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.
Maybe you should make a pool of heroes your team will specifically play! While it's nice to have all of these ideas, maybe trying to make it more focused and specific can help. By making a pool of heroes, you narrow down the strategies you can run but you focus on them and master them. So when the time comes to execute with your small pool of heroes, youve mastered all of the combos and timing perfectly. Maybe that can help.
ReplyDeleteBy competitive thinking, I thought you were going to write about the mindset you need to have to win! But that's what I'm writing about. :) You're writing about specific strategies and the metagame, which is also great. :)