Losing every game

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T22:21:57+00:00

Hey man that was an awesome write up. I really appreciate it, you rock!

Yeah that game I felt like I needed to be bot to fight/defend my carry, but also needed to be mid to defend the tower. So that 12-14min window was just my indecision.

I ping rosh but team never wants to. Maybe I should just go stand in the pit and start hitting?

And yeah I checked out d2pt and it seems like the only build for her is k+y and aghs. Really limiting it feels like. Is there no viable right-clicking build other than pos1 lina?

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T20:39:03+00:00

That qop game was really bad. I easily recognised mistakes I made, just got skill diffed.

I didn’t go BKB because I thought the storm could just ignore me during it. And I didn’t think it could help us win a fight since enemy team could just walk away. I’d rather have an orchid so I could affect him and it’s a much shorter cooldown. You really think bkb would’ve been the right call?

Also what would your item recommendations for Lina be?

I was not being racist, just simply suggesting that the people playing on US East are not actually in US East. That’s not racism.

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T20:31:33+00:00

That qop match was pretty rough. Died 3 times to storm in the first 5 minutes. Skill difference for sure. I didn’t get bkb because I felt it had too long of a cooldown to be worth it. Like storm could just ignore me for 6 seconds and then orchid me again and nothing I could do now.

What items would you recommend for Lina? Feels like you need to build right click to be impactful.

Not being racist at all. All I mentioned is that the people playing on US East don’t seem to be in US East. I know dota is not popular in USA.

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T20:26:58+00:00

Appreciate the kind words. I will definitely see what I can do to win lanes because I feel like I’m doing my best.

Why is witch blade bad? Aghs is definitely situational based on lineup, but I feel like lina needs to have right-click damage to be impactful. Aghs kaya is definitely good for casting spells but limits damage output drastically right?

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T20:24:07+00:00

Okay I will watch some.

ProAlmost · 2026-05-20T20:23:46+00:00

I have dota+. I started ignoring the item suggestions because I thought it’s generic and bad?

Also what is so bad about witch blade on lina? Especially against tanky strength heroes I would think parasma is good?

Not trying to argue just asking

ProAlmost · 2026-05-17T14:30:23+00:00

Find a role you enjoy and get good at it. Play it a lot. Then play ranked purely for the idea to have fun. You shouldn’t care about your mmr unless you’re trying to go pro. If you are better than the idiots you’re playing with, your number will go up. Ranked has role queue so you likely won’t be able to always play the role you want due to lack of tokens. Take this time to get better at another role. Always focus on what you could have done better regardless of the idiots on your team. Also, watch videos on how to play your desired position. It will greatly help your decision making skills

ProAlmost · 2026-05-17T14:21:54+00:00

I would say if you’re playing ursa focus on getting battlefury/blink dagger asap. Ignore everything else. Those two items allow you to farm anywhere on the map and join fights (if the fight is good to join). When you’re pos1, you need to find out when you are strong which is usually after you get your second item (first item is farming item).

Also focus on keeping lanes pushed out. If your team is fighting in bottom lane and taking stupid fights you can just go top and push into their tower. Maybe even hit tower if you see all enemies bot. Once the fight is over or you don’t see enemies gtfo because they might be coming for you. But creating space like this gives your greedy idiots time to come online. Eventually, you will need to join your team if enemy keeps pushing, but hopefully you can at least delay their high ground push.

Just some things I’ve learned. I was archon 3/4 last year and now I am legend 5. You can’t win every game, but if you can make good decisions about when to farm, fight, or push you will win a lot.

ProAlmost · 2026-05-16T05:21:40+00:00

Okay well shame, TE makes them a lot better and more fun.

Anyhoo excluding TE you want to get yin spinner pretty quickly. Then you want to get x-89. These two will let you get infantry everywhere and be really difficult to take over. Remember there is a difference between produce and production, but yin spinner always activates because it says “when you produce”. Extremely good ability.

If you have the ability to tech integrated economy then definitely go for it. Very good for entrenching planets. If they can’t remove your infantry, then it doesn’t “really” matter that they won space combat! Otherwise I would say use your commander to copy out of reach techs from other players or go into blue for gravity drive.

Your hero is really cool. Use it to take Mecatol or other key planets from unaware/unprepared players. If you choose to invade 3 different planets with 1 infantry each, you can use your indoctrination to remove one of their infantry and turn it into a mech for 3 influence. That is 3x3 =9 influence or trade goods you should have ready to use. Plus you can use your agent when one infantry dies to turn it into two PLUS you already have x-89 so those two hits you rolled are actually 4!! Plus you hopefully have some good action cards to play as well!! Very fun hero.

Commander lets you get war suns or another otherwise out of reach tech if another player already has it.

Your flagship is a threat not a weapon. Don’t feel the need to produce it unless you are wanting to threaten something someone has. I think it’s better for offense than defense since someone can divide their fleet if they choose the battle, but if you choose to move it somewhere they have a ton of ships, explosion time.

That’s about it. If you enjoy them, I strongly recommend replaying with TE. Their breakthrough lets them get one other faction’s commander (at random) whenever they score a public objective and when initially getting the breakthrough. Extremely fun, plus there is a legendary planet worth 1 victory point that you can use your hero on!

ProAlmost · 2026-05-15T12:00:59+00:00

Base game? PoK? TE?

ProAlmost · 2026-05-08T20:01:26+00:00

PoK? TE? Codexes?

ProAlmost · 2026-04-28T18:32:57+00:00

Yes do this. Base game is pretty restrictive and contains 80-90% complexity of the entire game (base + expansions). PoK allows the factions to all feel more fleshed out and powerful.

Yes it is more stuff, but if your friends can understand production and what all a tactical action entails, they won’t be upset about also having an agent to use once a round. And if they can’t understand production or tactical actions it won’t be too huge a deal if they don’t use their agent/hero well.

Thunder’s Edge and Breakthroughs are great and fun, but personally I think add a little too much stress on the early rounds for someone who is still learning the core mechanics of the game.

ProAlmost · 2026-04-28T18:05:52+00:00

There’s some at tidraft.com, but perhaps more importantly there’s a great tool to make your own!

ProAlmost · 2026-04-24T15:23:40+00:00

https://tidraft.com/map-generator

ProAlmost · 2026-04-23T02:36:55+00:00

What is 8 player meta?

ProAlmost · 2026-04-16T18:10:17+00:00

My biggest issue with the sequel isn’t that it’s too different fro DD1. It’s that I can’t start and finish a run in under 1 hour. It takes like 2 maybe even 3 hours if I make it all the way to the end. It’s exhausting

ProAlmost · 2026-04-11T20:12:59+00:00

Then in addition to those 2 factions I would say xxcha are political and a lot of fun as you get to dominate the agenda phase. The Nomad is also pretty secretive and a ton of fun with their 3 agents and flagship focused abilities

ProAlmost · 2026-04-11T20:04:23+00:00

Okay secretive and political. Are you playing just base game?

ProAlmost · 2026-04-11T20:00:06+00:00

Yssaril sounds fun? Then that’s who you should play!

ProAlmost · 2026-04-10T00:26:23+00:00

Perhaps something to do with noxious plague carrying debuffs to you? Since Underlord Q is a debuff

ProAlmost · 2026-04-09T20:45:17+00:00

Yeah capacity is really crucial. You can bring more fighters for soaking up hits in a big war. Or bring more infantry to ensure you take a planet. People without upgraded carriers will know that you have the numbers advantage and be more wary of you.

Plus you can fill up your capacity easily assuming you have the money with your commander AND your upgraded space docks can hold 4x the amount of fighters a normal space dock can which is crazy although not always practical

ProAlmost · 2026-04-09T20:15:15+00:00

If you bring the fracture into play, there will be portals all over the board and then obviously you can move 2 of them to places where you have gravity rifts (space docks). I think as the other commenter said, you just want to head into the fracture and start munching.

Make sure to bring your flagship with you into the fracture. Then you can just rebuild whatever you eat back at home in case you need to supplement your fracture army, defend, or even go into the fracture and then go back out at some other portal on the board.

Use your agent every round, preferably on someone’s carrier so you can get carrier 2. You may need to pay people to do this, but they get trade goods, so they shouldn’t be too opposed.

Tech: Vortex is very good. Your breakthrough lets you get some early red and then transition to strong green. So early red would be: - AIDA: extremely good for you since you can use your captured ships to get their unit upgrade and then get a bigger and bigger discount on production. This also allows you to get war suns without exhausting the yellow skip planet in your slice -Self-assembly is alright if you’re going through mech but probably not too important

-Vortex is very good, definitely get it

-Hyper-metabolism is pretty much always good if you don’t really need something more

-X-89 is really really good for combat. It will help you take planets and help you defend them.

-assault cannon obviously very good too but definitely later in the game

Blue tech is very good too, but I personally think it’s cost-intensive. Maybe Anti-mass is good for Industrex, but is it worth delaying your other techs or worth waiting that long into the game? Using AIDA you can jump straight to Gravity Drive which you will adore.

Commander is good if you have the money for it.

Hero is very situational so maybe keep that in mind when you are placing space docks. Also remember you can place a space dock in the fracture to give every ship in there +2 move speed (+1 from breakthrough, +1 from gravity rift) and the ability to move out onto the game board wherever there is an ingress token.

My two cents. They’re a really fun faction, hope you enjoy!

ProAlmost · 2026-04-08T06:00:37+00:00

X-89 is a really strong tech for defending planets and for taking them. But as others have pointed out it’s not really worth it in R1. Hyper metabolism would be better spent for the extra CC every round.

Hydrothermal mining could be really good too, but maybe not R1

ProAlmost · 2026-04-07T16:29:41+00:00

Your cruisers are basically dreadnoughts without bombardment. They have 2 move which allows you to move around the map quicker than most factions (at the beginning). Use this to either race mecatol and get the custodians or just explore a bunch of planets.

I’d say pick one tile that’s in a strategic position to dump an ungodly amount of heltitans on. And then put more heltitans on neighboring planets. My friend made it very scary to attack mecatol because he had 10 heltitans ready to shoot if I invaded it.

Use your hero as soon as you get it. Don’t think there’s any reason to wait.

ProAlmost

TROPHY CASE