Hi!

I'm Koppen from Singapore.
I played Dota before there even were couriers, but stopped thereafter. Back then it was not as competitive.
I haven't played with too many heroes, mostly supports. (Lich, CM, Lion, Centaur, PL, Clinkz)
I've got the basics down, but am very slow on farming and get a little lost on what to do especially when we're behind.
I've already started playing some games on TS. My mic on my laptop is current broken, so I'll try to get the fixed soon.

Hoping to actually have fun playing dota and not get raged on, so its great to find a community like this. Really keen on improving my game, so would be glad to get on a coaching team or something.

I would love to get on one of these teams. Is there a schedule on when these happen?

I'm a developer, so I did what I did best: Google. Haha.
I'm not on reddit though. I've witnessed first hand its impact on productivity.

Its 6AM for me haha. I'm not that crazy about dota. Could we have it like 2 hours later? 8AM is alright for me, cos I have something on at 7AM.

To help out with organization of timings,

I'm UTC +8. I'd mostly be free on weekends. On weekdays, either really early or late (EST 9pm+ or 9am+ respectively)

Hmm I counted wrongly. Its 8am for me. Yea I can probably make it this week.

is this still on?

Thoughts:

I think a group of 5 players with low/no experience in a pub is a bad idea. Once we end up going behind, (which will probably occur if we lose out during laning), without real communication or a strong player leading the charge, we'll be steam rolled after with no return + nothing will really be learned in the process.

Maybe playing bots is a solution, but I think it'll still be a situation of blind leading the blind.

Other than playing pubs/bots, I think some of us would really benefit from watching some videos online/reading some guides. I'm not sure how its like for the rest, but personally, I've done that and am aware of some of these basics and try my best to put it in practice. But typically end up forgetting about them when in-game/under higher stress situations. So I'm not sure what its like for the rest of us - either they are not aware of the basics or are like me, forgetting them due to stress.

I totally agree with the lack of communication part. After being outlaned, we definitely could have put up a better fight with better communication.

Also agreeing with the lack of thought/strategy going into hero selection.

We probably need to put some thought into how to organize this here on out. So far, most of my best learning in-game has been with an experienced player who's competent enough to play his own game and friendly/bothered to correct my mistakes along the way. Not sure if our current set-up (5 new players) is the best way to go. We'll see.

Thanks Skyop for organizing.

I was not aware of the match tonight, only found out after I woke Need more of a heads up if the match is around EST 7PM. Hope you guys had fun!

I'm actually not keen on Captain's mode. I don't feel that either one of us newer players are well acquainted enough with all the heroes to do that. We're already having troubles fulfilling our own roles as is. I personally only know a handful heroes decently well (i.e. played more than 4 games), and tried maybe another handful more once/twice. I know we eventually have to learn it, but now's not the time yet I feel.

@00Steve: I don't think it was that much of just being a melee hero. You definitely over pushed there on many occasions on the weekend especially for melee, mostly leading to taking lots of unnecessary hits, eventually deaths. I warded their camp so they couldn't pull for sure. All you had to do was wait for the creep line to push towards our tower and I could harass them away and you would have last hits. Remember, I gave you all my regen too. You probably needed to be a little patient. Its my bad for not communicating that either cos I thought you knew what you were doin. Also my quick chat hot key was messed up, so I couldn't ask you get back easily. We didn't communicate much, so that was crucial too.

@fallenelf: I'm guessing Miggly played with you guys(higher bracket)? Like I've expressed before, I find that I learn more from that. Been clocking in quite a few games with Zombie Bunny. But doing 5-stack from these are very dangerous, cos the weaker ones might just end up feeding all the way as they've singled you out as the weaker one. But definitely still a learning experience as long the higher bracket guy is there dishing out advice along the way - even with new unfamiliar heroes. (oei! remember to chakra, your cooldown is up) Also, did you get those thoughts penned down on our matches posted somewhere? Thanks a lot for doing this.

@Skyop: Again, thanks for organizing, waiting on more concrete plans.

Ah ok. I confused Captains with Captains mode lol. But the same argument stands I guess, I'd prefer a more experience captain at the start.

Its gonna 3AM for me so I'll be missing it too

Long post alert

I think I have a general grasp on supporting. Here are some of the guidelines I've gathered over all my reading/playing/watching. Skyop, this might be helpful for you if you're really just asking for basics of support. The other skilled players feel free to correct and mistakes.
- Buy courier/wards. You really don't have an excuse of not getting one or another. i.e. get Courier if no one got it yet, get wards if courier is taken, or if you know for sure you need to ward.
- Salve, typically used on a carry you're babysitting. Remember that salve gets cancelled by attacks, so don't salve while your carry is up front creeping/susceptible to enemy attack
- Clarity Potions if you're an MP deficient hero and/or need to spam your abilities early
- Ward up runes for rune control. Try to ward at positions that provide cover from potential ganks too. If you're offlane, ward the enemy NC camp to prevent them from pulling. If they have a jungler, ward for potential ganks.
- Towards the later part of the game, ward the cliff depending on whether you're winning or losing.
- If your team tries to gank, and you see the enemy backing up really early, they probably got you warded, so go counter ward.
- Don't auto-attack - pushes creep wave unnecessarily. Don't fight for CS if your carry is there.
- Stack camps.
- Pull when the creep wave is going too far away for your carry to safely gain experience. Use pull as an opportunity to gain experience/CS if no one else is trying to get it from the NCs.
- Deny your creeps to prevent unnecessary pushing of creep wave/keeping creep equilibrium.


I think that's in general for laning (excluding ganks). I feel like I got this part grasped well. In teamfights
- If you have initiating spells, signal to your team mates, go in cast it, and back the hell away.
- If not, use your support items, use your abilities after the fight is initiated, and go on the squishiest/disabler
However, here are my main questions:

1. In principle all the above sounds great, but it starts to go out of the window when you get ganked/outlaned horrible during laning phase. I understand in part sometimes this is due to bad hero selection in response to the enemy team selection or just bad lane match ups. You never get back lane control, and you and your lane partner (hopefully NOT a carry) are therefore screwed for the rest of the game, effectively losing/getting stomped in most pub cases.

2. When teamfighting/ganking phase starts, because you've been conscientiously doing all your support stuff, (either i'm doing it wrong) I always for certain seemed to be under-leveled (more so compared to the enemy carry). This puts me at risk of being the target of potential ganks (when warding, which shouldn't happen) or just being straight up targeted first during team fights before you can get any of your key team fights spells in. Typically I find that the enemy carry can just pick me off instantly. Is that okay/right? Towards the later parts, you no longer can safely farm NCs if towers are down and you continually become the target of kill, and you "feed". I know that its ok as long the trade is worth it (i.e. your death becomes an unofficial initiation which leads to the enemy carry death)

3. Following up from the previous questions, because of the nature of being a support, and being not able to carry, the end game result is typically dependent on the quality of your team's carry. If they got free farm/babysit but still did not get crucial items before team fight phase, or have zero communication (like in most pubs), any (if any) advantage quickly gets lost when the opponent team has more carry potential and your team refuses to capitalize on an early advantage or (worse) you go on with the rest of the game fighting a disadvantage, losing early towers and just straight out turtling. If you're against an equally mediocre opponent team, the match drags up to 50+ minutes just waiting for the eventuality of your loss. I feel like for many of these pub games, its essentially a gamble on which sides has the more skilled carry/ganker. (and I've been on both sides, although more so on the losing side)

I'm at about 90+ games, at around a 1:1 win lose ratio. Lately, I've basically just tried to co-op bot random to learn more heroes so that I know what I'm dealing with against my enemy line ups even if I want to play support. Wow, that's way longer than I expected.