First I wanted to talk a bit about how I random, and a very special Deadwood game. When I hard randomed Deadwood I ended up too way busy, trying to juggle reading prodex, the tooltips for the abilities, browse through a couple of guides that had the items I wanted because I don’t know where to find them in the shop, all in the time between pick, game start, and creeps spawning, while figuring out which lane I should go to versus which lane I should really be in if only I knew what I was doing, then attempting to last hit against a very harassing Bubbles that ended up pushing me completely out of lane, to get a feel for how the abilities work together. The biggest problem? No idea how to guess where someone would be 2 seconds from now to land his q.

You can just guess how effective I was that game.

Later while watching random youtubes, I found a Deadwood clip showing his full combo. Portal key in, ult, *q on top of them while they were stunned so they couldn’t move out of it*, hit them with stumps and when you only have one charge left throw it at them, they’re dead. It just seemed so obvious, I couldn’t stop cursing myself for not figuring it out on my own. That was the moment of realization that I just flat out wasn’t doing enough preparation to really take anything away from playing new heroes.

Now I do a very simple practice game to spend whatever time I need reading the in game guides, get a feel for the attack animations, ranges and damage for abilities, get an idea what items I should be going for, then hit max level and give myself all the items I could never make in a real game and compare that. Next, I hit up youtube for some highlight clips and see if there’s any obvious combos to the abilities or specific things I should be trying and failing to achieve in game. Then I just try it in a real game and see what happens. Lastly, I’ll download a replay and watch key moments or spectacular mistakes and try to piece together exactly how it all happened, to give myself an idea what I need to focus on next game.

Results have been speaking for itself, it’s a vastly better way to learn. Call not hard randoming ‘cheating’ if you will, it’s working.

Now on to Doctor Repulsor.

First thing I see in this practice game is the absolutely incredible mana cost to his teleport. This spells trouble because I can not for the life of me conserve mana, it’s the worst League habit I have, always want to spam every ability on cooldown always. Looking at prodex shows he’s a common mid hero so rune control will rely on me, which means I’ll need to be glimpsing at the clock constantly for each 2 minute rune, but the plus side is getting a bottle has been a lot of fun every game so far. I may need to purchase my own ward for the rune depending on if no one else does it, but that’s not a problem as the ward is way too important for runes and ganking/counter ganking. Bottle goes well with Blood Chalice, even though I never remember about the health return until after the fight is over and it’s too late. Since he has a teleport I’ll just guess that Phase Boots aren’t the best idea and try for Steam Boots, need the practice swapping the stats around for chalice and bottle use anyways. Cringing when thinking about that mana bar dropping in the practice game, I’m just going to say fuck it and get a power supply as well. Seems a good enough plan.

Goal: Bottle, Chalice, Steam Boots, Power Supply, Teleport Stone, and wild card that i’ll probably never get the farm for. Wards? Hell Flower? Tablet of Command? Null Stone? Shrunken Head? Just have to wait and see how the game goes to make any sort of decision.

Looking over the build order is proving more difficult. I seem to want every ability maxed at the start, q for farming, w for stun to kill, disable, or gank, e for farming and use while ganking, and ultimate to be able to move farther for the same amount of mana and can’t decide which. The guides are no real help here as they all suggest conflicting things, so based on what I think I should be doing I’m going to make a tentative guess of w, q, e, q, q, r, q, w, w, w, r, e, e, stats, r, stats. My reasoning being stuns might be necessary for any sort of level 1 fight, and while not looking for one if it breaks out it can mean the difference between a kill or escape at 10 hit points. Then going to farm with q, as a means to push the lane in preparation for trying for the rune or because I’m an ex-League baddie and need abilities to last hit, who knows. Leaving only one point in e and getting w second makes sense so far as most team fights I see usually start happening post 6 and I still have no real game sense on whether a gank is possible or not, and e only increases damage and w increases stun duration. Tentative, as I said, but I won’t know more until I try it out.

I am going to attempt to farm as much as possible safely at mid and get a bottle and hopefully a rune and lane situation will let me attempt at gank, but mostly just attempt to farm up a few mana items without dying and then just see how the game goes and any situation I recognize happens.

Guesses as to how the game will actually go? So much is always based on team comp; however, I fully expect to be allowed mid, face off against someone who has half a clue, get denied out the ass while being unable to last hit anything and taking much unneeded harassment, eventually getting pushed out of lane, or face someone I don’t know the abilities to and just die giving the opposing mid time to gain a clutch rune giving them a double kill on my sidelanes that lets them spiral wildly out of control while I’m flailing about uselessly because I spent all my money on teleports back to lane or just lost it all on death all the while completely midjudging the mana costs of his teleport at every turn and having someone make a .gif of my failures and becoming the next pull them fukers in superstar. Call me an optimist.

Now I could end up getting some sort of easy lane and harassing them out and pushing and getting runes like is needed and maybe end up getting a gank off for some sort of early lead, but unless lightning strikes, I just won’t be able to carry that momentum and will fall off to some side role disabler/feeder/annoyance later in the game. Unless they are just all ridiculously bad or something in which case it won’t really matter what I end up doing. It could end up being everyone is terrible, including me, and I decide the only real thing I can do is push every lane as hard as possible while attempting to be uncatchable, all the more reason to level q first.

Now to actually play and find out.

After game report: I’m going to have to do the write-up tomorrow as I didn’t realize the time and I’m tired as fuck, but I’ll just leave this here as a teaser.
http://replays.heroesofnewerth.com/match_replay.php?mid=65657176