So back in mid-June as I was getting back into Human I posted a “Case Study” on playing against Dark Ranger on Terenas Stand, if I can really call it that. It was more of a bunch of ideas to try since I was losing more than I liked.

So I’ve tried the ideas and here is parte dos! (I probably slaughtered that lol, Martin save me if I messed up=)) Kind of a completion to the ‘case study’ that was started, hopefully making it now a sort of ‘guide.’ I’m feeling a bit ambitious, so I’m going to say if the nonsense below helps at least two people then I will consider my time not wasted. LoLz

BoX’s Guide: Playing against Dark Ranger on Terenas Stand and Echo Isle with Human

Introduction
This strategy is specifically for TS and EI, on which it is easier to set up an expansion and defend it. In it’s entirety, it cannot be used on maps such as Turtle Rock or Twisted Meadows without great difficulty. DISCLAIMER - I’m not pro so don’t flame me, please. It will make me sad =( I do believe the majority of players will be able to find this of some use, however.

Replay Pack

Summary
1. Start & Creeping the expansion
2. Setting up the expansion
3. During tech - harassing
4. Tier 2 - Build army and push.

Start & Creeping the expansion
Start off the game by standard creeping to level 2 with the respective green camps. Direct expanding with a low-level Archmage makes it harder to get the expansion up cleanly; A higher level Archmage and more early footmen also makes it easier to deal with whatever your opponent does.

Creep Pattern

Base build: At your main you should have your buildings placed so that there is no entrance. The Dark Ranger and archers will then not be able to get inside and kill your peasants; however, skeleton minions will, so be prepared to call to arms some wood peasants to deal with a skeleton harass. Optionally, you could build an arcane tower to help with this. Place it a distance behind your wall so that archers can’t take it down.

Research defend after your 3rd or 4th footmen. I’ve been getting it after my 3rd lately.

Archers stay out!

On Terenas it’s best to expand at a green corner mine and of course expand at your natural on Echo Isle. I usually use five militia to creep the camp. Although you could do it with less, 5 helps you creep it faster and afterwards they are there ready to build the town hall. Five to six is the ideal number of peasants for speed-building a hall; four is not enough.

If you have already started creeping and your opponent creep jacks you, calmly finish creeping while moving away the units that are being focus fired. Above all, try not to take too damage on your Archmage. Dead hero = dead game. Don’t forget to have 3-5 wood peasants hotkeyed in case you need to call to arms for help.

When fighting agianst DR + archers, it’s better to try not to focus fire too much, but a little is good. Defend your footmen, attack move, and micro back focus fired units. With your Archmage you can and should focus fire, either your opponent’s hero or a weak unit. Water elementals can also be focus fired but they’re speed is a bit slow as well, so make sure you don’t have them running around not doing damage.

Throughout the early game you should continue making footmen, or else you can bet your bottom dollar that you will get run over.

Setting up the expansion

Up to now if everything is normal, the elf should have either tried to hit your main, jacked you while you were creeping, or is off creeping and probably expanding himself.

If you haven’t seen your opponent yet at this point you should use a footman to scout and find out what’s up. Otherwise, fight him off with your superior micro. (Because even if we mass towers against air, it doesn’t mean we don’t have micro, right?)

Build an arcane tower at your expo location before town hall and creep in the proximity so you are able to respond if he attacks or harasses your expansion. On Terenas Stand the goblin shredder is available at 23:00 and it can be used to help defend against an attack if you need it. Priorities should be

a) Get your expansion up
b) Hopefully get level 3 so you can play agressively after expo is up. Don’t lose too much if he tries to stop your expo or you’re going to have to hide behind towers all game

Arcane tower is best friend of peasants =)

During tech - harassing

When and only when your expansion is up, you should begin teching. Add a few defensive guard towers, but be sure not to overdo it.

Now that your expansion is secured, harass your opponent. Cancel tier 2 buildings, kill wisps, hit his expansion, use a goblin zeppelin if it’s TS, etc. Behind in tech but with a resource advantage, now is a great time to trade units to delay the elf. There really is not a need to bank gold like an undead player. I usually keep making footmen if they die until I’m close to Keep.

Build a blacksmith sometime during your tech.

Defend is g00d

Tier 2 - Build army and push.

At tier 2, train the Mountain King and build 2 Arcane Sanctums and a Workshop. Your first casters should be priests and research dispel. For your army, pump rifles, priests + breakers, and mortars. Be sure to scout and see if your opponent is making more dryads or teching for bears. If dryads, make more rifles, and if he is making bears, then focus production on breakers.

Upgrades! make a huge difference. I have started just getting damage upgrades first before armor, but I see most pros go 1-1. One damage upgrade then a armor upgrade. Whatever you do, don’t underrate upgrades! As for which upgrade first, I go range (or whatever it’s called) before the iron swords whatever one; but once again, I notice ToD likes to upgrade his breakers.

At Keep with your Mountain King is when you want to start power creeping. Pick up at least one scroll of healing and maybe a potion of invulnerability. Continue pumping units and you should hit 70+ food count very quickly.

Pushing

Bring militia and your goblin shredder if you have one when you push either the elf’s expo, or if he doesn’t have one, his main. Use your mortar teams to take out buildings while keeping your others units positioned carefully. Priests should be behind the front line and spread out so they can’t all be silenced if possible.

Keep your peasants at the side, in general, as they will just be food in front; they do help get in the way if dryads or panda goes for your mortars. Build two to three towers to the side but close to his buildings, although they usually won’t really do anything. There’s something about having long-ranged siege attacking your buildings and towers going up in your base that causes players to think they have to react and do something quickly.

When fighting with high food armies, you do not want to do too much focus firing unless your opponent breaks formation first; for example, by having a panda or dryad run through to get to your mortars, or if there are faerie dragons mana flaring on top of your casters. If it needs to be said, mortars should be focus fired on dryads if you can handle it; but if you can’t it’s better to just attack move them as you don’t want your mortars chasing a dryad that has been microd back.

Mountain King bolt is best to stun the panda before it tries to use breath of fire on your units. Bolt the panda, move your units, and possibly focus fire with breakers.

If all went well, now you get to go refill your cup of tea or get some noodles and grin like an idiot for beating an elf.

Otherwise….. you cry and switch to Blizzard for area of effect and mass breakers, and you’ll probably still lose anyway.

=)

mym news post

yeah storm was my favorite player a long time ago cause of his play style. for example, he beat sky’s tier 2 with tier 2 and tod’s tier 3 with tier 3.

hope he gets back in shape!

So I bought a registered copy of Game Cam after also trying ZD Soft and Camtasia.

Made a first video with unregistered Game Cam Lite last week. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s on youtube and now stage6 as well. I spent the afternoon today making a video with my newly registered Game Cam. ladder game with elf against archibald is on stage6, which has higher quality and youtube as well:

BTW the score screen showing at the end of part one is an editing mistake :p

Some ideas:

Audio commentaries on replays, like the ones they do at wcreplays, except I’ll be controlling the replay and I’ll record that. With videos if you miss something or just want to rewatch you won’t have to restart the replay either.

ACs on first person vods that I record, so what you see will be me playing with all the clicks and etc, yeah we all know what FPVs are.. and then the AC is following the game and making excuses for all the mistakes. :p

Other little videos like maybe showing how I micro stuff and then everyone can tell me I’m not doing it right and that ToD does it differently. haha. Game Cam has this like zoom feature that I haven’t tried yet, but I guess that it would let me zoom in on parts of the screen?

Need to get a USB headset first I think.. I’m pretty sure the mic jack doesn’t work on this computer. =\

Of course none of these are likely ever to happen, as I really don’t like listening to myself. Hah. =)

I’m starting to realize that I play like utter shit when I don’t warm up with a game or two or three beforehand. I guess it’s hard to just start playing and play well.

 You’d think I would have known something so simple sooner.

do u c wut i did thar ^^?

So I was thinking.. after you drop a map in like bo3 or bo5 or whatever I think you should always take a break. Like 5 minutes to just get up or watch the replay or something, so that with the next map you can focus on the game you’re playing, instead of still thinking about last game.

Conversely, if it suits your manner, after you win a map perhaps it would be advantageous to try to get the next one played right away. HMM =\

I think this mental game is something ToD is bad at, whereas maybe Sky and Moon don’t have this weakness. You can see how ToD just has horrible series and you’re thinking “wtf?” while some players can make every game amazing even after losing an unfortunate game.

In other news, if you play elf or whatever don’t miss Jaeho vs ToD series in wc3l

TS - Moon uses a sort of “counter-strategy” that won’t always work against everything (like DH LOL). Creeps Warden to 3 with Ancient of Wars. level 1 shadow strike & level 2 fan of knives. Staff of teleportation into ToD’s main which has no arcane tower. 2 FoK kill almost all peasants. ToD’s main is completely closed btw, something I’ve been advocating and using myself for a long time. =) Something that might be worth mentioning: Moon got level 3 shadow strike at level 5.

TR - Close spawn. ToD abuses it. If you play elf, you should definitely watch this to see how moon handles it. He got evasion first on DH if you don’t catch that.

So I decided to figure out gamecam today. Took 3 ladder games before I won, hah. Bad day, even lost to PriesT 0-2 in w3al. Really disappointing cause Reaver had just 2-0′d gameover. ANYWAY SO I SUCK LET’S MOVE ON.

Finally won against Cumulo in Hu mirror on LT. Part’s 1 and 2 on youtube. Higher quality joined file will be posted soon.

Yeah, don’t mind the noobness as I said, bad day. Like not picking attribute that’s cause gamecam has this menu thing covering the hero spots and it’s kind of annoying I don’t know how to get rid of it. Also there’s no wc sounds I’ll figure that out next time too. And if you don’t like the music just mute the volume, gosh.

EDIT: Link to full/quality file: here

I set up list checker today. It’s this nifty program that lets you host like LAN but on BNet. I might be doing something wrong though cause the people in game say it’s not that lagless, although at least I was playing with 0 delay. x)

Downs:
You’re not on bnet once in game, so no /f l etc.
Even in the lobby when you’re connected to bnet and I /f l it only shows first 10 lines…
I don’t know how to use some of the commands!! =( like /pingclients ?? doesn’t work??

But of course the 0 delay makes it all worth it. It’s way better than ggc. (like ggc before it went public)

OH and what is with GGC’s new skin?? @@ <— hard on the eyes

Wasting too much of my life away on dota. weeknights are okay though =)

SOOO I need to give myself to do. Not that I don’t have stuff to do.. it’s just that when I have lots of choices the chances that I’ll do one of the choices instead of WC becomes higher. ^^

Changed to a cleaner template. Tried to find one that was simple so that I can make my own modifications easily.. so if this one turns out to be complicated I’ll probably change it until I find a simple one I can work with. I already don’t like the way it displays the posts when you sort by a category. I guess I could change that part myself but so much trouble.

eS.UK wc3 is currently recruiting. Need someone solid to fill in a major league spot, especially now that I’m banned from nearly everything. If you think you have what it takes email me at forelmashi at gmail.com and i’ll give you gedge/propel’s contact info or just look it up.

so WoOHoO! in spite of all my complaining i still played xlocup. got 2nd after vankor last weekend qualifying me for season finals. hopefully this time around i’ll have a better experience and not forfeit like i have the last 2 seasons!

after that on sunday i got top 16 in incup^^ i tower rushed focus round 2 hahahaha i should feel bad for playing human. look ma, i’m in an mym scene news coverage article! that feels pretty cool :p YEAH GOSH I SHOULD PRACTICE LIKE 24/7 THEN MAYBE ILL WIN INCUP SOME DAY !!!!!ONE1!

http://wc.forelmashi.com/images/link88×31.gif

so i’ve been trying to learn dh and then maybe later warden against ud because all i know is bm/dr and thats not so great always. but then playing dh like 25 games in a row made me forget how to play bm/dr =\

 also going bears against UD is so weird i’m used to just mass dryads with panda aoe..

i think with beastmaster when you first get level 2 you shouldn’t pick the skill yet, and if you see that the UD switches fiends instead of ghoul/garg then getting level 2 bear and dust instead of hawk might be better.

 hard to believe back when i was first playing elf the strat against ud was bm/panda archer/talon/dryad LoL

oh! and a link from WCR is worth about 100 visits! yay xD too bad i don’t think they’re returning. when I look at this chart now it’s like really low flat.. then a steep arrow and then flat again..

 in other matchups.. i’m back to fast expanding against elf whenever i’m human lol. or tower rush. no more playing straight up with 1 mine ^^