The Art of Support

I watch a lot of Dota at the moment, whether that is from people like Purge www.youtube.com/user/PurgeGamers or professional games, partly because I find it interesting, and partly because I want to improve my support play.

What I’m finding however is that there is a significant difference between support play at low levels and at high level, which is that supports at high level very rarely play the role of solo lane support. High level games almost always feature a 1-1-3 split, with two solo lanes and a tri-lane. Alternatively there will be three solo lanes and a pair of supports roaming for kills.

Clearly there’s still a lot to learn from these videos, whether that be item builds, behaviour in team fights, and mid to late game strategy, but in terms of the critical early game it’s quite hard to draw too much from it.

In a conventional low-MMR 2-1-2 format there will be two opposing heroes in the offlane. When not playing hard support I like to choose a “bully” strength hero such as Tidehunter, Centaur or Abaddon. I have also seen Axe played offlane to great effect. Against a hero like that, plus a support or nuker, it’s simply not possible to leave your carry to farm while you go off creep pulling and stacking – to do so is just asking for a gank. As say Jakiro or Maiden I need to be there to offer something against the opposing players – at least the threat of a spell or disable to make them think twice about diving the carry. 

So reading posts like The Art of Support http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/dota-2-strategy/465232-the-art-of-support-part-1 on the Team Liquid forums, while fascinating of itself, is not really something that’s going to help my decision making all that much, because the decisions I need to make, in selecting heroes and in the early game at least, are different to in a high level game.  

Things that annoy me in low MMR solo queue

OK so firstly it seems a bit negative to start with a rant, but there we are. Also, what I mean here is things other than being bad at the game. Anyone can be bad at the game – it’s easy to criticise people for silly item builds, or feeding, or selfish play. But what really really bugs me is the following (warning, dear reader, I may lapse into the second person here).

1) Everyone else picks a hard carry, then complains when we lose

If you pick a stupid hero with no regard to the balance of the team then how can you whine when we get smashed in the laning phase?

The absolute most important period in any game of Dota is the laning phase. If you win the lanes, you almost always win the game – particularly at low MMR when we don’t have the experience to put together a comeback. The bottom line is that if you are 5-0 down after 10 minutes, the game is horribly difficult to win, and so your proposed Medusa-Antimage offlane might not be for the best.

2) People pick at the last second

You don’t communicate in chat to co-ordinate hero picks, and you pick your hero at the last second before the game starts. We then have a stupid team.  The only reasons I can think of that you might hide your hero choice until the last second are that (i) you genuinely are dithering between sniper and drow, or (ii) because you want to counter-pick the opposition. I have news for you – at 1600 MMR counter picking doesn’t matter. That is why we end up with no natural mid, no coherent pushing strategy, 4 melee guys or no disables at all.

If you know who you are going to pick, and you are going to pick that hero whatever anyone else picks, then for God’s sake please do so with 20 seconds left. Particularly if you are solo – there is a chance that your team mates are on voice chat and can pick heroes that dovetail well with you.

3) Playing random heroes in ranked

 Yes, when Purge does it it’s fine. He can play all the heroes really really well. You can’t. Last night’s 1-16 Tusk is a case in point http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/856277687  Pick a hero that you are familiar with, or at least have looked up on the Wiki beforehand and maybe watched a video.

If you absolutely must random, and you get Io, for God’s sake repick and save us all the hassle.

4) “We need wards”

I’m the only support because you fuckers all picked hard carries. All of you did. I am desperately trying to get together enough regen to stay in lane and protect this idiotic faceless void. Once I have that regen, you’ll get your damn wards. Until then piss off.

5) Invoker

Stop it. Seriously. Yes Sunstrike is a good spell. No, you can’t land it for shit. He’s a “high skill ceiling hero”. Your skill level is more ankle level. Pick Viper instead.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new Dota 2 blog. I’m very much a new player – about 150 games so far – and this is my first ever MOBA.

The idea behind the blog is to create a place where I can write about Dota, and in which I can analyse my games, vent about Things That Annoy Me, and generally muse about heroes, builds and strategies.

Some background about me? I’m 36, so pretty old for a gamer, and grew up with my trusty Spectrum 48k. I played mainly console games until after university (I was amazing at Goldeneye. True fact.) My PC gaming career included six years in thrall to World of Warcraft, which included raiding in vanilla, plus the first three expansions. I ran quite a large guild for about a year, and led hardmode raiding teams in Icecrown Citadel. I then spent a year playing mainly StarCraft 2 (platinum ranked mech terran, from which you can infer that I play the way I like, even if that’s not optimal!), and recently I’ve been playing a lot of Blood Bowl.

If you are particularly interested my old Warcraft blog can be found here.

The reason for the name of the blog is that I almost always play a pure support role – my most played heroes at present are Crystal Maiden, Jakiro and Silencer, and I’ve been expanding recently into Lich. Lots of what I’ll have to say therefore is focussed on the support side of the game.

You can find my match record here. Current solo MMR is about 1750. Group MMR is 2050.