I understand certain people are carries like Phantom Lancer, TA, Anti-Mage, Lifestealer, and Chaos Knight, but I don’t exactly understand who else is a carry, because in that game, with enough farm and kills anyone can become a “carry”.
The typical roles are:
Hard carry.
Semi-carry.
Hard support.
Initiator.
Jungler.
Ganker could also be considered a separate role in of itself, but that usually falls under initiator. As for what you said, no, not everybody can be a ‘carry’ unless the other team has no farm at all or is super retarded, at least in a realistic sense. I’m sure KOTL could do some great right click damage if he had three rapiers, a daedalus, assault cuirass and a sheepstick, but that doesn’t mean he’s a viable carry in any way. As for the roles, they usually fit in like so:
Hard carry: A HC is somebody that is incredibly item dependent or needs to wait until later game to go really well. Examples of this are Anti-Mage, Medusa, Phantom Lancer, etc. It sorta crosses paths with…
Semi-Carry: A Semi-Carry hits their peak around mid-game (20 minutes or so) and is very strong at that point, but tends to taper off later in the game. There is an overlap with Hard Carries and Semi-Carries in that some Semis can transition into late game if they get a lot of items, but for the most part, they usually only need to get a certain skill or one-two items to hit their stride. Examples are Troll Warlord, Alchemist, Viper, etc.
Hard Support: These are your supports that are going to be ward/dust/smoke bitches all game and don’t require items to be effective, as they usually have incredibly important skills that let their other teammates get ahead first. Examples are Keeper of the Light, Witch Doctor, Warlock (who can SORTA play a semi-carry) and Dazzle, though the latter is incredibly versatile and is one of the first heroes I recommend people to get good at for a variety of roles.
Initiator: Something basically every team needs, as it’ll make your teamfights 100x easier. They aren’t exactly a full frontal class by themselves but usually overlap with the other roles, for example Magnus is an initiator with Reverse Polarity + Impale, but usually requires a blink dagger to get effective initiations of. Other examples are Tusk, Sand King, Axe, Faceless Void and others similar to that.
Jungler: Somebody who can farm in or make use of the neutral camps better than other classes, and is usually based around it. This is one of the rarest roles because very few can do it in a worthwhile, non-gimmicky manner, but there are those that exist. Like initiators, they usually fit into one of the latter roles as I’ll describe as I go: Enigma (support), Nature’s Prophet (semi-carry or support), Enchantress (support/semi-carry), Chen (support with semi-carry esque effectiveness), Doom (semi/hard-carry). Others can jungle such as Batrider, Dark Seer and Lycanthrope, but they’re usually much more useful in lane than they are in the jungle.
Ganker is usually either initiator or nuker. Even then, the in-game labels aren’t exactly accurate.
The main thing to remember when it comes to laning…
The “easy” lane (the one that trails around the entire jungle) is the easiest to farm in and safest to be in early-on. As such, characters that rely more heavily on gold, typically carries, should be there.
The “hard” lane (the one that doesn’t) is much less safe because of the possibility of people jumping out of the jungle, and the easy access to lane pulling (which forces you deeper into enemy territory if you want gold/exp). As such, characters that have escapability (such as Bounty Hunter/Weaver/Clockwerk) or characters that don’t need to be close to the creep line to farm it (such as Dark Seer/Lone Druid) should go there. It’s also typically a tower you want to take as quickly as possible, making it the best place to push early.
Mid is the place to put characters that need a level advantage in the early-/mid-game to function effectively. A level 8 Zeus vs. a level 8 anything else is going to go very poorly for the Zeus. But a level 11 Zeus vs. a level 8 anything else is skewed much more in favor of the Zeus. Same goes for Pudge, who needs the levels for rot damage and hook range, and Slark, who needs that early ulti.
Anyone who is allowed to farm the most (position 1) is trying to fulfill the role of the carry but the hero they are using dictates the effectiveness of that.
Here is a copy of a great post on reddit discussing this and it remains relevant since the meta for carries hasn’t changed much in the past 4 months.
qbad bringin it back ALL THE WAY SON
haha obviously i saw qbad win and then shut it off before they lost yesterday
Went 16 and 4 today with CK. Good lord those illusions just break people in half man.
Got more Dota 2 invites. PM me if you want it.
Invictus Gaming ain’t what it used to be. RIP.
Don’t be so quick to brush them off. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re baiting and switching.
Though it’s worth pointing out how the Chinese Dota teams, to a fair degree, still seem to be rolling with last year’s meta of “pick a really strong carry and farm the shit out of them”, compared with the current western meta of “take early towers and spam AOE”. Will be interesting to see which pans out to be better.
I think you mean “take early towers and spam Phantom Lancer”. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
However, I’m not sure what you mean by IG baiting and switching. I don’t see the point of them doing such a thing.
FINALLY i found the thread on the new SRK sheesh.
can someone explain the rules of pausing? anyone can pause/unpause from either team unlimited times?
The two new heroes: Kaolin and Oracle are just imba.
I randomed both Visage and Skywrath today. I have no gdamn clue on how to play either of those heroes. Kind of got the gist of Visage after a while, but I was kind of lost on Skywrath. Any tips?
Spam first skill —> profit
Standard build is to max Q, then E, but get one level of his W.
Pugna is a pretty hard counter to Skywrath with his nether ward. I still don’t know what elder titan is capable of since I haven’t seen a good one yet :S
I actually played with and against a really good Titan. He requires a LOT of stuff to come together in order to really be effective, including a good team comp, good coordination, and proper terrain. That’s on top of the fact that he has a high execution barrier.
Watching now EG vs Na´Vi at the Raidcall dota 2 league season 3. EG had a good lead, but they choked then and lost. The Antimage of Na´Vi was too strong for them, it was really hype.
so…guilds…srk guild?
uh whats a guild…
add me on steam, ill play: Slogan8r
My god, I had two of the best shitty plays ever happen to me last night.
One of which involved Skeleton King (me), being chased around the bottom Radiant tree line by Broodmother, who was being chased by Chaos Knight. I had maybe 50 hp left and she couldn’t catch me. I ran around the entire tree line 3 times at least all the while CK was smacking her in the ass. Then I turn around and pop her with a crit and take the kill.
The other consisted of me juking some garbage magnus player around 2 trees until I had enough mana to Earthshaker his ass into oblivion.
People are bad.