On November 09 2014 16:11 Valhalla44 wrote: haha im only 20-10 on ember. I have problem with closing games with ember if i'm not snowballing.
you want someone on your team that can take objectives. Very often you'd have a good team fight but ember's push is so shit you can't really translate that into a lasting advantage.
Just buy a Linken's (or even better, have someone else buy it) for late-game against single-target disable guys. Use quick-cast and the Linken's pop audio cue to stay safe. Buy BKB instead against AoE disable. I don't think I'd buy Divine without one of these two items unless it's the "defending game-ending push" kind of situation.
People are still getting crit before the second BF. Your teamfight dps might be slightly higher but I don't see too many fights that you'd win with the former build and lose with the latter. What you give up is taking 2-3x as long to kill a creep wave due to how SoF works. I feel the substantial jump in pushing power of the second BF isn't worth losing in all but the most niche scenarios.
The 3rd BF is also ignored by a lot of people but in those games where the vast majority of your SoF damage is cleave due to enemy summons or illusions, allied AoE disables (RP/Vacuum/etc.), and/or just superior positioning, it gets you up to almost 50% more dps (70%->105%), which can match the output of a Divine with much less risk.
BoTs first is only really good occasionally against early push. Phase is really only good with the Flame Guard build since you need to chase. With SoF+Chains, you can get 90% of the same damage just buying an early Broadsword and rushing that BF since you won't be doing much chasing outside of Remnant jumps. So I end up with naked boots somewhat often.
The Moonmeander & Meracle videos with Manta/Skadi/Bfly/AC style is lame. If the opponent spends their entire front-loaded dps to 95% an Ember who can SoF back to full of course you're going to win. I'm not 100% sure that build isn't awful (like 90%) but I want to see games where that sort of Ember is flat out ignored and how that'd go.
Can you guys tell I'm sad the Ember thread in Strategy has been dead for a week?
it's not that bad, the difference is that you end up tanky enough to autoattack so you put out a lot more sustained damage on a semi-related note treads own, the treads attackspeed bonus is really noticeable when you're farming
Ember feels sort of weak as an autoattack/farm hero though, seems a lot stronger as a glass cannon. Heroes like PA, tiny etc. are a lot better at being in-your-face once you hit mid-late game.
The problem with shadow blade is that a) you already have an escape, and b) it's non-scaling damage, and c) you already have two ways of getting close to people for ganks.
On November 14 2014 19:38 Birdie wrote: The problem with shadow blade is that a) you already have an escape, and b) it's non-scaling damage, and c) you already have two ways of getting close to people for ganks.
This is probably true. But I won't say for certain unless I try it. The sb combo with SoF seems nice, and at early game with only lvl 1 in SoF sb is a good way of getting close (pretty sure I can get bottle/boot/bracer/sb by 15 min). Like I said, I wouldn't say for certain unless I try it out.
So far my understanding is 1bfury sucks for team fights, it only has a oomph when you get 2, 3. But an early SB seems offer so much more, especially in MMR it's hard to get your teammates to coordinate ganks continuously, they'l do it once in awhile but it's sporatic at best. With SB I can gank nonstop, all the time.
RESULTS:
Okay SB is kind of terrible. The mana cost seems pretty high and the burst I was expecting in a solo jungle gank is rather low as well. I think the argument shouldn't be "you already have a way of getting close", the argument should be "remnant is 100x better at getting close than SB, as it's faster and ignores fucking terrains"
The cool combo of fade -> SoF... I mean... You don't really get to do it that much. The SB has such high cooldown it's not as natural as a synchronized SoF/Chain combo. Again, the manacost is too high with SB, you barely get by w/o manaboot as a normal ember, I think if you go SB you definitely needs to do manaboot.
Maybe the right snowball build is actually Dead into 2x bfury, and the safe ricer build is 2bfury into dead. Just permute the order. I will have to give it a shot and see how it goes.
On November 16 2014 08:04 evanthebouncy! wrote: It's going badly guys!! ;( I think I have to revert to a more primitive thing to practice before I can try it on ranked. I went 0-3 on ranked today ;/
Watching your most recent game now. First of all, picking first as ember makes you easy to counter, which I daresay is why the next two picks were viper and storm spirit. Both do pretty well in lane against you and storm spirit generally is very good vs ember in my experience.
Usually you should ask for pooled tangos so you can get a faster bottle, but if you're laning against viper going for four tangos first is reasonable. However, there's a storm spirit on their team so it's far more likely you will be laning against storm spirit. Huh, pubs are random lul. Viper mid means you can't really play very aggressively. Chains first was ok because of the gank, and because guard first isn't particularly amazing vs viper.
Your attempted gank at ~6.30 was a poor decision, you're already low on farm and there's nothing really there for you to go on, so why roam down there and miss a couple of waves of farm? Second death was also not great because you didn't have mana for your ulti and a remnant sitting somewhere to jump to. Ember without mana is weaksauce, would have been better for you to sit at the tower and wait for a rune, or TP home and remnant back, something like that. Speaking of which, it's a good idea to grab a TP along with your boots so you can counter-gank and pick up kills.
Your third death was really random, viper and storm spirit wreck you so hard and you try to 1v2 them? I could see you soloing storm at that stage of the game MAYBE, but both of them wasn't good. At 12 minutes you have 21 last hits, which is less than two per minute. Sure you were laning against a viper but your poor gank decisions and deaths have basically set you behind by at least 1k gold, making you quite weak going into the mid game. Then you go gank void when there's nothing solid there, and lose out on another heap of gold and exp. 13.20 you walked past a jungle stack that would have been SO good, minor thing but taking that not only denies it from their team but also helps out your major gold problems. I think you panicked when viper came out of the jungle and attacked you, as you used all your mana up when you just needed a single remnant to get away. It would have been smarter to throw out the remnant, then pop JUST flame guard or JUST the chains and start hitting viper, then using remnant to get away ezpz.
After that death, at around 14.50 you start walking towards bottom. However, your TP is on cooldown so you're going to get there too late to do much. Your team will win or lose that fight without you and at best you might pick up a kill or save one person when you get there. Better to go to mid and take the 1.5 waves there, then head towards top to create some space for your team by pressuring their T1.
OK so you show up late and your entire team is dead, and you're going up against three of them. No problem, as you have a remnant back to keep you out of trouble. But then you...remnant into the middle of them? Plus void had his ulti up which you should have been trying to keep track of, although that's harder to do in a pub game. If you had stayed by the tower you would be able to guard it and not die. Instead, both you and the tower go down.
17.50ish you TP bottom, but again you're late to a finished fight and achieve nothing. It would be much better for you to work on your very poor last hits and create some space by pushing out mid, or running a gank against viper with slark at top lane, or going into the jungle and working on getting some gold. At this stage you're no-drums, no-PMS BF rush but there's no way you're going to get it before 20 minutes, which suggests serious gold starvation.
Big team fight goes down, but you remnant out way too early. Then you don't replace the escape remnant and nearly get killed. Always keep one handy after the early game for escape purposes.
Selling your shield for a slightly faster claymore is meh to me, the survivability is still alright and you're not exactly swimming in items. Just wait a short time for the claymore gold or just buy broadsword, don't waste your shield.
Pushing out top was a good idea, it created a little bit of space and got you some gold. Double kill in the teamfight was nice, I think you could have been more bold with your flame guard as you had a getaway remnant but otherwise good work. I think ideally you would have stayed mid and used a TP to get into the fight once it was actually underway, would have granted you a wave extra of gold.
Minor thing but you appear to be doubletapping your courier hotkey when delivering your items, and not using the quick purchase hotkeys. Small things but it's better to use the quickbuy and use F3 or whatever your Courier Deliver hotkey is instead of micromanaging it. Could be the difference between void jumping in and lolsphering you, or you being aware and jumping away.
You didn't last hit top tower when phoenix TPed in. Check the colour of the TP and if it's someone who can't trap you just keep hitting the tower, it's worth a lot of gold. Instead phoenix denied it so you lost out on a lot of gold.
Your fifth death was because you didn't save a remnant, it needs to become ingrained in you that at all times you have a getaway remnant. I cannot stress this enough, you would be on 3-4 fewer deaths if you were more careful with that.
Sexy lolsphere dodge! I assume you're saving for buyback. It's a real shame the rest of your team is securing all those kills as the gold would help you a lot
At 29.15 or so you went mid and took some of the last hits. Better to just stay in jungle and let mirana take the lane hits, sharing is caring and you wouldn't really miss any gold.
I need to go nap now, may finish the replay review later.
I think you gave me plenty of good things to work on already. Buying TP with boot is a fantastic idea.
I think I'll fall back to focusing on farming. I'd need to adapt. When I was doing non ranked ember earlier this week I had easier time cuz my unranked mmr is really low and I actually win lanes as ember, so I'm not used to fighting w.o a huge item advantage, usually I just run in and stuff dies. This needs to change.
It's about antimage but a lot of what he says in this and his other replay analysis' is about efficiency of fighting vs farming. Often it's simply better not to roam and fight when you could stay in lane or jungle and farm. Ember can be played as a ganking style vs some compositions but particularly until you get phase boots it's really good to just sit in lane and only gank if you get a haste rune or if someone dives tower and you can TP to that tower and secure some kills.
It's going bad guys T_________T, my MMR is tanking 200 ;/ Maybe I'll just quote Rocky that it's not about how hard you hit, but how hard you can get hit and still move forward. I'll just slug it out.
Alright guys. Here's the biggest question at the moment. I love ember a lot, but he seems to be hard to win solo queue with. It seems a lot of solo queue depends on winning mid and helping in ganks. Ember feels different. He horribly loses the lane and unless he can make up the loss in good fights where everyone else knows how to fight, he is useless.
It seems the usual logic of playing mid in a solo pub of "win lane ==> win game" does not apply. Some games felt incredibly easy because I outskill the other mid and win mid as ember, and just completely dominates because I wasn't suppose to win the lane. Other games felt incredibly hard because the other mid is better or of equal skill, on a hero that has advantages mid. As a result I am weak and I needed a lot of coordinated fights to make back the loss (which can't always be there), and I end up useless.
I'm not sure if it's just a communication issue where I should've coordinated with my teammates more via chat etc or if there's some playstyle change you can make. Ember is awkward as you need the fight to make the farm back and supress the other team's farm, which seems to be hard to coordinate in a pub.
If you can't watch the game, just answer this: You finally made it to level 6, and have boot / bottle, you lost the lane. The other lanes are losing as well. What do you do? which is definitely a bad question because there are different scenarios, which means maybe watch the game if you can. I'd appreciate it.