Hey guys, BalloonDota here. If you have ever wondered what's holding you back in climbing in Dota, this is PROBABLY the answer you are looking for. Recently, I had just released a new video that addresses the SIMPLEST fundamental concept in Dota 2 that 99% of players that are hardstuck fail to understand. It is related to the PUSHING OF WAVES and has always been the most basic action to take in the game that sets up for all potential future actions. Pushing waves is extremely important in Dota as it generates information, farm, efficiency and potential for making plays.

In the video, you will be introduced to the rationale behind pushing waves and see many examples of how pushing waves is meant to be executed and implemented.

The video will focus on:

1. Importance of pushing waves (3 key points)
2. Priority of pushing waves (cores and supports)
3. Reading creep wave timer (to optimize pushing waves)
4. When not to push waves (2 key points)

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri1rg_INiMk

If you ever wondered how high MMR players sped up the pacing of Dota so much, a huge chunk of it is related to the speed at which they clear waves. Also, the constant swapping and rotating of lanes together with switching priorities between supports and cores helps elevate this basic yet importance concept further. I guarantee that once you understand when, why and how to push waves and also the actions that follow after that, it will elevate your skill level to another tier and put you closer towards your goal of achieving Immortal.

Also, do join my Discord channel as well if you are interested in chatting with a community, participating in mini-events or want to get in touch with me to ask questions about Dota. Thank you!

BalloonDota Community Server: discord.gg/w4PWyXDV4n

if I play luna I could fallback to jungle since lvl4 but what about hero that doesn't have innate farming like AM, spectre and other heroes that cannot jungle fast

I've played a few games on him and it's just really inconvenient when the bear is much faster than the hero. Even if you buy the hero a regular boot, the hero is still much slower than the bear, especially with the talent for +30 movement speed for

The quickening feels so much better than Mephitic shield. It also reduces item cool down. I’m almost tempted to go Midas and see how that works.

Hello.

Doom has many interesting facets, but this one has always boggled my mind.

I had a game last night where I chose this facet out of curiousity. The game went well past 35 minutes and I got a Timeless Relic token.

At one point I doomed the enemy support and I realized the Doom lasted 25+ seconds on him.

I hit him with one infernal blade, he TP:d to base on 90% hp and died half a minute later, completely unable to heal. 1500 pure dmg.

This made me start thinking: Is this a facet that can be abused against typical doom counters like oracle/aba?

Simply dooming them, completely removing their heroes capabilities for an entire fight. They cant heal others or themselves. And the longer the game goes on, the more the odds are in Doom's favor.

Vs what heroes would you guys take this facet over Gluttony or Devil's Bargain?

Hey guys, former Div 1 dpc player 11.3k peak here offering coaching sessions for the lads to improve their gaming, either replay reviews or live coaching for you to improve your mindset towards your pubs and have some guidance and why not pop those double downs with live coaching and start the grind, if anyone is interested feel free to hmu on send me a message. Cheers!

Recently I saw Satanic PA with Sange and Yasha, also ember sange and yasha in one match. Pl enlighten me.

Hey everyone I've made a video talking about Tidehunter and his Krill Eater facet, I've had quite a lot of success playing this in 7-8k MMR pubs and wanted to make a video showing everyone how good it can be. If there's any feedback you could give on the video itself and or questions please shoot them in this thread or the Youtube video and ill answer as soon as possible. Cheers guys!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBEae_usiKw

GUIDE: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3411049841

Has anyone had good luck/found a good build for this facet? It seems to be intended for the core role but the deconstruction facet just gives so much instant value.

Hey guys just reach 5k1 which is my peak for the moment. I would like to know what you learn/focus between 5k to 6k. I play mainly pos 4, my heroes pools are bane, bh, tusk, rubick. Thanks

Yes, I can look up their profile and see how many hours they have played but who does that 4 times at the start of a new game?

Why not implement a simple badge next to the name if a player has less than X hours played or something similar.

I think the whole team communication can benefit from it.

I started Dota 2 last year but my skill level is still that of a noob. I know how to build items, war placements, ganking, combos, but I still struggle in winning games on my own.

S&Y is the last bastion of passive status resist, and I'm seeing it on every str/agi hero in pro right now. This is like the 3rd round of nerfing passive status resist items, and it feels like this one is bound to go too.

I don't think the temporary effects like Ursa, SB or Aeon disk have this problem, but it's kind of interesting how few passive bonuses there are left. I think it's really just Night Stalkers talent, Brew Void Stance, and S&Y.

LD was crowned the most Op cancerous hero during TI. Capable of surviving 5 man ganks by 'walking away' & teams had to first phase ban.

Post TI he receives a few decent nerfs.

1. Stat Bonus no longer applies to items in the Neutral slot
2. Stat Bonus decreased from 50/60/70/80% to 30/45/60/75%.
3. lvl 15 savage roar talent nerf. -7 to -5 secs.

Now suddenly no one gives a fk abt him. No competitive presence zero, zip, nada.

Imo the nerfs only affect his early game by a bit & minimal from lvl 12. So his mid/late game is still just as good. With the aura meta gone, he can also easily flex between offlane & carry. Add on the fact that they r only few top carries - alch, pa, morph. LD is a good gotcha pick.

Why is he not picked in Pro dota at all?

As the title says, I recreated Shopkeeper's Quiz from Dota 2!

Here is the link: Dota2Quiz

You can, as of now, play the following game modes:
Guess The Price
Combine The Items
Guess The Item

The next game I am working on based on current feedback will be Invoker's Mastery, where you will be able to learn Invoker's spell combinations.

I already posted about this in a couple of subreddits and was waiting to post it here because I wanted to get as much as I can right before showing it to you guys.

Hope you enjoy it and please do give feedback and any bugs you find!

Title. Is this a bug or am i doing something wrong. i can only get them to be on arcana mode if i do the portrait, the model/pedestal changes to the default skin of the hero when I click "save".

Hey, I am a 7k MMR player who just got back to playing after not playing for a few months, and now Lina is everywhere, she is very strong but I kind of don't know how to deal with her?
Her lane has always been very strong but most people are playing her more aggressively than usual and it is really hard to deal with, then she gets Travels and Aghs and she is a beast around the map, very hard to follow her, she still farms extremely fast (probably even faster with the magic build), and then she just deals a ton of damage and is really hard to catch. Anyway the hero is extremely strong early and mid game, is she just busted or am I just bad?

Also is the Gleipnir right-click build just dead? I really enjoyed playing it and I feel like it was more of a 1v9 style which is closer to the other heroes I play.

Hi everyone, I used to be a very heavy player back in the day (played since beta all the way til 6.x, hit 5k MMR at my peak)

I came back to try picking up the game again and wow it is very different.. facets, no more bloodstone (at least not the snowballing bloodstone we used to get for storm and sky wrath), no necronomicon, no shield (stout, PMS), talon, all the new camps, the gate things (teleport), new roshan spawns, new rune timings.. basically it feels like a whole new game, not to mention the dozen new heroes.

I used to be a phoenix and ember spammer (60% WR for both), tried playing it yesterday and got absolutely wrecked, and trying to get some tips on what are the most significant changes to the game and the current meta. I like playing offlane but I’m okay with 4 as well to climb ladder.

Hey everyone,

I’m a very old Dota 2 player with very little knowledge of items and sets. Can anyone tell me what will be the price of Antimage Oathbound Defiant Set (mythical type).

I was not able to find it online so if there is someone experienced please let me know :)

I have risen from 6.7 to almost 9k since kez was introduced and I strongly believe he is underutilized. I played 110 games on him and my wr is still rising, with 80% wr in the past month. I first pick it every game and play all core positions. In 95 pct of my games I go the exact same build in the following order Falcon-stick-phase-crystalis-aghs. From here its usually a defensive or shard. When you get these items you melt any hero in the game and your dmg output lategame with just daedalus is completely absurd. When you get to lvl 25 and refresher things just become comical, and you can usually wipe the other team alone dependant on lineups. The key is learning how to dominate every lane and learning the basic combo which where you get off all your spells except the katana ult (u can get it off, but will delay the speed of the combo, I would advice you to just forget the spell). And make sure to pick the ravens veil parry talent at lvl 15, even tho the other is tempting. I never had so much fun in dota, and I would suggest you guys to try it, as a grandmaster involer player i can safely say Kez is the best designed hero they have ever made.

I was with an oracle. The first 2 waves went fine but then I ended up overextending for a range creep and they got FB with blood grenade. From there the lane became unplayable. Treant would zone oracle away from left side (we were dire offlane) and get angle on me from trees, AM went fast corrosion. Even with lane near the tower I wasn’t able to contest creeps. Even trying to aggro pull wasn’t an option as the Treant was just waiting in trees ready to Q and AM would instantly blink.

I ended up dying a 2nd time and then I just went jungle because they were holding the wave and we couldn’t contest. My question is what the ideal play is in this scenario. Did I just mess up mechanically and the lane should be playable? I was thinking we needed to do some wave pulling shenanigans but I’ve never done that and my supp didn’t do it either. My game was pretty much over in laning phase. Can someone tell me what is the proper way to deal with these type of scenarios on doom? I went 0-2-1 with first point in 3rd as skill build, couldn’t fight/trade with the AM Treant lane at all.

Im now practicing to do pos4, im now at Legend 4 and my mains are only two for that position, Hoodwink and Darkwillow.

Also, when should i be confident to leave my Offlaner and help Bottom or Mid ?

• Borrowed time prevents him from dying from all the braindead bloodseekers who just press D and then run at you. Abaddon won't die from the blood mist but Bloodseeker will

• Aba offlane doesn't mind building mage slayer which obviously helps vs bloodseeker

• Aba's inate is "withering mist" which reduces HP regen, healing, lifesteal and spell lifesteal by 35% if the enemy hero is below 40% hp

• Some folks make radiance first item on Aba (I don't) which can later be broken into Nullifier. Nullifier obviously helps a lot vs Bloodseeker because it removes the barrier

I don't know if this will work in high level dota cos you just have another hitter on your offlane but I can see it working out in the lower brackets where the bloodseekers are literally brainlessly running at you

I've been trying him out in this role because of the absolutely stale patch meta and have been having pretty decent success so far. Build is 2-1-3 skipping GA for more burst potential. Itemization is Phase Wand Harpoon into any iteration of Blademail, Blink, S&Y/BKB and Shivas depending on the game. What's important to note is that even though your spells are mainly defensive in nature, you absolutely have to be a frontline initiator by using Repel on yourself and going in to burst one of their heroes. Once the fight starts use GA once they commit on your team and ideally you already have the numbers advantage.

Unfortunately, you absolutely have to stomp your lane in order to have any sort of impact on this hero but I've been winning most melee matchups except against AM and MK for obvious reasons. If their pos 5 is Lich or Lion it's also gonna be a really difficult time for you.

Pros: great burst potential even in the midgame Cons: lacks lockdown and kit is way too niche

Ancient rank.

I've been playing Dota since this summer and I mostly play pos 3-5 and rarely pos 2, but since I need to learn something new to get better I want to play as a carry. I've played Ursa once with my friend and it really didn't go well - I've got my BF at minute 24 after being bullied out of lane. Generally, jungling for 20-30 minutes makes me extremely bored and I kind of phase out out of game. The question is: what are some pos 1 heroes that do not require much farming and/or can fight early?

Which mid heroes are generally good for most games ? Because im learning mid, i want a hero that i can just pick in 2nd phase or just spam them without getting hard countered too bad.

Number one is undoubtedly Phantom Assassin, right? She is like a ticking time bomb that, if not defused, will explode in your face, regardless of whether her user is an expert or not.

As for support, I believe it goes to Abaddon. He's always at the top of the winrate chart, no matter which patch.

a few taken from our steam support conversation

a few questions about the attached image file https://preview.redd.it/what-is-this-even-steam-dota-support-could-not-answer-v0-c62hqyovmdee1.jpg?width=559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d89c06449ef1f95f0051a01d3e0d52f089888dd are:

- what is this when clicking a team 'logo' in-game whilst spectating a match/game is it a "cheer"?

- do others watching see it and do we see it if others click it?

- what is its purpose? what does it do? or just for show?

- what is the difference between holding it and clicking or multiple quick clicks?

- each with a separate color/colour (can be white, green, red) does that depend on the team hue? dire/radiant? and why some of the times white or other?

and to add, please let us know of all possible information on this subject-matter which is in the game with no explanation as we also did not find anything useful online to answer our questions or on the steam community discussion forum about this, would be best even if with answers from the development team.