Things I learned from Pro Players

Kicking off me running a weekly blog, I have decided to start with the game that has kept me addicted for 6.3k hours and counting. In this blog, I take a look at 2pro replays and an educational video to discuss things I learned by watching them. I will be alternating between a few topics from week to week, but let me know if you guys like this kind of content.

First game: 5281274000 |Player: Alliance.33 |Hero: Mars

Starting with my favorite dota hero, 33 showed me a couple of things I either didn’t know or didn’t consider when playing him. For starters, he started with an orb of venom in his starting items. While not conventional to start with as he doesn’t gain effects from hitting heroes multiple times like Ursa, Slark, or Monkey King, he does have an above-average attack range to constantly proc the orb slow. Combined with a Batrider pos 4, and he was able to do a lot of harass with just auto-attacks in an otherwise hard lane, being against bloodseeker which is one of the better carries against mars.

Next, I’ve noticed many pros starting with God’s rebuke at level 1 now that it has a movement speed slow on it. I tried this out in my last 3 mars games and it was fine. I can see it being more useful than spear stun in some lane matchups, but I’ve been very accustomed to having spear level 1 so it did feel a bit awkward at first. Overall, both skills kinda do the same thing in different ways, being a way to secure last hits and harass at the same time, as well as pose kill threat. Rebuke just has a strong slow rather than a stun. I’ll need to see more replays to see in what cases specifically God’s rebuke helps secure kills.

While 33s laning stage was very standard, he did a gigabrain play. At ~6:30 the catapult wave comes to his tower and most people would just draw it back to their tower and CS under the tower. However, 33 drags the wave around the secret shop. The cart doesn’t really follow him since it’s night time, so the tower instantly kills the catapult. This results in about 100 less damage on his tower from catapult hits, which may seem small but it quickly adds up.

This is a fairly standard play for higher-level players, but especially on a hero like mars, tanking for your catapult leads to towers being taken MUCH faster once the carry is forced out of the lane.

Interestingly, 33 builds treads rather than phase boots. While not the optimal boot for mars, I can see treads’ bonus strength being helpful against the likes of bloodseeker and void spirit. Phase’s armor and bonus movement speed is still preferred in most cases though. To compensate, he takes the 8 armor talents at level 15. This results in 200 extra health (strength treads), minimal amounts of extra magic resistance and health regen, 25 attack speed, 10 damage, and 4 extra armor compared to phase. Whereas taking phase and the attack damage talent is 4 less armor, a much better active for mars, and 43 extra damage which can apply to your crit. It’s hard to say which is better, and I haven’t tried treads out yet, but it’s still really cool to see pros adapt their builds to their opponents and try new things out.

Something I know but some mars players who are less experienced might not, is that arena is perfectly good for pickoffs. Many people want to save it for large team fights, but it’s low cooldown (for an ultimate) and low amounts of counterplay to it in the mid-game allows it to be a perfect pick-off tool. 33 frequently used arena to solo kill the pos 4 tiny during the more static parts of the game.

This game wasn’t too hard for 33 and his team, but it was still a great replay for me to learn a couple of efficiency tricks and to reconsider my early game build on mars.

Replay 2: 5274485322 |Player: Liquid.Miracle-| Hero: Riki

If you’ve stacked with me recently, you know that most of the times I’ve gone safelane, I’ve picked Riki and had pretty good success so far. Riki has a stable item build and while he did lose his invisibility until level 6, icefrog made his laning EXTREMELY good, with 66 base damage before considering backstab at level 6, him gaining 30 movement speed over 2 patches, and lots of mobility packed into his kit now.

Miracle plays very aggressively in lane, frequently harassing instead of sitting idly on the creep wave. Once the position 4 leaves and miracle is in a 1v1, after the mars kills the creeps and walks up to the next wave he sneaks behind and harasses, or even kills mars straight up.

Riki is a great carry at diving towers for kills, with invis to disjoint tower shots, effectively 3 mobility skills with the new tricks of the trade, and also having invulnerability while attacking with tricks of the trade.

Miracle goes for 4 wraith bands, which is a large amount for most heroes who usually want 2. But Riki doesn’t fill item slots as quickly as other heroes and gains even more damage from agility than most other agility heroes with backstab.

Unlike most carries, miracle doesn’t idly farm the safelane once he has secured his lane and established dominance. He considers joining or TPing to every teamfight since his hero is insanely strong with just treads and 4 wraith bands.

Once he has diffusal, he searches for kills and only farms when the enemy plays scared. After diffusal he goes back for a battlefury, which seems absurd on most heroes. However, on Riki, it makes sense for a few reasons. His diffusal power spike is large, but he is still playing the carry position so he needs to be able to farm creeps. Battlefury can also be a good fighting item since his tricks of the trade attacks can cleave as well. He was also against a brood which makes it the best item to get at that point, but many other high-level players go second item battlefury on Riki. As long as you aren’t ending the game soon, I think battlefury is great on Riki, even as a second item.

Really the rest of the game is just miracle doing Riki things, including getting 20+ kills and feeding when the enemy has a random sentry placed down. The main thing is making sure you are not the hero to get initiated on in fights since Riki is very squishy. This replay was the main reason I got into playing carry Riki in the last week and wanted to highlight a few things.

Dota theory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJZrZzsxoE Youtuber: Jenkins

Any other fellow Dota Alchemy fans will know Jenkins well by now. On his personal youtube channel this week he posted a video about how to win lanes in dota, even when your hero sucks in the current patch. As his example, he loves playing pudge but pudge is notoriously a garbage hero right now, to the point that it’s almost griefing if you pick it. He talks about making sure you know what your lane is (Pressure, Normal, or Cheese lanes) and making sure you act accordingly. I’ve won a lot more lanes recently by just making sure I analyze before the game starts who I am laning against. Most times in lower brackets you can turn any lane into a pressure lane by being better than the opponent. In 1 game I had recently, I played mars and got bodied in lane by a PA and disruptor lane, which is really dirty by the way and you should feel bad if you pick disruptor. Anyways, rather than continuing to feed, I instead cheesed the lane by cutting and jungling rather than trying to salvage the lane. Along with item build adaptations, I was able to turn a 0–6–1 start on mars (lava feeder OMEGALUL) to 5–10–21 by playing more conservatively. I linked the video above, and while there is a heavy emphasis on offlane and safelane carry roles, I suggest that everyone watches it learn about the different laning styles you will need to employ in dota.

Lastly, I got a request from the big man with guns himself, ELEM DOTA.

Well, funnily enough, I only had school for 2 days this week because coronavirus is currently plaguing California, but for things, I accomplished this week. I’ve been unusually on-time with assignments and not saved everything until the last minute. Since there is a virus outbreak, I’ve been more responsible with e-mailing teachers and responding more frequently so that I actually know what my homework is. The last thing I can think of that I accomplished was actually remembering to do this blog and I hope to make it a habit and not a chore (been good so far!).

For stuff I could’ve done better, I am still trying to remember to wash my hands frequently to keep myself healthy. It’s hard going from washing my hands twice a day (yikes) to 7–8 times a day, but I try. I haven’t been good with my attitude towards my parents tbh. My poor mom tries to prevent me from being a NEET and I just want to do things my way. Lastly, I’ve done a bad job of eating healthy recently. I’m going to try to incorporate more fruit into my meals every day (and only fruit because vegetables are bad (: ).

Thanks for reading this week’s blog. I am going to be posting blogs about a few other topics every single Thursday, so stay tuned for that. If you have any comments, questions, or criticisms you have about my blogs or just me in general, feel free to send me a PM.