PinkEmu Profile Joined November 2012 Australia 21 Posts Last Edited: 2014-01-27 00:37:34 #1



Hi,



Before I jump into the topic, I would suggest people read the prologue I've typed up below. It's not required reading to understand the points made in this write-up, however if you're the sort of person to reply to write-ups such as this just because you disagree with something or feel maybe the writer is missing the "Bigger Picture", then please give it a read. Otherwise happy reading, maybe grab a drink because there's a lot of info here!





+ Show Spoiler [prologue] + Thanks for deciding to read this little intro. The idea behind me typing all of this is to create awareness of some mechanics that I feel will eventually get abused and I look forward to seeing some of these "strategies" outworked even amongst the pro scene.



One thing I want to make clear, is that you will not find me typing things like "Pros should stop doing y and start doing x" where x is my suggested ideas. Dota 2 is far too situational to reliably say such things. Nor is it my implied attitude.



With that in mind, you should be aware when reading through anything here, that it's all situational. Please don't be one of those people that sit on forums trying to be smart by debating how there's so many situations where x strategy isn't viable. Maybe some strategies mentioned below will feel so risky and straight up shut down by popular heroes, this is not an excuse to get on your high horse and pretend to know better. Instead you just need to understand the mechanics that are mentioned and know that it may only be possible in 1/100 captains mode where you were able to draft it without being punished.



Finally, I would mention that it's not my job to type up every single reason why x strategies wont work in 90% of games. I've thought about it, and likely reasoned within myself these weaknesses, but I would be here for days if I were to type out everything. It's your job to use your own common sense and analysis











Or SQS as I'll call it from now, is essentially having multiple units under your control and using all to separately stack neutral camps. The reason it's called SQS is because the majority of players can't micro fast enough to be able to stack multiple camp in the few second window you have to do so. So by setting the units up ready to stack, and at intervals of time, Shift queue them into the neutral camp and back out to stack it while you're doing something else, you can easily stack all 5 camps given the right scenario.



"How to" might best be explained by a practical example.

Before we get into it, I'll make an assumption that we have at least 3 control groups setup as "z", "x" and "c". And for this example we're playing Naga Siren with at least 1 point in your illusions.

Somewhere in the Radiant jungle you activate your illusions. Assign each to a control group and send each of them to a separate neutral camp. You have the illusion in our "z" control group moved to somewhere 5 seconds away from the camp. The "x" control group to 3 seconds away from it's respective camp and likewise "c" is 1 second away. Now lets look at a timeline;



0:47 - SQS the "z" illusion:

0:49 - SQS the "x" illusion

0:51 - SQS the "c" illusion



What will happen here is that all illusions will get to the point in their respective neutral camps and they aggro the creeps at 0:52, and then since they're shift queued to move out, the creeps will follow and cause all the camps to stack at 1:00.



Here are some screenshots that show the point in each camp you will need to send your units too in order to aggro the camp. Its important to be fairly accurate with this, as alot of the time you'll be using an illusion or something with little in the way of Effective Hit Points. So sending it in too far results in the illusion being killed. Or of course not sending it far enough means you don't even aggro the camp.





+ Show Spoiler [Screenshots] +

Here's a few screenshots I took to show where you can aggro the camp efficiently. These were taken some time ago. Before the medium and easy camps were switched, so keep that in mind.



Item representing the hyperlink



Radiant pull camp

Radiant hard camp 1

Radiant hard camp 2

Radiant easy camp

Radiant medium camp

Dire pull camp

Dire hard camp 1

Dire hard camp 2

Dire easy camp

Dire medium camp

Radiant ancients

Dire ancients

Here's a few screenshots I took to show where you can aggro the camp efficiently. These were taken some time ago. Before the medium and easy camps were switched, so keep that in mind.



Some stats for SQS:



These are a little out of date, If I recall correctly the exp gain from the jungle was reduced by a small margin since these stats.



The jungle spawns between 399 and 734 gold per minute if you can perfectly farm or never block a stack. This is not including the ancients. For comparison, the creeps in lane offer between 336 and 420 gold if you last hit the entire lane. Yes, you read that correctly.

Likewise for exp. lane creeps give 479 exp per minute but the jungle can offer between 731 and 1228 depending on what camps spawn.



To sum that up. Even worst case in terms of what camps spawn, there is potentially more gold in jungle than in lane. Best case scenario, there's an extra 1.7x gold. And this is without the ancients! Exp gives up to a huge 2.5x, that compared to a solo laner who is always in exp range without getting denied.



Some ideas for ultilising SQS:



An uncontested Lycan in safelane: The premise is that you had a strong safelane trilane and therefore are not being contested for the first 6-8 minutes of the game. For whatever reason at least one of supports isn't in a position to gank other lanes and apply pressure elsewhere, at least for a few minutes. This means you can start using SQS as an advanced way to make the Lycan insanely fat.



The idea would be that the Lycan summons wolves and shares unit control with the support player. The support player with knowledge of SQS can then stack minimum 3 camps every minute and pseudo jungle but giving all the last hits to the wolves instead of themselves. Support potentially gets more solo exp than a mid laner, and the Lycan gets possibly more than 2 free farm safelanes worth of farm.



Generic Natures Prophet farming efficiency: Natures prophet is frequently TP'ing to his own jungle and summon a few treants to start farming it up for a minute or so. If you happened to TP at about the x:30 second mark, chances are you're only going to clear maybe 2 camps and then maybe stack another before the next minute ticks over. With SQS you can on the fly know positions to send a couple of treants to stack for you, while you're off independently farming other camps. Generating a minimum of 20% extra gold or exp.



Natures Prophet giving to his team: This is more of a unique idea that I feel like I should mention because it really does showcase the potential of these mechanics, even in professional matches where you can control the draft. You've drafted a mid Batrider and carry Alchemist. You abandon the offlane and ensure that they cannot contest the Alchs' farm.



I've worked out the details to ensure this is viable, but for simplicity's sake, I wont put down the details.



Imagine a Natures Prophet who even at the 1 minute mark he is able to stack all 5 camps. He gets some farm himself and stacks 3 camps at the 2 minute mark. Repeat with another 5 camps spawning at 3 minutes in. Natures is largely not getting much. He was able to farm a couple of camps and get a level 2 out, but now the camps are too stacked for him. 4 minutes in, a level 5 Batrider comes from mid and farms the camps. By about 5-6 minutes it's entirely possible to have a level 9 Batrider with tranquils and blink!



All the mean while you've had a greedy Alchemist farming maybe a first item maelstrom. With the camps cleared by the Batrider and ideally them all respawning at the 6 minute mark. You can set-up more stacks ready for the Alchemist at 10 minutes.



Needless to say, The sort of Exp and Gold available would mean the farmed Batrider mentioned before, and a pseudo 6-slotted Alchemist sub 30 minutes. Technically the Alchemist could just go shadow blade first. And every 4 minutes come back to his jungle and acid spray to clear stacked camps. My point is that it's not a farming Alch for 30 mins. If you think that, you've not understood the theory behind this.



As usual though, please don't think I'm saying this is viable every game. I know full well the weaknesses of the draft. But that is not my concern. My concern is having the knowledge available so that when it is viable, it is executed and it proves successful.



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Standard stacking of neutral camps relies upon the x:52-55 timing depending on various factors. The idea behind Delayed stacking is to allow various heroes with unique skills to get an extra stack in that would not otherwise be possible. There's lots of mechanics at play here, It's best if I just jump into an example.



Delayed stacking based on a Damage over time: Lets look at the skill Ion shell;



Radius: 250

Mana cost: 70/90/110/130

Damage: 30/50/70/90 Magical

Duration: 20

Cooldown: 10



Being an aoe spell, Ion shell means dark seer doesn't jungle in the same league as heroes like Natures Prophet. Other heroes like Natures have a DPS limiter because they can only attack one unit at a time with right clicks. Ion shell however doesn't care for that. My point here that the only real limiting factor to a Dark seer jungle strategy is being able to get stacks.



Ion shell is also a damage over time. This means post casting it, it will still have damage ticks that can in theory aggro neutral creeps for you. In the most basic example, instead of the x:53 standard stack timing, you could instead ion shell a creep in the camp at x:44. The creeps will leave the camp heading towards you, be leashed back. They will reach the edge of their camp again at about the 0:53 timing and will then proceed to stack. In fact, it's a simple step to take to then realise that you could also ion shell a creep at x:37 seconds and it will do the whole thing twice resulting in a stack.



Could it be taken a step further? It certainly could! With a 10 second cooldown on the spell itself you mat have already thought to yourself, but PinkEmu you can't ion shell a camp at 37 seconds and then another at 44. The thing you need to understand is the timings that they get back to their camp, not the time they leave the first time. So for example you could ion shell at 37 seconds, then walk to another camp, manually aggro it at the 44 second mark by walking close to it and let it chase you. Once ion shell is back off cooldown place it on that camp.



There's more mechanics at play then the above sheds light on, and as such I suggest getting in a lobby to practice and observe patterns for yourself. All things considered, it is completely viable to stack 3 camps at the same time as Dark Seer with little or no downsides to your typical Dark Seer jungle rotation.



I should also mention that, a lot of the time when attempting a stack in Dota 2 , it fails because there was ranged units in the camp who instead of chasing you, stood there attacking you for awhile. Stacking using this damage over time delayed stacking is far more reliable than normal stacking because no creep ever gets a chance to attack you.



Non hero unit stacking: The most basic of these is Shift Queue Stacking that I outlined at the start of this post. But this can also be stretched to Veno wards as well. Observe this



The Idea here is that the first ward, will aggro the mud golems. Being a level 1 ward it will get 2 hit by the mud golems, which means it almost instantly dies. The second ward is then in position such that it's far enough away that it wont block the camp, but is close enough to attack the mud golems once they're attacking the first ward. Timed right, this will result in a stack and has nothing to do with the hero itself.



Blocking or stunning: Using blocking tactics is based around aggroing the creeps early but then once they're out either blocking there way back to the camp or stunning them to get some extra time.



This relies mostly on abusing the fact that neutrals don't have a a leash range, instead they have a leash timer. And the timer only starts once they get a certain distance away from there camp. This means you can do things like, use Jakiros' ice path before the normal stack timer. They will be stunned for a second or 2 before they can even start the timer, meaning it will stack like normal.



Or of course there is always options like fissure blocking creeps and abusing those mechanics.



Overview of Delayed stacking: As you can probably tell, there are so many spells with unique effects and realistically I've only scratched the surface of ways to use spells to generate more stacks.



Fact is, players like myself in pubs or a lot of pro players when in matches, end up with a small handfull of heroes that they end up playing. The idea is that players will soon start to know and understand all these timings and how they relate to their heroes specifically. So that they can, without drawback, freely generate more gold and exp for their team by abusing these tricky mechanics.



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I'm not talking about macros using third party programs or anything of the like, I only want to touch on client side console commands. Ideally avoiding even altering config files but there is legitimate merit to altering config files and are not seen as a "taboo" topic.



First off, there are some simple scripts. People like EternalEnvy use basic scripts to instantly move the camera to the bottom and top rune locations.



There also elaborate scripts for doing various things for Invoker or Meepo. Some people think these sorts of scripts are flat out cheating. And that's not my call to make.



But keeping in theme with the post. The main ones I want to talk about are ones that I created to do some specific tasks.



The first one is designed simply to use a creep that you have controlled using Helm of the Dominator and placed near ancients. The idea is that you put the creep in control group 1, put your mouse just below the in game timer and press a button. The script will select the creep, move your camera to the exact location needed to aggro the camp, right click at the correct location for you, move the camera back to where the creep should wait, right click again but this time as a shift command.



This will stack the ancients for you and move the creep back to ready for it's next stack 1 minute later. All the while the only thing you need to do is put your mouse below the timer and press a button. Due to either limitations of the engine or my own knowledge of it, I was unable to get it digitally release the shift button. Therefore you will have to manually press shift after the script runs.





+ Show Spoiler [Radiant ancients script] +

alias "rightclick" "+sixense_right_click; -sixense_right_click"



alias "+sqsradancientscam" "dota_camera_setpos -2968.231934 -1122.323120 1238.626709"



alias "+sqsradancients" "+dota_control_group 1; +sqsradancientscam; rightclick"



alias "-sqsradancients" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos -3374.956543 -2734.620850 1238.174072; rightclick"



bind "KP_1" "+sqsradancients"





You will need to copy and paste each of the lines into the console at the start of a match. Or if you know how, create a cfg file that you can load at startup that contains all this information.



In the case of the above script you would need to press 1 on the keypad.



Using a script to stack:



An idea I had is a Natures Prophet who is frequently teleporting back to base is able to summon some treants (In your fountain) and stack all your neutrals. You have summons that last 60 seconds and have enough move speed to reach your own jungle and stack any of the camps.



At max level you summon exactly 5 treants. Making it a simple task to generate your team some more gold and exp, even if your whole team is on the other side of the map pushing and you will soon join them with your TP.





+ Show Spoiler [Radiant 5 camps stacking scripts] +

alias "rightclick" "+sixense_right_click; -sixense_right_click"



alias "+sqsradpullthroughcam" "dota_camera_setpos 3155.074707 -4897.966309 1238.159668"

alias "+sqsradpullthrough" "+dota_control_group 1; +sqsradpullthroughcam; rightclick"

alias "-sqsradpullthrough" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos 4911.242676 -5112.941895 1238.072876; rightclick"

bind "KP_1" "+sqsradpullthrough"



alias "+sqsradpullcam" "dota_camera_setpos 3109.539307 -6170.240234 1238.203491"

alias "+sqsradpull" "+dota_control_group 2; +sqsradpullcam; rightclick"

alias "-sqsradpull" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos 1147.333008 -6449.084961 1238.072876; rightclick"

bind "KP_2" "+sqsradpull"



alias "+sqsradhardmaincam" "dota_camera_setpos 1546.591553 -5117.129395 1238.174316"

alias "+sqsradhardmain" "+dota_control_group 3; +sqsradhardmaincam; rightclick"

alias "-sqsradhardmain" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos 268.304932 -5454.257324 1238.072876; rightclick"

bind "KP_3" "+sqsradhardmain"



alias "+sqsradmedcam" "dota_camera_setpos -382.160980 -4579.961182 1109.259888"

alias "+sqsradmed" "+dota_control_group 4; +sqsradmedcam; rightclick"

alias "-sqsradmed" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos -450.967163 -2513.824951 1110.072876; rightclick"

bind "KP_4" "+sqsradmed"



alias "+sqsradhardmidcam" "dota_camera_setpos -1135.129150 -5461.844238 1109.185059"

alias "+sqsradhardmid" "+dota_control_group 5; +sqsradhardmidcam; rightclick"

alias "-sqsradhardmid" "+sixense_left_shift; dota_camera_setpos -4754.562988 -4937.105469 1110.072876; rightclick"

bind "KP_5" "+sqsradhardmid"



bind "KP_6" "-sixense_left_shift"



This is all the scipts! The way it works is that you summon your 5 treants between the 1 minute mark and 1:10. Assign them each a separate control group and just leave them in the center of your fountain.



With your mouse just below the in game time, at 16 seconds you press 1 on your keypad. You press keypad 2 at 18 seconds, keypad 3 at 21s, keypad 4 at 28s, keypad 5 at 31s. Then since shift is digitally still pressed down, wait half a second and either press keypad 6 or left shift.



What will happen is that all treants will have received orders to not only walk to the exact locations on the map that aggro each camp but they will reach there at the time required to stack and then will have automatically been given shift commands to move away from the camp stacking it.



There's probably a few kinks with the script. I'm not super expert at using the source engine. The shift key remaining pressed is an annoying issue and there's probably some camps where the camera location or timing needs a slight tweak.



How to adapt these scripts: The scripts only do the commands, you have to manually know the timings yourself. The timings I have mentioned above are only for Natures Prophet doing some cool stacking from the fountain. Fact is you could do some other stuff with it.



Lets say for whatever reason you drafted a Broodmother and then through the draft decided you want to run the brood safelane instead of the normal offlane, the reasons for this is not my point, please don't bother commenting on that.



Should you have the need, you could generate a few spiders, assign them control groups and then at timings send them off to stack. You would be able to maintain last hitting in lane pretty much the entire time. These timings may be wrong as I haven't fully tested it all since it's just an example and I don't play Brood so I couldn't care less, but if you used the same scripts as above, and you placed your spiders in the tiny gap just above the radiant tier 1. You would then be able to press keypad 5 at 29s, keypad 4 at 34s, keypad 3 at 40s, keypad 1 at 46 s and keypad 2 at 48s resulting in all 5 camps being stacked ready to be farmed.



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Most heroes cannot jungle by themselves, and if they do it's often not efficient at all. But with 2 heroes you'll find some surprisingly brilliant efficiency. Although I'm not implying you draft 2 heroes to jungle together for the first 10 minutes, please don't get me wrong.



It's common place for 2 supports to roam at some point. The most basic example is something like an Enchantress in the jungle and a lane support in your safelane, let's just say a Shadow Demon for examples sake. At some point there's a really good chance you'll want to smoke up and go gank a lane together. You've got a good combo that's been partially drafted as a way to apply pressure early game.



The point that I'm getting at is that there is often ample opportunity for players to pull off some of these techniques that have been outlined in this entire post, with access to 2 heroes you are often able to stack tons of camps and have the ability to clear them rapidly. If an Enchantress and Shadow Demon player got in a lobby spent a few hours working together to work out how best to do farm given various circumstances, I'm certain the world would be amazed at how efficiently it works.



Again let me just say, The enchantress and Shadow Demon would still have all the early game impact they can. Maybe in tons of games they actually never get down time to farm like I'm suggesting. But in the games where there is down time, why not plan for it and make it amazingly efficient?



A single hero, then gets help: Radiant wisp in this case. You've gone safelane trilane and the basic idea now is to pull the lane, pull it through to the medium camp and then through to the hard camp if you can. You want a fast level 6 and that's pretty efficient. However it's somewhat common knowledge that with spirits it's possible to stack the hard and medium camps that are adjacent mid lane at the same time.



Wisp alone can't really take out big camps. But between wisp and whoever the other support is, chances are, taking the stacks is possible and the exp split 2 ways should still be like both of you getting a solo lane of exp. Worst case, you need your mid lane or another core to help you instead of the support. Oh no, free exp and farm for your core!



There is often no downside to doing little things like that to increase efficiency. In a lot of cases you may need to get a clarity extra then you would, but trading some consumables for a much faster level 6 and more farm then what you spent on the consumables, pretty worth it to me.



The only logical reasoning that this never happens at all is that individual players aren't practiced enough in abusing said mechanic.



Timing attacks: Being an ex-starcraft player myself, the concept of having a timing attack is ingrained into my mind, attacking at specific times when you're the strongest and should be really hard to stop.



Relating this to dota, and the idea of dual jungling. It's entirely possible that at the start of a match you could have a planned support combo that can roam well. Enemy will expect a smoke or a gank. But instead, what you're doing is both getting a couple of stacks and clearing them together. Dual jungling as 2 heroes that couldn't jungle by themselves.



What can happen is that you'll both be able to get a insanely fast level 3-4. While enemy supports will be at levels 1-2. The gold from it could mean something like a 3 minute arcane boots on a support. Again, this is one of those situations that is highly situational and would require lots of co-ordination to pull off.



Some heroes naturally have great combos that rely on them getting levels 2-3. For example Crystal Maiden with just a basic 1-1-1 build is very mana independent and scary strong early game. Having game plans to get those core levels up faster can and will help your team snowball.



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There's a lot to be said about being able to pull your lanes. There was a time where Radiant could pull mid lane and it was considered game breaking and was forced to be patched.



I'm sure a lot of us have come up with some pretty specific ways to pull a lane. Some simple stuff like using a Pudge or Rubick to move the neutrals. Or an Earthshaker to control your own creeps. Wisp tethers, Earth Spirit kicks, cogs pushing creeps up cliff, etc etc list goes on.



Maybe you even found some oddly advanced stuff. For example I found 1 pixel where if you stand there as Clockwerk, cogs, it completely blocks the pathway from the radiant hard camp to the radiant mid lane. Should you cog a creep in, you can pull the mid lane.



Problems with many of the methods like this is that they're unreliable at best, or require risks in the draft or laning phase. Which means teams are generally not willing to explore them. I only have 1 method that I think should regularly be abused that isn't.



The Troll summoner: All the neutrals creeps have a leash timer right? So do the Skeletons that the Troll summons. But instead of the origin of the leash being the actual camp, it's wherever they were summoned.



So, you could aggro a Dark Troll summoner, at the peak of it's natural leash kill one of its mates. The summoner will then summon some Skeletons which have default leash origin something like 500 units away from the camp itself. With this in mind it's a logical next step to simply use the Skeleton to pull a creep wave.



The best thing about this method is that you can repeat the process since the spell to summon has only a 25 second cooldown and there's enough mana to do it 11 times. Note: this isn't "easy" to do. But once you understand it, it's very reliable. And since you can do it with any hero, go nuts.



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This is largely a completely un-explored mechanic in the game. Lone Druids and Natures Prophets offlane used to pull the enemy creep wave as part of a way to get some exp and farm.



It's also somewhat common for when sieging a tier 1 safelane, for you to cut the creeps and pull them into the neutrals. Allowing for your creeps to stay on the tower and DPS down the tower faster.



While that's similar to the point I want to make it's not quite there. You should all be familiar with some of my Natures Prophets techniques by now. Now imagine taking it a step further.



Natures Prophet timing push: Let's say we're radiant, not only have you stacked some camps early while you're pseudo-jungling as Natures. Come a 3 minute mark or something similar you could pull your creep wave to delay it. Just like a single pull, your goal is to keep your creep wave alive and then it joins up with the following creep wave for a double wave to push.



Thing is though, at the time the second wave comes, you could also have a treant in position to pull the enemy creep wave into ancients. Not only would you have a double wave, all full health, they would have no wave at all. This solves a common issue of your double wave meeting the enemy single wave under the tier 1 and alot of the wave you've built for yourself gets DPS'd down by the tower.



Of course there's a lot of ways the scenario could then play out from this point and that's not my point. Technically you could then send another treant to intercept the next wave after that as well if you wanted to keep the momentum to force a tier 2.



Although counter-able with just a stun, it's also rather easy to instead of pulling the creeps to the enemy ancients where the exp and gold will go waste, send it to your mid laner who likely has an aoe spell to easily farm an extra creep wave.



While intuitive, these sorta of ideas take tons of practice in a lobby to get the timings and positioning right. Something that can and should be learned by players who use heroes with the ability to do so. Not to mention the benefits for doing such plays aren't nearly as good as something like abusing SQS



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I'll keep this short. Hopefully by now you're at least somewhat convinced that there is huge untapped potential when it comes to being efficient around the map. One big thing that I do with my mates is at about the 45 second mark, if any of us remember, we say "stack" to our team. This gives a timing window were people can analyse the situation and if it's worth them taking a small detour to do a stack, they will. Or it can flat out remind people as they're walking past the neutrals anyway, to do a stack. It's common place for randomly 15 minutes into the game someone says stack and forcestaffs are being used to get into position, various spells get thrown out and we end up stacking all our camps between 2-3 of us or something like that. That's a lot of free gold and exp generated for simply being aware.



Some of you already might have built mental notes or habits when it comes to checking runes. This is a great starting point to begin creating a "stack" habit as it's generally the 45 second mark that you consider to yourself "Is there a rune spawning? Do I need to go secure it?".



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In the end, professional player will first and foremost be relied on to be great all around players, great map awareness, teamwork, reflexes etc. I'm fully aware that doing any of the techniques mentioned in this write-up does not automatically make you a great player. But in a time where there's now 100+ amazing pro level players in the scene at the moment, it feels like the next logical step is to abuse these mechanics to eek out any advantage possible.



I'd like to give a quick mention that this is the sort of mindset that Alliance had when they first came on the scene. As players they're just as skilled as the rest but they often drafted heroes like Chen, Enchantress, Kotl and Crystal Maiden. Of course the Chen and Enchantress got farm in the jungle anyway, but they also popularised getting some level and farm by pseudo jungling Crystal Maiden and Kotl. Of course, they had a completely different play style, so I'm not at all saying this is the only reason they won all the games they did, just pointing out they almost always had an early gold and exp lead.



Thank you for reading. Should you feel the need to contact me you're welcome to add me on steam (PinkEmu). There is sooo much that I simply didn't write down, you can ask questions or share a theory if you wish. I don't mind.



Back to top Hi,Before I jump into the topic, I would suggest people read the prologue I've typed up below. It's not required reading to understand the points made in this write-up, however if you're the sort of person to reply to write-ups such as this just because you disagree with something or feel maybe the writer is missing the "Bigger Picture", then please give it a read. Otherwise happy reading, maybe grab a drink because there's a lot of info here!Or SQS as I'll call it from now, is essentially having multiple units under your control and using all to separately stack neutral camps. The reason it's called SQS is because the majority of players can't micro fast enough to be able to stack multiple camp in the few second window you have to do so. So by setting the units up ready to stack, and at intervals of time, Shift queue them into the neutral camp and back out to stack it while you're doing something else, you can easily stack all 5 camps given the right scenario."How to" might best be explained by a practical example.Before we get into it, I'll make an assumption that we have at least 3 control groups setup as "z", "x" and "c". And for this example we're playing Naga Siren with at least 1 point in your illusions.Somewhere in the Radiant jungle you activate your illusions. Assign each to a control group and send each of them to a separate neutral camp. You have the illusion in our "z" control group moved to somewhere 5 seconds away from the camp. The "x" control group to 3 seconds away from it's respective camp and likewise "c" is 1 second away. Now lets look at a timeline;0:47 - SQS the "z" illusion: screenshot 0:49 - SQS the "x" illusion0:51 - SQS the "c" illusionWhat will happen here is that all illusions will get to the point in their respective neutral camps and they aggro the creeps at 0:52, and then since they're shift queued to move out, the creeps will follow and cause all the camps to stack at 1:00.Here are some screenshots that show the point in each camp you will need to send your units too in order to aggro the camp. Its important to be fairly accurate with this, as alot of the time you'll be using an illusion or something with little in the way of Effective Hit Points. So sending it in too far results in the illusion being killed. Or of course not sending it far enough means you don't even aggro the camp.These are a little out of date, If I recall correctly the exp gain from the jungle was reduced by a small margin since these stats.The jungle spawns between 399 and 734 gold per minute if you can perfectly farm or never block a stack. This is not including the ancients. For comparison, the creeps in lane offer between 336 and 420 gold if you last hit the entire lane. Yes, you read that correctly.Likewise for exp. lane creeps give 479 exp per minute but the jungle can offer between 731 and 1228 depending on what camps spawn.To sum that up. Even worst case in terms of what camps spawn, there is potentially more gold in jungle than in lane. Best case scenario, there's an extra 1.7x gold. And this is without the ancients! Exp gives up to a huge 2.5x, that compared to a solo laner who is always in exp range without getting denied.The premise is that you had a strong safelane trilane and therefore are not being contested for the first 6-8 minutes of the game. For whatever reason at least one of supports isn't in a position to gank other lanes and apply pressure elsewhere, at least for a few minutes. This means you can start using SQS as an advanced way to make the Lycan insanely fat.The idea would be that the Lycan summons wolves and shares unit control with the support player. The support player with knowledge of SQS can then stack minimum 3 camps every minute and pseudo jungle but giving all the last hits to the wolves instead of themselves. Support potentially gets more solo exp than a mid laner, and the Lycan gets possibly more than 2 free farm safelanes worth of farm.Natures prophet is frequently TP'ing to his own jungle and summon a few treants to start farming it up for a minute or so. If you happened to TP at about the x:30 second mark, chances are you're only going to clear maybe 2 camps and then maybe stack another before the next minute ticks over. With SQS you can on the fly know positions to send a couple of treants to stack for you, while you're off independently farming other camps. Generating a minimum of 20% extra gold or exp.This is more of a unique idea that I feel like I should mention because it really does showcase the potential of these mechanics, even in professional matches where you can control the draft. You've drafted a mid Batrider and carry Alchemist. You abandon the offlane and ensure that they cannot contest the Alchs' farm.I've worked out the details to ensure this is viable, but for simplicity's sake, I wont put down the details.Imagine a Natures Prophet who even at the 1 minute mark he is able to stack all 5 camps. He gets some farm himself and stacks 3 camps at the 2 minute mark. Repeat with another 5 camps spawning at 3 minutes in. Natures is largely not getting much. He was able to farm a couple of camps and get a level 2 out, but now the camps are too stacked for him. 4 minutes in, a level 5 Batrider comes from mid and farms the camps. By about 5-6 minutes it's entirely possible to have a level 9 Batrider with tranquils and blink!All the mean while you've had a greedy Alchemist farming maybe a first item maelstrom. With the camps cleared by the Batrider and ideally them all respawning at the 6 minute mark. You can set-up more stacks ready for the Alchemist at 10 minutes.Needless to say, The sort of Exp and Gold available would mean the farmed Batrider mentioned before, and a pseudo 6-slotted Alchemist sub 30 minutes. Technically the Alchemist could just go shadow blade first. And every 4 minutes come back to his jungle and acid spray to clear stacked camps. My point is that it's not a farming Alch for 30 mins. If you think that, you've not understood the theory behind this.As usual though, please don't think I'm saying this is viable every game. I know full well the weaknesses of the draft. But that is not my concern. My concern is having the knowledge available so that when it is viable, it is executed and it proves successful.Standard stacking of neutral camps relies upon the x:52-55 timing depending on various factors. The idea behind Delayed stacking is to allow various heroes with unique skills to get an extra stack in that would not otherwise be possible. There's lots of mechanics at play here, It's best if I just jump into an example.Lets look at the skill Ion shell;25070/90/110/13030/50/70/90 Magical2010Being an aoe spell, Ion shell means dark seer doesn't jungle in the same league as heroes like Natures Prophet. Other heroes like Natures have a DPS limiter because they can only attack one unit at a time with right clicks. Ion shell however doesn't care for that. My point here that the only real limiting factor to a Dark seer jungle strategy is being able to get stacks.Ion shell is also a damage over time. This means post casting it, it will still have damage ticks that can in theory aggro neutral creeps for you. In the most basic example, instead of the x:53 standard stack timing, you could instead ion shell a creep in the camp at x:44. The creeps will leave the camp heading towards you, be leashed back. They will reach the edge of their camp again at about the 0:53 timing and will then proceed to stack. In fact, it's a simple step to take to then realise that you could also ion shell a creep at x:37 seconds and it will do the whole thing twice resulting in a stack.Could it be taken a step further? It certainly could! With a 10 second cooldown on the spell itself you mat have already thought to yourself, but PinkEmu you can't ion shell a camp at 37 seconds and then another at 44. The thing you need to understand is the timings that they get back to their camp, not the time they leave the first time. So for example you could ion shell at 37 seconds, then walk to another camp, manually aggro it at the 44 second mark by walking close to it and let it chase you. Once ion shell is back off cooldown place it on that camp.There's more mechanics at play then the above sheds light on, and as such I suggest getting in a lobby to practice and observe patterns for yourself. All things considered, it is completely viable to stack 3 camps at the same time as Dark Seer with little or no downsides to your typical Dark Seer jungle rotation.I should also mention that, a lot of the time when attempting a stack in Dota 2 , it fails because there was ranged units in the camp who instead of chasing you, stood there attacking you for awhile. Stacking using this damage over time delayed stacking is far more reliable than normal stacking because no creep ever gets a chance to attack you.The most basic of these is Shift Queue Stacking that I outlined at the start of this post. But this can also be stretched to Veno wards as well. Observe this screenshot The Idea here is that the first ward, will aggro the mud golems. Being a level 1 ward it will get 2 hit by the mud golems, which means it almost instantly dies. The second ward is then in position such that it's far enough away that it wont block the camp, but is close enough to attack the mud golems once they're attacking the first ward. Timed right, this will result in a stack and has nothing to do with the hero itself.Using blocking tactics is based around aggroing the creeps early but then once they're out either blocking there way back to the camp or stunning them to get some extra time.This relies mostly on abusing the fact that neutrals don't have a a leash range, instead they have a leash timer. And the timer only starts once they get a certain distance away from there camp. This means you can do things like, use Jakiros' ice path before the normal stack timer. They will be stunned for a second or 2 before they can even start the timer, meaning it will stack like normal.Or of course there is always options like fissure blocking creeps and abusing those mechanics.As you can probably tell, there are so many spells with unique effects and realistically I've only scratched the surface of ways to use spells to generate more stacks.Fact is, players like myself in pubs or a lot of pro players when in matches, end up with a small handfull of heroes that they end up playing. The idea is that players will soon start to know and understand all these timings and how they relate to their heroes specifically. So that they can, without drawback, freely generate more gold and exp for their team by abusing these tricky mechanics.I'm not talking about macros using third party programs or anything of the like, I only want to touch on client side console commands. Ideally avoiding even altering config files but there is legitimate merit to altering config files and are not seen as a "taboo" topic.First off, there are some simple scripts. People like EternalEnvy use basic scripts to instantly move the camera to the bottom and top rune locations.There also elaborate scripts for doing various things for Invoker or Meepo. Some people think these sorts of scripts are flat out cheating. And that's not my call to make.But keeping in theme with the post. The main ones I want to talk about are ones that I created to do some specific tasks.The first one is designed simply to use a creep that you have controlled using Helm of the Dominator and placed near ancients. The idea is that you put the creep in control group 1, put your mouse just below the in game timer and press a button. The script will select the creep, move your camera to the exact location needed to aggro the camp, right click at the correct location for you, move the camera back to where the creep should wait, right click again but this time as a shift command.This will stack the ancients for you and move the creep back to ready for it's next stack 1 minute later. All the while the only thing you need to do is put your mouse below the timer and press a button. Due to either limitations of the engine or my own knowledge of it, I was unable to get it digitally release the shift button. Therefore you will have to manually press shift after the script runs.You will need to copy and paste each of the lines into the console at the start of a match. Or if you know how, create a cfg file that you can load at startup that contains all this information.In the case of the above script you would need to press 1 on the keypad.An idea I had is a Natures Prophet who is frequently teleporting back to base is able to summon some treants (In your fountain) and stack all your neutrals. You have summons that last 60 seconds and have enough move speed to reach your own jungle and stack any of the camps.At max level you summon exactly 5 treants. Making it a simple task to generate your team some more gold and exp, even if your whole team is on the other side of the map pushing and you will soon join them with your TP.This is all the scipts! The way it works is that you summon your 5 treants between the 1 minute mark and 1:10. Assign them each a separate control group and just leave them in the center of your fountain.With your mouse just below the in game time, at 16 seconds you press 1 on your keypad. You press keypad 2 at 18 seconds, keypad 3 at 21s, keypad 4 at 28s, keypad 5 at 31s. Then since shift is digitally still pressed down, wait half a second and either press keypad 6 or left shift.What will happen is that all treants will have received orders to not only walk to the exact locations on the map that aggro each camp but they will reach there at the time required to stack and then will have automatically been given shift commands to move away from the camp stacking it.There's probably a few kinks with the script. I'm not super expert at using the source engine. The shift key remaining pressed is an annoying issue and there's probably some camps where the camera location or timing needs a slight tweak.How to adapt these scripts: The scripts only do the commands, you have to manually know the timings yourself. The timings I have mentioned above are only for Natures Prophet doing some cool stacking from the fountain. Fact is you could do some other stuff with it.Lets say for whatever reason you drafted a Broodmother and then through the draft decided you want to run the brood safelane instead of the normal offlane, the reasons for this is not my point, please don't bother commenting on that.Should you have the need, you could generate a few spiders, assign them control groups and then at timings send them off to stack. You would be able to maintain last hitting in lane pretty much the entire time. These timings may be wrong as I haven't fully tested it all since it's just an example and I don't play Brood so I couldn't care less, but if you used the same scripts as above, and you placed your spiders in the tiny gap just above the radiant tier 1. You would then be able to press keypad 5 at 29s, keypad 4 at 34s, keypad 3 at 40s, keypad 1 at 46 s and keypad 2 at 48s resulting in all 5 camps being stacked ready to be farmed.Most heroes cannot jungle by themselves, and if they do it's often not efficient at all. But with 2 heroes you'll find some surprisingly brilliant efficiency. Although I'm not implying you draft 2 heroes to jungle together for the first 10 minutes, please don't get me wrong.It's common place for 2 supports to roam at some point. The most basic example is something like an Enchantress in the jungle and a lane support in your safelane, let's just say a Shadow Demon for examples sake. At some point there's a really good chance you'll want to smoke up and go gank a lane together. You've got a good combo that's been partially drafted as a way to apply pressure early game.The point that I'm getting at is that there is often ample opportunity for players to pull off some of these techniques that have been outlined in this entire post, with access to 2 heroes you are often able to stack tons of camps and have the ability to clear them rapidly. If an Enchantress and Shadow Demon player got in a lobby spent a few hours working together to work out how best to do farm given various circumstances, I'm certain the world would be amazed at how efficiently it works.Again let me just say, The enchantress and Shadow Demon would still have all the early game impact they can. Maybe in tons of games they actually never get down time to farm like I'm suggesting. But in the games where there is down time, why not plan for it and make it amazingly efficient?Radiant wisp in this case. You've gone safelane trilane and the basic idea now is to pull the lane, pull it through to the medium camp and then through to the hard camp if you can. You want a fast level 6 and that's pretty efficient. However it's somewhat common knowledge that with spirits it's possible to stack the hard and medium camps that are adjacent mid lane at the same time.Wisp alone can't really take out big camps. But between wisp and whoever the other support is, chances are, taking the stacks is possible and the exp split 2 ways should still be like both of you getting a solo lane of exp. Worst case, you need your mid lane or another core to help you instead of the support. Oh no, free exp and farm for your core!There is often no downside to doing little things like that to increase efficiency. In a lot of cases you may need to get a clarity extra then you would, but trading some consumables for a much faster level 6 and more farm then what you spent on the consumables, pretty worth it to me.The only logical reasoning that this never happens at all is that individual players aren't practiced enough in abusing said mechanic.Being an ex-starcraft player myself, the concept of having a timing attack is ingrained into my mind, attacking at specific times when you're the strongest and should be really hard to stop.Relating this to dota, and the idea of dual jungling. It's entirely possible that at the start of a match you could have a planned support combo that can roam well. Enemy will expect a smoke or a gank. But instead, what you're doing is both getting a couple of stacks and clearing them together. Dual jungling as 2 heroes that couldn't jungle by themselves.What can happen is that you'll both be able to get a insanely fast level 3-4. While enemy supports will be at levels 1-2. The gold from it could mean something like a 3 minute arcane boots on a support. Again, this is one of those situations that is highly situational and would require lots of co-ordination to pull off.Some heroes naturally have great combos that rely on them getting levels 2-3. For example Crystal Maiden with just a basic 1-1-1 build is very mana independent and scary strong early game. Having game plans to get those core levels up faster can and will help your team snowball.There's a lot to be said about being able to pull your lanes. There was a time where Radiant could pull mid lane and it was considered game breaking and was forced to be patched.I'm sure a lot of us have come up with some pretty specific ways to pull a lane. Some simple stuff like using a Pudge or Rubick to move the neutrals. Or an Earthshaker to control your own creeps. Wisp tethers, Earth Spirit kicks, cogs pushing creeps up cliff, etc etc list goes on.Maybe you even found some oddly advanced stuff. For example I found 1 pixel where if you stand there as Clockwerk, cogs, it completely blocks the pathway from the radiant hard camp to the radiant mid lane. Should you cog a creep in, you can pull the mid lane.Problems with many of the methods like this is that they're unreliable at best, or require risks in the draft or laning phase. Which means teams are generally not willing to explore them. I only have 1 method that I think should regularly be abused that isn't.All the neutrals creeps have a leash timer right? So do the Skeletons that the Troll summons. But instead of the origin of the leash being the actual camp, it's wherever they were summoned.So, you could aggro a Dark Troll summoner, at the peak of it's natural leash kill one of its mates. The summoner will then summon some Skeletons which have default leash origin something like 500 units away from the camp itself. With this in mind it's a logical next step to simply use the Skeleton to pull a creep wave.The best thing about this method is that you can repeat the process since the spell to summon has only a 25 second cooldown and there's enough mana to do it 11 times. Note: this isn't "easy" to do. But once you understand it, it's very reliable. And since you can do it with any hero, go nuts. Screenshot This is largely a completely un-explored mechanic in the game. Lone Druids and Natures Prophets offlane used to pull the enemy creep wave as part of a way to get some exp and farm.It's also somewhat common for when sieging a tier 1 safelane, for you to cut the creeps and pull them into the neutrals. Allowing for your creeps to stay on the tower and DPS down the tower faster.While that's similar to the point I want to make it's not quite there. You should all be familiar with some of my Natures Prophets techniques by now. Now imagine taking it a step further.Let's say we're radiant, not only have you stacked some camps early while you're pseudo-jungling as Natures. Come a 3 minute mark or something similar you could pull your creep wave to delay it. Just like a single pull, your goal is to keep your creep wave alive and then it joins up with the following creep wave for a double wave to push.Thing is though, at the time the second wave comes, you could also have a treant in position to pull the enemy creep wave into ancients. Not only would you have a double wave, all full health, they would have no wave at all. This solves a common issue of your double wave meeting the enemy single wave under the tier 1 and alot of the wave you've built for yourself gets DPS'd down by the tower.Of course there's a lot of ways the scenario could then play out from this point and that's not my point. Technically you could then send another treant to intercept the next wave after that as well if you wanted to keep the momentum to force a tier 2.Although counter-able with just a stun, it's also rather easy to instead of pulling the creeps to the enemy ancients where the exp and gold will go waste, send it to your mid laner who likely has an aoe spell to easily farm an extra creep wave.While intuitive, these sorta of ideas take tons of practice in a lobby to get the timings and positioning right. Something that can and should be learned by players who use heroes with the ability to do so. Not to mention the benefits for doing such plays aren't nearly as good as something like abusing SQSI'll keep this short. Hopefully by now you're at least somewhat convinced that there is huge untapped potential when it comes to being efficient around the map. One big thing that I do with my mates is at about the 45 second mark, if any of us remember, we say "stack" to our team. This gives a timing window were people can analyse the situation and if it's worth them taking a small detour to do a stack, they will. Or it can flat out remind people as they're walking past the neutrals anyway, to do a stack. It's common place for randomly 15 minutes into the game someone says stack and forcestaffs are being used to get into position, various spells get thrown out and we end up stacking all our camps between 2-3 of us or something like that. That's a lot of free gold and exp generated for simply being aware.Some of you already might have built mental notes or habits when it comes to checking runes. This is a great starting point to begin creating a "stack" habit as it's generally the 45 second mark that you consider to yourself "Is there a rune spawning? Do I need to go secure it?".In the end, professional player will first and foremost be relied on to be great all around players, great map awareness, teamwork, reflexes etc. I'm fully aware that doing any of the techniques mentioned in this write-up does not automatically make you a great player. But in a time where there's now 100+ amazing pro level players in the scene at the moment, it feels like the next logical step is to abuse these mechanics to eek out any advantage possible.I'd like to give a quick mention that this is the sort of mindset that Alliance had when they first came on the scene. As players they're just as skilled as the rest but they often drafted heroes like Chen, Enchantress, Kotl and Crystal Maiden. Of course the Chen and Enchantress got farm in the jungle anyway, but they also popularised getting some level and farm by pseudo jungling Crystal Maiden and Kotl. Of course, they had a completely different play style, so I'm not at all saying this is the only reason they won all the games they did, just pointing out they almost always had an early gold and exp lead.Should you feel the need to contact me you're welcome to add me on steam. There is sooo much that I simply didn't write down, you can ask questions or share a theory if you wish. I don't mind.