HON

This is one game that I have managed to get addicted to and I’m not sure why because it’s extremely frustrating.  For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, HON stands for Heroes of Newerth and is a DOTA style game.  For those of you who have no idea what DOTA is, then I suggest reading the following Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota .  Essentially, HON is a more refined form of DOTA.  Once DOTA got popular, a set of their programming core literally split apart into 3 sections.  First section were devoted to continuing the original DOTA in all it’s glory.  The second section moved to create another DOTA game called LOL or League of Legends.  The originally concept creator of DOTA heads the LOL section.  Furthermore on this blog I also have a LOL tab on this website because really LOL and HON have similarities but sometimes depending on my mood I’d rather play one over the other.  The third section were the DOTA balancers.  They were given a task to make sure that heroes stayed balanced as to not create a huge disparity between picking one hero over another.  This group moved on to work for S2Games were they are the developers of HON.

HON vs. LOL

Okay.  I’m fond of both games and I regularly play both but for different reasons.  People think I’m weird that I have HON and still avidly play LOL (HON costs 30 bucks for an account where as LOL is free) because people think LOL is a watered down version of HON in which it isn’t.  HON focuses more on team play and rewards plays who make the least amount of mistakes throughout the course of the game.  LOL on the other hand is focuses on the individual and allows players to make small mistakes without being completely punished.  In addition to this, there are multiple things you can do in HON that LOL doesn’t allow.  For instance, in HON I can deny my own creeps (kill them when they have low health to half the other teams experience game) and in LOL you can’t do this.  Now when I started to play LOL this concerned me because there are literally 7 things you can do in a starting lane in HON:

• Harass (attack the opponent hero every once in awhile to chip their health down and setup a potential hero kill)
• Babysit (protect a weaker early game hero that needs to farm on creep to get funds)
• Push (kill creep as quickly as possible to push your creep to their tower and take an early tower gold set)
• Gank (try to setup early hero kills with precision movements)
• Phase (position yourself in an aggressive way as to which your opponent cannot gain experience from your creep waves dying)
• Deny (kill creep to half their experience gain)
• Kill Creep (kill creep to gain gold and experience)

LOL on the other hand only allowed you to babysit, harass, phase, kill creep, and gank.  The hardest part of HON is trying to decide what is more beneficial, denying v harassing, phasing v killing creep, push v harass.  LOL just seemed to come off a lot easier than what I expected in a DOTA game especially since the creator wrote the rules himself.  Now I can understand why he did this because those users with limited DOTA experience get walked over in HON.  See I started originally with HON and had never had an experience with DOTA (which is a mistake).  HON is hardcore.  Like literally .. you will get chewed out, you will find players who are far more competitive, and you will have to get used to the huge learning curve that is associated with the game.  LOL on the other hand is in my opinion extremely easy and you are able to “veg” because you don’t have to work as hard.  Now from the people I have talked to this might be due to the fact that I started out in HON.  The fundamentals you learn in HON, whether it be denying (not in LOL), phasing, orb walking, pushing, or ganking, the transition is much more fluid going from HON to LOL.  In order to put this in a better understanding, I played a semi-pro game in HON (think it was my 200th game actually) and I went 4/8/3 (kill:death:assist) in my first “semi-pro” game.  These stats aren’t bad at all considering it was my first full fledged, organized game between two mid level clans.  Meanwhile, in my first game on LOL (joined a semi-pro game in public), I went 22/2/19 and was accused of being in some top level team.  Thinking I was just playing with a bunch of players, I played probably 5 more games going a combined 137/10/42 against the top level brackets (I selected that I was a DOTA pro on the selection screen).  So when I think of HON I think of a challenge, whereas in LOL I think of something to keep me occupied. In addition to the overall skill set, the time invested between HON and LOL is huge.  It takes about an hour to play a HON game (no joke).  In LOL, it may only take 20-30 minutes because the towers have less life and players are able to determine the outcome of the game much quicker.  Anyways I recommend both DOTA styles to each person as I prefer to have my options open for me playing a game.  Just makes it more enjoyable.

HON Ranking System

HON uses an ELO based rating system.  The principle is that as you play a game, the matchmaking system determines those players who are most equivalent to your skill bracket and assigns them to your game.  This allows for every game you play equal and at the same time fun but not overly difficult.  Furthermore, the ELO system uses the derived zero sum scale.  Which means that as you win a game you gain X points and your opponent loses X points.  Everyone starts out with the same point totals of 1500 hundred.  So for instance if I’m playing a game I may be playing against anyone from 1500-1600 rating.  For simplistic sake, we’ll say we are all 1500.  In this case you are applied a modifier for points lost or gained.  It’ll be something like 1500 | +10/-10.  If I win I go up to 1510 and my opponent goes to 1490 and vice versa.  Furthermore, as you play more games, it becomes increasingly difficult to gain points and lose points.  This is designed to keep the good players in a higher bracket while there is more flux for worse players in the lower bracket.  IMO, this system is difficult to get used to.  I remember being stuck in the 1500-1600 bracket for what seemed like 5–6 months.  It seems good in principle, but the 1500 bracket is full of landmines.  Foreigners (Brazilians to be exact) that just seem to screw everything up.  It can be very frustrating.  But once you move to the 1700 bracket everything seems to feel like it should.  I’m paired with good players and it always comes down to two scenarios: outpicked or outplayed.  Their teamwork is better or they are just better.  But the journey to get here is much much more difficult.

Hero Strategy

Okay I probably won’t cover this in detail because really there is no basic strategy.  There are some keys to not losing but at the end of the day there is limitless supply of hero combos and team combos that force users to think outside the box every game.  Essentially there are 3 types of heroes in HON: agility, intelligence, and strength.  These heroes are all typically the same:

• Strength: Tanky, High Physical Damage
• Intelligence: Quirky spells, Low Hit Points, Ward Bitches
• Agility: Carries, Squishy but can become Tanky, ULTRA damage … yeah that’s right .. shit just got real

In addition to each hero type, there are roles that each hero can act as.  They are below:

• Hard Carry: These heroes need a ton of farm and are typically considered endgame because once the game gets to minute 35-40 they do a ton of damage and are extremely difficult to control due to their items
• Semi Carry:  These are heroes that are often intelligence based but if they get off to a good farm (kills, creep kills) they are capable of carrying.
• Support: These heroes have abilities that are great for early game and mid game … they are typical ward bitches (place vision around the map and counter opposing teams vision wards) and are responsible for purchasing the courier to transport items to teammates as well as harassing early game to allow carries to get some early gold.  They also are used for stacking neutral creep (creep that is not assigned to one team or another but can be stacked to a set of 3).  This allows for quick gold farming for your carry in between lane swapping
• Tank: These heroes are extremely tough to kill.  In fact once they get enough farm even hard carries have issues killing them.  They aren’t classified as carries though because they don’t do enough damage.  Though some carries can be tanks (see pestilence guide).
• Initiator:  Someone who is the first person before a battle engagement occurs.  These heroes either are 1) extremely strong but squishy so getting in and using all your abilities are important.   Now these people don’t have to literally jump in, they could be like a Behemoth who separates the opposing team or a Vindicator who silences everyone for 5 seconds from range.
• Babysitter:  Term for a hero who is extremely strong at laning with a carry.  These heroes have large amounts of crowd control.  Witch Slayer for example, a vector based stun and a mini ability to prevents the opponent from engaging your carry.
• Pusher: These heroes are good at eliminating creep extremely fast or have abilities that take down towers faster than normal heroes.  Defiler is a great example.  An AOE spell wave of death that pushes the creep back to the opposing tower and then combo’d with her ult (physical damage) which allows her to chew through towers.
• Anti Pusher:  Someone who has the ability to counteract an attack at a tower or keep the lane controllable so one side isn’t winning.  Kraken’s ult is a good anti-push skill.  Furthermore, his splash allows him to kill creep quickly if they do come to the tower.
• Ganker: Someone who is strong or semi-strong in the mid levels of the game.  These heroes often roam around the map identifying situations where they can kill off one or two enemies without a loss.  These can be carries, supports, semi-carries, tanks .. literally it just means that you are there to identify situations that can assist other heroes in gaining gold and causing enemy heroes to lose good (you lose gold when you die).  Gankers are often used or called upon when a lane is getting dominated or there is a chance to lose a lane.  Since losing a lane has the chance of losing the complete game, it is important to call for a gank.

Anyways, there may be more roles but really these are the big ones.  Instead of talking about anymore HON, I recommend you read through some of the strategy guides on this website to get a better idea of what is expected of you as a teammate or player.