Hello all. I've been lurking visiting the DotaNoobs channel and mumble for a few weeks just learned that there was a forum as well. I've had the opportunity to play with some excellent Doobs and I wanted to thank you for being a generally fun and positive community.

I'm quite new to Dota 2 but I'm kind of an obsessive learner and have come a long way in the past few weeks (thanks, in part, to fellow Doobs). I'm reasonably good at taking criticism so if I'm doing something wrong (or talking to much) just let me know. You won't break my heart.

I like playing support characters. I like the idea of making it easier/possible for the team to reach its full potential. However, I recognize that a lot of people also like playing support so I've resigned to the fact that I need to learn to play a carry or a ganker. Also, there seem to be a lot of core carry skills (last hitting, denying, etc) that I need to work on.

I'm going to go read all the Doobs hero guides now.

My question is about how to keep up (in terms of level and $$) as a support after the laning phase winds down. How do you, as a support, keep up?

This is something I learned from a match last night. We got off to a good start but in the mid game I was badly under-farmed. I think it's not wrong for a support to be 1-2 levels behind but I'm generally having trouble staying within a few levels of the carries. Using last night's game as an example: (I was playing ES) I had my arcane boots fairly quickly, had some wards up, flying courier bought, and the rest of the team was doing well. However, I felt that if I tried to grab an empty lane for some solo XP and last hits, I was an easy target for a 2 man gank. I didn't have the right items to efficiently farm the jungle and I felt like I needed some more items (blink dagger) to contribute to team fights/gank. That situation is one I'm having trouble recovering from. I finished the game 5 or so levels below the average. I typically have a better game than that but I still have the "always-behind-in-mid-game" problem.

What do you guys do, as supports, to catch back up after "sacrificing" some of your early gold and xp for your support duties? Do you grab a teammate and run around keeping the lanes pushed out? Do you just follow the carries, play conservatively, and get some assists?

Thanks!

-Eight

I am a chemist. I actually just turned in my dissertation and have my defense within the next few weeks. Before I started graduate school I was a research technician and a swimming/triathlon coach.

Thanks. In this department, our defenses are mostly just a formality but I'm still at stress level maximum. Not for much longer though.

Haha, yeah, I probably had bad fissures as often as I had good ones. I was way behind in terms of gold. I barely got the blink dagger. I also died too often (because trying to farm vacant lanes) which wasted a lot of gold. I just kind of wanted to know what support people think when laning is winding down.

I've been thinking: "Keep wards up, and farm all the things in vacant lanes." I saw that XP going to waste as lane creeps kill each other and I thought that was my chance to free-farm.

It seems like I should be thinking: "I keep wards up and stick with a teammate and try to contribute to ganks/teamfights/towers while not getting killed."

here's my home computer that I built about a year and a half ago.

AMD Phenom II X2 555BE @ 3.2 GHz (unlocked to x4)
ASUS M4N98TD EVO AM3
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600 Watt
2x Barracuda 320 GB HD (RAID 0)
Windows 7 64-bit
8GB A-DATA DDR3 @ 1333 (7-7-7-20, 1T)
2x GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB (SLI) <-- running w/ a very mild OC that I can't remember
Plain old Antec Three Hundred case
“Monitor” is a Sony Bravia, 1080p, 60 Hz

I know, the GPUs are old but they work so well I can't really justify upgrading. They can still max-out the games that I play most often. Should have gone with a more boss PSU for future upgrade-ability.

I also have a 13" Acer TimelineX for "work". It has a GT 540M and is amazingly competent for such a compact laptop. Gotta work to keep it cool, though.

http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/

^It's a accuracy/speed typing game kind of like "Typing of the Dead". It runs in a browser. Bonus: When you play it, it sounds like you are getting work done.

For a Dota fix, www.purgegamers.com is my favorite. He had lots of stuff in his archive and streams professional games as well as PUB games for most of the day. I often leave his stream on and listen to the audio. It's like listening to baseball on the radio. (Radio was this thing before the internet - it was basically low bandwidth, super long range free wi-fi that only carried one audio stream per block of frequencies).

Also: www.smbc-comics.com, www.feywinds.com (you know you like nerdy, fantasy stuff), www.sinfest.net (SFW), maddox.xmission.com, www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation (funny computer/console game reviews)

tl;dr - I can't get Dota 2 to work with SLI. The game is horribly unstable and choppy (and it usually crashes at the splash screen) unless I disable SLI. Do any of you have it working SLI? If so, would you let me know what your system specs and settings are? Thanks much.

Long version - I updated my Nvidia drivers a few months ago (right before I got Dota 2) and, apparently since then I've been playing all my games with SLI disabled (updating resets some of your preferences). I probably would have noticed the performance difference if I had been playing anything other than Dota 2 and Dustforce. I installed the Diablo III beta yesterday, realized SLI had been disabled for months, facepalmed, and turned it on the fix the "problem". All's good, Diablo looks great, yay. I fire up Dota 2, start a game with a buddy, and get a glorious BSOD (at least I managed to buy the courier first) and an abandon (nnuuuuuuuu!). The problem is definitely with SLI and Dota 2 since everything else is perfectly stable with SLI and even Dota 2 works fine if I disable SLI. Luckily I can run Dota 2 quite well on one card as long as I turn off AA (tragic).

My system specs:

AMD Phenom II X2 555BE @ 3.2 GHz (unlocked to x4)
ASUS M4N98TD EVO AM3
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600 Watt
2x Barracuda 320 GB HD (RAID 0)
Windows 7 64-bit
8GB A-DATA DDR3 @ 1333 (7-7-7-20, 1T)
2x GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB (SLI)
Plain old Antec Three Hundred case
“Monitor” is a Sony Bravia, 1080p, 60 Hz

If any of you have this game running with SLI, I would like to know what your settings and system specs are. Thanks.

What specifically do you need from the BSOD? You don't want the whole crash dump, do you? Let me know and I'll try to find it without deliberately triggering the BSOD again.

Drivers are 296.10 (current).

"strange part is that diablo 3 runs fine"

Yeah, everything else runs fine. Crysis, Dungeon Sidge, Batman, etc. I think it's specific to Dota 2. None of the SLI settings (alt frame rendering 1, 2, wahtever) seem to be compatible. I've found some forum posts where other people have this problem with Dota 2 but it seems like there must be a lot of people running this game with SLI or there would be way more bitching than there is. It might be an issue with the drivers supporting "older" cards. (I need to get a normal system next time. My game PC is SLI, my laptop has F-ing Nvidia Optimus...) It's not the end of the world. I can set up a custom profile for Dota 2 that runs it on one card and it's all maxed out except for AA. I'd just like to be able to use my system the way it was designed to be used...

"your latest driver version may have a conflict with rendering a full screen application that probably sets itself as full screen control,"

Yeah, this has been a problem for a while with Nvidia drivers. I found a fix for it a while back. There is a place in your Nvidia control panel where you can force "content type reported to display" to "desktop programs". This solves a whole bunch of SLI and Vsync problems - I think by forcing fullscreen control to the OS. It'll try the windowed fix and report back.

I was doing some MM last night and for our last game we ended up with some horrible Single Draft picks. Three of us had nothing but carries. I had Alchemist, Outworld Destroyer, and Void. Looking back, the opposing team had only one intelligence hero... if I were a better player I would have gone OD and destroyed them. Instead, I went support Alchemist. I don't recommend it but it's not absolutely horrible. Things I learned:

tl;dr - Alchemist needs farm. He's not an ideal support at all but he's not the worst. He is quite tanky so at least you can roam and place wards without too much worry about getting isnta-ganked. He has kind of a lot of utility. His ultimate makes him pretty self-sufficient, allowing you to avoid being low health or OOM and running back to base. He has a good (but risky) stun and acid spray is excellent for counter pushing and good for pushing.

long version

With your Ult and a Stout Shield, you can jungle pretty effectively and safely. Acid spray has good utility here too.

Unstable Concoction is probably a better followup stun than initiation move. The timer over Alch's head is really obvious and opponents will just wait for it to run out before they initiate. You can move, attack, teleport, whatever while the ability is channeling and you're probably going to have to since people will run or focus you when they see the timer. The damage is significant early game but becomes pretty trivial later on. Once you start the ability up, you are committed - stuns and disables will not interrupt the channeling effect. If you get chain stunned or can't find a target, you're going to eat your own stun. If it's clear you are going to stun yourself, run to a tower where at least you'll be safer. You CANNOT use the ability on allies, enemy creeps, neutrals, Roshan, etc. You CAN throw it at a BKB/magic immune enemy hero just to avoid the self-stun. The stun won't go through magic immunity, though.

Acid Spray a good counter-pushing ability. Throw it just in front of your tower and the other team will be reluctant to stand/teamfight in it. It does a good job on lane creeps too. It works similarly for pushing. Throw it where defenders want to stand or where lane creeps spawn if you are 'raxing. It does physical damage but for teamfights its probably more valuable for it's armor reduction than for the DoT. The cooldown is only about 20 seconds so in a teamfight you can possibly use it twice.

If you are playing Alch as support (why?), think twice about getting goblin's greed since you won't benefit that much from it if you aren't getting many last hits. Early stats may be a better choice as Alch's stat growth is really bad. It may make sense to pick up Greed later on when you're getting reasonable gold from pushing or counter-pushing. If you have a lane or are neutral farming, this skill makes a lot of sense.

Your Ult is up almost all the time (lasts 25 seconds, 45 second cooldown) and it will regenerate more than enough mana to pay for itself so you can use it like a Clarity Potion/Healing Salve or for the speed boost (to escape, etc). There's no reason to be running around low health if your Ult is available. The mana cost skyrockets as you level it up (50/100/150) so watch out for that - bank enough mana to use your ult.

If you see me on steam, let me know and I'll do a bot game with you. I am also teh noobsauce and there are a lot of things I need to practice. My cousin just got his beta invite, is about your age, and needs some bot practice before he starts playing matches.

There is a Dota Noobs channel in Dota 2 and there is a steam group as well. The people in this group are really great. I can't believe they're from The Internet...

How do you guys feel about the Avast virus scanner? I've been using it ever since the Eset prices went up. I feel like it's comparable to Eset but would appreciate a more informed perspective. Thanks.

In the Pacific Northwest (where it rains for several months straight) umbrellas are seriously out of fashion and waterproof jackets are in. We usually assume people carrying umbrellas are visiting or are otherwise new to the area.

I would recommend Asus or Sager. These are generally very well made and somewhat underpriced. I've had really good experiences with Asus service.

In general, I buy from Tigerdirect or Newegg. I purchased my previous (Asus) laptop from http://www.gentechpc.com. They sometimes have very good deals and have great customer service.

IMO, get a 13" or so and get a solid state drive. If you actually have to move it a lot, you'll appreciate not having a large/heavy laptop. Solid State Drives are amazing and they're finally at the price point where you can get a reasonable capacity at a reasonable cost. (~130 GB for ~$200) You know what's lame? Waiting for someone's laptop to start up at the beginning of a meeting. You know what looks pro? When your laptop boots in less than 20 seconds, comes out of sleep in less than 5, and hardly makes any noise. Get a SSD.


I have this Acer now and I'm really happy with it as a work and travel-gaming laptop.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-3830TG-Subnotebook.54641.0.html

If you can deal with its little quirks, it's a good buy. For work stuff it's perfect and the price is right. It will max Dota 2 out at 1080p and you can probably find one for less than $700. With the money you save over a really high performance laptop, you can mostly build a gaming desktop or at least get a nice monitor.

Pros -
Size, weight, looks (professional but not flashy)
Nice keyboard
The Nvidia 540M is pretty impressive. You can play almost anything at 1080p (with no anti-aliasing). I played a bunch of Space Marine and L4D2.
Long (6+ hours) battery life... but not that long if you're gaming.
Impressive cooling when not gaming. The fan doesn't run (or isn't audible) unless you're playing a game.

Cons -
The display is kind of dull. Fine for office work, not that great for movies or games or media work. It's decent but there are a lot of laptops with nicer displays.
No built-in CD drive (a lot of ultrabooks don't have them).
You might need a cooling pad ($25) for extended gaming. The 540M apparently generates a lot of heat.
You pretty much have to run Throttlestop when gaming because of some of the idiosyncrasies of this machine- it throttles the CPU when it doesn't need to but you can override it.
You have to set up custom Nvidia profiles for most games since the "optimus" thing isn't always smart enough to tell when you're running a game - it sometimes tries to game on the Intel GPU which is obviously not effective and sometimes will not allow the game to launch. Again, you just have to set up a profile in the Nvidia control panel. This is a common problem with Nvidia Optimus. But if you don't like tinkering then don't get this laptop.

hella - This word is horrible and should never be said unless referring to one the few things actually named "Hella" (such as municipalities in Iceland or something).

I realize this is a common gripe but: I can't stand the texting and internet abbreviations. "can u play dota2 2nite?" Eww.



Ha!

I don't usually ever play Invoker because I tend to get flustered when shit goes down. However, I saw a video where Purge practices with him in -wtf mode (no cooldowns). It seems like a good way to get an idea of how spells actually work (delays and such) as well as quickly memorizing them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oef8BmFrI0w

The Invoker playstyle reminds me of the game Magicka - except in Magicka you have 8 elements as opposed to 3. It's a seriously underrated game.