Ultimate Huskar Guide – DotA 7.24

This guide will tell you all you want to know on how to be reported after stomping all your games. Huskar is one of the best solo queue heroes in Dota and I’m going to show the ways of the Huskar.

Lane: Mid – Huskar safelane is OK too, but never take him offlane.

Counters

Counters for each position, from most annoying to lesser counters.

Ursa, Troll Warlord, Juggernaut, Weaver.
Invoker, Viper, Windranger, Timbersaw, Lina, Necrophos, Razor, Shadow Fiend.
Timbersaw, Axe, Doom, Legion Commander, Night Stalker.
Ancient Apparition, Witch Doctor, Skywrath Mage, Windranger, Zeus, Shadow Shaman, Lina, Bane.
Same as 4.

Level One Skills

Inner Fire should be taken against heroes that can mess up your cs, or you can’t harass level one. Take this against Tinker, Pugna, Lina, Windranger, Sniper, Arc Warden, Zeus, Viper, and Death Prophet.
Burning Spears should be taken level one against melee heroes and ranged heroes you can harass. You shouldn’t take this level one if you missed your creep block, since you can’t trade favorably with most heroes level one. Take this against Pudge, Timbersaw, Bloodseeker, Brood, Shadow Fiend, Naga, Tiny, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Void Spirit, Templar Assassin, Riki, Alchemist, and sometimes Outworld Devourer.
Berserker’s Blood should not usually be taken at level one. The only time you should take this skill first is when you miss your creep block badly or will be harassed very hard. Skywrath Mage is a good example of when to take this skill.

Laning Stage

Go 1-2-2 at level five. This skill build allows you to jungle effectively and survive almost any lane.
Use creep aggro and Inner Fire to secure the ranged creep.
I would recommend rushing armlet after your two bracers. Boots should be bought before armlet in matchups where you need the speed, like Razor.
If you are having a hard time in the lane, tell one of your supports to go take it so you can jungle. Huskar is one of the fastest junglers in Dota so losing lane isn’t a big deal.

Item Build

Start with two gauntlets of strength, a circlet, an iron branch, and a set of tangoes. Build into two bracers.
Rush Armlet next if you don’t need a fast boots, which you usually don’t. Buy Power Treads next, then Heaven’s Halberd. Morbid Mask if you need survivability. After that, buy BKB and Satanic. Assault Cuirass or Aghs depending on the enemy team for your 6th item.
Two Bracers -> Armlet -> Power Treads -> Heaven’s Halberd -> BKB -> Satanic -> AC or Aghs.

Best Neutral Items for Huskar

Ironwood Tree, Poor Man’s Shield, Faded Broach.
Grove Bow, Vampire Fangs, Vambrace.
Paladin Sword, Titan Sliver, Craggy Coat.
Flicker, Minotaur Horn, Havoc Hammer.
All of them except Seer Stone.

Talents

Level 10 always take 15 damage.
Level 15 almost always take 10 Burning Spears Damage
Level 20 take 20 Strength, unless they have a backliner like Sniper or Zeus.
Level 25 always take Pure Burning Spears. They also pierce spell immunity now.

Rosh Times

Many people take Rosh right after Armlet (8-9 minutes). I don’t recommend this. I would instead farm until you have Heaven’s Halberd, then take rosh. With the Huskar changes in 7.23, Heaven’s Halberd is your new powerspike. An average Armlet Treads Halberd timing would be around 15-16 minutes. Take some fights after that. In a good game, you will get BKB at around 20 minutes. Sometimes you can push highground right then, but other times you have to wait until Satanic and next Rosh.

How to Play Huskar

When playing Huskar, start by screaming into the mic “I AM THE CARRY NOW!”. After that, be the carry. Actually though, when you are playing Huskar, you are like a black hole sucking in all the farm on that map for the first 15-20 minutes. You should NOT be constantly fighting on Huskar. The way you fight is you hit hard timings and push a tower. They will come.
You should NEVER have less than 60 last hits at 10 minutes on Huskar. The hero is a farming machine, so if you can’t farm lane, go jungle.
PLEASE don’t be ganking unless you get a haste rune. You are a slow slow hero and it’s a total waste of time to walk across the map just for a gank. Instead, farm your way through the jungle towards the lane you want to gank.

Matchups

This is going to be very long.

Sniper. Use your Q to CS. He will out harass you. Can kill at 6 easily. You lose late game.
Tinker. Use your Q to get CS. You can’t really harass him. Can’t kill before 6 without a support rotation or if he misplays. After 6 just Life Break him if he lasers you. Easy kill. You lose late game.
Lina. Use your Q to get CS. You can’t harass her. One of the few matchups you should go 1-1-3 at level 5. To kill her you need to dodge her stun with your ult and jump her. Wouldn’t recommend trying until you have armlet. Sometimes leave the lane after she hits 6. Drag out the game if you are losing. You win late game.
Outworld Devourer. Use your Q to get CS, unless you have a good block, then take Burning Spears. Very difficult to kill OD. Need a support rotation. Leave the lane after he hits 6. You win late game.
Alchemist. Harass with Burning Spears. He can’t do anything against you. You win late game.
Viper. Use your Q to get CS. Another possible 1-1-3 matchup. Easy kill at 6. Life Break him after he plops down Nethertoxin. You will kill him easily. If he goes on you use Life Break to jump out of Nethertoxin. You lose late game.
Razor. Use your Q to get CS. Rush boots in this matchup. Inner Fire doesn’t stop him from attacking you in Static Link. Leave lane if it is going badly. You win late game.
Pugna. Use your Q to get CS. Easy lane for you. Can kill at 6 if he messes up. Life Break dispels Decrepify and breaks Life Drain with the spell immunity. You win late game.
All the Spirits. Harass with Burning Spears. Hard to kill after 6. Easy lane for you. You win late game.
Brood. Harass with Burning Spears. If you let her build her army you are screwed. So you have to force her out level one or lose the lane. You win late game.
Meepo. Harass with Burning Spears. Take a point in Inner Fire before 3. It pushes him far enough away to be out of poof range. You lose late game.
Templar Assassin. Harass with Burning Spears. You can kill at 6 or before if she misplays. Very easy lane. You win late game.
Shadow Fiend. Harass with Burning Spears before he can build up Souls. This matchup gets very difficult if he gets souls. You can dodge razes and his ult with Life Break. Difficult to kill at 6. You win late game.
Monkey King. Harass with Burning Spears. Rush boots in this matchup. Use Inner Fire when he gets to 3 Jingu stacks. If he stuns, turn on him. If not run for your life. You win late game as long as you stay out of his ult.
Kunkka. Harass with Burning Spears. You can use Inner Fire to prevent him from using Tidebringer. Easy matchup. You can dodge X, Torrent, and Boat with Life Break. You win late game.
Clinkz. Take Inner Fire if you have a bad block, Burning Spears if you have a good block. Pretty easy matchup. You can kill at 6 if you reach it before him. You win late game.
Death Prophet. Use your Q to get CS. Mildly difficult lane. You can kill at 6. You win late game.
Puck. Take Inner Fire if bad block, Burning Spears if good block. Puck doesn’t have enough damage to kill you but it is very hard to kill Puck. Life Break goes through Dream Coil. You win late game.
Timbersaw. Harass with Burning Spears. Rush boots. Use Inner Fire to push him away if he gets close. Whirling Death wrecks you, so don’t let him do it. You lose late game.
Bloodseeker. Harass with Burning Spears. Can’t jungle against him, so you have to stay in lane and ruin him. Easy kill at 6. You win late game.
Lone Druid. Take Burning Spears or Inner Fire. You can’t really kill the bear so just focus on CS. You lose late game.
Invoker. Quas Exort is one of your most difficult matchups. Take Inner Fire to not get cold snapped and get CS. Easy kill at 6. Use Life Break to dodge Meteor, dispel cold snap and deafening blast. Quas Wex is an easy lane for you. Not enough damage to kill you. You win late game.
Necrophos. Harass with Burning Spears. Very easy until level 6. Then just leave the lane and jungle. Later on, don’t show in fights till he uses his ult. You lose late game.
Skywrath Mage. Take Berserker’s Blood level 1. 1-1-3 at level 5. Hard to kill him. Easy to CS though. You win late game.
QoP. Kinda difficult. Take Berserker’s Blood first. Can only kill her if she misplays. You win late game.
Windranger. Use your Q to secure CS. Hard to harass her. 1-2-2 at level 5. You can kill her at 6 if she didn’t max Windrun. Use Inner Fire to disarm her if she goes on you. Heaven’s Halberd helps a lot. You lose late game.

All right I think that’s everyone. If I forget one or you want to know more ask me in the comments.

Power Spikes

Huskar’s power spikes are kind of funky. He spikes at 9 minutes (Armlet), 15 minutes (Halberd), 20-22 minutes (BKB), and 26-28 minutes (Satanic). His hardest spike is Halberd. Huskar actually scales very well. So if you are losing, drag out the game and chances are you will win. Burning Spears pierces spell immunity and is pure damage at level 25, and Life Break also pierces spell immunity. When BKBs are short durations, Huskar destroys. The other day I 1v4ed an OD with rapier, 6 slotted Faceless Void, Lion, and Undying, and killed them all.

Random Tips

Inner Fire ignores terrain. So you can cliff people.
You are spell immune during Life Break. So it breaks undispellable stuff like Pugna’s Life Drain.
You can also dodge abilities, like Magic Missile (venge) and Wraithfire Blast (wraith king).
Use Inner Fire to push SF away from you when he is ulting, or to push MK out of Wukong’s command.
Wait until Necro/AA uses their ults before you show in a fight.
Don’t stand in nethertoxin.
USE YOUR HALBERD. So many people forget to use this item.
You can dispel Spirit Vessel, but not Heaven’s Halberd, with Life Break.

Best Teammates

In order by positions, after that no particular order.

Ursa, Bloodseeker, Drow, Troll, Juggernaut, Monkey King, Slark, and Phantom Lancer.
This is You.
Tidehunter, Ogre Magi, Centaur (retaliate aura on Huskar lol), Axe, Dark Seer, Underlord, Tusk, Omniknight, Phoenix, and Slardar.
Tiny, Earthshaker, Nyx, Dazzle, Oracle, Shadow Shaman, Phoenix, Treant, OmniknightOgre Magi, Shadow Demon, Lion, Chen, and Io.
Same as 4, but without Tiny, Earthshaker, and Nyx.

The End

Yeah I think that is pretty much it, if you have any more questions leave a comment.

How has DotA changed since OG’s dominant win in TI9?

Usually, when TI is won so dominantly, teams usually follow in some way to mimic that winner’s play-style. The most prominent example I could think of was when Wings won the TI, where people started to make more interesting line ups and changed how they played the game. With OG, and I don’t know if I am just not seeing it, I don’t really see much difference in teams playing.

It’s really hard to play OG’s playstyle especially if one belongs to a much lower bracket. What gives them (OG) the freedom to play that way is their skill and game knowledge. After the recent TI9, there was an uptick of Io usage. However, without the OG level skill and game knowledge, Io carry line-ups can only take you so far even with a coordinated team.

Their influence has to do more with team dynamics. A lot of pro teams can play “run at you” type of line-ups but to have the same confidence as them is very hard to replicate (like Liquid tried to do game 3 iirc). They trust each other so much that they always pull through even with non-traditional lineups.

Personally though, OG’s play-style has taught me that no matter what line-up you are playing, the most important thing is that you still have fun with the game no matter what the outcome. Winning is just a bonus.

OG’s influence perhaps has been more on team dynamics than play style. It’s no secret why Secret and other teams have been taking time off at the beginning of each season since TI8. Perhaps we’ll start seeing more team psychologists as well. OG sports psychologist said she didn’t have much work to do with the team since they were already on a good stat of mind already.

For everyone saying OG changed the team meta as opposed to the game meta, you’re right, but OG has also massively changed the game meta too. OG relies on fighting early and often. It’s not uncommon for OG to leave lanes and instantly start going for 4 man maneuvers around the map to make space for Ana, but it’s also not uncommon for Ana to join in these early fights. The days of ratting and farming in DotA are over. When was the last time you saw an am pick who didn’t participate in a fight until minute 25? It doesn’t happen anymore. Teams know that if you aren’t ready for OG to come at you at 15 minutes, you’re going to get rolled over and picked off constantly by their mobile and aggressive play style.

What OG has been doing to win the TIs they have been doing for years, it’s not some breakthrough thing.

Notail’s obssesion for years has been about :

Buffs
Sustain

You will see this in all their Major wins/TI wins.

Lots of Chen, lots of Wisp, Ench, BM, auras, buffs and heals. They literally won a major by picking 2 of WW/Undying/Wisp/Dazzle almost every game.

They are not a “sophisticated” team that revolutionizes the game.

What OG i think did do is prove that resource prioritization is a thing, what do i mean by that ? 5k gold by min 10 might be better on your offlaner than your carry, so you prioritize the offlaner’s lane.

Another aspect is their superior understanding of Roshan, knowing when to contest/when not to. I think Secret copied their approach to it a lot last season.

Start with picking a generic support/buff hero such as Vengeful Spirit, Dazzle, Winter Wyvern. Over a set of games swap your item build from a ‘standard’ boots-force-glimmer to basilius-headdress-buckler in different combinations and build orders. This will give you the basic appreciation of aura/buff impact as you will typically get them very early before big flashy plays matter.

Once you get the hang of it you will find that you more naturally notice the correct auras and team items for a given line-up.

Are RNG Neutral Items Bad for DOTA?

Regardless of what anyone thinks of neutral items, what I have been missing in the discussion about them is that the discussion never goes beyond “RNG bad”. For instance rarely does anybody even state the question how much RNG are neutral items actually?

That is imo a much more interesting topic. What type of RNG is acceptable and what type of RNG isn’t? How can the effects of RNG be mitigated through gameplay or by designing the neutral item drop system? But most of those question don’t even pop up because the discussion does not progress that far. So I’ll do it here:)

In order to answer these more interesting questions I will go through:

The RNG Factor, RNG basics
Playing around RNG
The RNG factors of neutral items
How the neutral item system is designed with regards to these RNG factors/how it has been changed to accomodate for them
Conclusion: on the RNG element, what do neutral items add to the game?, were neutral items worth being implemented?

1. The RNG Factor, RNG basics

Essentially the RNG Factor is the proc chance with regards to the strength of the proc, in particular over a limited amount of throws with the dice.

Every attack, or in Multicasts’ case spellcast, is a throw with the dice with a chance to trigger the respective event, with enough throws the results will average out, naturally. If we are only talking 3 attacks though the probability to have reached the average are low. A low number of throws with the dice increases the variance/RNG factor.

An ability with a low proc rate and a high power level, like PA’s Coup de Grace, has a much higher RNG factor than Juggernaut’s crit which has a much higher proc rate and a much lower power level on top of that.

Generally speaking the abilities with a high RNG factor are much more likely to be perceived as bullshit due to the much higher variance in outcomes, especially if the number of dice-throws is limited. If a Juggernaut walks up to you and crits you 2 times in 3 attacks then the difference in outcome is not compareable to PA throwing a dagger, it critting, and then getting another crit on either her first or second attack from phantom strike, which also happens to proc almost simultaneously with the dagger crit proc.

PA’s item choices and mobility causes the feeling of RNG to be amplified further since the time Juggernaut spends walking up to you with his manta and butterfly, PA spends daggering and phantom striking you already with a deso and a basher, further fueling her crit.

As a result even assuming if both abilities had the same average damage amplification, which clearly they do not, PA’s crit would be considered much more lame because of its significantly higher variance which is supported by her gameplay, consequently the RNG factor on Coup de Grace is increasing the power of this ability which probably restricts the devs in how powerful PA and her crit can be before it starts causing problems on a pub game level, which is probably why it is this ability that is frequently tinkered around with, even on smaller scales, whenever PA is being changed, in particular when too strong.

An example of how Icefrog has handled things like that in the past is Ogre’s multicast from 6.82, in it Iceforg increased the proc rate of multicast significantly for a 2x proc, resulting in more multicasting, but at the same time the base strength of fire blast was reduced meaningfully, as a result the RNG Factor and variance went down. Multicast moved a bit away from being a Coup de Grace type ability towards being a bit more of a juggernaut crit ability, more of an average amplification rather than a super high proc event, without sacrificing the multicast-feel, possibly even adding to it. Good change imo.

Note: That ogre approach would not work for Coup de Grace, since PA is actually designed around having that murder crit/this mega amplification upon proc with short bursts of attacks and retreating. She would feel wrong if what was done to Ogre were done to her. If Icefrog ever were to tackle the RNG factor on this ability I could imagine it being done by adding counter, procs on every Xth attack, since PA is very well suited/designed to do that (and it fits thematically for a Coup de Grace), while Juggernaut is not designed to have a crit working like that.

2. Playing around RNG

The example Sumail brought up which I will expand upon was the rune spawn RNG of the game. Several people however brought up that these too are an example of RNG they dislike, even if to a lesser degree.

I will argue that regardless of the opinions on runes, they are a type of RNG that is meaningfully interacted with for a very simple reason: you can control it to a large degree. The term rune-control developed specifically for that reason.

You can can neither know where on the 2 spots the rune will spawn, nor can you know which rune will spawn, nor does the game consider that a regen rune for a mid core Skywrath is more likely going to be far more powerful than it is for the enemy meepo mid laner (random example, feel free to dislike it^), in other words the effect of a rune can vary drastically depending on heroes and game situation.

However what you CAN control is vision over those areas, vision over the enemy midlaner, you can control lane equilibrium, you can control your own actions with regards to the enemy hero and potentially cut him off and you can know when the rune will spawn and plan around that accordingly. You can have the map awareness to keep track of the enemy supports and whether or not they are missing. And you can communicate with your own team and you can decide on what priority you give the rune depending on whether or not someone has a bottle or not or what your sustain situation is like.

Assuming you properly control the runes you can even wait and see which rune spawns and then base your next actions according to the rune spawn. Is it a haste rune to gank a sidelane or invade the jungle? Is it a DD/Illusion to dominate mid? Is it a regen which makes you quickly spam your abilities and potentially harass the enemy hero at his own tower?

Long story short: The RNG factor of rune spawns can be be greatly mitigated/controlled by either team. In fact, it forces you to do so.

Despite that though rune spawns are still an element that is up to discussion and evaluation, I personally preferred bounties as alternatives to the other rune spawn for those draw scenarios in even lanes where one will get the rune and the other won’t purely based on luck due to how even the lane is, which was especially fair once bottles were involved or when those bounties enabled the purchase of a bottle.

However runes currently are not an immediate concern and not game ruining, and clearly it adds meaningful levels of depth to mid-laning based on the factors which I listed that are within your control. Mid-laning would be much emptier, brain-dead and easier without runes, hence nobody ever seriously suggests actually removing runes rather than compensating for the RNG element in their problem solving suggestions.

The take-away here is, RNG that can be interacted with, that can be played around with, can not only be a non critical issue, it can add meaningful depth, which DotA prides itself on.

(felt like I had to generally defend RNG a bit here considering the last couple of weeks on reddit)

3. The RNG elements of neutral items, evaluating the RNG factor

Trying to keep this shorter, the RNG element:

a) whether or not a neutral item drops is somewhat random

b) you can not influence which neutral item drops

c) similar to runes the game does not consider what heroes are being picked, thus neutral item X can be significantly more powerful on hero Y (like Essence Ring was on Io or Clumsy Net was/is? on Skywrath)

d) a neutral item can be disproportionally more powerful in a losing or winning game (like repair kit)

e) a neutral item in the same tier can simply be worse than a other one

f) a neutral item can have almost blink-like reveal consequences

Going through the RNG factor of each:

a) pseudo random and farming alone makes neutral items actually dropping based on RNG a complete non-issue, could argue for T5 if you are turtling in your base this is a factor, since you don’t have access to the jungle, but regardless of whether or not that is a good or bad thing, it is not at all RNG related.

b)c)d) these are clearly RNG elements with a high RNG factor, beyond moving the items around in your team you can not influence this, those are legitimate RNG concerns by design.

e) this is a balance issue not unlike basic hero balance, not a design or RNG issue, we can ignore it

f) this is another design issue

4. How the neutral item system is designed with regards to these RNG factors/how it has been changed to accomodate for them

If we want to answer the question of how much RNG are neutral items actually?, we now have to compare the RNG issues with the design of neutral item drops and the changes so far.

b) you can not influence which neutral items drop

In order to compensate for this the entire neutral item drop system needs to be set up for it to not particularly matter which neutral item drops. Probably the biggest restriction on the design and it will force neutral items to be mostly relatively basic and generic stat sticks. Or it will force nerfs on those outlier/unique neutral item drops.

There have been several changes that have compensated for this RNG element since 7.23.:

The increase from 3 to 4 items reduces the RNG factor in the same way increasing the proc chance of an ability or item would, like it was done to ogre multicast in 6.82, it reduces variance.
The restriction to only being able to carry 1 neutral item further reduces the RNG factor of this element, no longer all item drops are potentially being used, they now compete amongst each other on per hero basis thus reducing the impact of favourable/unfavourable drops, if the increase from 3 to 4 neutral item drops per tier is analogue to an increase in the proc chance of a passive critical strike, then this is analogue to reducing the power of the proc, a doublewhammy identical to the Ogre fireblast and multicast change in 6.82
while this seems a bit like a cheap point, again balance amongst the items and with regards to RNG element c) will reduce the RNG factor because it will no longer matter what item drops (or barely)

c) disproportionally powerful items on hero X

This is a design issue on a per item basis, for instance Vampire fangs spell lifesteal is pretty average on most heroes, but then there is a Bristleback or an OD. Similar to Essence Ring, which was changed to no longer heal because of Io or heal amplification heroes, these features need to be either removed or nerfed. Which of course happened to vampire fangs in 7.24, reducing the spell lifesteal from 8% to 6%. This is interesting in so far that Icefrog likes to do the opposite with heroes, he pronounces their uniqueness strengths very frequently, these neutral items need to work exactly the other way round, not entirely but mostly generic (like League of Legends, lul, and no, I am not fucking saying DotA = LoL now, not at all, I am saying that’s what League by design needs to do with their entire game).

In extreme case scenarios restriction or changes like for essence ring need to occur or have occurred,in worst case scenarios these items need to be removed, like Book of Aghanim was gutted instantly.

As a result, as mentioned, this forces most of the neutral item drops to become rather basic stat sticks. Total elimination of unique features like the vampire fangs spell lifesteal will not be necessary, but several neutral items, like Ballista in 7.24, will have that unique feature nerfed while gaining another side feature. Grove bow for instance gained a universal feature on top of its rather unique core feature for similar reasons I presume.

A minor element of RNG will always remain with regards to item X on hero Y, but we have plenty of evidence by now that not only will this be mitigated quickly, since this is a design and not a balance issue and those need to be hit quickly, the RNG factor of this element has already reduced drastically.

Imo this is a very solveable issue.

d) neutral item being stronger when winning or losing

Those are extremely limited, repair kit is basically the only one, could argue the leveller is an offender here too, but similar to grove bow or ballista again, the leveller has such a solid base secondary stat that it is generic/basic enough except maybe when it happens to drop for Tiny or Spirit Bear, which seems awkward. This could require demolish abilities like spirit bear/Tree Grab/Leveller to not stack with each other for instance.

Similar to c) this seems entirely solveable, actually much less of an issue. I’d argue repair kit is much closer to being removed than it is to being acceptable, but that’s really the only item that is relevant here. And even repair kit is not even compareable to its splitshot iteration from the last patch.

f) a neutral item can have almost blink-like reveal consequences

The poster boy for this right now I’d say is mindbreaker. Book of aghanim is a perfect example of this too. There are barely any of these left, most can be reacted to during combat. Mindbreaker clearly is an issue here atm. These type of items basically should not exist imo. Iron Talon is an invisible but annoying offender to this rule aswell, cause the jungle AM which you beat up on lane might suddenly show up wiht battlefury and manta at minute 22 despite getting his ass kicked hard on lane and you are just like “wtf?”.

Almost all changes since introduction of the neutral item drop system follow the pattern of either removing/nerfing a trademark feature, removing an item that offends against RNG in any way too much, and go for balance beyond that.

It is imo being made VERY clear with those changes that RNG is not meant to be, and not going to be, relevant with regards to neutral item drops.

5. Conclusion:

on the RNG element
what do neutral items add to the game?
were neutral items worth being implemented?

Whatever the RNG element of neutral drops originally was, by now it is a fraction of what it used to be, that much is certain. That however might not mean much though, because even while it got reduced massively maybe the RNG factor is still so high that it is game-deciding/ruining, right?

At this point I’d say though that within the next patches RNG will basically not be a particularly meaningful factor anymore, if it isn’t already. Not any more meaningful than that of regular proc based items and abilities, except for tier 5 maybe. The reasons for me stating this are:

the improving balance among the tiers negating 1 of the RNG elements
the removal of offenders like Book of Aghanim or recently Fusion Rune (like repair kit eventually?), reducing another massive source of RNG
the nerfs of disproportionally powerful features like spell lifesteal on vampire fangs for instance making the extreme outlier items less of a problem, including something like clumsy net on skywrath since 7.24
the reduction of the RNG factor by increasing the drop rate from 3 to 4 on top of the recent 1 item only restriction really damn near negated any other RNG factor beyond those I just listed that have been improved upon

I’d expect tier 5 to take longer than that purely because of the low sample size to get these into a better place. However based on 7.24 it might not take long either.

I’d be curious and interested if someone could actually argue how they still think neutral item drops are deciding games based on RNG. Because even though the drops essentially are random, it really damn near does not matter anymore by design. Even if currently the RNG factor of a specific drop combination is still an issue, there is so much evidence by now that this will most likely be removed/changed sooner than later, that I do not consider RNG an issue in the discussion about neutral items anymore, or at least not for much longer, it’s merely a shortterm issue.

What neutral items add to the game on the other hand, that is a different topic, since something not being a problem does not mean it existing is a good thing for the game either. Especially considering that in order for them to exist, they must necessarily be relatively generic, as I have laid out.

Currently I’d argue that it is questionable if adding them was worth the effort, if it was worth adding them considering the initial damage, polarization and uproar they caused. I think an answer to this question would strongly depend on the results of the discussion on what neutral items actually add to the game, if we were to agree on a variety of upsides down the road, then they might have been worth the trouble, however this is something we will probably be able to reflect upon only further down the road.

And as a final word, at this point I personally think neutral items are a surprisingly small element when compared to what they were on 7.23 release, basic economy, tempo of the game and regular item balance, business as usual imo, are bigger deals than the neutral items at this point. Regardless of whether you love or hate them, the importance of them is just not on a tier high enough anymore to strongly influence my opinion on the game/meta and even if they still are and always will be, their existence is not something I’d judge based on RNG at all anymore.

But that’s just me, feel free to disagree:)

Aftermath of Tesla Earnings Call

After hours share price hit $659

Highlights:

Cash
- $930M increase in our cash and cash equivalents in Q4 to $6.3B
- $1.0B operating cash flow less capex (“free cash flow”) in Q4
Profitability
- Profitability $359M GAAP operating income; 4.9% operating margin in Q4
- $105M GAAP net income; $386M non-GAAP net income (ex-SBC) in Q4
- Volume growth and successful cost reduction efforts were offset by normalization of ASP, mix shift towards Model 3 and a higher lease mix.
Model Y production ramp started in January 2020, ahead of schedule
Model Y took 10 months from prototype to production start
Increased Model Y all-wheel drive EPA range to 315 miles from 280 miles (This extends Model Y’s lead as the most energy efficient electric SUV in the world.)
We will start delivering Model Y vehicles by the end of Q1 2020. (website says March 2020)
Record vehicle deliveries of 112,095 in Q4
Record Q4 storage deployment of 530 MWh; 26% solar growth QoQ
For most of 2019, nearly all orders came from new buyers that did not hold a prior reservation, demonstrating significant reach beyond those who showed early interest
We were able to start Model 3 production in Gigafactory Shanghai in less than 10 months from breaking ground and have already begun the production ramp for Model Y in Fremont.
In Q4, the annualized total vehicle production rate in Fremont was just over 415,000 units, about the same rate as the factory under NUMMI reached in its peak year of 2006. We achieved this production rate in spite of Model S/X running on a single shift and before the start of Model Y production.
Our finished vehicle inventory levels reached just 11 days of sales(1) at the end of Q4, the lowest level in the past 4 years.
Our Mobile Service fleet almost doubled in 2019 to 743 vehicles, and we continue to open new service locations globally. As customers are increasingly buying their Tesla vehicles online, vehicle deliveries grew 50% while our retail footprint remained unchanged with a stable total store count across 2019.
We are planning to produce limited volumes of Tesla Semi this year.

Fremont

The production ramp of Model Y started in January 2020. Together with Model 3, our combined installed production capacity for these vehicles is now 400,000 units per year.
The ramp of Model Y will be gradual as we will be adding additional machinery in various production shops. After such expansions are done by mid-2020, installed combined Model 3 and Model Y capacity should reach 500,000 units per year.

Shanghai

We have been gradually ramping local production of battery packs since late Q4 2019. The rest of the Model 3 manufacturing processes are running as expected. Due to strong initial customer response in China, our goal is to increase Model 3 capacity even further using existing facilities.
We have already broken ground on the next phase of Gigafactory Shanghai. Given the popularity of the SUV vehicle segment, we are planning for Model Y capacity to be at least equivalent to Model 3 capacity.
Model Y production in Shanghai will begin in 2021.

Berlin-Brandenburg

The first deliveries from this factory are expected in 2021.
Annual Capacity at each Factory
Model 3 deliveries by region

Autopilot

Understanding the environment around a Tesla is key to enabling our cars to react to traffic lights and stop signs and take intersections through city streets. We are currently validating this functionality before releasing to customers, and we look forward to its gradual deployment.
Software will continue to play a growing role in our business model.

Energy

Energy storage deployment reached an all-time high of 530 MWh in Q4, which included the first deployments of Megapack
In 2019, we deployed 1.65 GWh of energy storage, more than we deployed in all prior years combined.
In Q4, we deployed 54 MW of solar, 26% more than in the prior quarter.
Solarglass: After organizing several roofing company training days at our training homes in Fremont, we already demonstrated dramatically shorter installation times versus previous versions of this product. Solarglass tiles are made in our Gigafactory New York, and we are hiring hundreds of employees at this facility
Energy Storage Deployed

Volume

For full year 2020, vehicle deliveries should comfortably exceed 500,000 units. Both solar and storage deployments should grow at least 50% in 2020.

Cash Flow / Profitability

We expect positive quarterly free cash flow & positive GAAP net income going forward, with possible temporary exceptions, particularly around the launch and ramp of new products
Factory Layout in Fremont / Shanghai

Call Notes 3:30pm PST

Elon: Hard to think of a similar product that generates such insane demand with $0 advertising dollars spent. Speaks to the nature of the product… and that the product is compelling in itself. Expect to exceed the NUMMI rate of production this year. Congrats to the Shanghai Factory. Really excited and optimistic about the potential. Incredible asset. We also broke ground on the Model Y Factory in Shanghai. Cybertruck: Tried to create a truck that is superior in every way without paying attention to pre-assumptions. Sci-Fi movie set from the future. Demand is incredible. Never seen such demand ever. Gonna be pretty nuts. I think the product is better than people realize even. They don’t even have enough information to understand the awesomeness of it. Thanks Tesla team for their ongoing work. Model Y, Giga Berlin, Tesla Semi, Solar glass roof, cybertruck, battery technologies, full self driving, next gen roadster, and a bunch of other projects will come up as well. Hard to think of another company that is this exciting! Hard to think where we will be in 10 years. We’ll product 1000 times more cars in 2020 than we produced in 2010.
Zack: Past year was transformational. Increase in ASP of S/X. Learned from the launch of Model 3. Basically summarizes the letter. Forecasting higher gross margins on Model Y than Model 3. Q1 is always impacted by seasonality. Coronavirus may impact the ramp of the Model Y a couple weeks due to the factory shutdown. Monitoring the suppliers as well. We have more than sufficient cash.

Q&A:

Retail Questions:

Since solar is required… do you have any solar glass roofs for any CA home builders? 2020 target?

Exponential growth in demand and output for solar glass roof. Difficult to predict except that demand is really strong. Working through new home builders, roof industry, and everyone. See a lot of interest. Question of refining the installation process. Getting lots of crews trained. Significant percentage of new roofs will be using solar glass. Do you want a roof alive with power or dead without? Plus it looks good and lasts a long time. Significant and revolutionary product. A lot of challenges to overcome.. and we will overcome them. Buffalo factory doing great.

Will you release the Tesla Ride Hailing network/app before full autonomy and change the terms of Tesla Insurance to allow owners to be drivers on the network? If so, when will this happen? Might want to target California airports first. Also good place to add Superchargers.

Will make sense to enable car sharing in advance of the robotaxi fleet because the car sharing can be done before the FSD is approved by regulators. It is our intent to put their cars on the FSD network using Tesla Insurance.

How many CA owners are currently insured with Tesla Insurance? What’s the target for Tesla Insurance in 2020? When will you start to significantly leverage the data you have from Tesla fleet to lower your cost of coverage? Will we get premium discount for % of miles drive on AP?

Expand Tesla Insurance to other locations. Preparing to meet the regulatory issues. Working on the algorithm’s to adjust our rates since insurance is heavily regulated. Will be rolled in over time. Yes there’ll be a discount for using Autopilot. The CA price already considers the safety features. We have a fundamental information advantage that insurance companies don’t have.

You set expectations that you would be feature complete on FSD by the end of 2019. Can you please provide an update on when we may see this with end users? Where are you in retrofitting the FSD computer to older models?

I said I was ‘hoping’ to be FSD complete. We got close. Looks like we’ll get there in a few months. Feature Complete just means it has ‘some chance’ of going from home to work. It doesn’t mean it’s working well though. Looks like it’ll be a couple months from now. The foundational elements of Autonomy is really what’s been advancing. AI team is really strong in making great progress. We’re only beginning to really take advantage of the full FSD hardware. Next is moving to ‘Video Training’. 3x magnitude of efficiency.

Since most retail investors seem to understand Tesla better than analysts and are risking a larger part of their own personal wealth on TSLA, doesn’t it make sense to take mostly questions on these earnings calls from us via Say? Do you even have to answer questions from analysts

I guess we don’t have to. I guess a lot of the retail investors have more insights than many institutional investors and analysts. If people really looked @ the smart retail investors.. then maybe you’d get the highest accuracy and predictions from those people.

Institutional Questions:

You have spoken previously about Shanghai Giga being 65% lower capex per unit of capacity. Have you learnt to do anything better or differently from an opex perspective and if yes what kind of impact might we expect on the long-term gross margin?

Labor cost, material cost due to localization, localizing supply chain, outbound logistics, etc.. all help with costs. Less Import related costs. Really helps to make a car on the continent where the customer is.

Given the recent run in the share price, why not raise capital now and substantially accelerate the growth in production (i.e. Gigafactories), investments in supercharger and customer service?

We’re actually spending money as quickly as we are spending it sensibly. There’s no ‘artificial holdback’ on expenditures. We’re spending money efficiently… and not artificially limiting our progress… and yet we’re still generating positive cash. In light of that it doesn’t make sense to raise money. We’ve learned during the Model 3 launch period that we grew too quickly with too much complexity. More products / factories next year.

Can we please talk about cost control and opex sustainability in terms of growth vs gross profit growth? How did we achieve the recent opex trends and how should we think about opex needs as we grow both vehicles and geo workloads?

We did see an increase in operating expenses. I think we as a company are at a point where we’ve learned a lot. OPEX will start to tick up to support our intl’ footprint and the growth as a company. Our job is to grow that

the sales of Model S and X have stayed flat for several quarters, the main reason is that they still use 18650 battery, when will Model S and X use 2170 battery? manufacturing capacity of 18650 may be used for battery storage systems instead.

The core chemistry inside the 18650 has improved over the years. It’s more a form factor if anything that’s different. We’re happy with the cell and energy improvements we’ve made. We’re rapidly approaching a 400 mile range in the Model S… sooo it won’t be long before that. Lines are running smoothly… I don’t see a reason to turn that cell supply off. The Model S/X actually have more range than what we’re stating on the website. We just haven’t gotten around to updating it to the EPA. Existing cars that are being made. Somewhere in the 380s or something like that.

Phone:

Adam Jonas / Morgan Stanley: Elon, do you see potential for tesla vehicles that end up being fitted with starlink terminals?

Something that could happen in the coming years. Not this year though. High bandwidth / low latency connectivity for homes/businesses/aircraft/boats/etc. About the size of a medium pizza.. but will probably be more bandwidth than you need. It’ll work. I think most cars will just use 5G in any cities. If you’re out in the country.. then possibly a starlink antenna could work well. 20/30mbps are probably fine. That’s something obtuse though. not thinking about it very much to be honest.

Dan Gals, Wolf Research: Guidance on what CAPEX is going to be this year? Is there a rule of thumb we can use for CAPEX per unit of production capacity? Some rule of thumb?

I don’t know if we want to say what our capex will be this year. We’re spending money as fast as we can spend in sensible ways… the challenge is spending it efficiently. Core tech is improving rapidly. Internal Applications team e.g. improved our productivity.. etc. Tesla grow at 50%.

Gene Munster , loop ventures: Cybertruck.. how many do you think you can make? Cost for production? We don’t comment on those #’s except the demand is far more than what we can make in 3 or 4 years. The thing we’ll focus on is increasing the battery production capacity… because that’s fundamental. That’s why partly we haven’t accelerated the production of the Tesla Semi.. because that uses a lot of battery cells. We need to make sure we get a steep ramp in battery production.. and improve the cost per kwh. Fundamental and extremely difficult.

Battery day after the end of this quarter. Tentatively in April. How do you get from here to a couple hindered thousand gwh.

High density passenger vehicle? We have to improve the total battery capacity otherwise we add complexity but do not add more vehicles on the road. People prefer to drive in their cars mostly by themselves. Average occupants in their car is 1.2. With Autonomy maybe 1.4? We have to scale battery production to CRAZY LEVELS.

Jon Sager, Evercore SI: Model 3 vs Model Y… beyond the 10% rule of thumb.. any other differentiating features? We’re not quite sure what will happen. We’re not worried about demand. Worried about production. Hard to predict the exponential part of the S-curve. We won’t talk about it on this call. They’ll be impressed when they do a teardown. We’re working on having the 3&Y produced in China/US/Berlin locally.
Colin Rush, oppenheimer: Pricing strategy in light of China? Target for gross profit on a per vehicle basis? We’re trying to make them as affordable as possible, as fast as possible, while staying profitable, growing the company like crazy, etc. Order rate supports our pricing right now. A lot of interest in our products. Price reduction in China is the first step to this globalization of our product. High Volume + High Margin obviously… high margin comes from Autonomy… For example, it’s not as good in China as it is in the US.. but as we fix that, more people will buy it. It will get more and more compelling. Higher voltage on the power train? Power train tech? cost reduction? Power train is pretty damn good. Way better than anything else out there. Model S has a 100kwh pack, Taycan has a 95kwh pack. Taycan has 200miles range,.. model S 400 miles. Coming out later this year. Plaid powertrain coming out later this year. It’s like alien technology. It’s insane. Congrats to the eng team. Hardcore engineering.
Emmanuel, deuschbank: We’ll adjust prices according to demand. Yeah. It’s fair to assume the mix will be stable in regards to asp when you average them. Affordability in China improved dramatically.
Dan Lady, Credit suise: Capital Raise… why wouldn’t it make sense to raise capital to pay down debt or pursue acquisitions? If you know of any acquisitions we’d love to hear about them. Who should we acquire? We’re not aware of anyone that we would want to acquire. We’re not constrained. We’ll pay down the debt as time goes by. We’ll keep steadily paying it down.
Pier, newstreet research: Panasonic relationship is excellent. LG/CATL at a smaller scale. We’ll talk more about this in detail on battery day. probably april. We have a compelling strategy. We are super deep. The rabbit hole goes down pretty far. Wow. We really know a lot about batteries. It’s next level. Ramp of shanghai? Team in china did a great job managing cost. Slight drag. But nothing significant.
Joeseph osho, jmp securities: maxwell tech plans? We’ll talk about this on battery day. very compelling story that we’ll present. It’ll BLOW YOUR MIND. IT BLOWS MY MIND. Retail investors have the most insight.

What to Expect from Tesla Earnings Call?

Tesla’s earnings call is due to happen on Wednesday the 29th of January. Here’s what to expect.

The 5 key focus points:

Revenue
Free Cash Flow changes (profitable or not?)
Production numbers confirmation (but we know them and they don’t really matter much)
Any big debt refund that could lower liabilities
Solar and PowerWall numbers

Stock price likely will be driven higher based upon some “non-technical” variables that analysts hate, and often ignore.

Expecting strong solar system installation numbers. Mainly contributed to from Powerwall and solar roof installations in many homes at the end of Q4 progressing exceedingly well. The positive social effect on these through word of mouth will lead Tesla into really great demand for further installations.
Delivery numbers have already been confirmed and released by Tesla – so not much to be seen by way of this.
Tesla’s strong cash position is likely, once again, to surprise unknowing analysts and investors.
Be on the watch for “feature complete” FSD to free up cash deposits, bottom line boost.
When EM was selling cars at Fremont at year end with his mom at the end of Q4 he seemed in “good spirits”
SolarEdge inverter stock is moving upward dramatically.
Lots of shorting still happening. Roughly around 20%. Shorts are still 24 million shares according to NASDAQ.
Big players will/or are getting in for ESG reasons as well as sustainable and ongoing PROFITABLY reasons, and all associated ramifications of that.
The dropping of the 30% tax credit for solar installations, now at 26%….. will increase demand for installations in 2020!
Chinese labor.
Major improvements and refinements in “hidden parts” i.e. pre-made wire bundles installed mostly by robots.
Mega/Giga RENEWABLE energy farms that need battery backup… NextEra Energy anyone?

The move away from dead animal fuels is currently strongly underway. Blackrock inc. and their $7 billion commitment, and many other investment management companies are going “all in” as well. ESG investment is real … Tesla is easily leading the charge.

In the earnings call we’re also potentially likely to hear more about Tesla’s plans for battery tech. Although Elon said on a recent podcast that battery investor day is a couple months away. He said there is more than one technology that Maxwell has that he thinks is a big deal, and that their ultracapacitors tech is not one of them. I think Tesla’s biggest remaining issue is raw materials supply. Hopefully they have secured mining agreements.

However – consider for a minute:

– Tesla purchased Maxwell for their new battery tech.
– Tesla purchased Hibar for the battery production capabilities.

Now, how long do you suppose it would take for Hibar to re-work their facilities to use Maxwell’s new tech? Well, it depends upon about a thousand different things. But it’s been (as much as) 7 months since Tesla bought them. And seven months ago Hibar already had plants in multiple countries. Could a few of them been modified by now? I’ve heard that in 12 months, you can build an entire car factory starting with nothing but a muddy field, so it certainly seems possible.

And how big a deal would some type of battery breakthrough be? The battery is the most expensive component in the car. This could reduce their costs by thousands of dollars per car.

Or what if they increased the energy density? What does that do to range? Weight? Or costs?

Or faster recharge time? More abundant/less controversial/less flammable materials?

But more importantly, improvements in battery tech don’t just affect cars. Imagine what cheaper/better tech could do to putting solar/wind on the grid.

Yeah, I REALLY want to hear about batteries.

Now, *will* we hear about batteries?

There’s a real potential for Osbourne problems if they announce too soon. So if we do hear something, it’s because they’re ready to roll it out big time. Hearing about batteries this week would be really good news.

I kind of think the answer to the question of when will Tesla have new battery technology in production is directly tied to Tesla’s stated expected rollout dates for Semi, then Roadster, then Cybertruck.

Semi rollout of limited numbers later this year implies they are producing new more efficient battery cells, but only in limited quantities later this year.
As semi ramps and the Roadster as well, this implies they are able to ramp production of the new cells to support expanding vehicle production of roadster and Semi.
The production start up for the Cybertruck, is quite possibly tied to Tesla’s ability to mass produce the new cells with high efficiency, and therefore low cost of production

If Tesla can ramp new cell production faster, than we will see more semi’s and roadsters and they may pull in the expected production release of the Cybertruck.

Just a guess, but all tied to my belief that the release of these vehicles requires a battery with greater watts per kilogram than current battery technology of 2170’s provides.

On the horizon for Tesla:

Autopilot update for reading speed signs that aren’t in the database. That’s a bit fundamental to FSD.
HW3 update … update.
Model Y intro and roll out strategy. US has no rebate anymore, so please allow for CAN and EU to get their share. Giga Berlin is too far away.
Solar and PowerWall growth prediction
PowerPack deployment
Battery production capacity update
Personal wish: upgrade program for early S/X buyers: purchase a new battery compatible with all previous car versions for a reasonable amount of money. Was that the 85kWh new pack?
Model S/X platform:
1. Upgrades new batteries or capacities
2. Update to interior with a 17in central display
3. New exterior design with more modern look yet still aerodynamic
4. Weight reduction for longer range and better ride quality

Hot take – Tesla is likely to lose value in the short to mid term. Here’s why:

“Buy on rumours, sell on news”. To get a post-earnings pop, we need a “one more thing” type surprise, and I’m sure all of those have rumoured out by now. There are also a ton of crazy rumours that are just wild figments of somebody’s imagination.
When the market crashes, Tesla is going to drop a lot more than the rest of the market as people retreat from “risky” stocks to “safe” ones. I think Tesla is safer than Proctor and Gamble, but most disagree.
I expect and hope Tesla will massively increase R&D & production capacity. That’s going to cost good money and depress earnings in the short term.

On the long side Tesla is likely to outperform in the automative, solar and renewables sector.

High MMR Support Tip: Do not always instantly deward an enemy sentry.

Learn to check a few points first before dewarding it:

Will it matter if you give away your current position to the enemy team? Often I have seen Supports mindlessly hitting an enemy Sentry when there is a Storm on the other side who will gladly take your face showing on the minimap and zip to you for a free kill. More advanced teams will maybe smell a 5v4 chance elsewhere on the map as you give away your location.
You can actually outmindgame the enemy by palacing an Observer on a Ward hill that only has an enemy sentry on it. If you deward a sentry and place an Observer there the enemy Support will usually take the chance to re-deward your sentry and possibly obs right back given the chance. However if you just leave his lonely Sentry up there it might lul them into a false sense of security. “There is a Sentry on this hill so there cant be a ward there!”.
Should they be onto you that you are placing Observers on already existing Sentries then go to the next level. Still keep the enemy Sentry there and place your own obs JUST outside of its range for another fakeout into false security.

Just make sure that leaving an enemy Sentry up doesn’t immediately sabotage your own Rikis and the like you have on your own team.

TikTok is an Amazing Way to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Eight months ago, I kept hearing from the video marketing whales that TikTok was a fantastic way to leverage exposure to your YT channel. I ignored the suggestion. TikTok is for kiddies. I’m a 53-year-old who digs into the inner workings of success on YouTube, why the hell would any kid care about what I have to say on that venue?

A month ago, I read that TikTok was the new Vine. I loved Vine, I’ve never laughed so hard watching those videos, so I installed TikTok and played with it for a while. I was amazed to see that kids were not the only demographic. It’s funny there are many videos where 40 something creators make fun of the kids because they are there to stay. I guess the younger crew thought they had exclusivity. Those days are gone.

After watching videos and learning how it works, I rolled the dice and made a 15-second video about how to respond to negative comments on YouTube. The next day I checked it and received 153 views, a few likes, and ten follows. My brand is nonexistent on TikTok. I’m a nobody, a grain of sand on the venue, and I received 153 views.

MY MIND WAS BLOWN. How is it that some random dude could get so many views from his first post? Obtaining this kind of exposure on YouTube would be impossible.

The next day I made two more videos. DAMN! Both received over 100 views, and more follows and likes came in. Making the videos takes minutes, and recording is super easy. Engagement is stronger than I thought. MY GOD! TikTok is incredible. Only creators who have been grinding, and toiling over their channel at YouTube could appreciate how easy TikTok is. There’s another benefit as well. When your video is finished, it takes you straight over to Instagram for a cross-post. Now I’m making content for two social media venues.

 **THE BOTTOM LINE**

You know that feeling of dread you get when your precious video only receives a handful of views after producing it for hours. That feeling does not exist on TikTok.

TikTok is easy
TikTok gets views
TikTok is FUN

Create a TikTok account now. Make sure your YouTube channel is tied to your account and start banging out 15-second videos. Over time it’ll push traffic to your YouTube channel. Stay in your within your niche.

Best wishes and good fortune.

8 years ago Mark Cuban said “following your passion is a bad advice. Don’t follow your passion, follow your efforts”… check out his article below, I think it has some gems specially at the end.

I hear it all the time from people. “I’m passionate about it.” “I’m not going to quit, It’s my passion”. Or I hear it as advice to students and others “Follow your passion”.

What a bunch of BS. “Follow Your Passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.

Why ? Because everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than 1 thing. We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.

Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there ? Why did you bounce from one to another ? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions ? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success.? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company ?

If you really want to know where you destiny lies, look at where you apply your time.

Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you .

Let me make this as clear as possible

When you work hard at something you become good at it.
When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.
When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it
When you are good at something, passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.

Don’t follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it

The Fundamentals of DOTA

A recent game got me thinking about stuff I could consistently point out that everyone messes up from time to time and none of them involve tread swapping. You all probably know all of this already, but some things are worth repeating.

Unwillingness to trade objectives – Too many times I’ve seen people give up on a guaranteed tier 3/rax/rosh to instead defend against someone taking a tier 2 or even a tier 1.
Fighting for every single objective – Sometimes you have a late game hero that needs time to farm and the enemy team punishes that by grouping early and rotating to different lanes taking different towers. You are most likely expected to lose those towers. Stop porting into them and feeding the enemy team. You will never lose a game off the enemy team taking t1s and t2s but you will certainly lose the game if you die pointlessly defending them, propelling the enemy even further along. Get other heroes farming other lanes and jungle areas. With luck, your enemy team might lose focus of their objective and port out to defend towers they shouldn’t, stopping the deathball (point 1).
Not buying a stick/upgrading to a wand – Even divine players are guilty of this far too often. Best item in the sideshop that gets ignored far too often. Depending on the matchup you can justify certain other items first (quelling blade or boots) but 99% of the time you will want this item fairly quickly in the lane (this does not mean take the courier at the first min to fly your wand recipe out when your midlaner needs their salve).
Raindrops – Same as above. Just buy them when you can. They’ll pay for themselves nearly every match. Upgrades into an urn as well. Sometimes I buy them a second time. Not dying once means it’s worth it.
Pay attention to the numbers – When you’re waiting on bounties to spawn look around at people’s attack damage, armor, hp and movement speed. You’ll start to feel a lot more confident about taking early fights and skirmishes once you’ve got ideas on which heroes have low armor and which don’t. Also, if your hero has some fixed spell damage you can do some quick math (spell damage * .75) to figure out how much right clicking you need to do to get kills.
Adult daycare – Stop responding to people who have no intention of making peace with you or someone else on your team. Maybe they lost their lane, maybe they’re having a bad day or maybe they’re just a troll. It doesn’t matter. If someone doesn’t accept that you didn’t have the mana as to why you didn’t cast that spell that would have totally changed them from being beat down by four players then it’s not worth going in circles with them. You have dota to play and someone is distracting you from doing your best. Mute and move on.
Not valuing the ranged creep – Mid players prep the ranged creep before nuking the wave. I’ll deny it everytime if you don’t. Supports and cores, try to coordinate the denies if you can. If your carry looks like he can’t get to the ranged in time and you have a nuke, just take the creep.
Farming towards a goal – Basically applicable to all roles. Please tell your team that you are farming specifically so you can then go do a thing (push, rosh, fight, gank, w.e).
Backpack your smokes – I’m extremely guilty of this myself but as you rank up in dota things become more and more time sensitive. Sometimes your window to do certain things lasts only a matter of seconds. Just put your damn smokes in your backpack so you don’t have to tell your team to wait for the courier to ferry it out to you. You might lose some vital opportunities because it took 40 mins for you to remember that the item exists.
Coordinate courier usage in the laning phase – It has 9 slots. Use them. One of my pet peeves is a sidelane using a courier to deliver stuff to one hero, then going back to the base and coming back to the same lane to deliver stuff to the other hero.

Always win mid: 8 Tips on how to crush the lane!

I watched around 50 replays of high MMR midlaners in the span of a few days. And I will point out 8 best tips on how they win lanes or salvage them from destruction. Midlaners I spectated include, but are not only: (Sumail, Limmp, Noone, Xcalibur, Cancel, Abed, IYD)

Almost always fight before runes, and before creeps start. I watched Abed, Sumail, and Xcalibur, almost always go to fight before the runes. They do as much damage as possible to the enemies and try to secure both runes. Go to the lane in which you have the highest kill potential.
Almost always push your creeps under the enemy’s tower, when your position 4 is ganking mid. By doing that the creeps will tank the tower for you, and you will end up killing the enemy easily, without losing hp. In the video, we see exactly how IYD does it, and how the enemy midlaner does it as well, both scenarios resulting in clean kills. This happens in ~85% of high MMR games, I’ve watched.
If you are playing a ranged hero. Try to last hit with abilities, and auto-attack the enemy at the same time. Good examples with that can be (Necro, Puck, qop, Storm, pugna, leshrac Lina.) In the video Abed shows us how it’s done, completely crushing a lane, securing last hits in the first 3 minutes only with abilities, while constantly killing his opponent with Storm.
If you are countered hard, (example – playing as kunkka vs od/monkey king), **just cheese the lane.**Don’t try to trade fair, you can’t. Push the wave under their tower with your spells, so it will eventually push back safely under your tower. If you are playing a hero that has no pushing spells, ask your pos 4 (not necessary) to push the lane into the enemy tower. That way the creeps will bounce from tower to tower, salvaging you the midlane. After you push the lane every time, just go to the jungle, stack, and farm! I can’t tell you how many games this has won me. Jungle! In the video, Cancel ends up winning the net worth and impact fight vs an OD!!!!
Always push the lane and play aggressively on odd minutes wave that meets at the 15-second mark. Play passively on even minutes and save resources for the time to come. That way you will secure most of the runes. Limmp is one of the best in doing this.
If your enemy has an advantage over you, (example Lina vs Qop, lina can always burst ranged creeps especially on higher levels) abuse the enemy’s strength, by staying next to your ranged creeps, before lina is level 4, and if your creeps are full hp. That way if she uses a spell to harass you, she will lower the hp of your creep, and you can safely deny it. This is something I have mentioned before, but rarely see in my games. (High divine and low immortal games)
If you have last pick, good, if you don’t – don’t pick a hero that can get completely countered on the lane, or cannot deal with meepo/brood or other cheese picks, without coming back afterwards.
Draw agro toward ranged creeps, when your spells are ready, and when the enemy’s spell is on cooldown. Do that also if you have more mele creeps that the enemy. If they contest the ranged creep, start hitting them, if they hit back, your creeps will deal more. Every second in dota matters, don’t do things randomly.

TL;DR: (Fight before start; Push creeps before a gank on mid; Last hit with abilities on ranged heroes, while attacking enemy; Cheese the lane, if countered; Push on odd minutes, play passively on even; Stay near ranged creeps during first levels, when they are on full hp; Pick smart, don’t get countered.)