u/Divayth_Fyr457

I'm Div 3 for context and I mainly play 3/2. I dunno, it just seems to me that like 90% of position 4 players are just griefers or soft griefers. It can't be just role queue farmers, I most often get pos 5 then 3 when farming role queue, 4 is tied with mid in terms of rarity for me. So many of the players who are griefing are spending role queue on this. Most games it just goes like this Pos 4 insta locks Pudge > Pudge was chosen by both teams > then they insta lock one of the Big Four™, so Rubick / WR / Sniper / Hoodwink. Mirana and Furion used to be popular for this, but seemingly not anymore.

During the laning phase they mostly respect farm priority and help by "securing" the ranged or flagbearer creeps with nukes, even if you were mid attack animation and there is not an enemy hero to be seen. But whatever, that's not too bad. What is bad is everything besides the laning. Then they just don't give a shit, my favorites are the Rubicks who steal some AoE nuke and begin nuking every wave with two spells even if a core was appraoching it or, shit, actively farming it. Most of these people then go these shitty semi-carry builds with their timings being off by 10 - 20 minutes. It's so bad that I developed this nervous habit of nuking the wave whenever I see my 4 approaching, even if I didn't have to at that moment.

Some of these guys take it to the next level with quickbuy. I've seen multiple "4" Rubicks having Lotus Orb in quickbuy and starting with Perserverance only to pivot to Phylactery every single time. Or Snipers going Treads into Force Staff to feign a support build, then finishing Pike and building carry items. But sure bro, I guess you killing the entire jungle is not so bad because you placed a free observer ward on the most obvious cliff only for it to be dewarded a minute later.

What even is the alure of this playstyle? Again, some people spend role queue to do this. Why not pick core if you want to play core? Why hold everyone hostage.

I was thinking about this yesterday. Assuming that you are marginally better than people who are supposed to be in your lobby (so the presumed conditions for climbing mmr), Hard Support has got to be the best position to climb with because most people who play it in pubs either don’t want to or can’t play the role (sometimes both). It’s the only position in Dota which most people are forced into against their will.

So by just existing as a competent 5 player (for your skill level) you completely remove the risk of having hostage 5 as your support while the enemy likely doesn’t have that advantage and are effectively playing with 4.5 players because their 5 is either a Pudge, a naked Midas Ogre or even someone who is genuinely trying but doesn’t usually play 5 so is realistically playing below their mmr level.

At the same time mid is the worst position to climb with because it’s THE smurf position. If you take mid then you simultaneously remove the possibility of being carried by a smurf on your team while risking running into one and hard losing the lane.

This isn’t meant to encourage or discourage anyone from picking these roles. I personally main 3. But it’s just something I was thinking about. I obviously have no data to back any of this.

Maybe not a super serious post but I was wondering about the oldest Scepter updates that are still in the game. The oldest one is gotta be Ogre, isn’t it? First update of its kind (an extra ability) and one that’s been there for like 15 years already. Either that or Warlock, though his was later changed for two separate stuns. But what is the second oldest after those? I was thinking maybe Enigma (it’s no longer a midnight pulse but the idea is the same as in the beginning). Sure one could go over the wiki, but it’s a rather big task.

This used to be the go to first item, but neither popular guides, nor D2PT recommend building it anymore. I tried the usual Blink > Shard > Agh's / BKB but it feels kinda one note, as in you're just there to front line and debuff enemies. Farming speed is okayish after shard, but not too great either. With Echo you can farm better and pose much more of a threat mid game to supports. Even in losing games, I can pick off out of position supports and accelerate my game. Most of them die if you get 3 bash charges on creeps. If they have a save, 2 are better since you can blink stun, get one hit in and bash as the stun is ending. On top of that you can eventually build into Harpoon, which is an amazing initiation / escape tool. One very useful thing is that you can blindly blink to initiate and still get the stun off, even if the enemy is further away than you anticipated.

I'm div 3 so your mileage may vary, but I dunno, it just seems very good on the hero. I get that it's fairly expensive, but it provides a lot of utility. It also doesn't necessarily lock you into a right click build, you can still buy Agh's later. Oh, and another hot-ish take - second point in bash is pretty good early, it more than doubles the damage. Sure, every level of Crush increases damage more than the second point in bash, but if you have a melee carry in the lane I think getting a second point is more value for harass.

The only time that I can recall LC being picked somewhat frequently in pro dota was during the days of pre nerf aoe Press the Attack + Magic Immunity. But other than that, her kit is much more pub friendly than competitive (I mean she was only popular when she had the aoe magic immunity that isn’t part of her core kit). What needs to happen for the hero to be viable in pro dota without her using her identity?