Moving to a New Website

Hello, this is Andrew.  I am going to be moving to a new website, since I would like to write under my own name instead of Hardcore Apathy, which was a name I concocted in my late teens.

I plan to write more about my opinions on video games and to write more guides aimed at helping people to improve their skills in multiplayer games.

If you would like to continue following my work, please check me out at www.andrewstiver.ca

Thank you.

Extra Life 2016

It's 6 AM and I'm lying on an unfamiliar couch in an unfamiliar home, passing in and out of consciousness.  To my left I see my friend Pete swapping between two SNES controllers.  He is carrying on a two player run of Donkey Kong Country 2, which I failed to continue after succumbing to the incredible exhaustion I was feeling on the tail end of 25 hours of playing video games.  I knew at the time that that would be one of my most vivid memories of our Extra Life marathon.  Pete was one of the only people who was capable of playing video games at this point, and somehow he managed to single-handedly round out the final two hours by forging ahead with Diddy and Dixie's adventure.

Extra Life is an annual charity event in which video gamers come together to support children's hospitals by marathoning video games and raising money through donations.  I had watched the efforts of others via online streams in years past, but this was my first experience as a participant.  We managed to exceed the fundraising goal that was set for our team, and that is something I am proud of, but I would be lying if I said that the marathon was easy.  The last 6 hours of our run was very difficult for a combination of reasons.  I had not been able to get much sleep the night before (in part because of a screening of Fellowship of the Rings that was intended to give people something to fall asleep to, but instead resulted in me finishing the entire 3 hour extended edition at 4 AM).  I felt some kind of illness developing of the course of the day, manifesting itself in the form of a hacking cough.  Poor diet decisions also compounded the problems.  But all of these are small manageable problems, and it was worth it to be able to make a small contribution to those who have real difficulties in their lives.

There was however lots of fun had.  Our matches of Halo 3 once again reminded me of how great that game was and continues to be.  My traditional Jackal run with Pete was especially challenging and goofy on such little sleep.  My first mythic raid in WoW was a fun experience, trying to maintain focus in a room full of people and activity instead of the silent room I usually play in was not easy.  One of the best things was being able to sit down with a bunch of friends in the same room and play video games, something that has become more elusive as we have all grown up and acquired responsibilities that limit the time we can spend together.

Gaming often gets a bad reputation, sometimes deservedly, but Extra Life is a chance for gamers to come together under a shared love of video games and do some good in the world; and despite all the highs and lows, the fun and the exhaustion, I feel proud of what we were able to do, and I hope to be able to make another effort next year.

Some things Skyrim could have done better.

Fallout 4 was recently released, and while I didn't feel a strong desire to return to the wasteland, the buzz of a new Bethesda RPG made me decide to fire up Skyrim again and set off on another adventure in the world of Tamriel.

Skyrim is a great game, one of my favorite games ever in fact, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any ways for the game to be improved upon.  Here are some of my biggest gripes about Skyrim and some suggestions for how I think these weaknesses can be improved upon for the next installment of The Elder Scrolls.

Skyrim does a really bad job of explaining the mechanics of the game to players.  Luckily for us, there are some great wikis that contain the knowledge that devoted Skyrim fans were able to wring from the game, but for someone who does not want to do additional reading, Skyrim is a game with a lot of unknown information regarding what actually happens when you play it.  More specifically, the combat mechanics are barely even touched upon beyond short descriptions of weapons, spells, abilities, and enchantments.  A few examples:

-The damage number on a weapon is not useful except when comparing weapons of the exact same type due to hidden differences in attack speed between weapon types.

-The speed at which dual wield attacks are made are determined by the attack speed of the weapon in your left hand.

-Different enemies are weak and resistant to different kinds of damage.

-The rate at which you gain experience in Alchemy is based on the gold value of the potions you create.

-Power attacks when sneaking can provide up to three times as much experience, if all three attacks hit the enemy.

-And the list goes on...

I don't believe that players should have to deduce the gameplay mechanics from the game, there should be clear explanations of these things available to players who wish to know them.

The journal is weak when it comes to tracking miscellaneous quests, and keeping track of collection quests.  The journal is really good at showing you the location of main quest objectives, however the lumping together of all the miscellaneous quests makes its really difficult to keep track of more than a few miscellaneous quests without having to run through a long list whenever you want to add or remove a quest from tracking.  There is also an overload of quests in the log once you get to a certain point, and it gets difficult to separate the quests that actually have story built into them from the simple quests that are meant to point you to undiscovered locations.  Finally when it comes to collection quests, it is difficult to keep track of which items you need to complete the quest without going into your journal and swimming through the sea of miscellaneous quests.

What I would like to see is for them to do a better job of indicating which quests have actual story interactions included in them, and which ones are simple move to this location type quests.  An idea would be for there to be three tiers of quest: main quests that are fully featured and contain unique dialogue, locations, and/or characters; secondary quests which still contain unique features but are not meant to be full experiences, and tertiary quests which are simple and usually involve either discovering a new location or killing a generic NPC.  Something else I would like to see is the ability to hide quest objectives for the tertiary quests unless you are in very close proximity to them, as tracking too many miscellaneous quests can quickly clutter your map and your compass.

The combat in Skyrim is clunky, especially when it comes to melee combat.  As a melee character, it is difficult to make sure that all your attacks hit your target.  Yes this can be considered intentional because real melee combats are likely very hectic, but the player is often left feeling like they are playing whack a mole.  If you have a companion with you the combat becomes more chaotic still, and what should be a cool combat experience turns into the silly dance where you are just hoping that your horse or a downed companion doesn't run in front of your sword and force you to murder them.  

What I think might be a way that melee combat could be improved, would be for there to be a soft targeting system, whereby the player can choose to soft lock on a target, and the camera would follow that target loosely, so that if an enemy suddenly rushes behind you, your camera will follow it, and you can focus on making sure that you hit the areas of the target that you want to, instead of playing where's Waldo.

Potions and poisons are poorly implemented.  The use of potions and poisons in combat is extremely disruptive.  Stopping combat completely so that you can drink 20 potions is a chore, and the fact that poisons only last for a single hit can make playing a poison user into an exercise in tedium.  The number of different potions and poisons is overwhelming and you can quickly find yourself holding dozens of different kinds of potion and taking 5 minutes to sort through them all in the middle of combat.

What I would like to see is a better way of categorizing potions and poisons.  Lump all the healing potions into a single line on the inventory, and allow the player to expand it if they want to see the full list.  There should be poisons that last longer than a single hit, or at least the option to auto apply poisons so that you don't have to keep menu hopping.  Multi effect potions can really blow up your inventory, so I think it would be a good idea to really consider whether the diversity of potion choice is worth the chaos it creates.  Perhaps creating a potion that has both beneficial and detrimental effects would just spoil the potion, and it would simply become something to sell.  Speaking of your inventory...

The inventory system has some major issues.  In fact people were so dissatisfied with the inventory system that modders completely redesigned the UI in what is one of the single most popular Skyrim mods in existence.  My main complaints come from the huge amount of clutter.  In addition to the aforementioned potion explosion, I also end up with lines and lines of soul gems and Stones of Barenziah that refuse to collect themselves properly.

I think that the inventory needs to be streamlined better for Elder Scrolls VI.  There should be more categories of item, so that I don't have to go through all my soul gems and quest items when I am checking which smithing materials I have, or how many gems I have of a type needed for a quest.

Finally, one of my biggest complaints is that the game is not roleplay friendly if you are trying to play a good character.  A large amount of the game's main content is found in questlines that require you to perform evil actions like committing crimes or murdering innocent people.  In my first playthrough I tried to roleplay a good aligned hero, and as a result I never got to do any of the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood quests, nor was I able to do many of the Daedric Quests. I also decided my character did not want to be a werewolf so I missed out on the Companions questline.  There were many other side quests that I could not undertake without breaking my character's moral code, and it really sucked because I couldn't enjoy the game's full offering without throwing my character immersion out the window.

I would love to see more choice given to the player in Elder Scrolls VI.  If I don't want to join the Thieves Guild, then why can I take them down or work from the inside to convince them to change?  Elder Scrolls is supposed to be a role playing game, and the gating of content behind immoral actions made it so I could not play the game the way I wanted to.

I am eagerly awaiting news on the next Elder Scrolls game, and I still love Skyrim despite its flaws, but I hope that Bethesda is able to learn from the shortcomings of this game and work to make Elder Scrolls VI into something greater still.

Review: CLICKPOCALYPSE 2

INTRODUCTION

CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 is a browser-based fantasy dungeon crawling incremental game created by Jim808.  In CLICKPOCALYPSE 2, you create a party of 1-4 characters of various classes, and assist them as they battle through randomly generated dungeons and castles, in an attempt to conquer every castle on the map and end the eternal winter that has befallen the land.

VISUALS

CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 employs a smartly constructed, button based graphical user interface.  The main game window contains a small graphical representation of your party as it travels throughout the game world.  This display adds a nice visual touch to the game, and the sprite based graphics harken back to the era of early graphical PC dungeon crawlers.  Information is presented in a very straightforward manner and the layout of the different frames in the UI focuses on a smart use of space with a simple intuitive design.  Tabs are used to keep secondary information off the main game screen.  The only drawback of the game's visual design is that the interface does not rescale to fit the size of the browser window, which leads to sub-optimal sizing on some monitor resolutions.

GAMEPLAY

The player starts off by selecting a party.  There are six base classes to choose from, and the party can contain up to four characters.  The basic gameplay loop of CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 involves your party travelling to a dungeon and then progressing through each room, one at a time, defeating any monsters present and collecting any treasures they find.  This progression is entirely automated, and the player is unable to control the characters in any way.  Notably absent from CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 is a basic click mechanic such as a resource collecting button or the ability to damage enemies by clicking them.  Instead, the player is responsible for utilizing party-accrued resources to purchase various upgrades, including using experience points to level up party members and selecting character skills.  Additionally, the player has a small inventory of potions and scrolls which can be used to buff the party or to damage enemies that the party has engaged.  Finally, the player has the ability to press a button when the party enters a dungeon room that contains a lootable feature, such as a chest.  If the player does not click to loot these features, the party will pass by them without looting (unless there is a skilled rogue in the party).  As a result, the active component of this game is somewhat limited.  If the player has run out of potions and scrolls, and doesn't have enough resources to purchase a new upgrade there will be no way for them to interact with the game.  At early stages in the game this is a limit that a player who wishes to play actively will run into frequently, however as the game progresses, the player will gain access to a much larger scroll inventory, as well as potions that allow for unlimited scroll use, which allow for much more active gameplay.  Selecting the correct potion or scroll for the situation, or deciding which upgrade to spend resources on can require a small amount of strategy in an otherwise extremely easy and simple game.  The game does not progress while closed, and the game will even stop running if the tab that it is open in is not the selected tab in a non-minimized browser window.

PROGRESSION

Progression in CLICKPOCLYPSE 2 is based on a map that contains dungeons, towns, and castles.  The party will progress through dungeons room by room, and when the dungeon has been cleared, they will return to a town to sell off collected treasure, then move on to the next dungeon.  Each dungeon is associated with a castle, and when the party has cleared all the dungeons for a specific castle, the player may choose to attack that castle.  The game ends when every castle has been cleared.  On my first playthrough I ended up completing the game in approximately 40-50 hours.  This was done mostly idle with small sections of active play throughout the day.  Your party members will progress through static skill trees, unlocking new abilities and improving their stats; purchase a series of upgrades designed to present them with stronger and more rewarding challenges; and collect a steady stream of progressively stronger equipment throughout the game.  The player will also unlock and level up six different types of scroll throughout the game.

REPLAYABILITY

CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 has a moderate amount of replayability.  There are currently eleven different classes to play, some of which are locked to players who have not yet prestiged one or more times.  In this way the main draw of replaying the game would be trying out different classes.  The difficulty of the game is quite low, and there is no failure state, which means that any player will be able to complete the game given enough time.  Other than trying different classes, different replay goals would have to be limited to player created challenges such as speedrunning or single character runs.

SUPPORT

Support for CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 is very strong.  Jim808 is active in the CLICKPOCALYPSE subreddit, and updates have been released several times a week for at least a few months now.  It seems that CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 is currently in a period of rapid iteration, which will please players who desire an incremental game that has not gone stagnant.

CONCLUSION

CLICKPOCALYPSE 2 is a smartly designed incremental game with some fun flavor and interesting mechanics.  The lack of challenge and minor technical drawbacks should not dissuade fans of the genre from giving this outstanding game a try.

Ranked vs Unranked Matchmaking

Every once in a while someone will ask the question "should I be playing ranked matchmaking?".  I would like to posit my opinions on the purpose of separating ranked and unranked play, and also provide some questions to ask yourself to see if you would be better off playing in the ranked or unranked pools.

The Difference Between Ranked and Unranked

Dota 2 matchmaking uses a rating system to try to arranges balanced matches contain players of roughly equal skill.  The matchmaking rating, or MMR, that a player is assigned is based on how they perform in games, with wins awarding additional rating, and losses removing rating points.  Both ranked and unranked matchmaking pools assign different ratings to the player.  They are functionally identical, except that a player's ranked MMR is shown, and their unranked MMR is hidden.

Why Separate Matchmaking Pools Exists

So if the MMR for each pool is identical, why do they make two separate pools?  The answer is that some players want to know how they compare to others.  Some players want to be the best, to improve, to win games.  The ranked MMR serves as a metric for a player to identify their skill level, to track changes in that level, and to push their rating as high as possible for personal satisfaction and to indicate their potential to others.

Differences in Player Motivation

Dota is a competitive game.  Like any other competitive game, every player plays the game for different reasons.  Generally however, most players play Dota because they want to have fun.  The problem is that different players will have fun by playing the game in different ways, and sometimes the different ways that players like to play the game are not compatible.

Everyone can agree that winning is more desirable than losing.  However, there are often situations in which a player is faced with a decision that presents a trade-off between maximizing your own personal enjoyment of the game, and maximising your team's chances to win the match.

As an example, imagine you are in the pick stage, and your teammates have already picked three core heroes.  You were hoping when you queued for the game to play your favorite hero, Anti-mage, however, you know that if you were to choose AM now, your team would be heavily disadvantaged due to a lack of heroes who do not depend on items to perform.  In this situation, you have to choose between playing your favorite hero and having more fun in the game, or choosing a hero you enjoy playing less in order to improve your team's chances of winning the game.

I believe that the decision that a player makes when faced with choices like this is a strong indication of what matchmaking pool they should be queueing for.  It is not wrong to make a choice that maximizes your personal enjoyment of the game.  However, the purpose of separating the pools is to allow players who prefer to maximize personal enjoyment over winning to not be placed in a match with players who will always choose the option that maximizes their chances of winning.

What Matchmaking Pool Should I Be Playing in?

In order to determine which pool is the best one for you to queue in, you should first ask yourself some hypothetical questions.

Most importantly, when faced with a decision, will you always choose the option that you believe maximizes your team's chance to win the match?  This question can be applied to every decision that a player makes in a Dota match; from the choice of hero, to the choice of starting items, lane, ability build, item build, choosing to watch the minimap, making choices about when to farm, when to push, when to fight, when to rosh, when to retreat, how you choose to interact with your teammates, etc.

This question is also relevant to factors outside the game.  Do you actively pursue outside guides, learn mechanics, or read discussion, in order to improve your play?  Do you own a microphone that you can use for voice chat?  Is your internet connection poor right now?  Are you queuing with friends who are not as good at the game as you are?  Are you distracted by outside things like people or pets?  Are you taking intoxicants that will lower your effectiveness?  All of these are decisions that you can make which have an effect on your chance to win Dota matches, and if you are not making the choice that maximizes your chances of winning, then perhaps unranked would be a better fit.

At the end of the day however, no one can decide which pool you play in except for you.  Keep in mind though that ranked games attract players who have a stronger desire to win, and if you don't share that desire, and actively pursue victory over your own personal enjoyment of the game, there will often be friction between you and your teammates.  Unranked matchmaking is the place for people who just want to have fun and enjoy the game.

Monks: Built to Level

The first character I levelled to 100 was my priest.  My plan was to do RBGs as shadow.  However, shortly into the PvP season I realized that DPS have such low value in group PvP, and that my guild already had a shadow priest who had a lot more history with them than I.

I decided to try healing in PvP.  I ran into another problem though, which is that I strongly prefer healing as  Holy priest, and that Holy is not good in PvP right now.  I tried Discipline, but I have never really played it before, and I also don't really enjoy the playstyle.  I promptly decided that priest PvP healing is not how I want to play the game right now.

I wanted to heal in PvP, as I enjoy healing, I am relatively experienced at it, and the demand for healers in group PvP is so much higher than the demand for DPS.  However I needed to decide what class I wanted to play.  After doing some research on the different playstyles of each healing class, I decided to give Monk a try.

Monk is the newest class that was added to World of Warcraft, and there are a lot of interesting tweaks to this class that show how the developers used past experience with class design to create a fun and interesting class.

One of the most noticeable advantages of playing a monk is that they are in many ways designed to allow for easy, quick levelling.  Here's a a few ways that monks excel at the levelling process:

Class Hub
The monk class hub is accessible through the monk's Zen Pilgrimage spell.  At the hub there are vendors who sell various gear which can be used to cheaply upgrade your gear when you have some low pieces.  There is also a vendor who sells cheap food which gives good food buffs, ensuring you can always have a relevant food buff up.  Additionally, every 10 levels monks receive a class quest to be done at the hub, which rewards them with a one hour long 50% experience increase buff.  Monks may repeat this quest as a daily to regain the buff.  The buff stacks with itself, and will not run out while the player is offline, making it so that if players are only able to log in for a short time during the week they can stack the buff to a duration of several hours, and then use the buff to it's fullest when they have the time to play for longer.

Movement
Monks have several abilities that allow them to move around quickly while questing.  Using the multi spec ability Roll, Windwalker specific Flying Dragon Kick, the level 15 talent, and several different glyphs, Monks can minimize travel time while questing, especially before the player acquires a mount.  One other great thing about these mobility spells is that they can allow you to quickly evade corpse campers by buying you enough time to mount up.

Versatility
Monk is a very versatile class.  They can fill any of the three roles, which means that you can have fast access to dungeon queues when you need it.  Monks who choose to level as Windwalker can use the same gear for Brewmaster tanking.  Every monk spec has the ability to self heal, and has access to varying amounts of crowd control.  Another useful ability to mention is Touch of Death, an instant kill spell when used on most enemies.  Touch of Death is extremely useful for killing off higher hp quest mobs, and allowing you to get back on your way.

I'm having a lot of fun levelling my monk.  It feels like a class that was designed to make levelling less painful in many ways.  I just recently starting using Brewmaster instead of Windwalker for questing, and I feel that is the right way to go.  You deal comparable, if not more damage, and you are able to tank more mobs as well.  Once I hit 100 I will try my hand at Mistweaver PvP.

Decision Making in Dota 2: When (not) to Build Hand of Midas

Hand of Midas is an item that I frequently see used incorrectly.  In my opinion the reason that it gets used incorrectly so often is that players do not understand the costs associated with building a Midas, instead focusing on the benefit of the item, namely increased gold and experience acquisition rate.  Here I hope to shed some light on the real costs of building Midas, and offer some scenarios in which building Midas is justified.

What is Hand of Midas?

Hand of Midas is an item which has two main benefits.  Firstly, if grants +30 attack speed.  Secondly, and most notably, it has an active ability that allows the bearer to instantly kill a non-player unit and receive 190 reliable gold, and a bonus 2.5x normal experience as a reward, on a 100 second cooldown.  It is created by combining Gloves of Haste with a 1400 gold recipe.

Why is Hand of Midas Valuable?

When completed, Hand of Midas will allow a hero to accelerate their rate of both gold and experience farming, enabling them to farm expensive items and gain levels more quickly, and eventually will grant them a power advantage over other heroes who have not benefited from this acceleration.  It also allows the user to instantly kill any player controlled creeps, making it more valuable when facing heroes like Chen or Enchantress.

What costs are associated with building a Hand of Midas?

Starting with the obvious, Hand of Midas costs 1900 gold to build, which is extremely expensive for an item that grants such a small amount of stats.  It is important to realize that you are forgoing any other combination of items that you could have built with that 1900 gold in order to build Midas.  Here is a list of items that that 1900 gold could have been used on instead:

Phase Boots - 1350 gold
Power Treads - 1400 gold
Perseverance - 1750 gold
Helm of the Dominator - 1850 gold
Mask of Madness - 1900 gold
Yasha - 2050 gold

Every single one of these items offers stronger stats, and will allow you to have a better chance of scoring hero kills, AND will allow you to kill creeps faster which means your farm rate is increased by purchasing them.  Not only are you forgoing the gold and stats, you are also forgoing mid game power and presence, which will allow the other team better opportunities to take your towers and win teamfights.  This is the true cost of Midas, you are giving up mid game power in order to have a stronger late game.

When is Hand of Midas the correct item choice?

When choosing whether or not to build Midas you want to ask yourself a few questions.  Most importantly would be: Can my team handle an underpowered mid game without losing too much advantage (towers, gold, experience) in order to allow me enough time to gain benefit from Midas?  You need to look at the heroes on your team and the opponents' team, and understand what parts of the game your team will have strength, and which parts your team will struggle with.  In my eyes there are 2 main scenarios in which Midas is a good idea:

1. The enemy team is obviously aiming to have the game go late, and have heroes are able to provide enough space for their late game hero(es) to farm up, while also defending against any attempts we might make to end early.

2. My team is 4 skilled players who have incredibly strong mid game heroes that will be able to play the game 4v5 until late game when I start to gain benefits from my Midas.

Outside of these two scenarios, I do not believe that Midas worth what you are sacrificing.  As I mentioned earlier though, when facing heroes that rely strongly on creep domination (Chen, Enchantress), the value of a Midas goes up.  At the same time, when you are playing a hero that strongly relies on attack speed as a stat (e.g. Faceless Void), the cost of building a Midas is lessened slightly.

Conclusion

Midas is not a license to print money.  It is an item that disadvantages your team greatly throughout the mid game in order to grant advantage during the late game.  It is a niche item that should only be built in very specific scenarios.  Please use Midas responsibly.

Decision Making In Dota 2: Ability Builds

Poor decision making is the single greatest contributor to lost games that I have seen (at the amateur level). However ‘decision making’ is a very broad term that encompasses many different aspects of Dota gameplay. In this series of posts, I will attempt to identify some of the most common incorrect decisions and offer alternatives to help improve one's Dota gameplay.

Ability Builds

Dota is a game that offers it's players a great deal of choice when it comes to how to play.  One of the more difficult aspects of learning to play Dota is the fact that there are so many different heroes, abilities, and items to learn.  One of the most basic decisions a player has to make is which abilities to level, and in what order.  Hero specific guides usually provide a recommended skill build, however due to the great variety in Dota games, players can often perform better with a skill build that is customised to the current match.  It is important to have an understanding of your own hero, your team composition, and your opponents heroes in order to choose an optimal skill build.

Relative Efficacy

The concept of relative efficacy is an important thing to understand when attempting to make better ability decisions.  Relative efficacy is the idea that a skill will have greater, or lesser value based on outside factors.  These factors vary from match to match, however there are some generalities that affect almost every game.

The first of which is that nuke spells (spells whose primary effect is to deal damage such as Lina's Dragon Slave) are comparatively stronger when the HP pools of the enemy heroes are lower, and the amount of mitigation they possess is low.  This is most often the case in the early game.  Simply put, at low levels, the percentage of an enemy hero's total HP that will be removed by a nuke spell is much larger than it will be at later stages of the game.  The result of this is that nuke spells are often (but not always) prioritized for skill-ups in the early game.

Secondly, the return on investment of points spent on crowd control spells (spells that serve to inhibit a hero's ability to perform such as Lion's Hex), beyond the first, is variable based on how dangerous enemy heroes are to you and your allies, and how valuable the positional advantage you can create is to your team.  There is immense value in putting a point in your crowd control skills early, since having crowd control options will greatly improve your team's chances of scoring hero kills and winning team fights.  However, most crowd control spells will primarily provide increased duration when skilled beyond the first point.  At early stages of the match, heroes will be less dangerous when compared to the later stages.  Therefore, the value of additional CC duration is much lower at early stages of the game, when the extra damage output or mitigation you will receive as a result is much lower than the value you get out of having a more powerful nuke or damage-increasing spell.  Conversely, the value of a crowd control skill will be much higher in situations where positioning is more important, regardless of the stage of the game.

Thirdly, the value of buff and debuff spells (spells that improve the power of allied heroes such as Ogre Magi's Bloodlust, or reduce the power of enemy heroes such as Bane's Enfeeble) also varies with external factors.  Like crowd control spells, the value of a buff or debuff scales with the power of heroes and often becomes increasingly valuable at later stages of the game.

It would be too lengthy to list every factor that affects the value of particular abilities, but I am mainly trying to get you in the mindset of evaluating the relative value of each point you spend in your skills based on the state of the current match you are in.

Know Yourself

In order to be able to optimize your ability builds, you must first understand the full effect of each ability your hero has, and the benefit they receive when levelled.  Unfortunately, the large amount of skills in the game makes it difficult to memorize each one.  I recommend trying to familiarize yourself with a hero you do not feel you fully understand before each game you play.  If you end up with a hero that you are not familiar with, ask for a quick pause and read through the abilities of the hero.

The main things that you want to identify when you read a hero's skill are as follows.

1. Is the skill passive or active?
2. How much mana does the skill cost to use?
3. What is the cooldown of the skill?
4. What kind of targeting does this skill use?  (e.g. target unit, target point, nearby enemies/allies)
5. What is the range of the skill?
6. How much damage does the skill do or provide, and what kind of damage is it (magical, physical, composite, pure)
7. What other effects does the skill have?
8. What is the duration of the skill?
9. What is the value of any buff or debuff the skill provides?
10. Which aspects of this spell scale when additional points are put into it?

Once you have an idea of the effects of each of your skills, you can use this information to help make better decisions about skill priority.

Know Your Allies

Again, this is an area that cannot be fully mastered until you have a knowledge of the capabilities of each hero in the game.  In order to make the optimal decision of ability build, you must understand what your allied heroes being to the match.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself about each of your allied heroes.

1. What are their strengths?
2. What are their weaknesses?
3. Do they deal primarily physical or magical damage?
4. At what range are they able to be effective?
5. How reliant are they on positioning?
6. What stats will they most benefit from?
7. What items are they building?
8. What skills are they levelling?
9. How has their performance been so far this match?
10. Which of my skills have the most synergy with them?

Being able to answer these questions will aid you in choosing which skills to take.

Know Your Enemy

Along the same lines as knowing your allies, it is important to understand what your opponents bring to the table.  Ask yourself all of the same questions that you asked of your allies, with the following change:

10. Which of my skills are most valuable when used against them?

Constant Evaluation

Finally, one of the most important habits to do when playing a Dota match, even beyond the context of choosing abilities, is to constantly evaluate the match.  Any time that a tower goes down, a gank or team fight occurs, or whenever you have a free moment, take stock of how things are going.  Ask yourself these and other questions constantly:

1. What is the strategy of the enemy team?
2. What is our current strategy and what skills can I take to help execute it?
3. Am I being targeted by the enemy or am I able to execute my abilities?
4. Is my team able to play offensively, or do we need to focus more on defensive play?

The key here is to use the information you gain from constant evaluation of the current state of the match to aid yourself in making better skill build decisions.

Conclusion

All of these questions are aimed at giving you a better idea of what the relative efficacy of each of you skills is.  The big question that you use all of this information to answer is as follows:

How does the value I gain from a skill point placed in one ability compare the the value I am forgoing which could be gained from placing it in a different one?

Decision Making in Dota 2: Refuse to Lose

Poor decision making is the single greatest contributor to lost games that I have seen (at the amateur level). However ‘decision making’ is a very broad term that encompasses many different aspects of Dota gameplay. In this and future posts, I will attempt to identify some of the most common incorrect decisions and offer alternatives to help improve ones Dota gameplay.

Refuse to Lose

The single easiest to avoid, yet still bafflingly commonplace, incorrect decision in amateur Dota is when a player or players make a direct and conscious decision to lose the game. More specifically I am referring to when players do any of the following: AFK in the fountain, feed intentionally, stop making attempts to defend their base from attacks, grief their teammates, etc. By choosing to do any of these things, players are taking what may have only been a slim chance of victory, and ensuring that the chance plummets to nil.

There are many possible motivations for choosing to lose the game, the most common excuse being that a player does not want to prolong a game that is already lost, however this is an incorrect viewpoint caused by inexperience. For those players that have never come back from being 3 barracks down or from a 40+ kill deficit, these situations seem nigh insurmountable. However that is far from the truth, as with careful and precise play, even the worst situation can be overcome. The game is never truly over until one team’s ancient is brought to zero hit points.

Aside from the fact that tilt situations are not impossible to overcome, playing in a tilt situation is an extremely good way to improve one's skill level. In normal game scenarios, players will incorporate some shortcuts or inefficiencies into their play. For example, if a player finds that their opponents are slow at picking up on gank opportunities, they may play with less care when it comes to grabbing runes, pushing, or jungling on the opponents’ side. While this adapted way of playing may work at their current skill bracket, they will find that players at higher levels than them will not make the same mistakes when it comes to capitalizing on such opportunities. In a tilt scenario, while a player is most likely still playing against people of similar skill to them, there is a sort of handicap (eg: level advantage, map control, barracks advantage) possessed by the other team which forces the player into refining their gameplay to iron out these inefficiencies. Since the player has had the opportunity to practice in such a difficult scenario, when they find themselves facing opponents who exceed their skill level, where similar advantages will be used against them (without first having to have lost several teamfights or barracks), the player will have a much easier time adapting to and overcoming these advantages.

Another way of saying that the player is able to play with others of higher skill and not afford them unnecessary advantages, is that the player’s skill level has increased.

Ten Basic Ways to Be a Better Dota Player

1. Never die when your death was avoidable.
2. Carry a teleport scroll 100% of the time.
3. Buy and place wards (if none of your allies who are less item dependant than you have done so).
4. Ensure that the courier is bought and upgraded as soon as possible (if none of your allies who are less item dependant than you have done so).
5. Frequently check the minimap to see where everyone is.
6. Always try your best to win the game, regardless of how lost the game might seem.
7. Always focus on self-improvement instead of worrying about what your teammates may have done wrong.
8. Do not get emotional when things are going wrong.
9. Communicate with your team, preferably with voice chat.
10. Try to have fun and enjoy the game!