General DiscussionReview my Match

What I see from dotabuff (didn't see replay) you are the best in your team, your item build is perfect and your skillbuild is almost perfect. (take juxtapose on lvl 9 and then ulty on levels 10 and 11.

tower damage is lacking, no jux at 8 creates a huge timing window where your farming is much slower without it, and I'm guessing you didn't keep quelling blade, which applies to your illusion's damage aswell.

also it's worth getting stats over doppel seeing as they had a gem, you should only max doppel if you're going to use to farm faster.

you can use it to move between neutrals quicker, spawn an illusion at 1 camp and then send ur hero to another, spawn an illusion in the lane you're about to leave with travels to farm the lane while you're away.

this is what i've gathered from stats, willw atch the replay right now

also instaed of going Q-W-Q-W-Q-R-Q-E sometimes you're better off switching E and R order around since you get jux earlier and you can use it to scout or farm slightly faster, since if you dont have jux then phantom edge only gives u magic res. if you're avoiding ganks then you dont need it.

Going for full Cask + maledict with your line-up is beyond retarded imo.

Axe and all of your team would greatly benefit from the extra tankyness voodoo restoration provides.

we arent here to flame his teammates, the question was

"what could I have done better?"

yes, his teammates made way more mistakes, and their skill builds suck, that's not an excuse for OP not playing well.

1. don't level up anything unless you need to use it. this applies to all heroes with active abilities. you got doppel as soon as the game started, how do you know your lane is gonna go to shit and that you're going to need to run, what if there was an opportunity where the slow and damage from lance got a kill? if there is then you can just quickly press ctrl + ability hotkey to level it up, something I know you don't do because I saw your player perspective, manually clicking on the actual ability icon.

2. you're too slow with your starting items. the more time you spend in the fountain the less time you have to check the rune or scout out your own jungle. if the support is watching the rune then you watch the jungle to see if the offlaner places wards. knowing where the offlaner has vision is way more important than the block, and you can still get your block between the tier 1 and tier 2 tower even if you've been scouting the jungle.

3. doppel at 1 and starting with a quelling blade is contradicting of itself. levelling up doppel as soon as the game starts assumes you're gonna have a tough lane (getting harassed and zoned) so that you're going to need the escape at 1. if this is the case then QB does nothing for you because you can't go into lane to last hit due to being instantly zoned out. either start off with a stout shield or a ring of protection instead imo.

or just start off with more regen on PL because that's one of his lane weaknesses, that he doesn't really get any HP regen items in lane whereas an AM goes ring of health, fvoid goes morbid mask, et cetera. so another starting item build could be 2 tangos, 1 salve and 4 branches (250 + 115 + 200 = 565g). if you lack regen then you can't even stay in XP range never mind getting last hits. if you have ample regen you can stay in lane to get XP.

4. messing up your block because the creeps are too fast. if you're not comfortable doing this with a slow hero, then start the block at the tier 2 tower because that's when they slow down. a full block from the tier 2 tower is better than starting the block at the tier3 s but not getting a full block off. if you're a super slow hero that can even mean you miss a last hit from the first wave.

5. your camera control is awful, you should be keeping the skywrath in your camera so that you know he's not up to anything, and also you didn't check his starting items. if you're on dire your hero should be at the top of your screen, not at the bottom. there's nothing important above you that you need to see, whereas there are things that could be happening below you that you need to look out for e.g. pudge hook. if your hero is at the bottom of the screen then you have no time to react once you see the hook.

for example, at 0:50 the sand king attempts a stun but you have no idea that he did because your camera was too far up that you couldn't see the SK or the skywrath. although he missed the stun, had he hit it, and had you also had spirit lance, you would have been able to force the skywrath out of the lane because he only had 1 set of tangos and no salve (something you didn't realise because you don't check enemy starting items)

for 11 whole minutes you only looked at your lane (12 if you count pre-horn). not once did you move your camera to the other lanes to check for important items (e.g. teleport scrolls, or smoke on pudge, whether he has a rune or not) or to gauge how farmed certain heroes were

6. no creep aggro drawing. what you should have done since the creep equilibrium was far from your tower is made the lane push in your favour so that one, it's safer to farm and two, the skywrath has to go further up to get XP which is unsafe because with your lance slow that can set up a sand king stun if he is hiding in the trees.

anyways, to draw creep aggro, you issue an attack order on any hero on the map, and that causes any enemy creeps which are within 500 range of you, to attack you. so what you can do with this information, is pull the enemy melee creeps towards you, then de-aggro them while they are facing your ranged creep. this will cause 2 or 3 enemy melee creeps to focus your allied ranged creep (which does the most damage to enemy creeps), so that if you don't have a ranged creep and the enemy creep wave does, then the lane will eventually push towarsd your tower, making it safer for you to farm and less safe for the skywrath.

7. you don't attempt to make your creeps die sooner by denying them as soon as they reach half health to make the lane safer for you, and unsafe for the skywrath, which is a win-win. if the solo skywrath tries to last hit under your tower then the sand king stuns him and you lance him, and if he doesn't come into lane, then he's getting no XP or gold, while you are.

because you didn't do any of these lane control techniques, skywrath who is not a strong offlaner is not getting punished and he is accruing a level advantage over you.

8. you're against a skywrath and you don't buy magic stick. okay. selling branches is not a big deal, you only lose 25g for them that even if you want to buy a magic wand later you can just buy another branch again.

at 2:30 you had an opportunity to sell a branch to make room for a magic stick. had you got it then, you would have started acquiring charges already.

you would have gotten the kill on the techies had you a magic stick, but you were short of mana to cast another spirit lance, and the time between 2:30 and when you missed the kill, the skywrath used 4 abilities if im not mistaken, you had 90 mana, so another 60 would be enough to cast lance again. the item would have literally paid for itself from the kill gold, while also giving you extra XP.

you finally get a magic stick at 4 minutes but you missed out on around 7 charges that you would have had if you weren't so stingy and sold your branch for a item slot earlier.

9. not ferrying in more regen when you realise that the skywrath is chewing through your regen faster than rabbits chewing cables. the cost of another salve or tango is about 120 gold, but if you get last hits that you would have otherwise missed because 1. you're not in lane or 2. you're too scared to get last hits because you're low on HP then the item pays for itself, as well as giving you XP because you didn't get denied.

10. you finally ferry in more regen but it's only 1 salve which gets you full HP, which again leaves you with no regen. a salve and a tango or two salves would have saved an extra courier trip had you needed the extra regen - which you probably do, and even if you don't end up using the extra regen you can always sell it at the side shop, the gold loss isn't significant.

you're still missing last hits by playing too conservatively even though you're at full HP. wasn't the point of getting more regen so that you wouldn't miss last hits by having to stay back? if you're just going to let the skywrath harass you, you may as well get some last hits for your trouble. the worst thing you can do is sit back and take his harass while not getting any last hits whatsoever. even sitting behind your tower would be better because at least you wouldn't be wasting the salve you bought.

anyways the skywrath can't kill you since he doesn't have enough mana for his ultimate - again showing the importance of clicking enemy heroes. it's not a difficult habit and yet the benefits of doing so are huge.

11. not using quickbuy. you can use it to buy items before you die, or just spend less time in the shop trying to find the specific item you want. time = money, time wasted = money wasted

e.g. if you miss a last hit because you were too slow in the shop because you didn't quickbuy, then the quickbuy feature would have indirectly earned you 45g.

or if you have 450 unreliable gold and you buy a belt of strength before you die instead of losing 300g, then quickbuy has saved you 300g that you would have lost.

12. power treads are a side shop item and you're wasting a courier trip delivering you the components when you're literally 3 seconds of walking distance away from it. one this wastes a courier trip and also makes the courier prone to being sniped with how far away it has to travel from the base and two, having the extra stats of treads earlier may save your life or get you a kill that there was literally 0 benefit to getting them delivered by the courier.

there were two fights / skirmishes where you would have benefitted from int treads to save you mana but your tread components were still sitting in the stash. maybe it didn't make much of a difference in this game but it might in another game.

13. 27 cs by 8 minutes, lol. you missed loads of last hits that you had no excuse to miss, when the skywrath was not in the lane temporarily, and you have a quelling blade, which combined with PL's decent base damage and high agi gain means there's not an excuse for missing last hits if it's safe enough to go into lane (which it sometime was)

you also miss tons of last hits by wandering out of the lane trying to contribute to kills that have 0% chance of happening

14. it's 10 minutes in and you still haven't used your branches. if you are not going to upgrade stick into wand, then sell them so you could have made space for your bracer and TP scroll.

15. not tread switching when casting spells. this is especially important when you don't have any mana regen such as basi/aquila/soul ring.

or just not tread switching in general. you did it once or twice, but when you did do it, you were very slow at it, that the time you waste from switching slowly basically cancels out the benefit of switching stats in the first place.

if you are on agility or intelligence treads you heal to full faster than being on strength, even without any regen items, while being on strength or agility makes you regenerate mana faster.

when casting spirit lance, you should be on intelligence while casting, and while the lance is in midair, switch to agility or strength before it lands, so that the created illusion has strength treads for more HP, or agility for extra damage, and also every illusion spawned from the first illusion will also have the same treads. if you are on int when the lance lands and that illusion goes to create 8 more then you're losing damage or HP for no reason.

when on doppelwalk it depends whether you want to conserve mana or farm faster. with the extra 8 agi your illusion deals more damage and also attacks quicker increasing the chance to juxtapose, useful for when you're teleporting out but want to farm the lane you're about to leave.

16. item choice, drum vs vlads. theoretically vlads is a bad item because it doesn't offer anything to your illusions, but indirectly it does, because the health of PL's illusions are based on PL's current HP when they're spawned. so if PL is always on full HP, then so will his illusions, which indirectly increases your farm because your illusions don't die as much and you also don't need to go back to base, making it a good item if the lanes are not safe and you're farming the jungle instead.

drum should be gotten if you're going to be joining fights with your team or split pushing where the aura and stats helps with destroying buildings, although looking at your end score as well as your tower damage it looks like you did neither.

17. only having 1 into jux when jungling as PL. the third skill point of doppel at 8 was not needed, and since you lack mana regen then you cannot use doppel to farm faster, making points into jux more beneficial. pre 11 you should always have at least 2 points into jux because you go from having 1 illusion, to having 3 illusions, tripling your illusion farming speed since OG PL counts towards the limit. so if you're eventually going to have to get 2 into jux pre-11, why would you get it at 9 and 10 instead of benefitting from them earlier?

18. "For those who are asking about my low cs, it's because the radiant would consistently try to gank our jungle"

no it was because you have no map awareness that you were playing far too scared, resulting in last hits being missed in empty lanes despite there being no threat. if there is someone in your lane then you should teleport somewhere else but instead you spend the first 20 minutes of the game either top lane or in your own jungle.

you are also extremely inefficient, missing many uncontested last hits, not farming both the lane as well as the jungle with your strength tread illusions and not moving around the map efficiently by taking the shortest paths between two sources of gold and also by ignoring farm when you're moving from points A to B when there are neutral camps you can take in between. if the lane is not safe, send the illusions to push there. if the enemy is roaming into your jungle, send your illusions to the jungle to scout as well as to get one or two extra camps with no risk, and go farm the enemy jungle + the lane that is nearest to it.

19. wasting reliable gold on shitty items like a lone blade of alacrity. you should be saving reliable gold because it's hard to acquire without midas or if you aren't participating in kills often, and because it isn't lost upon death that makes hard to build items much easier to buy if you slowly save up your gold from towers / kills+assists / track / midas / roshan.

i may watch the rest of the replay, I got up to 22 minutes, but basically your shit early game made sure that you had no farm in the late game as a hard carry.

^^ *breath*

androgynous, the king of analysis...