DOTA 2 cosmetics

                                       The infamous Pudge ladies and gentleman. According to the statistics, the most played hero in dota 2 ( arguably also in dota1 though we dont have reliable stats for that). Pudge is played in every skill pool, Competitive tier, Elite tier, Normal tier and in Potato tiers.

This guide is NOT for:

• People trying to play this hero for the first time. There are hundreds of guides on steam/playdota other sites that will teach you the basics spells/descriptions etc much better than I could. Also this will not teach you how to hook. There are better guides with gifs and videos for that purpose.
• People above 4000 MMR , you probably know all of this stuff below so why bother reading it again?  

So this guide will focus on those players who are already quite experienced in playing pudge but still lack the finishing touches required for perfection.  So its more like a collection of tips rather than an actual guide, highlighting the common mistakes. So lets get started.

Laning:

Midgame:

Lategame:

General Gameplay:

• Get armor on pudge. ALOT OF ARMOR. Armor scales with hp, as pudge already gets alot of hp from Flesh heap, he benefits ALOT more from armor than any other hero. Every armor point adds an additional 6% of your maximum HP to your EHP. Consider a pudge with 1000 hp and 0 armor. To kill it one needs to deal at least 1000 damage to it. If we give pudge 10 armor, he gets 37.5% reduction, so it will take 1600dmg to kill him. You can say that pudge now has "600" extra hp. This "1600" hp called EFFECTIVE HEALTH POINTS (EHP in short). 
• Tranquils boots are the BEST boots for pudge. They give good armor, imba hp regen to heal up after ganks, awesome movespeed but most of all, they are cheap as dirt. You can always sell them for Travels later in game.
• Always click hook ON TOP of enemy heroes. Many people just select hook and click in general direction of the enemy. The problem with this appreach is that if you miscalculate the range, the hook will fall short and you will miss by inches. By clicking on top of enemy, pudge will not throw hook until he walk in range to make sure the hook reaches where you clicked.
• A good way to land your combo is to select hook > Click on enemy hero>When hook is lanuched, immediately select Ulti and use it on hero before the hook connect> press rot button. Now sit back and watch how hook connects+pudge uses ulti immediately and stats the rots autometically. Benefit of this method is you keep your mouse on a single place, you immediately use dismember to less time for enemy to react. The downside of this method is that after the Chen+pudge fountain hook fix, this method causes problems if there is fog of war between enemy and you (e.g when you hook a hero through lot of trees. There is a delay when hero reaches pudge. So its better to just hook then manually dismember him when he reaches you)
• Pudge dont need alot of items during midgame. Buy the wards and smoke, the extra vision+smoke will ensure that you keep getting kills, that 150 gold investment on obs gives good profit . DO NOT BEG your teammates.
• When its lategame, use Dismember on enemy carry who used bkb instead of that poor Crystal Maiden.
• DO NOT MAKE DAGON. If you already made dagon DO NOT KILL WITH IT. Use hook or rot to finsh off heroes. The reason is that Dagon range is larger than flesh heap range. You miss out on soo many flesh heap stacks with dagon thats its not even funny. Remember flesh heap range is 450 (its half the range of lvl 1 hook. Yes its VERY LOW range)
• Your mid enemy is QOP, OD, Quas+Wex invoker, Bristleback or Slark ? Go passive mode. Killing these heroes is hard so just try to get last hits+denies but focus on staying alive and keep your hp high.
• Lvl 1,2,3 Rot doesnt disable Salve. So when you are rot+chasing enemies early game and they prefer running instead of man fighting you, you can safely use salve.
• Having problem hooking an enemy who keeps moving? Wait until one of your creep is low hp. This is the moment when he will stay still and try to lasthit it. That's your moment. 
• NEVER HOOK TIDEHUNTER IN LATEGAME. Its always funny watching a Tide getting hooked and landing a 5 man Ravage on enemies. His kraken shell will always ensure he is able to land his ulti.
• Try to enjoy playing him.

I will add to this guide, if i come up with something else.

In this post we try to understand Illusions with detail. Illusion scale very well into lategame, thats why most illusion based heroes are lategame carries. They pretty much have a straightforward skillbuild and item build. Pub players always misunderstand how illusions work

Illusions can't use any active ability. Passive abilities that illusions can use:

• Evasion
• Critical Strike (it should be noted that the red number is before the illusion's percentage reduction on damage)
• Feedback (only works on melee illusions)
• Movement speed (flat and percentage)
• Attribute bonus (Strength, agility and intelligence)
• Flat HP or mana
• Radiance burn aura
• Spell resistance from abilities, and base spell resistance
• Quelling Blade's boost on damage

Following passive abilities do not work on illusions.

• Raw damage or armor. (Only damage from stats and armor from agility is given)
• Raw Attack speed (Only AS from agility and yasha bonus)
• Orb effects (except Feedback on melee illusions)
• Spell resistance from Planeswalker's Cloak, Hood of Defiance or Khadgar's Pipe of Insight (Only resistance that illusions get are from base resistance (25% for all heroes except Meepo's 35%) and skills like Antimage's Spell Shield, Phantom lancer's Phantom edge, Viper's Corrosive skin

How this knowledge affects dota:

This knowledge helps to understand how to play illusion based heroes which include.

HEROES WHO USUALLY BUILD MANTA:

• Focus on bulking up on raw hp and agility is effective way of boosting dps and surviveability of illusions. Prioritize getting Agility giving items (Yasha,Manta,butterfly,Ethereal Blade) over raw damage items(MKB,Daedalus,Desolater).
• Diffusal is common choice because it gives good agility and melee illusions deal full damage from manaburn.
• Manta is another core item because it furthur increases the number of illusions( which also benefit from your illusion based item build). Extra movespeed and attackspeed from yasha do work on illusions.
• Althought illusions do get critical strike but you should try delaying it as much as possible. After rushing daedalus as first item on PL you find out that even if overheard red numbers show 500dmg critical your illusions still deal pathetic damage. That's because the numbers show a fake crit. As Illusions do not get raw damage from daedalus so the actual damage is calculated by considering the damage from stats, applying crit multiplier on this number and then reducing it by %age reduction of illusions)
• Illusions do not get damage block from Vanguard. So a vitality booster provides your illusions ALL the benefits that a vanguard could give (with a furthure benefit of upgrading it to Heart of Tarassque later)
• Quelling blade works on illusion damage. It may not have significant impact but still boosts your jungling ability.
• Illusions do not benefit from Vladimir's offering or Assualt Cuirass auras. They do not get the +armor,lifesteal,damage or attackspeed auras that these items provide but they do however grant other nearby heroes these auras similiar to radiance. Try to avoid making these items, if you are so desperate for lifesteal, a simple Morbid mask could be more cost effective than a finished vlads for same purposes.

(The topic is incomplete for the time being, I will add more stuff in future)

This is the second part of the previous class. We discussed the basic nature of scaling skills and how a hero should be properly skilled. There are some heroes that are inherently difficult to asses the proper skill build either because they had been misplayed from the very beginning or those whose skills are too complex to make sense of scaling...  Skill Points=sp for future reference.


Berserker's call should always be maxed AFTER Counter helix and Battelhunger are maxed. Berserker's Call provides 0.5 seconds of extra disable for every skill point. The reason why disable time scaling is so bad is because its a BKB piercing AOE disable giving you insane armor, meaning its VERY strong skill in lategame. 1.5s would be enough early, if you decide to max it, you will lack dmg output from other skills and u wont have mana anyways to make use of it,

Wild Axes deal composite dmg (its dmg is reduced by enemies armor and mgc resistance) so they deal high dmg early game when heroes have low armor and neglible dmg lategame when enemy carry has bkb+high armor. in most cases max this first.
People mostly skip Call of wild. Its one the BEST skills in whole game. You get free moving observer ward with huge vision and 35% slow that goes through bkb. Max it second.
Only max inner beast early IF you are going for push strategy and start roaming as 5 man very early, because thats where this skill shines most.

Dragon breath: A nice aoe,spammable nuke. Max at lvl 7.
Dragon Tail: One of the most powerful lvl 1 stun. 2.5second and only 9s cooldown. But has worst scaling possible, a pathetic .25s and 25dmg. When a skill has such scaling you know it must be a strong skill. It is one of very few stuns in dota that are instant (fireblast, telekinesis etc) combine it with instant spell casting animation of DK and you got your self the most powerful stun in game (non-ulti skill). Take one skill point at lvl 1 and max it last.
Dragon Blood: Makes you tanky, max it 2nd.

Tiny is usually played correctly. but if you absolutely want to max you dmg output at lvl 7 then take skill points in following order. Avalanche/Toss/Avalanche/Toss/Avalanche/Grow/Toss/Toss/Avalanche . We stop taking points in Avalanche because of its weird scaling after lvl 3. (80 dmg for first 3 lvls then mere 40 for 4th level). Also take Grow whenever possible, the benefit are too good to skip and people in pubs skip ulti in order to max first 2 spells.

Burning Spears: Max them at 7 or max berserker's Blood if you are facing heavy nukes but NEVER skip Spears altogether. people still play huskar like the old version when you got upto 96 free dmg from berserker's blood and made lifesteal. Now if you make lifesteal skipping Burning Spears, huskar will hit like a crystal maiden autoattacks. A single attack of Burning Spear does around 200 dmg. Tell me why this skill is not AWESOME.. and its sad to see people not taking a single point in it.

DO NOT MAX Vengeance Aura early. Its based on base dmg and stat dmg ONLY. so by the time you max it at lvl 7, most heroes have around 70 base dmg, so it barely gives your teammates 25 dmg maximum. So max it later in game when drow ranger got 200 base dmg where you provide her with 72 free dmg. Take early points in Magic Missile and Wave of Terror. Wave gives gud vision+pure dmg+nice armor reduction which is nice for early game and helps alot in pushes.

DO NOT SKIP Shrapnel. Its very underrated spell and frankly his best skill. His skills are flexible and you max the skill based on how your game is going. You have good supports roaming and protecting you? Max headshot first. Game is hard and enemy heroes are scary ganker? Max Take Aim. You got pushing heroes in team? Max shrapnel.
Just make sure you dont ignore shrapnel and your games with sniper will be improved significantly.

Spectre being a melee farming carry get harassed ALOT. Thats why many people make the mistake of maxing Dispersion. Dispersion is a scaling skill and a single point is more than enough early game. Get a shield and get lot of regen, do not make yourself a useless creep for whole early game only because of a little harass.
Max Desolate at lvl 7. You don't even have to join fights, just activate your ultimate and your illusions will hit the enemies for 65 pure dmg each hit. You can deal upto 200 pure dmg to every enemy in map just by pressing a button.

Almost NO ONE builds this hero correctly and I don't know why. Why do people not understand that scaling of 1 sec and 20dmg per level on nightmare is pathetic? Take a single point and leave it at that.
Max Brain Sap. Its pure dmg and it heals you.
Max Enfeeble second. It reduces enemies dmg by 120 with a cd of 10 sec and 20 sec duration, meaning you can apply it on 2 enemies. So it permanently blocks 240 dmg for all of your team and you thought 40 dmg block of vanguard on a single hero is good? It is also not removed by bkb.

Do not ignore Upheaval. Its an amazing spell. Doesn't matter when you max it but just dont skip it in favor of stats. Learn to use it then you will appreciate how OP this spell actually is.




Chilling Touch: The strongest spell this hero has. It gives total of 2400 dmg to your team at lvl 7. Theoritically you can kill the whole enemy team with nothing except this spell and autoattacks. Practically it is still very strong. So either max it first or second depending on situation. Its a very OP spell and surprise surprise.. Majority of people don't even take a single point in it.

Ice Vortex is weak skill. Max it last.



























So this was the list of all the heroes that I feel are built wrongly in pub games. Ofcourse many of the skills still depend on different scenarios (fore example You could max Ice vortex at lvl 7 for Ancient apparition, if you have Pugna and Skywrath mage in team and you 3 start roaming with your mgc dmg amplification skills) so unless you are going for some crazy strat like that, above skillbuilds will give you maximum efficiency in almost every scenarion.

Next post I will start some interesting Advanced Mechanics stuff and some tips that even veteran Dota players could find useful.

This is NOT the typical post about cosmetic items or anything related to mods. I'm just in a mood to write and I got no other place to go. So I think I'll just use this blog for my personal opinions and stuff like that. If you want to get the updates of ONLY the cosmetic posts, then I suggest you subscribe to the facebook page because I will ONLY post cosmetics related links there that will link you to the appropriate post. Feel free to ignore any other posts.

                                         I recently got the idea to write about dota related tips/tricks/mechanics needed to become a better dota player or in general to improve your skill. First of all, I would like to start with my personal info. I started dota back about 4-5 years ago. I was a die-hard fan from the beginning. I was an ACCA student and had ALOT of free times (we used to have 4 holidays each weeks) so I played like 12 hrs per day. Needless to say I became quite good at it, I spent most of my spare time surfing the forums and mechanics related stuff, so I became good at theory crafting too. So in this (and future) post, I will write about stuff that I feel every dota player should know in order to improve.

                                          Today's topic is Scaling of skills. In DOTA, certain skills have a scaling factor, to make them relevant in lategame. Take Lina's Dragon Slave skill, its a standard 280 dmg skill. It may be strong early game when heroes have low hp but it will keep getting weaker and weaker untill its neglible. Lategame when enemy has 3,000 hp with bkb and lifesteal, 280 dmg doesnt even matter. This is an example of non-scaling skill.
                                         So what is a scaling skill you might ask. Most of the skills with percentage element attached to them. Consider a few of them,

• Spectre's "dispersion" - More hp you have, the more dmg you will disperse.
• Drow's "Aura" - More agility you get more dmg you get. (same with Riki's backstab)
• Centaur "Return" - More STR you get, more dmg is reflected to anyone who attacks you and more dmg they take from your ultimate.

                                                 The point is, ALMOST every hero got some kind of scaling or some logic behind its skill build, enabling you to prioritize 2 skills and while taking one point in the 3rd skill (take ulti whenever you want). Most of these scaling spells are either one point wonders or not relevant in early game.

The main reason this is important is the popularity of wrong skill builds. Taking earlier points in proper skills can help you play the hero at maximum efficiency. I think an example would be more appropiate to make it clear. Lets take Storm spirit.
                                          At level 9, there are 2 popular builds.

• 4 points in remnant, 3 in vortex, 1 in overload and 1 in ball lighting
• 3 point in remnant,   4 in vortex, 1 in overload and 1 in ball lighting.

Does any of these builds ensure maximum efficiency? The answer is NO. The correct skill build is this.

• 1 point in remnant, 3 points in vortex, 4 in overload and 1 in ball lighting.

Why 3 points in vortex? Besides being a normal disable, vortex has a purpose. SS uses a remnant, now this remnant takes time to become active and enemies usually run from it to avoid it, thats where the vortex comes in play. Its purpose is to pull the enemy in order to hit it with remnant. 3 skill points give 2 seconds of pull that is more than enough to hit them with it. The extra 0.5 second disable IS NOT  WORTH A SKILL POINT early game. Remember exp is very precious, so you need to spend every skill point carefully.

Why 1 point in remnant? Thats where most people get confused. You see the scaling is horrible on remnant. There is ONLY 40 dmg increase per level and its pathetic. The cd remains the same, while mana cost get significant. Storm already have ALOT of mana problem during start and higher level remnant mana cost cripples him badly. Inshort, its a 1 point wonder skill, You get all the benefits from lvl 1 remnant without maxing it to lvl 4.

Why 4 points in overload? Now this is the main source of SS's damage output. You gave up 120 dmg by leaving Remnant at lvl 1, thats a 80% dmg output of remnant usage. But by taking 4 points in Overload, you increase your dmg output from overload by 300%. You see, the 220% difference is huuuge. And wanna know whats the most important part? This damage costs you ZERO mana. As you know overload is just free dmg whenever you use other skills, Use your low mana cost level 1 remnant, get free 90 dmg, use your slightly low mana cost vortex, gets 90dmg, use ulti, 90 dmg, use ulti again 90 dmg.. I think you get the point.

In short, this skill build will get you MAXIMUM dmg at the cost of MINIMUM mana cost.







The purpose of this post was that every single hero has a certain logic to how you are supposed to build him with limited amount of skill points. Getting that EFFICIENCY and maximum DMG OUTPUT is the key factor for dominating early game fights. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or want to discuss any skill build for your favourite hero.