Intro to Competitive Thinking (re-post)

I wrote this about a month ago and I posted it to reddit I'm not sure about the HoN forums, but I figured I would throw it on here just so its on my blog, enjoy :)

I wrote this up for my clan(which ranges from 1500-1800) in preparation for HoNtour in hopes that we could get "Competitive" inhouses and such and hopefully get 2-3 teams in HoNtour. I figured this belongs here and could help a few people out! Keep in mind I'm not a pro player, currently sitting on 1780 or something but I have competitive experience and always enjoy helping others understand that way of playing/thinking. Enjoy :)

There are certain things you will see in competitive games that you don't often see in TMM games, laning concepts and such that take organization that you can't capitalize on in TMM with pubs. These include but are not limited to:

Suicide Solo: A situation where you send a solo hero to your long lane(Top lane if you are legion, Bot if you are hellbourne). The purpose this serves is to send a hero that can survive in that lane and get full XP for the most part. This takes away that gimped long lane which is almost always lost 2v2, and gives your carry and other lanes a much better chance at succeeding all the while putting your suicide in a position where they can get levels and not die. This lane takes proper positioning and a hell of a lot of patience, as of now I'm the only one that has taken on this role in J4K 5 locks but I would love for others to learn it. Some heroes that can generally fare quite well suicide are Bubbles, Hag, Plague rider, tempest, wildsoul. Those are some of the BEST, the heroes you will almost never fail with. Other situational suiciders would be Valkyrie/Tremble/Jeraziah....the list goes on its really situational and a matter of versatility of your team make up.

Dual Mid: if you rune a suicide hero this gives you the oppurtunity to run two heroes mid. There are SOOOO many heroes in this game that can wreck mid in a 1v1 situation, throw two heroes mid and they get shut down. Heroes like a tremble/pebbles/devo/blood hunter just examples of heroes that get raped 2v1. Usually a dual mid will be your carry and a strong support, but sometimes you can run a kill lane like a pyro mag. This gives you a safe lane and really easy rune control, just have the carry farm up and the support gets all the runes. In pubs its really easy because most teams won't expect it so if you have two mid they try and counter with a dual mid, but since you purposely picked dual you will be better then them 90% of the time.

Jungler: Yea yea, you see junglers all the time in TMM but competitive jungling is on a whole nother level. Once again, thanks to a suicide lane you now have the luxury of running a jungler, along with sometimes a dual short lane and a solo mid. With this you can do one of a few things, you can have a strong ganker like parasite or ophelia and just rock the fuck out of the short lane giving your carry stupid good farm. Or you can have a defensive farming jungler like Keeper/Legionairee. If you do this it is really hard to gank them since you have a dual short lane so they can get stupid strong farm. Its also really common to run a jungle in the other teams woods to wreck their carry and their mid lanes, this really only works with para/ophelia.The difference between jungling in TMM and jungling in a competitive game is the importance of being an active part of the game (early esp for Para/Ophe) while still maintaining farm and levels so you don't find yourself underleveled and useless if the game goes late.

Carry-based game: In almost every game you have played you have a carry who you try and get farmed. It is REALLY important in games that you build your team around defending your hard carry and giving them the best farm possible. For example if you have like a magebane or a TDL farming short lane, you give them a support to babysit and a jungler on top of that and rape the lane they face! I cannot stress more how much stacking the jungle and ancients just fucking wins games. With a hero like TDL or draconis stacks can add 3-4 levels by mid game.

So after all that, here is a solid list of the really fucking good heroes in lock pick games.

God-Tier: Carries:Magebane/Dark Lady/Draconis/SIlhouette Gankers: Pebbles/Fayde Supports: Glacius/Nymphora/Aluna Suicide: Bubbles/Tempest/PR/Pharaoh/Wild Soul/Keeper of the Forest Solo Mid:Witch Slayer/Tundra/Pollywog Jungle:Ophelia/Keeper/Parasite

Good: Carries:FA/zeph/MQ Gankers: Deadwood Supports:Monarch/Rhapsody/DS Suicide: Tremble/Valk/Scout (Madman)

The list goes on and on, you can really try alot of heroes in dual mids and such.

Awesome heroes to have on your team: Moraxus/Magmus/Torturer/Pharoah/Hammer/Behe/Bramble These are really great utiity heroes that can work in multiple roles.

My thoughts on Blitz

As most anybody that has ever played with me knows, I love Blitz. Easily my favorite S2 hero to come out since monkey king and I am yet to play a game where I get to the end and think "Damn, I wish I didn't pick Blitz". So why is this hero so fun? What makes me desire to play him? Well aside from the fact that next to nobody else plays him(lets be honest, this hero is bad), I love soloing mid with him and find it stupid easy against pretty much any other hero.

Reasons why he kicks ass solo:
1. W provides awesome damage potential in the early levels, especially against a melee hero. The amount of slow it compiles is fairly strong +stun=tons of damage at levels 2-5.
2. Despite the fact that he lacks an AOE nuke, he still manages to have strong rune control because of W and E. Unless the hero has a blink mechanism, you can get damn near every rune. Knowing you will win the rune battle gives you the ability to play stupidly aggressive with W and Q making easy kills early.

Typically even if you are facing someone of equal skill, you can kill any hero mid multiple times pre-level 6.
A standard Blitz game starts off with facerolling mid and starting like 7-0.

So why does Blitz suck so much ass?
Well there are multiple reasons why Blitz is seen as awful by the general community.
1. People try to play him as a support. this is just silly because he pales in comparison to every other support hero in the game. Sure he can get the job done in lane but once you get to mid game with shit levels and no gold, you can barely even use all your skills before running out of mana and being utterly useless.
2. Energizer. Inexperienced Blitz players read his skillset and think "Hmm Energizer would synergize awesome with this hero!" In theory yea sure it does, but its un-necessary. Between your E and Phase boots you can manage to almost always be near max movement speed, you don't need to spend the extra 1300 gold on energizer for an extra 60 movement speed. Too often skill builds are generally built around that extra 100 damage you can get from your stun, rather than utilizing the massive levels/gold you gain on your opponent by shitblasting mid.

So how do I make blitz useful past 25 minutes?
What you need to do is build as if you are a carry hero when you have a huge lead. Rather than getting energizer and push book with your gold, get a nullstone. In most games below 1700, if you are destroying early game people are going to focus fire you in fights. My typical blitz build is phase boots/nullstone/shroud/savage mace(maybe dawnbringer if you are feeling risky).
As I stated before it is really easy to stomp mid with this hero, like....too easy. That being said you can pound up an easy nullstone by like 18 minutes and all of a sudden players start to freak out. Now not only are you running around smashing people with your stupid burst damage at 18 minutes, but people are wasting shit on you and ignoring your actual good heroes!
What makes Blitz a more viable carry than say FA/Silh?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. This hero does suck, but there are ways to make him slightly more useful especially in the 1500-1750 range. He is by no means a beast late game, but because of his burst potential you can get a good jumpstart on the other team. I think Blitz is the most fun hero in the game, and it is worth sacrificing a little bit to have a blast. Just make sure you are mid, he is pub-tier sidelane.

Blitz's problems:
What usually happens is you do really well early and come mid game you are still squishy and put out no physical damage. This being said you can be 7-0 and have 3 levels on the entire enemy team and they can still squish you like the feline that you are. However, if you get a nullstone you can be much more tactical in fights and have a blast crushing 1600s, leaving their jaws dropped at losing to a blitz.Now go out there, pick Blitz and make me proud!!!

24 Hour Pikastream

The end of the semester is approaching and I just invested in a new computer so be on the look out for lots of good J4K content in the near future! I should have my computer up and running by December 1st, and my stream will be going live shortly after. I finish school on December 17th and plan to do a 24 stream immediately following my last final. Details to come soon! I am calling all J4K members/fans to come together to make this 24 hour stream a giant success. Clear your schedule, skip your finals, do whatever you have to do to be there because it is going to be epic. 8=========D--,O:

As of now, I finish my final at 2 PM CST on Monday December 17th and Will probably start the stream around 5-6 PM, depending how long of a nap I take. All J4Ks are welcome to participate in the streamathon which will hopefully include not only 5 man J4K tmm but also playing/casting J4K inhouses!!!

Stream Channel: Twitch.tv/pikastream (going live approx. December 3rd)

Keep calm and J4K on.