If you read Pebbles' spells carefully his "Chuck" says that if you use it on a unit being hit by Stalagmites, they will take double damage from stalagmites. This used to work in DotA because they'd get hit by the spell, and if you chucked them in the air and then back onto it they'd get hit again. The "bug" got ported over with the rest of the hero.

It takes really really good timing in DotA and you have to be specific with the order. In HoN though, you can do it either way, and as long as you stun and chuck (straight up) the same target, he'll take double damage from Avalanche (Stalagmites). I've only heard it called "double ava" really..., but that's what I meant when I said it was forgiving.

But yeah, at level 8 he can do 900 magic damage just with that single combo. Deadly.

P.S. : Blacksmith+Elec is dual melee and thus sucks.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 16 2010, 5:50 am by FaZ-.

Yeah, but dual melee lanes have worked before, just depends on skill Although i will say i would never do a dual melee lane unless they had really good killing skills, such as behemoth blocking off the opponents and swift spinning them to death.

And yeah, i knew about the damage thing with pebbles, otherwise he'd be kinda useless. I just didnt understand what you meant by the way you said it.

I must say, now that I'm going for Ring of the Teacher and then Ring of Sorcery I really like Demented Shaman.
I can spam his spells like crazy and generally be more useful for my team. It's just incredibly fun keeping my team alive and enemies low armored and slow so my team can tear them to shreds.

However I'm sacrificing bracelets so staying alive during laning phase proved to be quite difficult vs. a heavy stun/slow lane. Any suggestions on that are very welcome.

Since I'm mainly playing him I managed to raise my PSR by almost 200 points. Well that and probably because I again started being very picky about which games I stay in when the countdown starts.
Oh and of course playing with Shredder helps a lot. I rarely lose with him and we usually have a lot of fun.

Ew. No. No. No.

Ring of the Teacher and Ring of Sorcery give flat mana amounts. Someone that's an intelligence hero and spamming spells needs mana regeneration in the % form. Shaman has the highest INT gain in the game, which gives him awesome innate mana regeneration. Take advantage of it. A scarab giving +50% mana regeneration will give you MORE than your Ring of the Teacher which gives a static .65/sec. Ring of Sorcery also gives a flat amount (135-25 every 33 seconds), 3.33... So, with 2200 gold for that, you get about 4 mana regeneration. By the time you hit level 11 or 12, a single manatube is giving you all of that.

Those items are for STR heroes with a terrible intelligence stat. DShaman usually gets items like wards and more wards, Steamboots, Staff of the Master, Nome's Wisdom, Astrolabe, Cyclone, Sheepstick, etc. All of those items give flat mana regeneration except for Steamboots/SotM, which give INT to combo with it. Plus, if you can get SotM in addition to level 16 your team pretty much wins.

He's a great hero though, my second favorite at the moment. The reason I'd guess that you're doing well with him is that usually no one on a team picks support heroes, so you're stuck with a bunch of carries and no pushing or healing. That's how I got my PSR up, too, then I started learning more heroes well.


I'd say I'm up to maybe a dozen or so heroes that I can play at or above my PSR level:
Tempest, Demented Shaman, Hellbringer, Corrupted Disciple, Electrician, Nymphora, Pollywog Priest, Soulstealer, Madman, Magebane, Torturer, and Glacius. Okay, so those are probably my best in that order. Write that down on the front page. =p

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 16 2010, 10:51 pm by FaZ-.

You seem to forget that Ring of the Teacher has an aura and also adds 3 armor. On Level 4 that's 26.2% damage reduction instead of 14.9%.
This way I support my lane partner early on so he, too, can cast more spells and survive a little longer.
And the point where a scarab would grant me more mana than the ring is not reached before Level 3 and then just barely (by 3 mana/min).
So the actual advantage for me (ignoring aura) would start at level 4. But HoN is a game where you build up your hero slowly instead of rushing towards expensive items.
Here's a small table of the mana regeneration rates depending on the level and item. * Marks interpolated values.
L1 No Item: +1.09
L1 Scarab: +1.63
L1 Teacher: +1.74
*L2 Scarab: +1.87
*L2 Teacher: +1.90
*L3 Scarab: +2.11
*L3 Teacher: +2.06
L4 Scarab: +1.57+0.79 = +2.36
L4 Teacher: +1.57+0.65 = +2.22

The same goes for the Ring of Sorcery. It helps me well enough, and even plenty on early levels but is also useful to keep my allies' mana up.
And also don't forget that I disassemble the Ring of the Teacher to reuse the Guardian Ring and then I have my +% mana from the scarab plus the flat mana gain.
Then when I got boots and the new ring, I get Astrolabe and usually have enough mana to spam all of my heals except for very long pushes.
So the next item will be the mana tube you mentioned for building up to a sheep stick.

Imo this build works very well because I can reuse "outleveled" items so I always have pretty useful items without sacrificing too much gold.
And of course I help my allies a lot, which is always great.
But I'll try your Steamboots suggestion. Putting them on strength might give me the survivability I lack when I don't get Bracers. Downside is, obviously, the lack of speed. So I'm not sure which one will save my ass more often... I'll just try it.

Ring of the Teacher is fine on DS, as long as you build it into a Nome's Wisdom. With a Nome's Wisdom, you do not need the Sorcery Ring, skip over that. I usually go to lane with some clarity potions and blights, along with a scarab, so I can build the ring of teacher int he side outpost. From there, you can go Astrolobe / Stormspirit, and then support items like Totem or Barrier if no one else is getting it.

You have no stats and thus get bursted down in 3 seconds from any decent offensive lane, which as DS you're going to be facing because you're in the carry lane, and you're going to be focused because you don't have a good escape mechanism and every melee carry that you should be laning with does. Armor won't matter against the vast majority of lanes, your threat is going to be from magic damage and stun combos.

Your support is pretty negligible with Ring of Sorcery, I can't think of anyone you would be laning with that's really going to need to spam spells. Common matches are Pestilence, Panda, Shaman, Scout, On top of that, you delay your core items drastically and thus at midgame you're still sitting around something like 800 hp. Good luck surviving any gank.

As a support hero you shouldn't be taking much farm unless your carries are bad, so you have to work with what you have. I finish SotM in maybe half of my games, and that's only twice as much as you're spending on your first items that give you zero survivability.

I almost always get Steamboots for the STR, switching them to INT when there's no one around for more mana regeneration. You don't really need movespeed, if you're caught alone and out of position you're going to die. Plated Greaves I get sometimes if the other team is really physical damage heavy, but for the most part you'd rather the 190 HP.

I copied my starting skill build from a few high level DShamans, not sure if you're doing this already but if you really like the hero:

1. Heal
2. Entangle
3. Heal
4. Entangle
5. Entangle (Gives a 1 second stun at L3, huge)
6. Heal
7. Heal
8. Entangle (Unless you're teamfighting already and need your Ultimate)
9/11/16. Ultimate
10/12/13/14. Hide

Generally when I'm building Nome's I buy the scarab but not the ring. I buy the ring last so I get the 50% boost (which is >.65 by level 3 or 4) the whole time.

Yeah, i've started going solo mid a lot in my games with nude, and found im pretty good at it. In fact, bloodhunter solo mid might be my strongest at the moment. I've actually literally gone through 3 creep waves straight getting every single last hit.

Also, i tend to out lvl the other solo mid by a ton. With some heroes like FA, this really helps, since you can go and gank really easily once you hit lvl 6, especially while the other mid is only lvl 4-5.

Also, i've found that if you really try hard at it, no matter how bad your score in a game, you can still turn it around. (IE. me playing behe and going 0-8, but still being able to genocide their team after 40 minutes.)

Quitting early is dumb, because the other team tends to get cocky and try to take everyone on solo to boost their KDR. I started one game 0/8 as Slither and ended 8/10. Half of the kills were from a team fight, but whatever.

When you're playing with lower level players who don't really know how or when to push you can make a lot bigger comebacks then you really should be allowed to. Once better players have a clue and the advantage, they use it and end the game. That's why non-EM games in low levels routinely last for 80-90 minutes.

HoN isn't as fun without the old crew. Ah well.

Yeah

Yeah, when playing pubs without a friend it's even worse cause you get gay elitists who tell you you're bad no matter what kind of crazy move you pull off.

I'm Lethoth at HoN.

I quit hon, just on a side note.

Why on earth would you happen do to that Devourer? And i'll have a lot of free time to play HON this coming week, just on a side note.

Because you're all quitters. Your guys' enthusiasm is what brought me to this game and now that I'm a half decent player and the game's fun you all left. I haven't played with a SENner in like a week and rarely ever seen anyone online... QQ

I had a lot of time last 2 weeks, which I haven't the next 2. Will potentially be on from 10am to 4pm (GMT-5) though.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 8 2010, 8:17 am by NudeRaider.

Nude, what's your sn? Mine is stickynote10

Quote from stickynote

Nude, what's your sn? Mine is stickynote10

He uses NudeRaider, I use Tatts. I play it quite regularly and have a clan that I am the co-leader of with roughly 10 people that are quite active.