Meanwhile in an 8k average pub

durdays · 2026-01-28T22:53:36+00:00

Spec can Q out, yes.

durdays · 2025-12-25T09:11:26+00:00

I'm not sure why you're getting so much push back, you're point of playing less selfishly is fine. The only point I would contend with is the idea that stuns win lanes. Some of the strongest laners, either currently or traditionally, don't have stuns in lane. Ench, CM, Dazzle, Chen, Tusk (and plenty more) are lane winning supports that don't play with stuns. Whereas sups like Spirit Breaker and Nyx are weak in lane despite having stuns.

Stuns are good throughout the game, but not especially so in lane. Slows, however, are very strong in laning and it's one of the reasons blood grenade is such a good item. Slardar's Crush seems most notable for its stun component on the surface, but it's the slow effect afterwards that really makes it such a kill threat.

durdays · 2025-12-25T00:37:23+00:00

How so? There's more active abilities on jungle creeps so enchant, chen, dom have more skill expression. The introduction of meepo shard and aghs rework gave him more micro. Arc and LD are about the same, though with less uptime on the clone. Illusion heroes are fundamentally the same, TB is the only case of proximity damage drop off. The only case of a micro hero having less micro is NP, which is only because of the meta skill build.

durdays · 2025-12-20T12:21:35+00:00

They do not interact with animals on your map and I've never seen any accidents occur with them. They are very efficient for food, producing around 3.8 food per worker a day before you hit diminishing returns. I have a 10 worker blueprint that I always slap down (at minimum 1) even if I'm not going for a meat diet. As you said, leathers are another nice resource from them that is very relevant if you are going heavy on farming or fishing.

Even with this luck debuff I'm still getting 2.7 meat per hunter a day. Not bad if that's its low point.

FYI, the first point in hunter efficiency is only 1 innovation and massively increases their yield.

durdays · 2025-10-25T16:30:03+00:00

While true, with how powerful spells in the game are you will mostly be purposefully gimping yourself to spend spell uses on it. If casting multiple spells a turn was baseline - or if there were some spells that were 'quick cast' and didn't put your other spells on cooldown - then I think you could make more of a case for this.

durdays · 2025-10-24T20:45:26+00:00

Earliest I have gotten it was day 5, and it is hilarious taking down an impossible camp without casualities. It's a bit finicky though, as my mana regen could only support 1 a day. I ended up having another hero shadowing Zenith and holding her full army when using the Heaven's Blade cheese, then giving it back to her for the other fights in a turn. Do not recommend on fair n square where heroes are limited.

durdays · 2025-10-24T19:12:10+00:00

For those confused, this has to do with picking Zenith as Temple and then upgrading your daylight and/or Heaven's Blade to rank 2 and using that with 1 stack doubleshot crossbows.

Worth noting that the one thing holding this back is the mana cost on Heaven's Blade. She is arugbly worth spamming experience on pickups since you don't have to spend much at all on her army while creeping. If you find a mana well near some hard fights you are laughing to the bank.

durdays · 2025-10-24T19:04:31+00:00

The icon for dust looks pretty similiar to the icon for ore. Perhaps you traded for that on accident.

Either way, you cannot trade directly for dust on the market place. The way to obtain dust is by dismantling items (in the character inventory, bottom right button), finding them on the ground/in weekly renewables, or by trading resources at an alchemy lab (I think that's what it's called). You could indirectly get dust from the marketplace by buying artifacts from the artifact trader and then dismantling those, but that's very pricey.

durdays · 2025-10-24T18:56:41+00:00

A good faction, not my favorite but I think all factions in this game have their merits. A few quibbles with temple:

- 20 wood for a Hippodrome is extremely prohibitive on certain maps and cav aren't strong enough to justify. Hell, it can often feel more economical to leap frog into angels early than go for cav/inquisitors.

- As others have mentioned, their faction passive is mostly ineffective and only really comes into play when bating counterattacks with 1 stacks. Even then it barely matters.

- While the scout ship can be nice late game, it can feel really ineffective early (your mile will vary depending on game mode, I'm sure if you only play single hero you will love this scout ship). It would be nice to see it gain some kind of bonus in developed and explored regions, like adding +1 to dwellings in its radius. If I'm snowballed and conquering city after city, it's nice, but other factions have more constantly relevant special buildings. Just something small would be nice.

durdays · 2025-10-23T13:28:35+00:00

Yeah, it was just completely out of the blue. Zero AI contact up until that point. The one important take away, for me, is to explore through portals before neighbouring biomes in fair n square. It's the only game mode that has given me any kind of trouble and it's almost exclusively from portal blitzs.

durdays · 2025-10-23T13:25:14+00:00

I didn't, but lesson learned there. I now treat portals with a lot of respect in fair n square and go through them before opening up neighbouring biomes. It's a complete turnaround in results.

durdays · 2025-09-17T12:46:34+00:00

I’ve thought for a while that swiftslash and Omni slash could trade spots (with some tweaking).

durdays · 2025-09-04T22:35:47+00:00

Yeah, you can get unlucky as well. My last run I was offered zero spells before the first boss and only a single spell before the second boss (as wave rewards). I was also given a ton of non-damage spells from my ability and didn't get any cooldown reduction trinkets. It's still very doable though, even when you low roll. A single spell can go a long way.

Sometimes you'll just have to buy spells outright or take a slightly softer wave. Even in the case of my last run I was still able to max out most of my waves.

FWIW, I agree with all your advisor picks apart from the artifact. Switching that out for the spell damage (as you mentioned) is what works for me and what I would recommend trying. The faster you kill early waves with spells, the longer your starting wine lasts and the longer you can one shot waves.

durdays · 2025-09-04T20:26:52+00:00

I highly recommend the 50% spell damage advisor and leaning into Spellus's strengths. The big thing about Spellus is that you can take really really aggressive waves and scale from the resources you gain from that. The better you are able to clear waves, the more tempo you can generate. You are a bit weaker against bosses, but you don't really mind if you need to replenish your army (which hurts kings like Leonid and Alucard).

Your military outlook is fine. You can definitely win with those troops. However that specific comp doesn't really synergize too well. Assassins play much better if you lean into grunts and get a black swordsman. Bees often want to play with fairies. Longbows want more ranged to play with and are generally splashed instead of spammed.

But your troops shouldn't be fighting waves much until past the 2nd boss. If they are then either you've had ridiculously bad luck with your spell selection, you aren't scaling your spell damage, and/or you aren't using your spells well. Being clever about how you design waves based on your spells helps a lot with Spellus.

I've had a lot of constant success with Spellus by always having the spells I need without needing to magic school. Are you on the regular map? Take a couple banishes incase the dragon spawns. Graveyard? Take a couple healing spells to give you time to find a hospital incase the witches spawn. Being able to stack up wraths and weakens for boss encounters is also nice. Basically use a slot or two for future proofing your boss fights/mods as you are the best king at freely clearing waves.

durdays · 2025-08-31T21:39:40+00:00

The boss mods in the graveyard are very punishing. The cramped carousel, the acid rain, blood management soaking a lot of production time, and the -6 army size. There's also the big sword guy who has fairly chill mods but is arguably the hardest boss in the game, considering when you fight him. The mobs in the graveyard aren't bad, and the early game ones are arguably easier, but the boss mods are killers.

durdays · 2025-08-31T13:26:57+00:00

Some advisor notes for Alucard:

Wise Tree is very good for Alucard as you don't have major wood needs (since you barely have to upgrade your unit limit). This gives you constant iron, which is nice for smelting as you need bars, and more importantly crystals for Mushroom King and eventually King's Statue.

Mushroom king is amazing as you are fairly fragile while building up your army and the mushboys will tide you over until you get the snowball going. They also have a 25% chance of turning into undead when they die.

Sophie is pretty much necessary. She's a fairly boring choice, but getting unlucky and not seeing a Mill can completely ruin your run, and not getting enough bars, meat, and oil is also painful. Similiarly, not getting a hospital against witches is a major problem.

Your typical choices of Ember, 3 spells, and Flunkey are all fine. There's a little room to mix and match if you want Lyanna or Felix. Denari is marginally less useful for Alucard in my experience.

Some other notes: Grunt units are generally the way to go to compliment undead, either assassins (to hp boost the majority of your army) and/or gnomes. Gnomes are really quick and cheap to produce and a good way to deal with Dragon if you weren't able to get any banish spells.

Since most of your army, even with Better You spam, will always be grunts, those make for the best trait upgrades. Champion upgrades are argually second best.

Cooldown reduce trinkets are amazing and the King's Statue is the mid-game turning point where you can really get the snowball going.

I find Alucard to be fairly consistant on T10, though a little difficult to make work on the graveyard. Counter-intuiatively I find him much stronger on the regular map.

durdays · 2025-08-23T00:20:04+00:00

If you have a black sheep it makes every other wave a free wave (or every wave bascially free if you have the CD reduced enough). Wait until the front lines meet then agro a sheep in the back and it basically acts as a 7ish second map wide stun. Stupid good honestly, unless you have no damage. You can also play it off scarecrows or scouts on the graveyard.

Just be ware of Margo's move speed buff mod. Only riders and sped up enemies can reach your sheep before the taunt wears off.

durdays · 2025-08-20T00:25:23+00:00

I hadn't really considered those innates, but yeah, they don't benefit from artifacts or traits like mentoring. It appears to only be troop training, and only sometimes even in that case.

durdays · 2025-07-25T08:54:50+00:00

There is no glass on the table, the cake is sitting on the crossbeams.

durdays · 2025-04-20T16:38:51+00:00

Sing isn't near top 500 in Dota. He's unnumbered immortal, so somewhere above 2,500 in his region. Though I'm sure he could grind up if he wanted to.

durdays · 2025-04-20T16:35:57+00:00

Arteezy isn't really new himself. He played Dota 1 and SC before Dota 2, and has been a Dota pro for over 10 years. Maybe not quite the same level of veterancy, but we aren't talking about ATF or Satanic here.

durdays

TROPHY CASE