the stick discussion. I usually start with the stick specifically to maximize the time I will be potentially gaining charges. It's the worst when you get to 10 charges before you've finished your wand XD 4:25 Correction on the Boots of Travel - you DO still need to buy TP scrolls, no? Are you thinking of the old school BoTs that existed before the TP scroll slot when TP's used to take up an item slot? I'm confident you still need to buy them but now questioning things
Glad you enjoyed the stick discussion. The real fix to the problem is actually itemise for your lane correctly and start with a Stick in lanes where you need one off rip: but low elo players don't always recognise when they need one from the start and itemise for non-stick lanes, then suddenly try and do a 180. Regarding your correction: not sure if that's how it used to be in the past but you actually don't need to buy additional TPs once you have Boots of Travel. So long as you have a single TP scroll in your inventory. If you have no TP scrolls available when you buy Boots of Travel and get them delivered then you may need to still buy one? But if you have them in your inventory already then you're good to go. If you have multiple charges available the game automatically sells your excess charges so you get a little refund (though not sure if it's a full refund - that would be a nightmare to test and we can't be bothered lol)
Correct that you need 1 in slot or else you must buy one. It might have been that you still needed to buy them a loooooooong time ago but that might have even been dota1. I had been curious about what happens to those excess tps but i don't recall whether you get the typical 50% back or if it was nothing. @@beneaththeveil
Glad you think so! Improvement comes from focus on oneself and what they can change, rather than looking at everyone else and pointing out what they did wrong :)
Sir, this lessons require players to have the ability to think, and that's asking a lot from many dota players.... jokes aside, great video actually. Sadly real dota lessons like this won't ever get more views than meme videos.
Thank you! We have faith that there's enough of an audience out there that can apply some critical thinking, they just aren't given all the information from Valve in order to fully utilise it - that's what we're aiming to do. We're sure that if we stick on the path that we're on, we'll soon pass many of the accounts that you speak of who rely on gimmicks rather than solid fundamental game understanding :)
I like playing turbo mostly and I find a lot more usage with arcane boots on most str pos 3 heroes so I can spam their abilities more. Usually centaur or axe. I also have the ability to upgrade to greaves for a dispel if I need it but I usually just get tp boots It used to be even better when you could dismantle arcane boots so it’s definitely less excusable but I still like it
@@beneaththeveil typically I play either tanks or Carries so my go to dispels are lotus orb or either manta/disperser depending on the carry I’m playing I also forget satanic has a dispel
1:45 something that’s not clear here.. are you saying it would have been better to come out to the lane with the stick/wand, or just that you need to rush it after you get to lane, if needed?
Excellent question! Indeed, if you need a Stick at the start of the game, then you should be starting with one. A meta starting item build for Drow Ranger playing into a Bristleback or Timbersaw offlane for example is: Tango, Circlet, Stick and 3 branches :) We made this section because a lot of players consistently start their game with the wrong items for the lane matchup and then try to make the most of a bad situation but don't quite get the ordering right. We wanted to help them in particular rather than just tell them what the correct starting items are as sometimes you get a starting item setup based on a guess of what you're playing into and then you guess wrong because the enemy are playing something off meta
@@beneaththeveiljust to add on here, i tend to fly out a stick after runes unless i know i'm facing someone like bb, pa, vs, sky, and even lion. If i'm a support, sometimes i'll only buy the crown in order to have the faster wand and then can start building urn or whatever is needed.
Have to pause the video and just say that necro is a super fast farmer, he has innate sustain and AoE, he eats through creepwaves and jungle camps. Hes just slow and clunky, BoTs help with that.
This was recorded before 7.36 dropped and Necro got a massive help with his earlier stages through the changes he received. Before that though, he'd had the same problem for years and players would frequently fall into the trap of going BoTs when he would get no feasible impact out of the initial investment. He's a lot easier to find early value out of now for sure.
@@hkl2007necro used to be so strong that he only needed bots out of mid before he cleaned up any teamfight and then could flashfarm a radiance, get a heart, and finish the game. I don't play necro simply cuz i think he's so op for the skill level i prefer to play at, but it's been a while and haven't played him in the latest version. There was a time where buying BoTs was highly conditional on those early teamfights, or else he could be picked on and exploded, making the BoTs far less viable, and created a very gimped jungle farmer. Radiance then became the reliable method for guaranteeing a very fast farm rate, and it could be acquired still very quickly without the risks associated with early teamfights. Necro with bots is far more reliable when you have sufficient lockdown/burst from your supports--you get your stack, clear the wave while healing your teammates, push a tower, clear the jungle, and do it over again until you win.
Yes sir! 7.36 is insane efficiency for Techies. Being a Universal hero, Techies benefits from all slots simultaneously so at the most simple itemisation level you could theoretically have 9 iron branches at once giving him 18.9 base damage for 450g.
Yes. The only thing pertaining specifically to Leash in the patch notes was Mars' Bulwark soldiers no longer knocking enemies out of leashes. Do wonder if this change unintentionally altered the behaviour of all ways to break leashes.
@@icata12345after glimmer cape became a shield i never liked pushstick as a go-to, but now that riki has the 'untargetable' thing and you can't push out leashes, it's very, very far down my list of items i want to build. In more organized games it probably has more utility but in unranked i almost never get it.
Ooft. The greed is all well and good until you come across players who know how to punish you. It's why so many people love Boots of Speed to start lane :'(
@@beneaththeveil though to be fair we play turbo most of the time, so its easy to get away with it. when it comes to ranked though, 90% of my tangos goes to him 🤣
Why do topson go for 1 tango and 4 iron wood branch then proceed to buy bottle he wont buy stats item if he really needs it though i think his going a situational build iguess?
It will be situational, yes. Usually it's about just getting enough stats to reliably secure last hits in lane without sacrificing so much gold that it hinders his item timings. Essentially, he's greeding a faster bottle but if he were to buy it straight away in the MMR range he is in then he won't get to CS at all because everything will be denied when it's out of HP range for him to secure it. It's common for heroes like Puck for example to just buy branches (and maybe a Faerie Fire) in order to get a faster bottle timing without sacrificing too much damage in lane
For some players raw mechanical skill can do a lot of heavy lifting for them for sure. Totally agree that itemisation at all stages of the game is a major key to success.
Great question. This is an issue that we see happening pretty much right up to and including Ancient ranks and then by the point players hit Divine they're usually itemizing optimally. Most of the replays we review are between Guardian and Legend
You free up 2 item slots and double the potential healing you can give yourself for free for the rest of the game until the point you're on to your 4th/5th major item. Yes, it's worth the 150g investment
I can’t look at pipe of insight without seeing a broken masquerade mask
Funny, I just get the smoking pipe association immediately. Interesting how our brains interpret art differently though
Same I thought I was the only one
Oh my god someone finally said it
i actually never realized until now that the picture is actually a smoking pipe.. lol
always thought its a mask for some reason, even though it did not make sense combined with its name
I feel seen lol. For me the wind lace also looks more like a wave in my peripheral. BKB also looks like a golden cow skull or some other bovine animal
Great video and a SUPER important topic in my opinion. I definitely noticed in my Dota journey that taking the time to learn more about which starting items are good in which situations has helped my laning a lot. Great job again :]
That means a lot coming from you, brother. Thanks for stopping by and leaving such kind words. It's been a joy to witness your own growing success over the last couple years and has played a major role in keeping my own nose to the grind stone to find eventual success with this channel. Here's hoping the new update brings plenty of niche game mechanics for us both to sink our teeth into for the betterment of the community :) - Phil
Couple of beasts .
Guys what we noobs need is a chart or some guide to match ups and counters.
Like how to counter a fed ursa, what hero or item, etc . Thanks bros
@@beneaththeveil😊😊r 😊
the funny thing about this is that I learned how to do this purely by sheer logical thinking, it's a topic not being talked a lot and yet is extremely important
We're continually surprised at how uncommon common sense seems to be ;) A shocking amount of people completely underestimate how important a small bump to certain stats drastically changes your power in the earliest stages of the game
@@beneaththeveili think a big reason for this is that people usually just follow the guides ingame, so they dont really think anything of it since if it is provided by the game there is no need to worry about it. If it says core items: stick boots, they just focus on getting this items in whatever order they have money the fastest
@@zvEr348 agree 100%
"Use Your judgment". Meanwhile most players I meet in the game "No damage, no good"
Honestly? Fair
jeez no joke, literally had a sven argue about not wanting to buy blink on him because it had no stats
@@rinarvado6645 That's tough. Not being able to find the retort that Overwhelming Blink provides Strength was an oversight on your part though ;)
@@beneaththeveil 2200 gold vs 6800 gold
@@lilpullout yes, but still one slot that gives utility to snowball kills, increasing GPM and hitting the late game timing faster. There's not many items for less than 3k that a Sven would end up keeping in that state all game. Echo Sabre is usually upgraded to Harpoon and Mask of Madness is disassembled to build into Satanic and sometimes Butterfly. The strength of those items are they help Sven increase his GPM to then build into later game itemisation. Blink enables Sven to both close the gap aggressively to gain kills as well as widen the gap defensively to prevent himself from dying, both simultaneously increasing his GPM, one through gaining gold and one through avoiding losing it
Great video.
One note I would add is that certain components are really great to buy early for offering later flexibility. The itemization needs of your team often change dynamically depending on how the lanes go and what the other heroes choose to build. As a support player, I'm a big fan of the casual wind lace since it builds into Tranquils, Eul's, Drums, Solar Crest which are all items you might want later in the game depending on if you need HP regen, control, burst teamfight threat, or sustain on your carry. I think Fluffy Hat is another strong item in this regard, for building into Force Staff, Pavise, and Spirit Vessel.
Very true! Casual small components (especially Wind Lace) are something that a lot of players overlook. It's something we'll eventually cover as its own separate topic once we've worked through the backlog of more major topics we have in the pipeline right now. Good to know there's a healthy dose of players ahead of the curve in that regard :)
@@beneaththeveil I hope you do more videos on item ordering too! One that I particularly struggle with is Glimmer Cape since both Shadow Amulet and Cloak are strong individually and I'm often unsure which I should purchase first.
Other good candidates would be Khanda (Crystalys vs. Phylactory first), Force Pike (Force Staff vs. Dragon Lance first), and any of the KSY swords.
@@jackmccarthy7644 Now that we've addressed the concept, it's something that we can look to more in depth when doing dedicated item videos. At the moment we're working through items which also have a tonne of hero skills that do the same thing but Glimmer Cape is one we want to cover for sure. Too many people we see throwing games by buying Shadow Blade when really they should be buying Glimmer Cape instead. Will put it on the list just for you :)
Agreed, move speed can make such a huge difference that (particularly when playing support) if I have a spare item slot I usually stick a windlace in it, even if I'm not intending to upgrade it.
Extra m/s can easily translate to effective extra range, attack speed or even effective extra dodge/hp
Thank you so much for this content! I've been playing for a year now and been recently spamming Abaddon pos5. When I started playing him, I start with the correct items (blood gernade, branches, ect). But then I fell into a bad habit of going into lane with Ring of Basillius and no stat items. No wonder I was starting to lose my lane more. I corrected that and been getting more consistent wins in the laning stage.
Glad to hear! Blood Grenades are an essential tool to leverage in early laning! Keep it up
Sage mask and a set of tangoes with max branches is very valuable
On strength heroes, like a lot of offlaners, playing from behind to finish bkb, I feel like the ogre club is much more value than the mithril hammer. The dmg/gold is the same and you also get 180 HP. Not to mention you get the stat boost a whole 600 gold earlier. But on a carry who is afk farming until they have the whole bkb then your reasoning makes sense.
We did make a note on it, but didn't want to talk about it too in depth as it wasn't the main focal point of the video. You're certainly on the right track with your logic there :)
Just a note about visual design; at 10:30 I initially read the text as three columns, top to bottom not left to right. I would imagine that some other viewers may have read it the same way and also would have been confused. Great video regardless
Yes, someone else said the same thing. In hindsight we could have definitely made things a bit clearer with just a few more visual choices to create separation
Thank you for bringing up the point about TP boots! I've tried to explain this to my friends many times!
Any time! It's a common set of issues we've seen and it always makes us sad to see play out
I really hope did your Friends know english, mine are stuck at the lowest rank and they are not able to take any advice.
I I really wish that at anytime in the future they understand all the information in the video.
We speak spanish and they don't believe that My tips are usefull for them
I see necros get BoT rush on a team without catch or quick kill threat and I always cringe inside
Yes, thank you as someone who used to play necro mid rushing boots who travels to lane just to farm and shove it, not great of an impact for a rush item.
8:40
I have 5.5k hours of dota and only just consciously realized... Power treads attribute item differs depending on your hero primary attribute.
Wow.
To be fair: they only changed it within the last two years or so that when you queue up a treads to purchase it gives you the correct attribute component. You could still build it out of the other ones but it used to only give you belt of strength if auto queued
The other thing. Magic stick is a great bait. If you are sitting on 10 charges and having people come at you with low hp, helps you survive when you are down to the last 10% of hp and secures kills. That comes with circa 200 gold which helps get those extra items
exactly :)
I love this numbers based approach to strategy thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Started playing Rank more consistently after years of on and off playing. The Nullifier vid helped me on a couple of matches. Got out of Herald and currently 70% to Guardian 2. Love the vids and the format. Playing All Roles in the Queque. Idk which one to focus on.
If you're having success and climbing playing all roles then feel free to continue doing so! When you get to the point that you stop consistently winning and climbing: that's the point to start analysing which role you have the most impact in and starting to focus on that role in particular: or you can pick the role you most enjoy playing and learn to improve your impact from that position.
As a fellow all role queuer: I don't blame you for liking the versatility that comes with playing everything ☺️
@beneaththeveil
TY
I like a lot of heroes so playing one role all the time seems boring. I have like 2 or 3 heroes I like playing per role. Definitely my weakest has to be mid. I just default to playing Zeus or Pudge there.
@@FactorialGhost if you like a challenge, learn Meepo for mid. He can end reasonably fast and solo carry if you have a good start in lane and know how to micro. TA can also be good to play from mid in the right games but she's a bit weak in the current meta. Leshrac is also a good pusher and can play tempo or go late game if you like your spellcasters in mid. Learn how to set up your own stun off the back of a Eul's Sceptre Cyclone spell and you'll be cooking 🍳
Crazy how I have never thought about this but still inituitively did it. I never enough thought that anyone would buy boots for tranquils first its such a waste
Heres an idea, Dont get both circlet and primary stat +3 item. Instead buy either and rush your 1st item along with the wand + Up'ed boots. If you're really cheap, Hold on to stick and power out all the way till 1st item
The reason we couldn't show any example of an Immortal player doing what we were talking about is because of exactly this: they itemise correctly for the lane from the strategy phase.
A Drow Ranger for example will start with tangoes, circlet, 3 branches and a Stick, then proceed to go Wraith Band first as the bump in armor early on does help with some of the harass the enemy pos 4 will usually put on to you. We wanted to talk about what to do in the situation where players itemise for the lane incorrectly and then don't realise until they get to the lane and have to improvise - making the most out of a bad situation. You're completely right though! Get your itemisation right from the very start and you avoid a lot of unnecessary headaches
I wish there was a lategame option for PT. When all Lanes are pushed you have to switch back and forth from BoT to PT or abandon PT all together for a good 6th slot.
It's such a mighty item early and mid and falls off so hard. The toggle becomes meaningless due to high regen. Adding something like an ultimate orb to it to it + a recipe making the PT
+30 to all stats as well a the option to teleport to your own fountain (so not aggressive just defensive) would be great.
There's been an upgrade for PTs as well as Phases in the back end for a good while now based on leaks from pre-New Frontiers. It may well be introduced in this patch.
As someone who has been playing a lot of str carries(usual bracer rush)and heroes not really needing a full magic wand(AM), I had no idea it was this imperative to finish assembling magic wand first on Agi, Int and Universal Carries. I've always just ship out 1 set of tangoes and finished components for a bracer/wraith band/null on the first courier ferry and ship out magic wand and boots of choice components on the next courier ferry. Very intriguing and insightful guide and I definitely learned a lot from it.
The real answer is to itemise properly for the lane from the strategy phase but it's very common for players to itemise thinking they're playing against a certain 2 heroes only to discover that's not the case and suddenly they have to improvise based on what's already purchased. When that's the case: not enough people think to just backpack an item to get something more important active and then start combining items to make space and get everything active again from there. Glad the video helped ☺️
"Due to every player starting with 600 gold."
Alchemist Facet 1: "Are you sure about that?"
To be fair: this was released before 7.36 lol
Great video and I agree with most of it especially the point about BoTs, I see way too many necros build it, show up for one kill (which they don't always manage to secure with scythe) and then fall massively behind on their farm... Even when they've won their lane.
The one point where I disagree is that I usually backpack my tango rather than an iron branch for my magic stick (swapping an iron branch out when I need to eat a tree) as tango gives you no immediate benefits from having them in your inventory and you usually have some warning before you need to eat them (especially in the very early laning stage where this is an issue) so in the meantime I'd rather have the extra stats (also if you're careful you get something like 3-5 extra health by your iron branch being on cool down when you swap it back in after eating a tree)..
I do specify "usually" though because sometimes you do need to be able to tango faster...
But then whilst you're regenning health you can swap your branch back in...
Its a small difference but it has occasionally saved my life.
i notice the B.O.T strat when i was climbing in ancient i was like "wait a minute i got low cooldown i can help the team while killing and having a map presence" and some games it made it easier and some games when you get stomped you just go and adjust
Exactly. It's a great "win harder" item but it can be very difficult to find value with when you're on the back foot
This video is underrated. I was hoping no one would start doing the math about stats vs raw damage/item which doesnt really do much. But that power treads switch plus a wand is how I live + farm + kill without much regen till my 1st mid game item.
Don't rush shit just coz you saw pros do it ( they got insane coordination ) instead understand the math man..
When playing Necro (especially when 7.35 dropped) it was best to rush BoT. After completing 1 Bracer. With basically unlimited health reg and mana you could farm the big map and when Ulti was off CD you could go for a gank.
Plus it's a hero with one of the slowest movespeed. Later a heart than aghas was a free win. I almost had 75% Winrate during that time.
A second Bracer was useful when you were offlane and not mid.
When the patch was new and no-one had any idea what was going on it was relatively easy to win your lane and then snowball with Travels which is expected. Travels is a win harder item. The biggest issue is Necro players who fall behind them go Travels and have no impact. The gold investment gives them nothing except a way to KS on a super long cooldown.
@@beneaththeveil that's true.
He was heavely needed though. I play as 3-5 stacked team comps and the damage output I had at the end due to Stacks were insane. Looking back at dotabuff games the numbers are crazy. He slowly got nerfed plus people started picking AA (which you can't ban for sure anymore).
I even got my stacks up with illusion kills.
bro you are giving away my early pudge strat with the tranquil tips lolol but very true, i find getting wind lace and ring of regen first helps heaps. If i hit a hook, windlace is more than enough with rot to keep them in line, and let my lane partner get the damage. I don't think i'd ever go for boots of travel, unless its kotl for me.
It's crazy how much people underrate small stat buffs early game
@@beneaththeveil definitely man, can make or break the game
Legend carry player. Subbed because I never buy wand on carry. I think of that as an item for heroes who are more active on the map. Wasn't thinking about lane phase unless there's a Skywrath or Shadow Demon
Glad to hear you've reconsidered the item! It's a super helpful source of free Regen throughout a game ☺️
As a universal hero I usually build Wand + faerie fire + blood grenade to start out with, and Amazon Prime a tango after bounty runes. As a melee hero I get tango, quelling blade, mango or faerie fire depending on hero, stat components, blood grenade.
I like the iron branches, however I prefer blood grenade.
Totally fair. Am personal to 2x circlets, 2x branches, tangoes and either Quelling, third branch or a faerie fire depending on the hero but your wand build is pretty slick too if it's a good lane to start with Stick/Wand
hey dude, good video. My friend who plays a lot of DOTA sent it to me as something to learn from. I found it very informative!
Glad to hear it helped and your friend sent you our way :)
Hope you stick around
@@beneaththeveil obamna!
Tranq boots are one of the biggest trap items for new players. Up there with dagon.
Respectfully disagree. Have won countless games with only Tranquil Boots and upgrading to Boots of Bearing when the draft allows the team to play on tempo and end the game quickly. It's much harder in the current meta since games tend to go long and high ground can be difficult to break; but Tranquil Boots enable many melee supports especially to aggressively trade in early laning then disengage and regenerate HP faster than their opponents. That doesn't even touch on the potency of roaming between lanes more quickly.
@@beneaththeveil Def hear you on the boots of bearing. I was mostly talking about people who I see buying tranq boots instead of regen items in early game lols. Then NEVER upgrading it.
When they dont upgrade it, my thought is its not good because simply other things are better most of the time.
Most of the time Id rather have Boots + Bracer. Or wind lace + 2x Bracer. Substitute null talisman sometimes.
I almost never get that item, personally. Unless Im 100% sure I need boots of bearing like you said.
@@suntzu6122 with that context I can see why you made your initial statement the way you did. You could make the same argument about Arcanes since some heroes still need the odd clarity/mango to top up their mana through early/mid game due to burning through so much mana you know? There's very rarely a single item in the early game that will outright fix early game regen issues. When we're eventually through all the mechanics based videos we've got in the pipeline one of the things we want to highlight is how many low elo players just simply don't buy enough regen. The amount of people I see buy a single set of tangoes and no other regen whatsoever makes me want to flip tables lol
Tranq boots rush broken for melee support in early lane....IF player knows how to abuse the disassemble mechanic. Quite simple: have boots disassembled + full health..... Engage in heavy trading...disengage and immediately unlock combining when out of attack range= 9 seconds of instantaneous heal. Disassemble boots just before time is up and go trade again. Basically a free tango every 20 seconds
@suntzu6122 It depends on the hero. I still run tranqs on bounty hunter, because it helps when roaming from lane to lane and to heal back to full between ganks. Very useful when in those early/mid roaming parts of the game.
Great Video! Reenforced a lot of beliefs about how to play certain hero's as well as helped me play my lane better
Glad to hear it!
600 Golds - I always start with Boots and quelling blade and Doom's 2nd skill. Early kill and harassment in lanes.
Would encourage you to try buying stats to start in lane to secure more CS and denies and see how that treats you instead. If that itemisation is working better for you though, more power to you
deymm thats was very informative ( you just earned a subscriber...keep up the good work, you're good at this)
Thanks for the sub! Much appreciated :)
"Buy Mithril Hammer before Ogre Axe as a source of damage"
Me, who buys Mithril Hammer to complete the most expensive component first: yes of course because of the damage
whatever works man!
move speed is king, no exception. You cant beat being at the right time in the right place
Good video I think one small thing missed is that with boots and the order of purchase- for a hero like Bara move speed= damage so there is consideration there
True! One of the rare cases where boots first is the optimal choice :)
i think the point with magic stick is more nuanced, it's value comes much with mana regen, you can eat cheap tangos for health at any point. if you are not casting spells the extra stat points from iron branch can be vital for last hitting which really trumps anything else
Totally agree that it's nuanced! Though if you're sitting in lane with maxed out mana you're wasting your passive mana regeneration and that's a different issue to be addressed. Something we didn't really belabour was the outplay potential that Wand gives you versus Stick. Suddenly gaining 300 HP rather than 150 HP with max charges can make the difference between a won and lost engagement. Especially in the early game when net worth and XP swings due to dying first or second are so valuable, Wand becomes very potent. You're totally right though in that sometimes the burst of mana is just what you need in order to get that last spell off in a combination to secure a kill. There's so many intricacies even in the early game
i love this kind of dota contents. you just got yourself a sub
Glad to hear! Welcome aboard and thanks for joining!
As a support player I always prioritize buying magic wand over boots(when the lane enemy hero has spammable skills), but now I guess I should think over if I will upgrade it 1st to magic wand or buy the boots. As a carry player I always rush boots 😭 easy to harrass, easy to disengaged, easy to go to camp, they cant kill you if then cant chase you but as always this video made some insights to not rush brown boots. Thanks
Happy to help! It's always worthwhile to think about
nice explanataion Now my Mid necro will die 8 times under 15 min and still go for 30 min radince with only boots of speed
you hate to see it
really good video, but it can be really benefitial to sometimes buy gloves of haste first, on heroes with high base dmg in lanes you are dominating. you can basically secure every deny vs e.g. a gyrocopter if you get gloves of haste on a lot of offlaners.
Excellent point! There's an exception to every rule :)
This video was mainly getting players to stop autopiloting purchases left to right on their quickbuy and actually start actively making choices about the components they're buying and what order they're purchasing them in!
Got recommended this channel by nullifier video and just skimming through, videos are very informative and detailed.
However, I feel like just putting text which you read aloud on screen and nothing else is somewhat of a waste for video format, i understand that searching for game examples is certainly hard work and editing takes time. But having them or just some stats(which are already often used, and more than welcome) with text relegated to bottom third of the screen, would be a major improvement. It's not constant issue, but to minimize it would be great.
Other than that, great work, keep on keeping on.
Appreciate the feedback. You're not the first to mention this at all :) We initially did it as we'd been getting complaints about people not being able to understand what Phil was saying and this was our initial solution. Since we started getting feedback along these lines we've pulled back on our in video text elements and are now using closed captions for those who struggle to understand Phil. We now try to exclusively save text elements for corrections we realise we need to make during the editing process after Phil has done all the voiceovers. Sometimes it's that our initial research was wrong, Phil misspoke or a patch has come out during the video production process that has changed the validity of what we initially said and needs to be corrected. Rest assured we're always paying attention to the community. Again, thanks for reaching out :)
@@beneaththeveil well, to be honest I checked some later videos and noticed improvements already. So my comment was a bit premature. But thanks for elaboration :)
@@Sever.s.Server your comment was totally valid. We took it in the good faith we knew it was intended ☺️
i started like a month or two ago so i have only about 150 hours in dota but never thought about doing magic wand later, this item just look busted especially in early, i even carry it till mid or later if i dont have any better option
Welcome, my friend: to the minority. I usually have to beg people to buy Magic Wands in general. It's excellent you're so early on in your DOTA journey and yet already understand just how strong it is. There's definite merit to delaying it at times, but in general if you're hitting max stacks without needing to pop the heal it's worth upgrading sooner rather than later.
@@beneaththeveil i played league for years before i switched to dota so i might just be more conscious about items and what they do
i usually sell magic wand after i have like 2/3 items cause in this moment the bonuses arent that big of a difference
@@novy1198 that makes sense! You're on the right track re: time to sell it. If you have Dota+ you can see how much Wand heals you for each game. Most of the time the numbers sit around 1-2k
@@beneaththeveil ye i bought dota + on the start just to have some help with what to do and i did my own characters layout for dif roles but thats pretty much it, i dont think dota + actually gives you something important in the longterm so i prefer to buy skins for example than this
how about choosing which items to sell/replace, for example, i play centa with 1 boots, 2 bracers, wand, blademail, and blink, then i need to make room for my next item in this case shiva or shroud. which should i sell? bracer or wand?
Wand is usually the first item you sell to make room for bigger items, but there are always exceptions to the rule. If you quickly hit 20 charges in every skirmish and are continuing to find value out of spamming Wand for for the 300 HP and Mana burst heal from 20 charges: then it's worth keeping the Wand and selling a Bracer. In most cases though, the enemy might only give you 8-10 charges in a teamfight and in that case the 150 HP burst heal isn't as good as the 10 Strength from the Bracer post 25 minutes which gives you 220 HP. Hope this helps give some insight :)
3:30 there's one missed advice about buying stick. No need to buy stick/wand if your enemy lane doesn't have spam skills. Immortal bracket, they usually buy stick/wand if enemy have spam skills, if not, stick to wraith/bracer/null then treads/phaseboots/arcane
Very true! In lower MMR it's harder to get people to buy stick/wand in games when they need it than it is to get them to not buy it when it's not so we thought it would be better to just not mention it as better players realise that already and adapt
also with different heroes you dont need to insta upgrade your stick, could hold out for abit until the upgrade (usually mid just use the stick for regen anyways and only upgrade it much later), the 150 gold for 1 extra attribute arent super flavorable against the likes of windranger/wraith king etc its better to save up for boots to out run their spell or actually catching up to gain a kill or what not, consider other items for the stats instead of just having a wand with 4 charges
reason to why i specifically point out to wraith king and windranger is cause they both have some sort of slows and could easily connect their spell if they run at you, keep in mind that windranger usually powershot from far thus not gonna add charge to your stick. There is no right or wrong with buying any or which item, its just which item is better for you at your time of need
Really well-crafted breakdown of of the factors in early item choice. Subbed. 👍
Much appreciated!
I took me a second to realize this video is for 3k and below. Glad it showed up though, I can send it to some friends
If you want to affect change, gotta start from the ground up ;)
There's some games as pos1 where either grabbing 3 runes or getting an early kill/assist means I sometimes start lane 1/2 CS away from being able to ship in both bracer/wraith band recipe and magic wand, isn't it better at that point to delay wand by likely 10 secs tops and get the upgraded regen+damage/armor+AS early rather than delay whatever amount of seconds it takes for the non-upgraded courier to waddle back to fountain then back with the bracer recipe?
Fair question! The best answer is to actually start the lane with the correct items and already have a Stick if it's a lane which requires one, but we talked about this situation as an example since a lot of players don't itemise correctly for the lane and then have to improvise as soon as they realise. In the case of Bracer it's probably the better option if the enemy aren't going to cast that many spells right at the start of lane, so you get the benefit of the extra damage which widens the window of when you can hit a creep to secure that CS; however the extra attack speed and armour of Wraith Band doesn't really help all that much in early laning since they don't help alter your damage numbers to make CS easier, they just increase your attack speed slightly so your projectile travels faster or your melee animation is a touch quicker. In that case it's far better to gain access to the healing potential of Stick.
Good video. Well represented and commentary. Good points.
Thank you!
Hey! great contents of the video, great explaination, all I wanna point out, in my opinion and I think it might be helpful for your video format, try reducing the ammount of text, if you are already saying the whole sentece, like it can get distracting and tireing because i suppose we instictualy tend to read along and we pretty much combine our voices with your voice and sort of make a clutter in our heads ( I might be the only one here, if anyone else feels the same let's give positive feedback! )The most "agressive" you've used the text was between 5:37 and 6:32 it's almost a minute full of slideshows, which can be overwhelming for some viewers to have to look at the same type of format for too long, I don't have a statistic of how long is the attention span of Dota players, but I doubt is that big haha. Maybe you can implement a bit more footage in between, or short example clips such as *Necro travel TP CD 3-2-1 while ult is 52-51-50 as for example , something highlighting the two Coldowns. Anyway, the way you present and talk is certainly great and not boring, this is why the algorithm boosted your channel after all! Keep it up!
Appreciate the feedback! When we started out we had a lot of people saying they couldn't understand what Phil was saying so we were pretty heavy handed with text elements. Things have been getting better so we've been scaling things back now but we're still clearly a bit too heavy handed - appreciate the critique. We'll keep pulling back on the text elements and use more video and graphics based material instead :)
Glad you found value out of the video despite that
The mithril hammer 1st for bkb is so insightful. Most players just build ogre axe 1st which doesnt do anything until u get a bkb.
Totally agree. On a semantic level: there's value for Strength and Universal heroes in getting the Ogre Axe first for the extra HP and HP regen if they still want to brawl on their way to getting BKB and don't mind the slight sacrifice in damage: but for Agility and Intelligence heroes it's a no brainer to go Mithril Hammer every time. A lot of players just see they have 1k gold and instantly purchase the Ogre Axe without really thinking about what they're getting out of the investment.
@0:38 I love the 3D attribute icons 👌
thank you!
Small feedback on layout of build orders:
I initially interpreted the grid of 9 as 3 columns (instead of the intended 3 rows) ie top to bottom is the build order and left to right is preference; my intuition was so strong on this that I even thought there was typos (ie damage written twice instead of damage, other) rather than recognising the intended pattern for quite some time.
Solution space is large... one suggestion I think might help: highlight whatever you are verbally referencing on screen.
Appreciate the feedback!
In hindsight we could have definitely made the line spacing much larger during that section so there was more of a separation between each line of text. In addition we could have made a little arrow instead of the dashes ( -> instead of just - ) to naturally guide the viewers eye left to right so they inherently understood how to interpret the information we were presenting. Totally agree we could have highlighted the information better as well - the GPU we were using was struggling a bit to render everything towards the end of the video so we decided to chill out on some of the motion graphics elements to give the hardware some room to breathe. We're continually looking into what we can do during production to make things easier for not only us and our viewers, but our hardware as well so it's something we'll fine tune over time as we look to continually improve our production practices :)
Great video! I can see the effort you made. I've always wondered when watching the pros choose their shoes, especially supports. Why do they go tranquil early, why phase boots, even sometimes I see brown boots 40 mins into the game. This video gave me a slight idea about it.
Glad it was helpful!
Very educational video. This definitely will help those like me in the lower mmr brackets.
Great to hear! Good luck on the grind!
To sum up ,everything item depends on situation and hero
True!
This necrophos + boots of travel thing is so true.
We see it all the time and it's enraging to say the least
I wonder what were the goals of that sniper that rushed MKB, then gotten maelstorm and finished mjolnir in like 40th minute, before we inevitably lost
We often find most players don't have goals in itemisation beyond 1) get more items and 2) pray that the enemy don't get as many items
Unless they were facing a very active Phantom Assassin or Wind Ranger, probably not the best build order. Maybe they were planning on ceding farm to a greedy team composition and got kill potential early? It's kind of like rushing desolator.
Big note: Necro + bot part when you say low mmr should be itemizing more selfreliable - although you are completely correct, the wrong message is being sent. Low mmr players already rely less on teammates and a lot of them have some sort of 1v9 mentality. We should promote messages that help grow.
Appreciate the sentiment: however the point is with Boots of Travel in particular that it's only successful if you can snowball off kills with a coordinated team. This often doesn't happen in lower MMR and therefore players need to itemize more appropriately to reliably increase their GPM. Lina can snowball off BoTs more reliably simply because she can rotate and use her ult twice as much as Necrophos can so she doubles her overall opportunities to find value out of the purchase
These videos are excellent, thanks
as a new player, would love to see a deep dive like this about bkb. When to buy or not to, most efficient usage etc
Glad you like them! You're very welcome!
We will definitely touch on debuff immunity! Since it's only been in the game for just over a year now, we're knocking out a few of the more established and unchanged mechanics just in case Valve decide to rework BKB again
Your content is the God's gift to us dota newbies!
Glad to be of help :) If there's anything you ever need clarification on or other mechanics that you'd like us to explain in future videos we're always listening to the growing community and are adding those ideas to our list for future videos
u sure loving what you are doing, dang doing something like this . requires effort! GJ
Thank you!
Loving the content so far, a well deserved sub. Best of luck with the channel
Much appreciated! Glad it's serving you well. Thank you for the kind words and wishes
I would've appreciated a joke about huskar when mentioning the timing of buying bracers
Valid point lmao
I would simple buy the recipe first or the most expensive component
Fair enough!
Bro I walked away from this more confused than I was before.
Anything we can clarify for you?
the most suffering i have is when playing support and a fcking carries chooses to skip treads wand, bracers, band, talisman. They really fck up in lane if you try to assist mid and sideline. then blame you for dying because they have no boots.
Ty for this. I’ve been buying recipes first.
You are so welcome!
This can increase your winning rate by 0.0000000001%.
Learning how to position yourself and play as a team, that can double your win rate.
While you're completely correct that learning better positional play and coordination can significantly improve your win rate, your initial comment is a bit disingenuous. Efficient itemisation in the lane can drastically alter how the lane plays out, significantly altering the course of your mid game impact.
Call me a noob but early brown boots helps so much imo .. I skip the other garbage that’s waste my gold. Boots and tangos underrated
On the contrary, Boots + Tango is severely overrated. In lower MMR players don't trade enough to chip you down which gives you perceived value on the starting item combo. Better players know how to trade to contest space in which case starting with Boots/Tango is horrendous because you trade for less damage and can only regen as much as they can since they start with tangoes too so you lose lane control as a result if they can trade into you. Playing melee support into a ranged support who went boots first is a mild inconvenience until you hit your powerspike at level 2 or 3 which lets you close the gap with skills and feed on them. They should also win the CS/Deny battle too since you have no stat items granting them an XP advantage and even more networth which they can use to steamroll your greedy starting items and get the same items online to nullify your perceived advantage at the start of the lane.
Calling other low gold cost items "garbage" speaks volumes about your inherent understanding of their benefits. High tier DOTA is about understanding and exploiting every small advantage. There are memes about heroes gaining or losing one base armor or base damage for good reason. In high MMR gameplay, that difference completely dictates how those heroes trade in laning and set up their team for the rest of the game.
Great vid and lots of good tips. Absolutely loved the stick discussion. I usually start with the stick specifically to maximize the time I will be potentially gaining charges. It's the worst when you get to 10 charges before you've finished your wand XD
4:25 Correction on the Boots of Travel - you DO still need to buy TP scrolls, no? Are you thinking of the old school BoTs that existed before the TP scroll slot when TP's used to take up an item slot? I'm confident you still need to buy them but now questioning things
Glad you enjoyed the stick discussion. The real fix to the problem is actually itemise for your lane correctly and start with a Stick in lanes where you need one off rip: but low elo players don't always recognise when they need one from the start and itemise for non-stick lanes, then suddenly try and do a 180.
Regarding your correction: not sure if that's how it used to be in the past but you actually don't need to buy additional TPs once you have Boots of Travel. So long as you have a single TP scroll in your inventory. If you have no TP scrolls available when you buy Boots of Travel and get them delivered then you may need to still buy one? But if you have them in your inventory already then you're good to go. If you have multiple charges available the game automatically sells your excess charges so you get a little refund (though not sure if it's a full refund - that would be a nightmare to test and we can't be bothered lol)
Correct that you need 1 in slot or else you must buy one. It might have been that you still needed to buy them a loooooooong time ago but that might have even been dota1.
I had been curious about what happens to those excess tps but i don't recall whether you get the typical 50% back or if it was nothing. @@beneaththeveil
This is an AMAZING break down! Thank you for the hard work and content! This is something ALL newbs should watch!
Glad it was helpful! Thank you for watching :)
Love your videos! Very interesting to watch, very informative. Makes you think where you could be better
Glad you think so! Improvement comes from focus on oneself and what they can change, rather than looking at everyone else and pointing out what they did wrong :)
Sir, this lessons require players to have the ability to think, and that's asking a lot from many dota players.... jokes aside, great video actually. Sadly real dota lessons like this won't ever get more views than meme videos.
Thank you! We have faith that there's enough of an audience out there that can apply some critical thinking, they just aren't given all the information from Valve in order to fully utilise it - that's what we're aiming to do.
We're sure that if we stick on the path that we're on, we'll soon pass many of the accounts that you speak of who rely on gimmicks rather than solid fundamental game understanding :)
I like playing turbo mostly and I find a lot more usage with arcane boots on most str pos 3 heroes so I can spam their abilities more. Usually centaur or axe. I also have the ability to upgrade to greaves for a dispel if I need it but I usually just get tp boots
It used to be even better when you could dismantle arcane boots so it’s definitely less excusable but I still like it
There's use cases for all items for sure. The upgrade into Guardian Greaves for the Dispel utility as well as the burst heal is super nice as well :)
@@beneaththeveil typically I play either tanks or Carries so my go to dispels are lotus orb or either manta/disperser depending on the carry I’m playing
I also forget satanic has a dispel
Yeah! There's 8 different at-will self dispel items currently in the game. We're spoiled for choice
1:45 something that’s not clear here.. are you saying it would have been better to come out to the lane with the stick/wand, or just that you need to rush it after you get to lane, if needed?
Excellent question! Indeed, if you need a Stick at the start of the game, then you should be starting with one. A meta starting item build for Drow Ranger playing into a Bristleback or Timbersaw offlane for example is: Tango, Circlet, Stick and 3 branches :)
We made this section because a lot of players consistently start their game with the wrong items for the lane matchup and then try to make the most of a bad situation but don't quite get the ordering right. We wanted to help them in particular rather than just tell them what the correct starting items are as sometimes you get a starting item setup based on a guess of what you're playing into and then you guess wrong because the enemy are playing something off meta
@@beneaththeveiljust to add on here, i tend to fly out a stick after runes unless i know i'm facing someone like bb, pa, vs, sky, and even lion.
If i'm a support, sometimes i'll only buy the crown in order to have the faster wand and then can start building urn or whatever is needed.
Have to pause the video and just say that necro is a super fast farmer, he has innate sustain and AoE, he eats through creepwaves and jungle camps.
Hes just slow and clunky, BoTs help with that.
This was recorded before 7.36 dropped and Necro got a massive help with his earlier stages through the changes he received. Before that though, he'd had the same problem for years and players would frequently fall into the trap of going BoTs when he would get no feasible impact out of the initial investment. He's a lot easier to find early value out of now for sure.
@@beneaththeveil He always farmed fast? Ofc he's no Luna but this hero farms fast with just lvl 5 and has done so forever.
@@hkl2007necro used to be so strong that he only needed bots out of mid before he cleaned up any teamfight and then could flashfarm a radiance, get a heart, and finish the game. I don't play necro simply cuz i think he's so op for the skill level i prefer to play at, but it's been a while and haven't played him in the latest version.
There was a time where buying BoTs was highly conditional on those early teamfights, or else he could be picked on and exploded, making the BoTs far less viable, and created a very gimped jungle farmer. Radiance then became the reliable method for guaranteeing a very fast farm rate, and it could be acquired still very quickly without the risks associated with early teamfights.
Necro with bots is far more reliable when you have sufficient lockdown/burst from your supports--you get your stack, clear the wave while healing your teammates, push a tower, clear the jungle, and do it over again until you win.
Is this why techies is op rn? Extra spot in the backpack! 😮
Yes sir! 7.36 is insane efficiency for Techies. Being a Universal hero, Techies benefits from all slots simultaneously so at the most simple itemisation level you could theoretically have 9 iron branches at once giving him 18.9 base damage for 450g.
Great video. This magic wand mistake is 🤯
Thank you! Glad to hear you learned something new :)
your teachings may be the key for me to break the chain of crusader HAHAHAHAHA
Boots+Tango, got it
Nice video man, keep up the good work!
Thank you!
stick takes skill & knowledge tho to know if you can force them to dish out spells without you just dying
True, we have a whole video on heroes that buying a stick in lane is good against. You should watch it if you haven't already :)
Good information and thanks for this video👍
Glad you liked it :)
blood grenade is the way
If I could insert GIFs in comments sections just know I'd put the Jack Nicholson nodding one here
That was awesome thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it! You're welcome!
Anyone noticed you can't force staff away from slark leash anymore??
Yes. The only thing pertaining specifically to Leash in the patch notes was Mars' Bulwark soldiers no longer knocking enemies out of leashes. Do wonder if this change unintentionally altered the behaviour of all ways to break leashes.
@@beneaththeveil As a suppport main i dont really like that atm xD
@@icata12345after glimmer cape became a shield i never liked pushstick as a go-to, but now that riki has the 'untargetable' thing and you can't push out leashes, it's very, very far down my list of items i want to build. In more organized games it probably has more utility but in unranked i almost never get it.
one of the friends i frequently play with has never started a game with a build other than just 4 slippers. help me.
Ooft. The greed is all well and good until you come across players who know how to punish you. It's why so many people love Boots of Speed to start lane :'(
@@beneaththeveil though to be fair we play turbo most of the time, so its easy to get away with it. when it comes to ranked though, 90% of my tangos goes to him 🤣
@@ranenchua9146 checks out
Another nice guide from you.
Thanks!
I appreciate the information provided
Glad it was helpful!
Why do topson go for 1 tango and 4 iron wood branch then proceed to buy bottle he wont buy stats item if he really needs it though i think his going a situational build iguess?
It will be situational, yes. Usually it's about just getting enough stats to reliably secure last hits in lane without sacrificing so much gold that it hinders his item timings. Essentially, he's greeding a faster bottle but if he were to buy it straight away in the MMR range he is in then he won't get to CS at all because everything will be denied when it's out of HP range for him to secure it. It's common for heroes like Puck for example to just buy branches (and maybe a Faerie Fire) in order to get a faster bottle timing without sacrificing too much damage in lane
@@beneaththeveil thanks for further explanation brother 💯
@@Miguel-nt4ii welcome!
Great video! keep up the good work!
Thanks, will do!
I reached immortal without doing this. It really depends on how you itemize and adjust the flow of the game.
For some players raw mechanical skill can do a lot of heavy lifting for them for sure. Totally agree that itemisation at all stages of the game is a major key to success.
Fuck me if I decide to play like that
It’s soooo petty
I wanna enjoy the damn game !!!
We enjoy winning, personally. But you do you
what is low mmr for you
Great question. This is an issue that we see happening pretty much right up to and including Ancient ranks and then by the point players hit Divine they're usually itemizing optimally. Most of the replays we review are between Guardian and Legend
Magic wand + 3 iron branch is worth it 😂
You free up 2 item slots and double the potential healing you can give yourself for free for the rest of the game until the point you're on to your 4th/5th major item. Yes, it's worth the 150g investment
You've got +1 new subscribers
Welcome aboard!
W video dawg very helpful
Glad it helped
but if i go naked bf i can farm bery fast and become big strong
excellent counterpoint
Will try this herald 2 here haha
Good luck on the grind!
This is a great video dude
Glad you liked it!
would like to like, but having dislikes disabled prevents me
are they disabled? They may be hidden but from what we can see others are able to like the video without issue
my favorite dota2 content ❤❤❤
Glad to hear!