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Hello! This is my first blog post. I'm doing this to get some feedback on the subjects I'll post about, and to hopefully provide a good read to everyone interested.
This particular blog is about what I think of when drafting for my team, and general things I have learned in doing so.
1. Introductions I play the carry role for a 5k team I formed with a friend of mine. We used to be play on a friends-only team, which averaged 3.5k mmr, but since three of them decided to stop playing because of other obligations, we got three really nice people that are also enthusiastic to build a new team, and we've been playing 2-3 scrims and matchmaking games everyday since then. We also entered a semi-professional tournament and we are rather serious about our trainings.
2. Why do I draft? When we started, we used to have our offlane player draft, because I didn't have confidence in my drafting anymore (I used to draft on our friends-only team). Once I started watching more games, and thinking more about drafting, I got into the drafting role again.
Nowadays, I try to draft with my team in mind. We have a googlesheets set up to post draft ideas, training schedules and signature heroes in which every player thinks they're good at, to help me brew ideas up for new drafts, and to help me in knowing what I can and cannot do without leaving the comfort zone of everyone.
3. The players We have two supports who were friends from before the team forming, so they have good communication in general between themselves. One of them helps me to make big calls ingame (should we do Roshan? are we ahead? should we chill? lets push mid or bot? etc), while the other is a bit more chill.
Our offlane and mid often rotate positions depending on the hero I draft. The offlane player plays really safe in general, and normally waits for calls to jump in. Our mid player is a reckless space creator, who jumps in first and asks later if he should or not do it.
As already said, I play the carry role. I'd say I'm the most unflexible when it comes to playstyle. I'm used to playing hard carries that win the lategame, and I hardly am able to play under a timing pressure (for example, I'm a Terrorblade and Naga player, not a Slark player).
4. Drafting players or heroes? My inability to switch my hard carry playstyle is what sort of dictates what we can or cannot do with our drafts. This may be hurting us a bit, but I believe that focusing on having a few good drafts is better than playing a lot of strategies in a mediocre fashion.
When studying drafts, I seek teams that I know has players who play like us. For our hard carry + space creator playstyle, I generally watch Cloud9 and EG drafts, with the occasional Secret draft. When training, we like to play 1-2 drafts a week, making the same sort of picks 2-3 games in a row. I, myself, believe that this is the best way to get a good team and to maximize your chances of beating good players: focus on one draft, master it, then expand onto another sort of draft.
As of late, I try to draft more heroes than players, meaning I'll get a Puck for our mid even if it's not his best hero, but that is not always the case. I will go ahead and admit that I don't know if this is the best approach to drafting. Drafting players is better in a sense that you will have people playing really well, but if the lack of synergy your draft has because of this is way too big, then I don't think it's worth it.
5. Walking through a draft I enter into the draft already knowing what it is we want to do. I don't think of particular heroes, but I do think of a gameplan. Do we want to play teamfight (Spectre, Tide, Storm, Brew, Ember), or do we want to play rat (Naga, Terrorblade, Antimage)? We currently do not play push strategies nor timing pushes, because of my inability and lack of confidence when playing those playstyles.
So, after knowing what it is we want to train (or in the case of tournaments, what it is we are most confident at the time), I start thinking about the first ban phase.
5.1. First ban and pick phase If we're teamfighting, I want to ban what would be good against our gameplan. We like to pick Spectre + Brew (or Ember, Razor and even Puck), so I like to ban whatever would be bad against us after I Haunt, and whatever would make our teamfight bad if we choose to initiate (since counter initiating is easy with Spectre, Puck, Tide, those sorts of heroes).
Good choices: - Banning Tide, because we have a reason not to pick him (for instance, if we want to train some other offlane hero that does the same function as he does for us),or believe that our safelane will not have supports there to zone him, and thus will make him farm vs our Spectre, which is not good. - Banning Brew, because we are second pick and would not like to let them get a first-pick brew if we don't plan on having a Skywrath, or some sort of hero to deal with him with low risk (we generally have Apparition if we do the Spectre draft, so we only have "one flexible" support pick). - Banning Centaur, because we won't have a lot of stuns to have good catch, which is exactly what makes his ulti so good. Justifications of bans: I may deviate from banning strictly teamfight counter-initiators if we want to have a bigger pool of counter-initiators ourselves. For example, I could ban Jakiro and Skywrath if I want to leave either Brew or Tide for us.
- Picking Jakiro, because he is a flexible pick in the sense that you cannot predict his lane by seeing just his pick. Later on the draft, we may choose to let him play the 4 support or even put him on the offlane. - Picking Ogre, because he is a flexible support. You can make him roam with a Venge or some sort of aggressive support, and thus the other team has to respect the pick and react accordingly. I would like at least two good targets for the Bloodlust buff to justify the first pick Ogre. - Picking Razor, because he presents a force to be dealt with. He makes the other team have to pick something that will not get owned on the lane and makes them have to answer him, either by not picking carries like PA (who will get damage stolen) or by picking stuff to counter him.
5.2. Second ban and pick phase By the time we see their first 2 picks, I'm trying to predict whatever their picks are going to lane. This may be impossible depending on the picks, but if we see a clear offlane, or at least have a reason to suspect a hero will be played on the midlane or offlane, I will try not to ban heroes that play strictly those positions.
The difference between the second and first ban phase, as far as I know, is that you want to ban more general heroes on the first ban phase, and ban specific heroes on the second one. I try to ban heroes that will have an edge against two or more of our heroes, so that they don't have great counterpicks on us.
For example, let's say they have picked Void and Ogre. I would lean more towards banning a Doctor instead of a Skywrath if I plan on having a small amount of stuns and I plan to pick an illusion hero. While the Skywrath is pretty good with the Void, it may be right to ban the Doctor because he will have good synergy with Void and will also mess with our lineup more. This, of course, is not definitive. If I had a Brew mid, for example, banning the Skywrath would also be pretty stellar!
Good choices: - Banning Slark if I want to pick Terrorblade and also have a hero with a bad animation on his stun (Earthshaker, Wraith King). Slark will dodge a lot of stuns from my supports, and he is also a good pick versus Terrorblade on the midgame, since he can hunt me on my jungle with little-to-none retaliation and I will not be able to Sunder him. If they haven't picked a carry and their picks are rather aggressive, this ban will be very good! This falls into the "banning double-synergies" category. - Banning Lion if I want to pick Naga and have squishy supports and a mid that would not like to rush Bkb (Zeus, Invoker, Legion Commander). Lion can kill two illusions instantly at any point in the game, by Hexing one and Mana Draining the other. This will make my Naga somewhat bad on the mid and late game splitpushing, which is something I want to avoid with such pick. If they haven't picked their second support, and their lineup looks light on CC, this will be a good ban.
- Picking AA + Spectre. While you could pick AA + something else, and then pick Spectre on the last pick, you have to worry about them figuring your draft out. This is specially important on pocket strategies like this one, or Drow + Visage. If you make it way too obvious you want one particular hero, you should probably pick them as 4th, because letting them have another ban versus you could be the bane of your draft. Sometimes concealing your strategy is not as good as making sure you will be able to get the draft you want without getting interrupted. - Picking Batrider + PA. By picking the Batrider you sort of give out one of your lanes and let the enemy have a good idea of what your lanes are. With that being said, picking, in this case, the PA as a 4th makes the other team wonder if you want to put her in the mid lane or the safe lane, which can be powerful, especially since you can switch roles from 1 to 2 depending on the lanes of your enemies. Let's say they picked Drow and no supports that can TP to save her from a dive easily. You could simply put the PA mid and exchange farm, while always threatening the Drow with your level 6 dive, and harassing her freely with dagger, while putting another hero on the safe lane to farm.
5.3. Last ban and pick phase The last pick should, generally, be either a surprise pocket pick or, more commonly, something that is easily replaceable and reactionary. You want to be able to use this last pick, which is the pick you'll make with the biggest amount of information available to you, to close your lineup in a "cover all bases" way.
Of course, in the case of a pocket strategy, this will be mostly your "ace" card. This is not to say that it can't be flexible! If you left your last pick to a reactionary pick, you should focus on analysing yours as well as their lineup, and think of questions like "what can we do to secure Roshan?", "is our mid game way too fragile?", "what can we pick to secure the farm of our carry?" or even "are we able to get away with picking x hero?".
Good choices: - Banning Gyrocopter if you have a lineup that wants to win fights early and fears a carry that can get into fights early. This ban makes sense if they still do not have a safelane carry and their lineup is good for early game fighting but lack a good early to mid game carry. If you have the late game secured, this last ban should be used to make sure you will not get stomped early game by a snowballing farmer like Gyrocopter or Slark. - Banning Antimage if you have a defensive lineup, they have already banned and you plan on picking Medusa. This ban would make even more sense if they have a lineup without a hardcarry and clearly don't want to facerush you on 15min. This is, I guess, the most straight-forward ban discussed in here.
- Picking Venom. This could be a good last pick to make your enemies confused as to how you're going to lane. For example, if you have a very nice matchup for a Venom mid (against, for example, an Ember, TA), you could lane Venom on mid. If you want to lane him on the offlane, this is also possible, which makes the Venom a good last pick against certain compositions. - Picking Clockwork if you want initiation and they have a lot of heroes which can't control who they want to damage at all times (for example, Skywrath's ulti, Leshrac, Luna). This pick justifies itself as both a counter and a good way to tie your lineup together. It's a reactionary pick, in the sense that you want it specifically against the other team.
5.4. Summarizing the draft part When drafting, I just like to plot at all times what is the picture of the game on the early, mid and late game, aswell as on Roshan fights, contesting the farm of the carry, what do you aim to do on the first minutes of the game, etc.
You need to make sure you are drafting proactively, since even pocket strats have room for reactionary picks. Not every pick is 100% set in stone, and you should think a lot on your spare time about which heroes have overlapping functions with other heroes, making it easy to think of a good replace or a better pick for the situation you're currently in on the draft.
6. Conclusion I would like to thank everyone on my team, as well as everyone that read everything and cares to write a feedback to this!
Drafting is very fun, and a very important part of the game. Mechanics should be your focus if you're in lower brackets, but having a nice draft to tie it all together never hurts!
Again, thanks to all readers, and if you liked this writeup or even want to trash talk at me because you don't agree with something I said, just quote me and do it! I'd love to talk and learn new things, as I'm new to all of this.
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Drafting is my favorite part of the game, imo it's one of the most important factors about the game and for a while I didn't even play all pick as I considered it garbage. Grats on your new team, hope you all stay together and build up learning new things.
Two quick questions though, how did you meet your 3 new team mates? And do you play on US East? If yes, why?
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Have to say you remind me a lot of my own thought process when I played comp dota1 and was the drafter. It's nice to see that someone else cares as much about his draft for his team.
Not much else to add except some conclusions I came to: Don't underestimate drafting for *your* team and *your* players. You seem to already recognize this but there's some confusing drafts or analyzing sessions after games where you feel like you just need to yolo and draft what is meta favored or pro-game trend. Try not to fall into this trap and continue to use bans and picks to get what you want.
And finally, to improve your team overall I strongly believe the best teams have adaptive versatile players who are elite in multiple roles. This applies really when you start playing the same teams over and over in competitions but it will help you win drafts before you even get to the pick screen since the other teams will be paralyzed in how to guess what you are going to do even more. Think of working on your carry flexibility [ even if its just different type of carries, as you admitted being weak on timing-based carries ] as helping your drafts and team as well as a whole.
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Two quick questions though, how did you meet your 3 new team mates? And do you play on US East? If yes, why?
First of all, thanks for reading! We met one of our supports through a board on a forum (yes, we got really lucky). The other support is a friend of his, and our offlane is someone my friend used to play as a standin for on scrims and small tournaments, but his old team disbanded and now he plays with us. Everyone on the team is really helpful and it even felt strange saying that only me and a friend of mine founded a team when, in reality, us five did it.
We play on Brazil as it is where we all live. US East is unplayable with >240 ping for us. We still find good competition here through a "high level" scrim group, and so we always have lobbies to play on and people of our level to play against.
And finally, to improve your team overall I strongly believe the best teams have adaptive versatile players who are elite in multiple roles. This applies really when you start playing the same teams over and over in competitions but it will help you win drafts before you even get to the pick screen since the other teams will be paralyzed in how to guess what you are going to do even more. Think of working on your carry flexibility [ even if its just different type of carries, as you admitted being weak on timing-based carries ] as helping your drafts and team as well as a whole.
Thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it! We are currently aware and still discussing what we should do in regards to having only "one kind of strategy", but we got into a consensus that we should focus first on having 2-3 very strong drafts that we feel 100% confident before expanding into a wider spectrum of drafts and playstyles. I believe it is counterproductive to have a lot of different drafts that you can never say "hey, we are so confident in this that we can just make small adjustments to the draft and probably win". We currently are working on our 3rd draft.
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The biggest advantage of working on one draft is learning the counters. You realise that how you play is bad against Enigma or that lich totally destroys one lane. Meaning you know when to switch over to something else. The first few times one plays a draft one only sees if the strengths you theorized are there or not.
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I agree with you that having a few good drafts is better then several medicore drafts. I draft the same general strategy but just change up the heroes depending on bans/enemy team. I think having a flexible draft that can work with a lot of heroes and just master that strategy is the best way to go.
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I really like the insights! One thing I wanna ask, and if you don't mind, it's not about drafting: I'm also the hard carry player on my team (void, spectre, dr ember). Any tips on being hard carry? Where do you learn about farming patterns, etc?
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On November 29 2014 13:14 the bear jew wrote: I agree with you that having a few good drafts is better then several medicore drafts. I draft the same general strategy but just change up the heroes depending on bans/enemy team. I think having a flexible draft that can work with a lot of heroes and just master that strategy is the best way to go.
Thanks for reading! We did a lot of Spectre drafts back in a few weeks, and we already feel very confident in it. We are new testing Terrorblade and Storm hc drafts. Our main concern now is having drafts that has equal or similar first ban and pick phase, so that we can transition into another draft if we find that their picks and bans are telling us something in particular would be better against them.
For example, if we chose to ban Necro + Razor first phase (Necro is a good ban if you want to have only one big hc with a lot of space creators, and it lets the pool really big still, since you're not banning strictly tier 1 heroes. Razor also follows the "let a big pool of heroes through" mentality), then we can pick Tide or Brew and another tier 1 support hero (Venge, Jakiro, Ogre). This lets our strategy be general enough that we can switch into a lot of drafts on our second ban and pick phase, which is really good!
On November 29 2014 21:02 Checkm8 wrote: I really like the insights! One thing I wanna ask, and if you don't mind, it's not about drafting: I'm also the hard carry player on my team (void, spectre, dr ember). Any tips on being hard carry? Where do you learn about farming patterns, etc?
Thanks for commenting! I like to watch a few POV games of whoever I think is the best carry player for that particular hero (like Terrorblade for EE, Arteezy or EE -- probably EE nowadays -- for Naga, etc). I also like to pub a shit-ton with the hero, and pick it really early into the game, so that I can also test it against some hate and see how i fair.
You should also scrim a lot. Pubbing and scrimming is really different mainly in the sense that you have people listening to you when you make calls. You can, for example, tell people to just never fight, but just stay with 2-3 heroes in mid while you aggressively farm their jungle, or just push a tier 1 tower and finish your last 500 gold you need to fight. For farm patterns, just spam the hero until you're not even thinking too hard about what you should to do have reasonable farm.
Something I also really like to do, is to watch a good pro-game, figure out their 10, 20, 30 and sometimes even 40min networth when they're ahead (like 8-11k networth on Ember on a good Ferrari game in the 12min mark (I don't know the exact numbers, but that seems about right)), and try to achieve that on a mediocre pub game (it should be possible on a pub if you tryhard). While scrimming, use your teammate coordination to your advantage. Tell them to only stack and show up mid and bot (to zone the mid and bot lane a bit) for a good 3-5 minutes, so that you can clear the stacks up whenever you finish your first big item. Make sure that lines up with the timing of your first item, so that the stacks don't hang on the jungle for too long doing nothing.
I don't know how your team picks, but judging from the heroes you said you play, it seems like you don't necessarily play 4-protect-1, in which case, I don't know exactly what to do, but I believe you should be coordinating fights with your supports early in the game (since they have a big impact early), and with your mid and offlane in the mid to late game. I generally like to let my supports decide when we should fight early (and if I don't think I should come, i just spam chat or teamspeak with "I CANT GO. I'M NOT THERE. I'M NOT THERE. I WILL NOT COME. ITS 4V5. CARE. CARE. CARE". That way, they're really aware that I will not come, and know how to fight accordingly, or maybe just decide not to fight.
One last general advice for playing with your team, and something that we've been trying to incorporate to our play is: use chat. Chat is really powerful because people like to talk a lot during matches, and having something pop on your screen is sometimes a better way of letting people know something. Ofc, Roshan timings are important to mark, but try to make item calls in chat, buyback calls (reinforce it on voice if really necessary), and even fight calls to your team, like "I need 200 gold for Battlefury", or, more commonly, "Teleport Scroll ready".
I thought of writing this at the strategy section, but I think it's way too personal to be there. If people like this post I think I'll try to write something about drafting/playing with your team on the strategy section, or something like that, I don't know. Thanks for reading again!
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+ Show Spoiler +Show nested quote +On November 29 2014 21:02 Checkm8 wrote: I really like the insights! One thing I wanna ask, and if you don't mind, it's not about drafting: I'm also the hard carry player on my team (void, spectre, dr ember). Any tips on being hard carry? Where do you learn about farming patterns, etc? Thanks for commenting! I like to watch a few POV games of whoever I think is the best carry player for that particular hero (like Terrorblade for EE, Arteezy or EE -- probably EE nowadays -- for Naga, etc). I also like to pub a shit-ton with the hero, and pick it really early into the game, so that I can also test it against some hate and see how i fair. You should also scrim a lot. Pubbing and scrimming is really different mainly in the sense that you have people listening to you when you make calls. You can, for example, tell people to just never fight, but just stay with 2-3 heroes in mid while you aggressively farm their jungle, or just push a tier 1 tower and finish your last 500 gold you need to fight. For farm patterns, just spam the hero until you're not even thinking too hard about what you should to do have reasonable farm. Something I also really like to do, is to watch a good pro-game, figure out their 10, 20, 30 and sometimes even 40min networth when they're ahead (like 8-11k networth on Ember on a good Ferrari game in the 12min mark (I don't know the exact numbers, but that seems about right)), and try to achieve that on a mediocre pub game (it should be possible on a pub if you tryhard). While scrimming, use your teammate coordination to your advantage. Tell them to only stack and show up mid and bot (to zone the mid and bot lane a bit) for a good 3-5 minutes, so that you can clear the stacks up whenever you finish your first big item. Make sure that lines up with the timing of your first item, so that the stacks don't hang on the jungle for too long doing nothing. I don't know how your team picks, but judging from the heroes you said you play, it seems like you don't necessarily play 4-protect-1, in which case, I don't know exactly what to do, but I believe you should be coordinating fights with your supports early in the game (since they have a big impact early), and with your mid and offlane in the mid to late game. I generally like to let my supports decide when we should fight early (and if I don't think I should come, i just spam chat or teamspeak with "I CANT GO. I'M NOT THERE. I'M NOT THERE. I WILL NOT COME. ITS 4V5. CARE. CARE. CARE". That way, they're really aware that I will not come, and know how to fight accordingly, or maybe just decide not to fight. One last general advice for playing with your team, and something that we've been trying to incorporate to our play is: use chat. Chat is really powerful because people like to talk a lot during matches, and having something pop on your screen is sometimes a better way of letting people know something. Ofc, Roshan timings are important to mark, but try to make item calls in chat, buyback calls (reinforce it on voice if really necessary), and even fight calls to your team, like "I need 200 gold for Battlefury", or, more commonly, "Teleport Scroll ready". I thought of writing this at the strategy section, but I think it's way too personal to be there. If people like this post I think I'll try to write something about drafting/playing with your team on the strategy section, or something like that, I don't know. Thanks for reading again!
Hey, bigger thanks to you sir! Learned a lot. Especially with the communication. I for one really like to be quite. Gotta learn more about communicating. Thanks again!
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Hey, thanks for the post it's really great to hear drafting thoughts from someone at a relatively high level. I have a group of friends that likes to play ranked team games on Sunday, Captain's Mode.
Our carry player likes to play a lot of Terrorblade, so what are some general picking rules around that hero? Is he a first round pick, or second round pick? Who are some good options for bans? What are terrible lanes to match against him? Any tips you think are helpful would be great, thanks :D
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On December 03 2014 03:17 Beirut wrote: Hey, thanks for the post it's really great to hear drafting thoughts from someone at a relatively high level. I have a group of friends that likes to play ranked team games on Sunday, Captain's Mode.
Our carry player likes to play a lot of Terrorblade, so what are some general picking rules around that hero? Is he a first round pick, or second round pick? Who are some good options for bans? What are terrible lanes to match against him? Any tips you think are helpful would be great, thanks :D
Hello! Thanks for reading! Terrorblade a hero you sort of need to go into the draft ready to pick or to abandon it (unless you're C9, in which case you pick it if they don't ban him). You can't go and then all of a sudden decide you need a carry and say "oh, Terrorblade would be awesome!", because he heavily depends on the rest of the team to function.
When picking Terrorblade, one thing of really big importance, is that you need to pick supports and cores that will do great with 1 or 2 items. You almost always can't go into the draft planning for TB to get 6 slotted on the 30min while your supports have no Blink, your mid has no Guinsoo, your off has no Force Staff, etc. The problem with TB is that if they want to kill you, they will kill you. You need to make sure that if they do decide to kill you, you have your other cores clean them up and win the game. For that, you need to let your supports have farm, just as your mid and offlane. The difference between your third and fourth item and way smaller than the difference between your support having or not having Blink. Farm your supports! Get your Treads Yasha, move into the jungle and let your support have your lane. That's the most important thing about playing TB with your team as opposed to pubbing with TB.
When we want to pick Terrorblade (which is most of the time), we want to ban good counter-initiators and pick counter-initiators ourselves. If we have first pick, we ban to widen up the pool, and to grant that we get either Tide, Brew, Jakiro, or some good counter-initiator (we generally ban Necro, who's really good against TB and Razor, or some other shit, you can devote this to personal bans). If we pick second, ban Tide, Brew and good counter-initiators and get Venge + Mid/off hero. This mid/off needs to be versatile (think like Puck, Legion, Jakiro, Venge, that sort of hero). Venge is kind of important because she can stack and save TB, and is just really good in general, BUT, you can find a replacement for her on Shadow Demon, Sky, you know... that sort of shit.
You need to ban smartly on the second phase, in such way that you get an awesome draft if you get TB, and a nice draft if you don't. That means banning still more counter-initiation or banning direct counters to heroes of yours (not a lot of those exist, especially because your first pick phase is really general and not specific at all). Ban also double-synergies for them. That means banning heroes that are good for them considering their heroes and good versus you considering your picks. For example, banning Doctor if they have Void and you just picked no stuns, banning Slark if you don't have a lot of burst or control for him (and also because he's good vs TB), etc, etc.
Second pick phase you want to make it or break it. If you do decide that you want to play TB, pick something like Veno mid, Dazzle sup, Beastmaster, Earthshaker, just go nuts and pick whatever it is you want to (not everything is good, you need to have someone to get the farm and levels you'll provide by letting them have the lane. Earthshaker does that really well, because having an Earthshaker with Arcane Blink on 18mins is really, really, really powerful).
Terrorblade is really powerful on organized team not because he is inherently broken, like one could say about Death Prophet, or something like that. He's broken because he can go rogue into the jungle at the 10min mark and leave the lane for your supports. You create space with him by making the enemy team worry a lot about you while your other cores farm, and also the other way around. Make sure to pick fights on enemy territory when you want to get objectives (because after killing 3-4 enemies, TB can make megacreeps really, really fast). Make sure to kill Roshan a lot, but do it only if you know you can't be contested without a good fight for you breaking out (which means having your Earthshaker having Blink, your Veno having Aghs, your Puck having good vision to start them, etc, etc, etc).
So, to summarize: move into the jungle fast if you had a good start, and let your supports farm your lane. Make sure you have Venge or something to stack things to you so that you can clean them with Metamorphosis. Stack ancients with your illusions by making them on the 30s mark and sending them to ancients (make sure to ask your teammates if they are nearby and are able to stack first, because then you don't need to do this). Fight near objectives, that being Roshan or towers. If you get a good fight near an objetive, take everything! And, of course, if you didn't know it: Kills mean nothing, Throne means everything.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, and I hope my post wasn't too confusing (it probably is).
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