General Tips & Tricks

I'm making a list of "general" things to help you find builds, item builds, little things to give you an edge creeping or dueling ECT. Anything suggested that I feel is on topic and not a "maybe" type thing, I will add. THIS IS NOT A "I USED THIS AND WON< KEWL!!!!11one!!1" thread. this is for information only, for newer members to enhance their playing.

Items:
Boots of speed! A lot of newer players often overlook these, for only 400G you can move much faster. I even get these when I use timmy and Siren, they will allow you to creep faster and pvp better!

Power set/Set armor! Whenever you are trying a new hero build and have no idea what items to get, you should usually get these first. For their price, they are a couple of the best items in the game.

Weapons: You should not get weapons early unless you are very good with a specific build that calls for it. your +135 damage axe for the first duel is worthless if you have slow move speed, 4 armor, and 800 HP. Save these for later if you want them.

Fire Orb: Great farming tool, the splash is awesome, get exceptional orb as fast as you can, then creep with it for a while, you will outfarm anyone else.

Ice orb: The overlooked stat on this is the attack speed. It gives 10% bonus attack speed, that is good at low levels. Thats 10 agi worth of attack speed, while slowing an opponent. Great for early pvp!

Light orb: A great orb for slowing, if your opponent has any spell they cast on themselves, get one. If you have hex, darkness, or any spell that lasts for a duration on an opponent, dont use one of these.

Stats:
Attack Speed: The most important of any stat, it doesnt matter your hero type. Attack speed is one of the most important things you can get both for creeping and pvp. A str tank with 300 damage and 5K hp but only 50 agility will lose to a bad player with decent agi. 1agi=1% attack speed. 400%=max.

Armor: Almost as important as attack speed. early on, the best stat in the game. For general builds, try to get a lot of this fast, aim for 10 armor by level 10, 20 armor by 15, and 40 armor by 22 or so. More is nice, but less will really hurt you.

HP regen: Most newer players dont even consider this a stat. Quick math, you have 6 HP regen and a duel lasts for 30 seconds, how much extra HP do you get? 6X30=180. 180 extra HP isnt bad, since 6 regen is obtainable by the first duel! Combined with armor this can make you unkillable!

General Skill Tips:
You want 1 late game skill: A single skill that you will put no more than 1 point into until late game. Soul burn, hex, terrify, ect are great end game skills.

You want 1 farming skill: You will level this skill every chance you get! It is your primary creep killer. Most of the offensive spells fit this, but skills like endurance, acid rain, and summons can fill this.

You're 3rd skill your "all game" skill: A skill that is helpful all game. Hex, spiked armor, befuddle, and things of that sort. You level this when you cant level your farming spell.

ULT: If you follow the above set up, your ult almost doesnt matter! you can use it to reflect your playstyle. If you want to level more, get a farming ult, if you love pvp, get ava or demon, if you love tanking, get reinc!

General Hero Tips:
Ranged heroes with skills like bash, crit, ect are considered "spells" avatar and things of that nature will block them.

Ranged heroes have slower base attack than melee heroes. This makes their max attack slower also.

Melee heroes crits/bash chances aren't considered spells.

Agility heroes have a slower base attack than other heroes.

Ranged int heroes have a faster base attack than other ranged heroes.

Cool "Tricks"
3-4 seconds before a duel cast rejuv on yourself near the shrines in base. You will start the duel with a rejuv on. (this works with frenzy, frost armor, and other spells of that nature)

Own the middle 2 creep spawns, if you control more creeps to farm than your opponent, you win.

Focus on killing creeps a lower level than you, you will earn gold faster. Make a pattern or order in which you go to creep spawns, so by the time you make it around, your starting place has creeps 2 levels lower than you.

Do not be afraid to Gank (kill) your opponent in the field! Even if it is cheap, they got low HP, you got storm bolt, kill them and take the extra 400 gold!

If you have an early game build (nova/ww/juv/ava) then dont let the game last until end game. Kill them fast and shut them down before you lose.

If you have a late game build make sure you get extra move speed. Do not allow yourself to be ganked. If you survive to end game, you will win. Don't give up on yourself, ive seen many people be 0-8 or 0-9 and come back and win!

1.if you chose a ranged hero you can use this trick.
after you buy a greater fire orb attack nearby creep and run back maybe 300 or 400 distance attack and repeat, you will take less damage from the creep and able to farm abit longer because they will all retreat back to their original position afterwards.

2. use potions, it may seem like waste of gold to some but buying potions and creeping will really help you gain levels, also in extreme mode if you remain in same spot after you cleared bunch of creep normally you would have to go back to base to heal after such an ordeal and by the time you come back you will have to fight against full mobs again, however if you have a healing potion you will be able to remain on same spot and simply wait and kill creeps one by one as they pop up. (if you wait for them to pop up as mob it usally spawns about 5-6 creeps, but if you stay in that spot and wait for creep to spawn you will be able to kill creeps w/o taking any serious damage because they will pop up one by one and later two or three by three,)
NOTE: IF YOU DO THIS THE MAP WILL ACTUALLY SUMMON MORE MONSTER IN THAT SPOT, AND IF YOU KILL FAST ENOUGH SOMETIMES CREEPS KEEPS ON POPPING UP AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO KILL THEM W*O TAKING MUCH DAMAGE AT ALL BECAUSE YOU ARE ONLY FACING FEW OF THEM AT A TIME INSTEAD OF A WHOLE MOB.

I like the port blink tricks myself

Glorn if I can I would like to add Animation Canceling to this list.

Animation Canceling is by far the easiest thing to do yet I noticed that few players actually do it including a few who are in our clan. When Im talking about Animation Canceling what Im talking about is spell and item spell animation canceling. Stop being an idiot and wasting a good deal of your spell, or items ability. Dont stand there for a long time flinging your arms about, or standing still looking at your hero flashing a cool color.

Examples: Magic Barrage, Vampiric Soul, Stun Feild, Super Sonic Ring. All of these can have there times reduced to where you not wasting time by simply hitting the SHIFT KEY and then issueing another command usually attack. Right clicking works to but shift works the best.

Now look at the hot keys in this game.

Z, X, C, V, B where is the shift key located? right next to Z there is no reason you should have troubles taking advantage of this. What hot key is the attack order? Its A where is A? Its on top of Z omg magic huh?

So lets say you have the skill build including Vampiric and Stun Feild

Your in a duel.

Lets say the hero runs up to you. Hit X followed by shift and then Z followed by shift and right click the hero or hit A and click. I just saved you up to 5 seconds of animation time wasting.

Now what would happen if you dont cancel. Well you waste about the first 3-4 seconds of vamp, and stun feild well you will stun them but not get a single attack off on early levels. By doing this trick you get atleast 1-2 attacks off on stun feild before theyre unstunned and you will waste only 1 second of vamp on animation.

the only thing that has not been said is move speed wins games

nice advice. I would usually just mix power set and set armor as soon as I could, but youre actually stronger with them separately.

Its not just those items it holds true for most of the items in the game. Just dont get too worried about not combining slots. About when your trying to kill bosses is when you want some open slots so start combining your items before you do the elements or archons dont be that guy who has to drop his 30k item on a peon just so you can grab an archon puzzle only to wind up ganked and killed. Trust me some may laugh at that but Ive seen it happen countless times.

Generally, as far as item slots go, I keep boots of speed as my empty slot. I drop them to buy a potion for duel, or to grab an elemental item, or archon drop. Other than that, with exception to the first duel or two (Where i may use additional consumables) I try to keep 5 items of equal value in my inventory.

A big mistake people make also is having all 6 slots full; but having 2 items worth 2000, 3 items worth 8000, and 1 item worth 30000. Especially agility heroes, rushing their ring of masterful shielding or ring of the speed demon. they usually fall into one of these 2 downfalls, then get 2 shot by nukes.

ooooooohhhhhhh
lol i do just that ring of speed demon is what i get first when i play agi.
By reading this and other posts in the site, ive actually won a lot more matches now.
Really good advice, here. Thanks everyone!

@Ignaciorocks Yup. Tips and Tricks rock. They prevent my signature from happening quite a bit.

haha true that