Gameplay

Early Game

Mid Game

Late Game

You are looking to gank

You could initiate a fight

You can counter-initiate their gank

Block creeps for your offlane. By putting ajust in front of your creeps, you can block them and ensure that the creep wave meets closer to your tower, making life easier for both of you.Early Laning: Start with a point inand look for opportunities to separate and block enemy heroes. Use this time to harass the isolated hero together with your teammates. If played correctly, you can get multiple kills in the early game with a singleAlways pay attention to your mana, especially in the early game. You start with less than 300 mana, meaning you can castonly 2 - 3 times before running out and requiring mana regeneration. Make sure you always save up enough mana to have yourready at any time in order to secure a kill or save your lane partner.Your objective is to be annoying to the enemy and to try to find opportunities to block their escape paths, hopefully resulting in a kill or at least dealing enough damage to waste as much of their health regen as possible. Forcing your enemies to play safer and keeping them away from the creeps will greatly reduce their experience gain and early gold. Also, if you’re doing a good job at harassing and forcing them to use their regen items, they will be forced to either go back or buy some more regen items.This is great because they’ll be spending gold just to stay alive on lane instead of actually buying items. You can keep an eye on their inventory and whenever you see that they’re lacking regeneration, you can play more aggressively and it could also pay off to plant anbehind their Tier 1 tower and maybe kill their courier to get some extra gold and maybe even deny their regen items, if you're lucky!Useful Tip: Watchmatches and focus on the first 10 minutes to observe movement and spell casting.Your job is to initiate or counter-initiate when the enemy team is out of position or attacking your teammates. It's important to pay attention to the map and try to be around your cores in order to react quickly if needed.Once you haveyou need to be more active around the map. Stand around your cores to be able to help them if needed or try to setup kills with the other support and offlaner. For instance, if your cores are farming the jungle safely, it's best to allow them to farm and create space by trying to gank with your other teammates.Start looking at getting aggressive wards in the enemy jungle so you have vision for better ganks. You should be looking to take team fights if youris off cool down (unless enemies have a better team fight setup), as it offers great area damage and disable. Much like, the presence of your hero in a teamfight will change how your opponents play, so use this to your advantage.You don't always need to use yourat the beginning of the fight. It is also very effective to use it against 1 or 2 key enemy heroes. For example, important team fight heroes such asandto not give them the chance to use their ultimates in fight, or carries likeandthat have good farm and deal high damage (killing them at the beginning of the fight will greatly reduce the damage output of the enemy team).Some times it's important to take down their key heroes rather than usingtoo early or on too many targets with the risk of missing the key ones! This way you also start the fight with an advantage, since your team will have more heroes that are alive and can take part in the fight. However, your enemies will know that youris on cool down, meaning they might play more aggressively during this time.As much as possible, try not to get out of position during team fights. You should be looking at weaving in and out of fights (e.g. go into middle of fight, combo, run away). The longer and better you do this, the more you offer your team with long ranges (once you havethen you also offerandcombo) that can create chaos for your opponents in terms of stuns and blocking movement.is also particularly good at chasing fleeing enemies after they’ve lost a team fight, or even good at blocking off pursuing enemies so they can no longer chase your teammates.If yourisn’t up and you aren’t looking to gank an enemy, prioritize farming your(or initiation item,ifisn't ideal), and once you getlook to use it immediately for a kill (ideally a core or even in a team fight; can also useimmediately). If you haveand the enemy team is unaware of this, your impact in the game and particularly team fights increases massively, so look to take advantage of this because once they know you have, they won’t be grouping up in fights as often.Once you have, you’ll need to read the flow of the game. Is that next item crucial to winning a team fight (e.g. will ahelp save someone? Will thatmake my carry invincible for 6 seconds?)? If so, look to farm that item while also being ready to rotate or teleport for any fights or ganks. If the enemy team is ahead, look to position yourself near your carry or mid and protect them if any ganks occur on them (It’s okay to farm while doing this, but don’t stray too far from your core/mid). This can also result in a team fight breaking out, and if you’re already there and ready you can turn around the team fight early.Always be ready, team fights are your big strength. Don't miss any of them, always have enough mana to fight and stay close to your team.You have no cast point on, that way you can surprise enemycarriers and chain stun them so they never even get to use it and die fairly easily to your cores.During late game, your role in the game is to participate in every team fight and also to set up up ganks on key targets such as cores and heroes without buyback, but these will almost always turn into team fights. This means being prepared for any team fight that's about to break out so you can counter-initiate, or being the one to initiate the fight. However, it becomes more important to play the weave in/out style properly due to high respawn timers and the importance of disables in the late game.That being said, positioning during late game is super important, not just in team fights but anytime. Farming in the jungle out of sight makes the opponents scared that:These change the way the opponents have to play (e.g. not attempting Roshan together, not walking through a choke point), however, if you farm in lane, the opponents know where you are so they can play more aggressively OR you paint a target on yourself which will put your team at a disadvantage. Split pushing has its times but thinking about if you’re seen or not is important. You are a key hero in team fights for your team, and as such you are a big target for opponents to burst. Knowing where to position to avoid this, or if you can survive the burst is also something you need to be aware of.