Same (Irish) person using multiple computers doesn't count.

You have all the experience you need, yes, you! Even though you don't think you know enough, you do. Say it with me, YES I CAN CAPTAIN!

In order to form a more perfect union of dota people, I propose we encourage more people to try captaining in our inhouse games. While obviously some (and by some, I mean one) of the usual captains are awesome human beings with good hair, it would, perhpas, be good with a bit variety, so all of us can learn more. I would especially like to see some crazy, but effective strat or compositions that people can come up with.


What do you think?

I agree whole-heartedly. There is a need for some kind of mechanism for encouraging/discouraging certain types of behavior. It's not so much about one-time stuff, as it is about consistent behavior. Everyone can have a bad day afterall.

As far as inhouses go, I would like everyone (myself included) to try to trust their captain more. If the captain has a weird picks or strategy you should try to trust that the captain's vision, instead of giving up or arguing that x pick would have been better. I've been in many games where my team pulled out a win despite people considering the picks terrible. This goes for captains as well, if you don't believe in your team, then you will most likely lose at the first sign of trouble, since you half given up already.

By the way, I've seen you captaining, Kree, and I thought you did a great job, so keep at it.

If you come on mumble the DotaNoobs hive mind might be able to help.

Having been inspired by Moe Joe's next level jungle Doombringer I thought I would this small guide, in honor of his greatness.


At the beginning buy:
Tango, Stout, QB.

If radiant:
Immediatly go to the small camp, and start destroying the trees between the small camp and the hard camp. When done, position yourself below the easy camp so that you can see the hard camp. Eat the big hard camp creep, kill the rest, then get the small camp.

if dire:
Destroy the trees between the small camp and the hard camp. Later destroy the trees below the easy camp, so you can go from the medium, to easy, to hard.


Afterwards follow these rules:

* Never take an Ursa camp unless you are lvl 6+. You can clear it out, by devouring first the samll Ursa, then (after cooldown) devour the large ursa.
* Don't take on the Centaur/Wolf/Troll/Wildkin/Satyr camps unless you devour the big creep unless you are high level.
* Never devour small/medium creeps like Ogre, Kobold, etc unless you are 8+.
* Never use creep abilities unless you are ganking, if you do so, you will slow down your farming/need to buy regen items.
* Get your basilius as your first item and send it immediatly when you can afford it. The mana regen is very much needed.
* Buy and send 1-2 extra sets on tangoes after your basilius. This will prevent any need for going back to get regen. Alternatively, go for a gank, then TP back to base.
* Don't use Scorched earth on hard camps / cent camps. Use it on the small camp and the medium camps.
* Use the QB to cut down as many trees as possible to make it easier to get around the jungle.
* Midas is an extremely good idea. It boosts your exp so that get almost as much as a solo hero, kills creeps quickly, and gives attack speed which boosts your jungling tremendously.
* If you have a good large creep (see the list below) try to kill less tasty medium camps (Golems, Blue Satyrs, etc.) before you devour a large creep that gives worse abilties. This is mainly important earlier on.
* If you have a good creep, Eat the small Ursa first in the Ursa camp, then devour the large on after cooldown. This will mean you take no damage from the big, nasty Ursas, and allows you more time with that good regen/attack speed.


Roshan

* You can easily take on Roshan at around 14 minutes, if you get HotD or Vlads after your Midas. Just make sure you have eaten a Wolf when you do so.
* If you go Midas, Morbid Mask, Medallion (disassemble basilius for the sobi), you can have taken down Roshan at aprox 13 minutes, maybe a bit sooner.



Yummiest creeps priority list for creeping:

1. Centaur (early) / Big Satyr (early) / Wolf (level 5+)
2. Wilkin
3. Troll Warlord / Ursa



Ganks:

* It's difficult to gank early if the lane close to you doesn't have initiating stuns or slows. If so, consider getting boots to land your Centaur stomp.
* Troll Net is probably the best ganking creep, but you probably won't have the 150 mana, unless you forgo devouring a creep.
* Centaur gives a lot of flexibility, it allows you to gank well, but also boosts your jungling early on.
* If you are planning on ganking a lot, get a bottle. This will allow you to control runes, gives you HP for jungling and lots of mana for ganking. This allows you to easily use the troll net for ganking while not slowing down your farm.
* The witch has a 20% slow, which is decent for ganking and it costs no mana to use. (orb effect)
* The the blue satyr in the medium satyr camp has a 100 mana burn for 50 mana. You can eat this creep and completely wreck certain heroes at level 1 by hafling their mana. It has 18 second cooldown, so you can eat, burn, kill medium/small camp, then burn again.
* Urn + Boots is very strong for ganking. If you can get a kill before level 6-7, it's becomes very easy to kill most heroes with Doom + Urn charge.


Benchmarks:

8:30 QB, Stout, Bas, Midas.
12:00 QB, Stout, bas, Midas, Phase, TP. (~5K gold)

Fun fact: once you get past the 10 minutes mark and have midas, you should earn around 630 gold/minute just from jungling.

I've made a new version of my suggested item builds (see the old thread: http://www.dotanoobs.com/forum/thread.php?id=339) and rather than it being buried in my old thread, I thought I'd make a new thread.

To install them, extract them to the "dota" folder under your dota 2 folder.
Something like this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota
Once you've installed them they'll show up when you play a Dota 2 game. Note that this will overwrite the default suggestions (you can backup the folder itembuilds if you want).

If you want to take a quick look at the builds after you've installed them you can use this program to view them:
http://code.google.com/p/d2ric/downloads/detail?name=D2RIC_1.4.2.rar&can=2&q=

You can download it here (v1.3):

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18652/Gambits%20Suggested%20Item%20Builds%20v1.3.zip

Thanks

wait, we have a twitter?

There's a simple reason for that. Gauntlets aren't usually very good on non-strength heroes as a starting item since it gives no damage and no mana, (puck, I think, being the exception) and 3 branches cost the same give the same amount of HP. Wraithbands and Null talismans aren't very good items and take too much item space for too little. For example, an Urn is much, much superior to Bracers, and only cost a little more. Also, most of the time you simply don't have item space for those kind of items. You need: Boots - TP - Wand on almost every hero. That only leaves 3 spaces, so that's 1 utility + 2 components for a big item.

Also note how 3 branches always leads to a magic wand, which is a good item on 90% of the heroes.

I finally finished all my suggested item builds! Hurray!

(TL;DR: New default suggested item builds by me.
See them here: http://imgur.com/a/dZpMv#8.
Download them here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18652/Gambits%20Suggested%20Item%20Builds%20v2.2.PlusScreenshots.zip)

For those who don't know, I redid the default suggested item builds for all the heroes.
The purpose is three-fold. First, to be a guide to newer players, so that they end with items that make a difference instead of merely being decent. Second, to provide a convenient list of all relevant items for players of all skill levels for that particular hero, and lastly, to provide alternative builds to more experienced players, who might like to try new ways of playing a familiar hero.

I removed some of the sillier items, cleaned up the starting items for all heroes, and concentrated on solid items buids that would work in most game (especially inhouses and medium/high level match making games), and complement that particular heroe's playstyle. I added a lot of the more underrepresented items such as Urn of Shadows and Orb of Venom to the heroes they complement, so that more relevant items are given for each hero, while simultaneously removing items that are almost never viable on that hero. I also added alternative builds to most heroes that, rather than being inferior versions, add different capabilities or possibilities with that hero.
In addition to this, I also made a distinction between jungling and lane starting items/builds for all relevant heroes, making it much easier and better for heroes that can both jungle and lane. I've also added different possible builds/starting items where it made sense, for example there are now 2 different starting item builds on Invoker, depending on whether you go Quas or Exort first.

I hope all this add up to more flexible, useful and interesting item suggestions, and I would really appreciate any feedback from any of you, so that they can get even better!
If any of you (noobs and experienced players alike) have any questions about some of the more untraditional item builds, don't hesitate to ask!

You can see screenshots of all the builds online here: http://imgur.com/a/dZpMv#8, or in the zip file, where they are included.

To install them, extract the zip file to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota
They will then override the ones supplied by Valve.

Download them here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18652/Gambits%20Suggested%20Item%20Builds%20v2.2.PlusScreenshots.zip

I'm in!

I've tried out the various boots, and I almost always prefer tranquil. In the early game, tranquil boots are the cheapest, and you need your Vanguard/Hood/Dagger as soon as possible. In addition, having extra regen is awesome for jungling and tanking creep waves, and allows you to be more get more farm. If you need mana, I usually go Soul Ring, which alleviates most mana issues.
If you are laning, and you already have a RoH, and a lane partner/team mates that need mana, Arcane Boots can be a good alternative, but will delay survivability items. Treads give extra survivability, but Hood/Vanguard/Dagger is much better early game. Late game, if you have an AC or another DPS item, Treads are a decent choice to deal more damage. Phase is often my choice after I've disassembled my tranquil boots as it gives lots of mobility, however, keep in mind, that you could save that 1K gold, and get your dagger that much sooner.

I've been really enjoying the inhouses these past weeks, especially with all the new people have come lately. However, I feel we can make the inhouses experience even better than it currently is, especially for some of the newer players. So here is my personal suggestions, and I hope you wil all join and make your opinions heard.

* Ask too much, rather than too little. Communication is key, especially if you are new. Lack of skill is never frustrating, but lack of communcation can be. Don't know what items to get as carry? Just ask. Don't know how to stack or pull? Just ask. Would you like a gank or a help for push? Again, just ask.

* Games are usually better, if each team has a captain. It's been my experience that people generally have a better time, when there is one (more or less) experienced player who try to direct the battle. That player doesn't need to be Dendi, just to have an idea and know how to execute it. This gives alleviates the too-many cooks syndrome with multiple experienced players (We should do X! No, Y! What? Clearly We should Z!) and gives new players a clear idea of what to do.

* Be inspired by competitive games, but don't copy them. Many of the competitive picks or strategies only work because every player knows that they are supposed to do. A solo offlane Tidehunter can work in competitive games, but if the person playing tidehunter has never played solo offlane versus a dual lane, he's going to have a horrible time because neither intuitive or easy. My point is that doing more sophisticated strategies can be rewarding, but the chance of failure is high, so take that into account.

* Try to coordinate items. It's always a good idea to discuss who gets courier, wards and mekansm.

* Read about the chinese farm distrubtion system and learn it's implications. (link here: http://www.dotatalk.com/fdp/). Essentially, some heroes need farm more than other's, and carry-style heroes usually have priority. This also means that as a support in an organized game, you will be quite poor unless you gank or pull well.

* The object is to have fun! Wanna do some awesome, weird combo like Kunkka, Sand King, go for it! Wanna try to jungle Luna or Doombringer, sure go ahead. Just remember to tell your team mates and discuss it with them.

I'll try to contact him

Fixed

Upvoted all three (first one has an "return" too much)

I think phase and force staff by 12 minutes might be a tad optimistic. That's approximately 4300 gold by 12 minutes. If you last hit every single creep you have around 4350. So, assuming your opponents aren't missing both arms and/or crucial parts of their brains, that's going to be difficult to do.

Already done. Will update with screenshots later.

I was thinking that we might do guides on heroes or aspects of dota. This might be a fun way for us to learn new things as well as introducing new players to our community.
We should probably try to avoid subjects that already been covered by everyone else (warding, pulling, etc), so maybe specific hero guides or stuff like team compostions or item flexibility?

We will need someone to take care of the video part (light video editing, nothing too fancy) and 1-2 people to record the voice part.
I've already got some ideas on a guide to jungling Lycan post 6.75 (when the weaker wolves were introduced) and have several replays ready to be used if we want to go that route.
What are your thoughts?

Statistics of games are kinda useless for determining what's good for multiple reasons.
First of all, the vast majority of all games are played at a relatively low MMR, i.e. the normal skill bracket. Thus, what wins games, statistically, is not necessarily what's good or powerful, but rather what is easy to execute. For example, Lich's win rate is ~50% simply because he is easy to understand and has a powerful ultimate even if underfarmed. Anti-Mage or Morphling, despite previously being extremely powerful, only won around 45% of the time due to them being difficult to play.
That being said, disablers and initiators are always good in any skill bracket. So to sum up, if you want to win, pick heroes that you know how to play, and that are easy to execute well for you.