HoN Strategy

The Ultimate guide to Winning HoN games

In the following Heroes of Newerth guide I’m going divulge the secrets that high level players use to dominate games.
The reason for this guide is to help and at the same time educate players who are having trouble winning public and ranked games, whether on their own or with friends.

For reasons of simplicity and ease of reading i have split the guide into 4 categories each with their own sub sections:

1. Pre game
1.1 Hero picks
1.2 Counter picking
1.3 Synergy
1.4 Laning

2. Start game
2.1 Starting Items
2.2 Rune control
2.3 Warding
2.4 First blood
2.5 Adjusting lanes

3. Mid game
3.1 Adjusting Wards
3.2 Ganking
3.3 Lane pushing
3.4 Farming

4. Late game
4.1 Importance of Team fights
4.2 Lane control
4.3 Pushing their base towers

1. Pre game

At this point you are sitting in the lobby at the hero selection screen, regardless of the game mode you will have to make decisions on which heroes to pick  that will give your team the advantage.

1.1 Hero picks
Being able to play every hero in the pool to a decent standard is great, but more often than not your strengths will lie in certain heroes.  Let your team mates know which heroes your most accustomed with. Having an epic lineup < Having a lineup of heroes you can actually play.
Now it might come to the point where you are playing with “absolute retards” who haven’t read this guide, then you have two choices:
Try and carry your team or pick whats needed. For example , if you are a skilled player pick Forsaken Archer and farm till your imbalanced, or you can pick that needed ranged disabler to go with those 4 melee carries on your team (fml). It’s just a matter of how confident you are in your team mates.

1.2 Counter Picking
Depending on the game mode you will have the chance to counter pick enemy heroes. There are very few heroes that have no counter, so knowing which heroes counter which can be very handy. You must also bare in mind that having a lineup of all counters will result in lack of synergy. So you either counter their best player or counter their most threatening hero.
With the recent ability to view players most played heroes you can get a good idea of what they might pick and either ban or counter pick them before they get the chance.

omg! ban Wretched Hag!

1.3 Synergy
When picking a hero you must consider the compatibility with other heroes on your team. Try and visualise a team fight with your lineup and ask yourself, who will initiate? Once they’ve initiated, who is going to follow up with that AoE disable ? How will we kill their carry? What happens when they silence our initiator ? etc…
Deciding on the right heroes for your strategy is crucial. A pushing lineup will have heroes like Defiler and Pollywog with heroes to support them, a gank lineup will have heroes like Magmus, Witch slayer, Pyromancer,  who will roam early on stopping the enemy carry from farming, a carry orientated lineup will have a combination of babysitters, support, disablers and a carry.
Just picking lane combos isn’t enough to win games.

1.4 Laning
Decide on the lanes before the game starts. Heroes that require farm should always go to the longest lane, for the legion it’s the bottom lane and for the hellbourne the top lane. The reason for this is that they can pull the creeps from the forest into the lane and farm them, while also being the hardest lane to gank. With that in mind your gankers (heroes like Witch slayer/Magmus) will go to the short lanes to counter the enemy carries.
Mid lane is reserved for heroes that scale well with levels, for example, Pebbles, Wretched hag, Forsaken Archer, Chipper, Deflier. With these kind of heroes once they out level the enemy team they can cause destruction. At level 9 pebbles does insane damage, which means he can pop into a lane and destroy most heroes. A level 11 Deflier is the fastest tower pusher in the game.

2. Start game

Starting items, lane adjustment, first blood,  and rune control all attribute to getting a foothold early game, which in turn leads to winning mid game.

2.1 Starting items
Every team needs to buy a courier and at least one set of wards at the start. The courier is used to maintain lane dominance, having the ability to get regeneration items from base lets you stay in the lane without going back to the fountain. Otherwise you will be loosing a lot of experience and gold.
OK so you’ve sorted out the courier and wards, now you need to buy items that will help you last hit and deny in the lane along with some regen items.

2.2 Rune control
The rune will spawn every 2 minutes, you need to make sure that someone on your team picks it up. The most prevalent runes are Haste, Double damage and Regeneration, these runes will make ganks easier. Most of the time the mid hero is responsible for picking up the rune, but if the rune spawns closest to your short lane have one of your gankers  come and pick it up and use it to take out the enemy hero laning mid. I can’t state enough  the importance of picking up the rune when it spawns.

2.3 Warding
Early game wards are used to block the enemy pull camp on the long lane, and to give sight of one of the rune spots. By doing this you stop the enemy farming lane from pulling creeps hence denying them gold and xp. Also being able to pick up the rune as soon as it spawns.
As a general rule the lesser of the two heroes going to the short lane will buy the wards, while the lesser of the two heroes going to the long lane will buy the courier.
Make sure you ward the rune spot 10 seconds after the first rune spawns, this way you will be able to give sight over the period of 4 runes spawning. When warding the long lane creep pull spot make sure you do it before 30 seconds (first neutral spawn) and inbetween the woods (hard to counter).

2.4 First Blood
There will be engagements around the rune spots as the first rune spawns. Standing up a hill next to the rune spot will give you vision of the rune and anybody going for it, either enabling a first blood or avoiding getting ganked while going for the rune. If you managed to pick up the rune and there are no enemy heroes around use it to gank the closest lane. Remember it’s hard to gank the enemies long lane.
A great way of getting first blood is a Tri lane strategy where you all hide in the secret shop on your long lane, wait for the heroes to come into the lane and own them. You will need at least 1 disabler to pull this off.
If you think the enemy will try to ward your creep camp use it as an opportunity to gank them.
Getting first blood early game will help you and your team mates massively, if your feeling generous upgrade the courier after getting first blood.

2.5 Adjusting lanes
Recently there are new strategies  emerging in higher level games, Tri lane and dual mid are the most popular. If you find yourself laning against one of these strategies unexpectedly or you are laning against a tough lane you will have to swap lanes with your team mates.

Countering a Tri lane is simple, they will most likely lane in a dual lane (top or bot), this means if you send one of your teamates in that lane to another lane it will be 3vs1 . Sounds crazy ? Not really. If your solo hero plays defensively he won’t get killed, while impeding the xp gain of the 3 enemy heroes. This will force them to change their lanes.
The only way to defend against a dual mid strategy is to dual mid yourself.

3. Mid game
Mid game is where the action starts. Ganking and tier 1 tower pushes will start happening. The aim of this stage is to out level  and outfarm while defending and pushing.
If your team has done well early game, mid game will be alot easier. Doing well mid game will carry you into late game.

3.1 Adjusting Wards
In order to do well mid game you will need sight of choke points used to gank. These locations will change when towers die.
The first picture shows the choke points that need to be warded when all towers are alive:

The next picture shows the choke points when the mid and top towers are down as hellbourne.

Obviously there are alot of rune spots that you can abuse, but you must place the wards where you predict the enemy will come from and to take into consideration towers that have been destroyed.
Counter warding is just as important, it is very hard to gank a lane that has it’s choke points warded. The only way to gank them is to tp to the lane directly or to destroy their wards.

3.2 Ganking
If you have warded properly and are confident that the enemy won’t see you coming, you can start to gank the lanes. If you fail to destroy the enemy wards at the choke points you will waste xp walking around the map trying to fail gank, as they will see you coming from a mile away.
When your ganking heroes reach level 5/6 they should start roaming the map for kills, once you  successfully gank a lane you can either push the lane or look for more ganks.
Depending on the hero you have laning mid he should stay in the lane a little longer then start ganking or farming.

3.3 Lane pushing
Getting those tier 1 towers down mid game will give your team  gold and open up area’s for ganks. The most important towers to push mid game are the mid and enemy long lane towers.
By destroying these two towers you increase accessibility into their forest area, which means you can gank anybody farming there.
If the enemy is pushing one of your towers you have 3 choices: Full on defence and hope to win the team fight. Full on counter push, or Defend and counter push. Once again this depends on your hero line up and team strategy. If you have the kind of heroes that excel in team fights you will want to full on defend. If you can’t defend at all, you will want to counter push another lane or two. If you can fend them off long enough you will want to have 1 or 2 heroes push another lane while the rest defend.
The goal is to maximize gold and xp while keeping your tier 1 towers as long as possible.

3.4 Farming
If your lineup consists of heroes that require farm to be effective you must ensure that they get the room to farm. The best way to do this is to ward the choke points surrounding your carrys farming area, and to defend his lane. Letting him get last hits and hero kills also helps. Meanwhile your gankers should be roaming for heroes caught off guard and killing them.

4. Late game

The goal of the game is to destroy the enemies throne, you didn’t know ? Well the amount of players that run around the map like headless chickens with no direction is a testament to this.
Late game is all about winning the important team fights and pushing base towers/barracks.

4.1 The importance of team fights
At this stage in the game your level will be fairly high, if you die its a long wait to re-spawn, that’s why you have to make every team fight count. Loosing a team fight at this stage could mean loosing a Rax.
That’s why you have to ward anywhere you farm including Kongor. If the enemy tries to kill kongor you should be ready to pounce on them, and if your going for kongor make sure youve warded and counter warded the surrounding area to prevent getting killed yourself.
When finding yourself in a team fight situation try to initiate on them first, or get them to initiate on your tankiest hero. Make sure to kill the damage dealers first then the support and finally the tank.

4.2 Lane control
Defending one lane isn’t hard, defending 3 lanes that are being pushed at once is alot harder. This can be used against your enemy also. Knowing when to nuke a lane is essential, nuke it too hard and it will push it into their enemy base, don’t defend it and it will be prime for an enemy push. A great strategy is to synchonize 3 lanes being pushed at the same time, this will force the enemy to split into 3 lanes of defence, at this point you can regroup into one lane and push hard. If they all rush to that lane to defend you can switch to another lane etc…

4.3 Pushing the base towers
So your inside the enemy base, and wondering what to do. The priority here is to destroy the enemy barracks, namely the melee one. By killing this rax you will force them to defend that lane consistently letting you push the other lanes and stopping them from pushing with 5 heroes. The amount of times ive seen high level players mess around trying to kill enemy heroes when they should be attacking the barracks is ridiculous. There is no point pushing their base if your not going to kill the barracks, remember it regens at 50 hp a second, so just damaging it to come back later and finish it off isn’t going to work.
If you see the enemy are pushing your base without tp scrolls, you can counter push their base with another hero while they are forced to walk back or push , essentialy turning it into a race. If you have better pushing heroes then this is the option for you.
The Turtle strategy is a great way of turning around the game if you are underleveled and can’t push. This strategy relies on staying in your base and farming the creeps until you make up your level  and farm difference to the point you can kill the enemy and push.

Summary

Pick heroes you are comfortable with while keeping synergy with your team mates. Buy wards and courier at the start and make sure your in the right lane. Rune control is imperative, watchout for ganks by warding and counter ward to setup your own ganks.
Support your carry, don’t let him get ganked. Push while defending and win teamfights.
Most importantly of all , destroy the enemy throne.
Good luck!

Flavours of the month

After being blessed with patch 0.1.63, HoN players are switching up their play styles accordingly.
Here is a list of heroes that have been effected by this patch, starting with those that have been buffed.

Recent buffs:
Devourer
Engineer
Glacius
Hellbringer
Moon Queen
Night Hound
Nymphora
Ophelia
Pandamonium
Pebbles
Rampage
Slither
Soulstealer
Swiftblade
Torturer
Wretched Hag

And those that have been nerfed:
Corrupted Disciple
Deadwood
Forsaken Archer
Madman
Magebane
Puppetmaster
Sand Wraith

Most of the buff/nerfs are subtle, however a few heroes have had noticeable changes. Here are a couple we thought might make some noise in the weeks to come.

Devourer:

With his hook now 1100 range at all levels, Devourer players have the option to skill level 1 hook instead of rot. This in our opinion is a huge advantage, especially if he is laning with a partner who has a stun/disable, opening up the possibilities of level 1 tower hooks (where you hook a player into the vicinity of a nearby tower). Level 1 rot is still viable as an early ganking spell.

Engineer:

Having had channeling removed completely from Tinker, Engineer is now a great support hero. Making defending/pushing a much easier job.

Glacius:

Glacius can now cast Ice Imprisonment on allies reducing ALL damage taken from enemy’s up to 80% at level 4! (the draw back being they are immobilized for the duration). We think this is great throughout the game and especially late game when facing farmed carries or just before a player gets nuked by a big damage dealing spell.
Special tip: Try ice imprisoning yourself when playing Glacius just before you cast your ultimate.

Hellbringer:

Deathboil now jumps to a total of 4 targets at level 4…. need say anymore ?

Rampage:

Not the most viable pick in high level games, but for the players who enjoy Easy Mode games Rampage has had cool-downs on both his spells significantly reduced, nice.

Slither:

Slithers attack range has been increased by a whopping 50, this may not sound like much but it makes a huge difference in terms of lane control and ganking.
His Passive now impairs the health regeneration of players under the effect. Possibly making him more of a viable pick in higher level games.

Sand Wraith:
Those fond of Sand Wraith will be sad to realise his dispersion is not doing nearly half as much as the damage it used to do. This is because the damage type has been change to Magic (from True) making it less effective the more magic armor enemies have.

Tempest:
Early farming for tempest has become a difficulty: with the new creeps implemented in the last patch, and purge getting buffed in this patch, his spawns will have a tough time lasting  in the jungle.

To sum things up
So, we’ve given you some advice on picks of the month, its up to you how you go about countering the newly buffed heroes.

Good luck!

An Advanced guide to Geometers Bane by Euls

Geometers Bane

Components- Slash, Blessed Orb and a 500g Recipe.

Want DPS?

Geometer’s Bane – or if your still old school, the Manta. Well this is an item that is definitely one of the most underused damage items you can buy in HoN.

Back in the days of Dota, it use to be a primo item on the likes of a ranged carry, and you most often saw it being used on Mirana.

However, for HoN – this item not only makes many other dps items look silly, but it also plays a staple part of many carries builds and hardly any people realize it.

Read more

Farming Account Statistics

We have discovered it is possible to increase your Heroes of Newerth account statistics such as KDA ratio and PSR using multiple accounts. If you have spare beta keys you can create new accounts to use on the HoN servers; you can also run multiple instances of HoN. Therefore, make a private game with your main account and use a subsidiary account in a second instance to join the game and go on the other team. Then start feeding kills to your main account – we have managed to farm about 200 kills in 30 minutes using soulstealer against madman, thinking about what items to buy, what spots on the map to use etc. Sure enough, the unanswered kills get added to your account and your KDA improves.

Although less effective, you can also farm PSR. You need to have many subsidiary accounts and as many instances (or many friends with second accounts) running – and make a team on the enemy of 4 or 5 accounts, against your 1. This will ensure you gain a lot of PSR from the game. You then win the game and your PSR will increase. You can only do this a few times as when your PSR gets too high, it will stop letting you gain any because of the mathematic algorithm involved. Even if you make more and more fresh accounts, a team of 4 1500 players against your 1 will still not let you gain a lot of PSR at all later on.

S2 games have discussed the issue and concluded that for now at least, they will not take action to prevent this activity because players cannot farm PSR very well, and the player’s PSR will not represent how skilled they are. ‘True’ high PSR players will identify quickly that you are not as good as your rating. If you look at people’s statistics profiles, it can be a little obvious when people have farmed K:D ratio. Usually the normal relationship between games played, games won, PSR and KDA gets upset in a way identifiable to others.

What do you think? Should S2 take a stand against stat farming? Or should it be left for those players with no conscience?