Heroes of Newerth: Ok, who has Chipper's nuts?

In the midst of all the Nomads, Emerald Wardens, Scouts and Flint Beastwoods, where did Chipper go? This is just one of those heroes that fell to the wayside with a dismal (current) 70th ranking on the HoN most played. Why? Maybe it's the stream of new shiny heroes flowing into HoN every two weeks. Or, maybe it's a general lack of knowledge on how the hero operates. Either way I'm going to try and spotlight Chips and give the old favorite some much needed attention.

Now I wont bore you with descriptions of Chipper's skills, as you can go anywhere and find the descriptions of those. It's the combination and execution of his skills for maximum damage and slow that I will concentrate on. Now the very basics is that Chipper's "Q" skill, Tar Toss, burns enemies that are hit with a rocket for an extra 50 magic damage per second at max level. This nifty bonus just adds to the pile of spike damage he can toss out at any level and at any stage of the game.


Combining Tar Toss "Q" and rocket barrage "W":
This is the backbone of chipper's damage. The general idea is a 4 hit combo with these two skills. Both of these skills have aiming mechanism making them skill shots to a certain degree. With Tar Toss, your objective is to hit your main target directly in the center of the AOE targeting circle. This creates a maximum slow allowing for easier hits with Rocket Barrage. If done correctly you will see your target blackened as if covered by tar, funny how that works eh? Anyways, this is where the glorious rocket spam is most effective. Nail that target with all three rockets for max effect, providing some awesome burst damage. You are going to want to hit fast as the extra burn damage only last as long as the Tar Toss debuff is in effect. You should have another rocket ready about a second or two after the last one is fired.

Sawblade Showdown!!!!!!!
Chipper's ult works as an aimed AOE, but only in a straight line. Early on it will be hard to keep targets in the AOE as they can easily escape it's linear animation. It's best early to use it as a single damage nuke, partnered with Tar Toss or with stuns and large holds like Keeper of the Forest's ultimate. The 65 second cooldown usually means you can only use it once per fight, but its short enough to use multiple times in sustained pushes or multiple encounters.

Item Flavoring!

 I generally use a high damage oriented item build on Chipper, as I like the most bang for my nut....ahem.  My first item obtain is a Blood Chalice. This effectively allows you to use your Tar/Rocket combo more frequently in the early game. This is important for mana upkeep for rocket harass and kill opportunities. Then I usually grab a bottle, this with Blood Chalice will increase your ability to maintain sustained fights as Chipper uses a majority of his mana pool quite quickly. Throughout early to mid game I start working on my Staff of the Master. In my humble opinion, this item is key on any Chipper! Aside from
 the obvious Strength, Intelligence, Heath and Mana boosts, It increases your ultimate cast range to 1000 and slows any enemy caught in your ultimate by 70%! This is huge when combo-ed with your Tar Toss. Enemies literally crawl out of your ultimate taking large amounts of continuous sustained magic damage. My last core item I usually pick up is Spellshards. The negative magic armor effect makes all your damage output even more effective. In addition with Ghost Marchers you have a fast and hard hitting auto attack as far as non-carry heroes go, and your ultimate cooldown is reduced 6 seconds to 59 seconds with level 3 Spellshards. All in all an effective Chipper item. All combined making Chipper a hard hitting, agile and sustainable hero throughout the entirety of the game. Also check out my Chipper Kill Video for your viewing pleasure! Skit out.....

Heroes of Newerth: Juking and Hide Spots

Everyone has seen the action movie where the hero runs through an overcrowded urban center jumping over fresh fruit stands and throwing garbage cans at his pursuers right? Yea, and then he finally jumps into a crevice, alley or barrel and sneakily watches them run past his hiding spot one by one. Well guess what, that's exactly what juking and hide spots are. So to recreate that in HON terms.... You are Mr.Ricercarry Jr. You are enjoying your alone time at the top lane laughing your way to the bank, hacking up little defenseless creeps. But wait, baddie enemy heroes pop out of the jungle. Luckily for you they stack their disables and you are running for dear life back to your base. You have two options here:

• Run in a straight line all the way back to base and hope they don't tower dive you and have 10 minute cool downs on their disables (sarcasm).

OR

• Juke to the forest on your left and negate your enemies line of sight and ability to attack/cast spells on you?

I'm not going to answer that for you.....

Now it's easy for me to just throw a juke map at you and say have fun. But I'm going to take it a couple levels further. I'll throw some specific places into the spotlight and explain the stratagem around them.

 Now this is your basic juke map. All of those lines are paths of movement a hero can take. The colors are explained in the legend on the side of the map. Pay particular attention to the white lines, those represent hiding places in the trees. While you are taking one of these paths through trees it is much harder to retain line of sight on you. You may ask "What is this line of sight you refer to Mr.CaDiZzle?". Good question my observant reader. Line of sight is exactly what it sounds like, basically everything you can see that isn't covered in fog of war. What is more important is that players can't target you if you are not in their line of sight. They however can still hit you with map targetable skills such as Pharaoh's Tormented Soul even if they do not have vision on you. So to demonstrate this I put together this video of an example in one of my games. WARNING: This video editing is complete crap. =)

So basically as you can see throughout that video I (Bombardier) was running on very low health. Plague Rider was unable to get the finishing hits on me because I was using line of sight to my advantage. In an open lane I   would have been done for, using the trees saved me and got me the double tap.

Now I'm going to spotlight some specific juking locations.

 Juke point 1:
Enclosed area directly above western outpost at Legion long lane.

This area is a small opening directly above the shop(marked by red arrows). If you are getting ganked, high tail it here, grab a Homecoming Stone and get back to base. This is less commonly used than the northern most tree opening (marked  in green arrows) and less commonly checked. A bit of warning however, if you are seen going into this juke spot you are backing yourself into a corner and likely will not escape.

Juke point 2:

Trees directly above eastern outpost Hellbourne long lane.

       

This is another decent place to grab a Homecoming Stone from the shop and hide while you use it. It's more commonly checked than juke spot 1, but it also doesn't corner you if you are found. The spot actually has two entrances that connect in a U shape. So if your caught just keep going and they will have to follow you round.

This is the same juke spot but with a twist! If you have the means to cut down trees, Runes of the Blight or Logger's Hatchet, you can cut down the tree marked by the green X. This will allow you to escape from the top portion of the trees. Especially helpful for Hellbourne as the exit is close to the first tower.

Juke point 3:
Above middle Hellbourne tower closest to river.

This is a nice little alcove that is commonly known. A decent place to hide, to Homecoming Stone or as Devourer wait for a juicy hook.

  

Yay another twist! Same juke point and again with Runes of the Blight or a Logger's Hatchet remove the pesky tree marked by the green X and you have a fresh exist with three glorious exit options available. Choose Wisely.  =)

This is obviously not a complete juking guide. Get familiar with the concept and try your own paths to confuse your enemy into a fit of nerd rage as they watch you slip through their buttery fingers. So remember next time when you are in a heap of trouble, look to the trees for salvation =) 

         

   

                                               

                                      

  

Heroes of Newerth: Teamwork and Roles Part 1. Tanking.

So you want to be a tank. You want to eat Engineer's bullets and split them back in his face. You want to sit in Magmus's boosted ult and make him regret the day he PKed into your lane. You want to laugh hardly as madman does nothing more than tickle you while you systematically take out his team. Well that's a bit dramatic but not outside your grasp! In most games a tank can be as invaluable as a fed carry. Here I will get you your first steps to achieving your fatty tanking glory dreams!

Tank Heroes:
A lot of heroes can be built to fill this role. A few being Balphagore, Keeper of the Forest, Kraken, Legionnaire, Electrician, Armadon etc etc. For this post I will be using Balphagore as my point of reference.

This fatty demonic monstrosity is an ideal tank complete with great early game healing (eating corpses), Pushing power with his minions, AOE nukes and a silence to boot. Most tank heroes are generally strength based as they benefit the most from health oriented items, regeneration and stat based items like behemoth heart's health regen boost. However tanks are not limited to strength, agility heroes such as Zephyr or Sand Wraith can fill this role effectively as well as intelligence heroes like Torturer or Soul Reaper. It's not just the hero that makes or breaks the tank, just like a carry a tank is heavily gold dependent to be effective at his job.






You are not born a tank!
You gotta earn every hit point, armor point and regeneration percent. That starts from the second creeps collide. Being fat costs money and when it comes to money you don't want to compete with your carry in a lane. I'd suggest joining up with a ranged support in the long lane (Top for Legion or Bottom for Hellbourne). Middle is a viable choice if you have the chops to hack it. This allows you to go for as many creep kills as possible without your carry yelling at you for noobing it up and gimping his/her GPM. For starting items generally I pick up logger's hatchet, iron buckler and a stack of Runes of Blight. The iron buckler and logger's hatchet can be switched out for more healing at the start if you feel the need to do so, however especially with Balphagore's corpse heal you shouldn't need it.

Long term items:
Helm of the Black Legion will be your first pickup. Using the iron buckler you picked up from the start, a life tube and a behemoth's heart you create this god send early game tanking beast. If you are really kicking ass farming you should be packing one of these babies in or around the 10 minute mark. If you manage the 10 minute pickup, it will literally take 3+ enemy heroes to take you out till about the 18-20 minute mark.  You maybe inclined to ask "Why no boots Mr.CaDiZzle?!" Well my curious reader if you manage to dominate early and pick the helm up quick, you will be the tankiest at this point compared to enemy DPS than at any later point in the game.Enjoy the comforts of reinforced survivability. Farm up the empty lanes, jungle and push some towers. During this time start piecing your second items together, Plated Greaves. It gives you the added bonus of strength, armor and a creep buff that gives them survivability and damage. Almost like it was made specifically for our obese demonic friend. Now it's time for some assessment and choices. Take a gander at the enemy team's magic damage potential. If you would rate it from medium to high I would suggest picking up a shaman's headdress to counter it. If the enemy has tons of magic damage or lots of AOE magic damage you may want to consider upgrading it to a Barrier Idol as well. If the enemy has low range of magic damage skip this and move right along. Toooo the god among tanking items, the Behemoth's heart. If you lock this puppy down in the 30-35 minute range you should be the golden goose tank. In theory it should take the enemy team focus firing you for around 30 seconds to take your fat self out. More than enough time for your team to swoop in and provide some genocidal loving. Everything else from this point can be considered luxury items. However now that you have the health and regen stack armor items like Demonic Brestplate or Frostfield Plate.Hell grab them both! At that point you could take a leisurely stroll through their well if you so choose.

Your Role: Once you feel you have a solid tank build going for the time frame of the game you should be playing your game around some simple objectives.

• Try to be the first one in a fight and the last to leave ( pending death or extremely low health of course.)
• Get right up in the enemies faces SOAK UP AS MUCH DAMAGE AS POSSIBLE.
•  Try to separate the enemies back line (Ranged, Support and Casters) from the front line heroes. A split team is not working as one meshed unit and can create valuable opportunities to take out left behind heroes. 
• But most importantly DON'T BE RAMBO. You're not built for DPS so if you got caught flexing your tanky fat self deep in enemy territory with no help in sight thinking your invincible, you might just get a wicked five man pounding while being disabled and kited like a rodeo bull. So don't do it. 

Heroes of Newerth: Last hitting and lane control.

The beginning of a HON match, a fresh start, a new beginning. A chance to get away from your previous team mates. You know the ones who wouldn't stop raging at you for being under farmed and under leveled inevitably feeding the other team to a cushy win! If you are new to the game this can seem like a impossible task to keep up with the more experienced HON community in these aspects. Well never fear, for in this first SkitCaDiZzle Showcase I will try and point you in the right direction to get you a leg up in the laning phase which is the first step in a successful match, GPM, KDR and personal gaming self worth. WeWt!

(Side note: This information is applied to non casual mode play or Normal Mode. Information and style of play differs for each mode.)

 Last Hitting and Denying. 

Last Hitting
Last hitting in a nut shell is when your hero is the unit to land the killing blow on an enemy  hero, unit or structure. This is very important because you will receive the gold for doing so, and we all know being fat with gold is half the battle.

Denied!
Denying is equally important to early game dominance and works the relatively similar to last hitting. Basically the idea is to land the killing blow on an ALLIED unit, hero or structure. In so it will deny the enemy the experience and or gold that the enemy team would get for last hitting it. Denies differ from Last hitting in certain ways as I will explain next...

Denying Allied Creeps: If you manage to last hit an allied creep it will allow you certain benefits in the lane. First it will not allow enemy heroes to obtain the gold for last hitting the creep. It will also reduce the amount of experience enemy heroes in range will receive when the creep is killed. If you become a master at the art of denying creeps you will effectively keep the enemy heroes in the lane under farmed and under leveled. But wait! There is more, If you last hit creeps that is effectively reducing the amount of allied creeps in the lane which in turn reduces allied creep DPS. "What does that do Mr.SkitCaDiZzle?" You may ask... Well my friendly reader, it will give more pushing power to the enemy creep wave allowing you to stay closer to your tower. Staying closer to your tower will greatly increase your odds of survival when being ganked or when enemy heroes in the lane decide to get their hands on a juicy hero kill at your teams expense.

Denying creeps is done a bit differently than last hitting. The allied creep has to be below 50% before you can even attack it. Also right-clicking will not auto attack the allied creep, pressing A  on the keyboard before hand  (then clicking) will allow you to attack an allied creep below 50%. Generally however to insure a deny you would want to wait until the allied creep is low enough that one hit will kill the creep to prevent missing the deny.

Denying Allied Structures: This is done exactly like creeps (Pressing A and clicking the structure.). However structures have to be below 10% before allied attacks will be allowed to attempt a deny. Towers are important to deny as it will reduce gold the ENTIRE enemy team will receive significantly, not just one hero. Structures such as the meatball however will only deny gold to the enemy unit that would have performed the last hit.

Denying Allied Heroes: The trickiest of all denies ladies and gents. Only under certain conditions will an allied hero be deniable. First and most importantly the hero has to be under a damaging debuff (DOT) , for instance Hellbringer's Death Boil. Not all debuffs apply however, Voodoo Jester's Cursed Ground is undeniable. Secondly they have to be under 10% health. Be careful with this as heroes can be resilient and unnecessarily denying a teammate can bring forth "da rage" from them. A good hero deny is just as satisfying as a kill on an enemy however.

Tips and a bit o tricks: Timing. Timing. Timing. Should I say it again? Timing. Practicing it will be crucial for not giving up easy creep kills by attacking too late or too early. Part of that is knowing how hard your hero hits vs how much health the creeps have left (they get buffed throughout the course of the game). One way to insure overkill on last hitting is grabbing a Logger's Hatchet from the store. The hatchet increases damage done to creeps by 32% for melee heroes. I wouldn't recommend going hatchet on ranged as it gives a significantly reduced % to damage.
An advanced trick to play around with is juke hitting. Very tricky but it involves baiting your opponent to attack a creep early by attacking and canceling the animation before it lands allowing you a free swipe at a newly low creep courtesy of your enemy. Fun and incredibly satisfying if you can master it.

Last but most certainly not least! DON'T AUTO ATTACK. Want a sure fire way to be called a noob? Then by all means auto attack yourself into noobtropolis. This not only is a horrible way to waste last hits in a lane it also push your creep wave into enemy towers, unless you plan on taking the tower down or out it's a place you don't want to be.

Harassing enemy heroes: So that jerk keeps denying you and getting all the last hits like a ninja stealing all your cookies right from under your nose...Well put the beat down on him! Especially if your hero has the range advantage make sure your putting some hurt on the enemy heroes keeping them away from your precious cookies and giving you oh so sweet lane control. Be careful early on, creeps hurt and they will attack you for harassing enemy heroes. The object is to be smart and put more hurt on the enemy heroes than the enemy creeps and heroes can do to you. To prevent harassing stay back and only come into range when creeps are low for last hitting. Also pick yourself up an Iron Buckler to cut down on enemy hero and creep DPS. Later it can be turned into Iron Shield or Helm of the Black Legion.


That's all for now happy last hitting and congratulations on one step out of the noob pit,
                                                                                                                          SkitCaDiZzle