Heroes of Newerth 2.6.16 Patch Notes

I will no longer post the Changelog on my website(#), you can check it in game or on the Newerth official forum, from now on I will only comment on the changes. First of all congratulations to S2 for Envy (Parasite Alt avatar), the game mechanics are stunning!

On this patch i would like to highlight The "Iron Rage" bundle, the Magebane and Flux alt avatars are awesome and you can get them with a 20% discount with this pack, Deadwood also got a new avatar "Icy Deadwood" but this will only be released on the 27th August together with the second deadly sin "Sloth" an alt avatar for Armadon.

As far as Hero changes, Bombardier was buffed, so as Magmus attach damage. But the most important change is that now Kraken Ultimate also stuns magic immune units.

Wen it comes to items, only Post Haste was reworked. You can no longer Teleport to allied pets. Sad we can't use Booboo as a port point.

(#)As some of you know and you may have noticed by the lack of adds, HonGuideIt current ad provider(adsense) has declared that HonGuideIt lacks unique and Original Content. I'm trying to fix thisproblem so I'm avoiding any kind of Copy Past from the HoN's Forum and news.

Oogie preview

Next week S2 will be releasing Oogie, an intelligence melee carry (finally!), so far there is few information about the hero and of course testers are now allowed to reveal more(Sorry).

As far as I can say is damage stacks with mana :)

Other things I can tell you are the names of Oogie abilities:

Tar Quake;
Conflagrate;
Kindled Fury;
Primal Surge;

More things i can talk about are the speculations about his abilities, "more damage has less mana he has", "more mana and damage as more trees are around", "extreme low mana/coldown ultimate  that gives damage", "passive ultimate that gives damage acording to your mana pool"... and it goes on and on.

You will need to wait for the spotlight. But I'm sure all carry style players will love it. Oogie + Hellflower = OP.

DDOS Vs Fanatic.Raidcall

What a game so far.. DDOS dropping top raxes at the 20 min mark, but [FNTC]Era with his Magebane is just farming like crazy..

Follow the HoNcast at http://pt.twitch.tv/honcast


Well even tough era is on the 350 gpm it is over, DDOS just got bot raxes. Awesome warding job by [DDOS]getviolator. When you ally proper offensive warding with Nynfora's ultimate you simply dominate the game.


GG's dropped at 22 minute, great aggressive plays by DDOS. And those wondering how do you win Vs [FNTC]Era on Magebane, well that is how, aggressive pushing team.

DDOS 1 Vs Fanatic.RaidCall 0

It is a best of 3 so stay tuned to the HonCast ;)

And 2 - 0 for DDOS, Fanatic.RaidCall just gave up on that second game, it is sad so see a Rage Quit at this Level.. [FNTC]Notail, shame on you..

Heroes Of Newerth Legionnaire

Legionnaire is one of the strongest tanks/ initiators / junglers in the game. And also has one of the coolest Alt Avatar in the game "Lumberjack Legio", with the addition of this limited edition "Executioner Legionnaire" its just becomes over-awesome!

As I would like to make a small note, some times(most of them) is not advisable to pop up Barbered Armor as soon as you PK in and use Taunt, it may not be advisable because of all the armor bonus.. but well it all depends on the amount of armor you have put on Legionnaire. Remember that Taunt gives your a 20 armor bonus on level 4, and that Barbed Armor reflects 80% of received damage, if u receive 300 damage and your have already 20 armor you get 20 from taunt that makes 40 Armor, that represents a total of 70.6% Damage Reduction. So out of the 300 damage you only "get"  ~30% that is 90 Damage. Barbered Armor reflects 80% of those 90 damage that is 72 damage that then goes trow your enemy Magic Armor, lets say he has 10 Magic armor that gives a damage reduction of 37,5% so he only gets  45 damage at the end.. Not bad but if you use it after the taunt armor goes off you can get up 20% more damage back, of course you also receive 20% more damage but well unless those 45x3 or x4 kills the enemy you will be getting those additional 20% damage anyway..

Today while talking to my viewers on stream I noticed that most of them have no clue about how Armor works, about how much 1 armor will give you on Damage Reduction.. so tomorrow if i have the time i will make a quit tutorial about how the armor works and how important it is on tanks and over all heroes.

HoN Rally Guide

I found this Rally guide, it is made by Raawrr, the voice is not the best but he goes "all over" the hero, explaining how the skills work, how they synergize, what items to pick, and of course the skills level up order to get the best outcome from Rally.

You don't really need to see all the 15 minutes of the video since the last 5 minutes are some game-plays where you can really see Rally on action (not awesome moves, but well the dude only played Rally for half a day so well.. could be worse).  

Enjoy!

Smite Beta Keys- Giveaway

That is right we have 3 SMITE Closed Beta Keys to Give away!

Two of them will be given to HonGuideIt Facebook Fans, and one to the most creative "slogan"  for HonGuideIt (place it as comment on this page). The winners will be chosen randomly between all facebook fans on 16th August on the end of the day same goes for the best comment.

So like the Facebook page, and set your creativity free! You may join me in some action at this amazing new game ;)

Heroes of Newerth 2.6.14 Patch changes

== New Content ==
- Added a new Valkyrie Alt Avatar: Headhunter Valk
- Added a new Devourer Alt Avatar: Shibo Shinobi
* Released on August 13

- Added New Courier: Hamster Courier
- Added New Tempest Skin: Phantom Tempest
* Released on August 15

- We are introducing a third option for avatars: Skins!
* This new non-premium avatar option will be available at a reduced Gold and Silver cost from the outset!


== General ==

- Lock Pick has been re-enabled as a matchmaking option and should work correctly
- Added new voices for Artesia and Arcannis
- Fixed the buttons for First Pick in Banning Draft and Lock Pick
- Fixed slots being exceeded in public games
- Video driver restarts are now handled correctly
- Fixed skill being still active when you hit the button and then issue an order afterwards
- Increased texture slots, fixes textures sometimes not loading


== Item Balance ==

Blood Chalice
- +50% Mana Regeneration added
- Mana gained decreased from 100 to 85


== Hero Balance ==

Amun-Ra
- Strength gain increased from 2 to 2.5

Drunken Master - Finally Drunken master will be back on the competitive scene..
- Drink : Charges gained increased from 3/6/9/12 to 4/7/10/13
- Drink : Charges expire time increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
- Stagger : Movement Speed and Attack Damage bonus increased from 15/30/45/60 to 30/40/50/60

Engineer
- Spider Mines : Cooldown decreased from 7 seconds to 3.5 seconds

Martyr
- Sol's Conviction : Amount healed increased from 20/30/40/50% to 35/40/45/50%

Slither
- Starting Intelligence increased from 15 to 16
- Toxin Wards : Vision increased from 600 to 650.
- Poison Burst : Mana cost decreased from 200/300/400 to 175/275/375

Soulstealer
- Soul Burst : Damage is now based off number of souls; 20/30/40 per soul + 150/225/300 static damage within 100 range
* Damage decreases linearly to 0 at max distance. Snare and damage reduction apply with the damage now instead of separately
Latter on i will explain how does the Soulstealer Ultimate works now and the "why" behind the alteration.

Trench Warfare

Trench Warfare is the latest mid wars tournament(up to 256 teams) sponsored by Logitech and Beyond  Gaming. And there are some pretty nice prizes: Cash, Gear, and gold coins.

You can register from 08 August until 15 August in the Beyound Gaming website.


As for the play dates:

• Round of 256/128 : August 18 
• Round of 64/32 : August 19 
• Round of 16/8 : August 25 
• Round of 4/2 : August 26 

Prizing:

1st Prize $400 + 10,000 Gold Coins 5 G930 Headsets (Valued at $159.99) 5 G700 Mice (Valued at $99.99) 5 G19s Keyboards (Valued at $199.99) Total value: Over $860;

2nd Prize $250 + 5,000 Gold Coins 5 G35 Headsets (Valued at $129.99) 5 G500 Mice (Valued at $69.99) 5 G510 Keyboards (Valued at $119.99) Total value: Over $570;

3rd Prize $150 + 3,000 Gold Coins 5 G330 Headsets (Valued at $49.99) 5 G400 Mice (Valued at $49.99) 5 G110 Keyboards (Valued at $79.99) Total value: Over $330;

4th Prize 1,500 Gold Coins 5 G400 Mice (Valued at $49.99) Total value: Over $50;

Take your chance ;)

Vodafone melt down

Guys my vodafone sim card just stoped working. I have already requested a new micro-sim, so for the next 3~5 days all you guys that have already paid for TMM with me just send me your schedules to the same email as the paypal account.

Sorry bout that =/

HoNGuideIt is growing!

A few months ago I relaunched my blog, gave it a new/cooler name (HoNGuideIt is pretty badass) , bought the domain and dedicated more of my  time to it(not much because of University exams).

The truth is that I was not playing enough attention to all my followers, it is hard to manage my time between, University course (Computing engineering), part-time job, gaming Stream and my blogs.

But since i made the changes to the blog I noticed a daily traffic up-grow of almost 2000 page views, the standings now are at  4000+ page views a day. I know that this would not be possible without my stream fans and gaming mates, and I'm thankfull  for that. With the upgrowing traffic the revenues of my blog and stream have also increase leading me to give even more attention to the blog and stream. Since I'm on University sumer break, and i only have 2 finals/exams on September (requiring only a couple study hours a day) i will dedicate even more time (between study, streaming and my part-time job) to the blog. If the revenue  becomes "interesting" i may even consider University + Streaming + HoNGuideIt but i wont dream so high for now.

Anyway, congratulations to HoNGuideIt, that has already passed the 250 000 pageviews mark! A really huge Thanks to all of you!

I'm back to my studies, so I'm sorry no more streaming for today ;)

Heroes of Newerth 2.6.13 Patch changes

Change log 

New Content:
 - Early Access Hero: Rally;
- Limited Edition Early Access Alt Avatar: Warlord Rally;
- Premium Rally Alt Avatar: Joan D'Rally;
- Salforis Alt Avatar: Lord Thanatos;
- Limited Edition Jurassic Warden has returned to Newerth for one week!

 General:

- Pets are now deleted when the owner terminates;
- Items that drop on death always lose ownership, even when dropping off a pet;
- Fixed possible editor lockup when editing water.

 Optimizations & Bug Fixes:

- Fixed the courier from being pulled or pushed by abilities when immune;
 - Removed the animation from Genjuro so it does not stop any current channeling animations;
- Fixed Harkon's Blade interaction so that the slow state of Genjuro will properly apply if you attack out of Genjuro's stealth state with Harkon's toggled on;
- Fixed the reset effect making the dead hero glow for a split second when Null Stone goes off of cooldown;
- Arachna: Fixed Spiderling so that it won't die if Arachna dies while the Spiderling is in midair;
- Chronos: Fixed Chronofield so that units properly play their idle animation after it expires;
- Empath: Fixed Homecoming Stone/ Post Haste so it won't immediately cancel if Empath uses it while in her " As One " state;
- Nomad: Fixed Edge Counter so that it plays the correct animations for each respective alt;
- Pebbles: Fixed Enlarge from playing the rock skin shed animation when he is invisible;
- Pharaoh: Fixed an exploit with Wrath of the Pharaoh and Staff of the Master. You can no longer cast Wrath of the Pharaoh, pick up Staff of the Master (or get a courier/friend's hero to deliver it to you) and then use the secondary ultimate skill (hotkey "D") immediately after. The cooldowns will now be properly shared.;
- Silhouette: Fixed White Lotus Silhouette's Sky Dance animation so that it uses the alt's model instead of the originals model

So over all it is a pretty standard Change-log with some minor bugs fixed. The great news here is the new Vector Entity mechanism implemented for Rally first ability - Compel. Hope they use it on some new features in the near future, a new item in the like of Tablet of Command (maybe an upgrade for it) would be nice. But I'm quite sure the next new hero will have some ability using this new system. Lets wait a couple of weeks to see ;)

Rally HoN Spotlight

Well I'm divided.. By watching the spotlight and if we think a bit about the hero's abilities, it looks OP, i would go further, and say it YELLS OP. But the truth is that it only has a 32 win rate so far, and believe me this is not normal! Any new hero has 60% + win rate on the 1st few days. 

I didn't bought the early access, but I have played with a Rally on the team, we laned top (i was playing Pyro) and we pubstumped a Moraxus Pupet lane.. the new Vector Entity mechanism is pretty fun to play/play with. I really can't understand why there is such a low win rate on him.. lets see if it grows on the next few days..

Rally preview

Are you ready for him?
His ganking ability looks kinda OP..

Heroes of Newerth 2.6.12 Patch changes

== New Content ==

- Added new Silhouette Alt Avatar: Master Assassin Silhouette
- Added new Ravenor Alt Avatar: Storm Demon Ravenor
- Added new Bundle: Shadow Pack
* Get both Master Assassin Silhouette and Storm Demon Ravenor at a discount before release on Tuesday


== General ==

- Trees now sway with the wind
* Zephyr tested and approved!

- The skybox is now correctly reflecting off the water
* This can be disabled/enabled in the options menu
- Herodex simple view has been updated
- Witch Hunter now correctly gains the bonus from Staff of the Master


== Item Balance ==

 Lifetube
- Regeneration lowered from 5 to 4.5


== Hero Balance ==

 Blitz
- Quicken : Cast time reduced from 0.3 to 0.2
- Pilfering : Clearvision now lingers for the entire duration of a target being slowed
- Pilfering : Increased the Movement Speed draining from 10/20/30/40 to 15/25/35/45
- Lightning Shackles : Increased the radius from 200/300/400 to 300/350/400

 Dampeer
- Vampiric Flight : Lowered cooldown from 22/18/14/10 to 16/14/12/10
- Terrorize : Reduced cast time from .3 to .25

 Moon Queen
- Moon Beam : Stun has been increased from 0.6 to 1

 Scout
- Disarm : Cooldown decreased from 20/16/12/8 to 14/12/10/8
- Disarm : Critical strike increased from 1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0x to 1.4/1.6/1.8/2.0x

 The Dark Lady
- Dark Blades : Base Damage % reduced from 50/60/70/80 to 35/50/65/80
- Taint Soul : Increased Mana cost from 35 at all levels to 40 at all levels
- Cover of Darkness : Cast range reduced from global to 2500

Merrick 50% gold discount

Last day on the 50% gold discount! Grab it all ;)

Heroes of Newerth Slither

Slither is one of my most played heroes, he is a really versatile hero that can either support, gank, semi-carry or even become a little tanky early game if you fell like trolling a bit.

Slither as support -  well if you turn yourself into the 1st support character of you team, expect to die really often. Your goal in team fights will be to cast a good ultimate , cancel that mag/behemoth/tempest portal key and if you are lucky hit 2 or 3 heroes with spray.. the best slither you can play is when you help your "true" support with a few wards but still manage to get some survivability item at early/mid game.

Slither as ganker - your goal is to set up some ganks on your own lane, try to use a wise tp to get a kill on the other side lane.

Slither as semi carry - with enough farm at early game slither passive allied with spray can go massive damage, the fact that you take your opponents regen near to 0 allows you to take down most of the early carries, since the are almost all based on regen. Once you get those kills keep on farming and ganking, once you get that you are able  to semi-carry or even carry the game.

Slither as tanky - I have called this a trolling build but this it is a really good option if you intent on doing max DoT(Damage over Time) and take away the opponent team regen. They are better ways to play Slither but getting a Helm of the black Legion + Shaman headdress + Sol's Bulwark will make you pretty tanky.

Anyway i will leave you the the new spotlight so that you have more of an idea about the abilities synergy of all slither abilities.

 

Heroes of Newerth - f2p

Well HoN turned to a really free to play game, this rises some controversy an some dislike among the legacy accounts (guys that like me bought the game), but the truth is - we played the game for a long time on the p2p stage, we played the game during the free hero poll , will all heroes unlocked. So well we made a good use of the money already!

But that is not all. We will also get a free hero and a 2 silver bonus for every game we make. Is not much but well hon really needed this change, slowly HoN was losing people for LOL and will lose a lot more for DotA 2. Congrats S2 for the balls, but will it be enough?

Heroes of Newerth 2.6.10 Patch changes

The new patch is life since 13/07, the face of this patch is the new Swiftblade alt avatar "Bushi Swiftblade".
It is just awesome!As usual the price is set at 300 Gold coins or 3000 Silver coins. The other is a Berzerker Alt avatar "Demon Hunter Zerker" also with a pretty nice layout!

The general update is an update to the update system, avoiding windows administrator privileges to run the game and -repair and -update function.

As for what concerns to gameplay changes some heroes were reworked, the part that shows off is the serious nerf on Pebbles that damage reduction on Stalagmites... i really don't like it! The mana cost increase on Voodoo is another downcut.. the combo just gets really expensive,  level 2 Acid Cocktail(120 mana) + level 3 Cursed Ground (120mana) + Spirit Ward (200 mana), well a 420 combo at level 6 is a boomer..

Arachna:
- Spider Sting: Cooldown reduced from 80/50/30 to 70/50/30


Armadon
- Restless: Movement speed rescaled from 4/5/7% to 4/5/6%

Artesia
- Dance of Death: Cooldown rescaled from 25/22/18/16 to 25/22/19/16

Blood hunter
- Hemorrhage: Damage rescaled from 190/310/440 to 190/315/440

Chipper
- Rocket Barrage: Manacost rescaled from 50/60/70/85 to 45/60/70/85
- Rocket Barrage: Damage rescaled from 85/115/145/180 to 80/115/145/180

Corrupted Disciple
- Overload: Shoots a jolt every 0.85/0.75/0.65 to 0.8/0.7/0.6

Defiler
- Wave of Death: Manacost rescaled from 105/120/140/165 to 100/120/140/160

Devourer
- Devour: Manacost rescaled from 100/130/170 to 100/135/170

Electrician
- Energy Absorption: Damage rescaled from 85/165/225/300 to 85/150/215/280

Forsaken Archer
- Call of the Damned: Rescaled the damage of skeletons from 14-20/20-26/26-32/32-38 to a static 17/23/29/35

Geomancer
- Quicksand: Movement slow rescaled from 12/16/24/30% to 12/18/24/30%

Glacius
- Ice Imprisonment: Manacost rescaled from 115/125/140/150 mana to 120/130/140/150

Hammerstorm
- Galvanize: Armor bonus rescaled from 3/5/7/10 to 3/5/7/9

Jeraziah
- Sol's Blessing: Manacost rescaled from 125/175/250 to 150/200/250

Legionnaire
- Terrifying Charge: Movespeed buff rescaled from 100/150/200/500 to 100/200/300/400
- Decapitate: Damage rescaled from 300/450/625 to 300/450/600

Magmus
- Volcanic Touch: Damage rescaled from 90/130/170/220 to 90/130/170/210

Maliken
- Sword Throw: Range rescaled from 700/850/1000/1200 to 750/900/1050/1200
- Possession: Fear duration rescaled from 0.75/1.25/2 to 1/1.5/2

Pandamonium
- Face Smash: Bonus base damage rescaled from 30/70/120% to 30/75/120%

Pebbles
- Stalagmites: Damage rescaled from 100/180/260/300 to 100/160/220/280

Pestilence
- Impalement: Manacost rescaled from 80/95/105/115 to 85/95/105/115

Pollywog
- Voodoo Wards: Damage rescaled from 39-43/54-58/69-73 to a static 40/55/70

Sand Wraith
- Desert's Curse: Bonus movement speed buff rescaled from 5/9/14/18% to 6/10/14/18%

Scout
- Marksman Shot: Manacost rescaled from 125/175/250 to 125/175/225

Slither
- Poison Spray: Range rescaled from 600/725/850/1000 to 625/750/875/1000
- Poison Spray: Manacost rescaled from 90/105/120/130 to 85/100/115/130
- Toxin Wards: Wards damage rescaled from 9-11/17-21/26-32/34-42 to a static 10/19/28/37

Soul Reaper
- Demonic Execution: Manacost rescaled from 175/340/500 to 175/300/450

Succubus
- Succubus' Hold: Damage rescaled from 100/155/215 to 100/160/220

Swiftblade
- Way of the Sword: Crit chance rescaled from 10/18/26/36% to 12/20/28/36%

Thunderbringer
- Chain Lightning: Number of bounces rescaled from 5/7/9/15 to 6/9/12/15
- Lightning Storm: Manacost rescaled from 225/325/450 to 225/325/425

Tundra
- Call of Winter: Coeurl's damage rescaled from 23-29/43-49 to a static 26/46

Valkyrie
- Courageous Leap: Range rescaled from 630/720/780/870 to 630/710/790/870

Voodoo Jester
- Spirit Ward: Manacost rescaled from 200/200/300 to 150/225/300

Top 10 plays of the week

Awesome plays this week. That top 2 is move is just awesome! And is always nice to see a solo behemoth annihilation on the top 10.

Game Hon Giveaway

Heroes of Newerth is starting the biggest Giveaway ever!

From July 6th until July 13th S2 will be featuring the Game Hon event.

It is pretty easy to get the avatars and icons that are been given away.Play:

• 10 Games: Unlock the new Doll Master Alt Avatar     
• 10 Games with Friends: Unlock the Team Player Bundle     
• 25 Games: Unlock the Mega Store Bundle

 Team Player Bundle:

  

Alt Avatars

Clown Devourer 

Snow Zephyr 

Quadropod Tremble 

Ninja Bubbles 

Nightmare Madman 

Queen Arachna 

Mutant Parasite 

Queen Bee Monarch 

Geojuice 

Frostrider  

Account Icons 

Legion 

Hellbourne 

You're Mine 

Grenade 

The Soul  

Symbols 

Game HoN 

Team Player 

Club 10  

Chicken Courier 

Original Taunt

Mega Store Bundle

Alt Avatars 

Kangamonium
Infernal Behemoth
Logger Legionnaire
El Guantelete
Raven Soulstealer
Nomaddin
Pollywog Chieftain
Winston Charmadon
Demented Witch
Cyber Valk

Account Icons
I Heart HoN
Thumbs Up
Nunchucks
8Bit Scout
Legion vs Hellbourne
Custom Account Icon

Symbols
Game HoN
Gamer
Club 25

Rat Courier
Gore Taunt

In addition there are also some silver coins Bonus:

Consecutive Play Bonus*

Day 1 Bonus - 6 Silver Coins
Day 2 Bonus - 8 Silver Coins
Day 3 Bonus - 10 Silver Coins
Day 4 Bonus - 12 Silver Coins
Day 5+ Bonus - 14 Silver Coins

Social Play Bonus*

Play with 1-3 friends - 4 extra silver coins per game
Play with 4 friends - 10 extra silver coins per game

Have fun ;)

Prophet HoN Spotlight

As usual this will be a short introduction to the hero, with a small explanation on Prophet's abilities and item build.
On the 6th July Prophet will be released on Heroes of Newerth, and you will be able the buy the early access to this ranged intelligence hero.

This is my kind or hero. But lets take a close look at his skills.

His 1st ability - debilitate is a single target damage that increase damage taken for some seconds, its easy to understand that this should be wisely in fights taking advantage on major nukes. Invigorate Prophet's second ability is a small heal that also buffs the target ally with attack speed for the next few attacks, the colldown on this ability is is very small so you can use it often during fights, Persecution Prophet's 3rd ability is a small damage single target spell that also stuns the target for 0.5 second, and debufing the target making it get a mini-stun for each attack next to the cast, the number of mini-stuns are related to the skill level (4 at max level)1. Prophet's ultimate Shared fate, casts a large ring slowing the enemies and making every spell and auto-attack made by Prophet to propagate to every target inside the circle, his second ability also propagates to every ally inside the circle. You know can see how devastating a well targeted ultimate can be on a 5v5 situation.

For more visual information check the spotlight bellow ;)

Heroes Of Newerth - Cast Range Indicators

With the release of the Heroes Of Newerth 2.6.7 Patch, hon became a lot more "Newby friendly". I can see the move from S2 to steal some League of Legends players (And there is a lot of potential for it to work!).So if you are a regular LoL player and you have tried out HoN but missed the cast range indicator, you should give Heroes of Newerth another chance. With this move S2 took a giant step into making life easier for newbies.

As a reminder this is NOT a Heroes of Newerth Vs League of Legends rage post.

As some of you know I'm mostly a HoN player but i also play LoL and DotA II with friends. I would put HoN and Dota II in the same skill requirement level, and LoL in a more "weekend Player" level (this when you aim to be a decent player, not a pro). With this I'm not trying to say that HoN is superior to LoL, as i said before they are both awesome games, and i can manage to get hours of fun from booth!

Once i had a dream, combining League of Legends(LoL) community with Heroes of Newherth (HoN) game-play/ mechanics, and changing its name to Defense of the Ancients (DotA) with Valve on his back. What a massive puking rainbows game it would be.

HoN Lock Pick Mode

Since June 22nd Hon has a new Competitive mode for The Match Making System. Lock Pick Mode is intended to be the future of Heroes of Newerth Competitive scene.

One thing is sure, it will change the picking phase concept and strategy.

But how does it work?

In Lock Pick  the team captains(Blue and Pink) do most of the work. For start each will Blind ban 2 heroes(like in the TMM Mid Wars) giving a total of up to 4 banned heroes, in the next step each captain will lock pick 3 heroes, creating a 6 hero pool that will be used latter. Then a normal Baning phase will start with each team captain baning 3 heroes. The next step is a 3 hero pick for each team, and at last 2 heroes are picked for each team from the Locked hero pick pool.


As you can easily figure out this brings a hole new dynamic to the picking phase, taking counter pick to a hole new level.

Check the official Heroes of Newerth Lock Pick Mode bellow:

For now i wont give my personal opinion about the mode, let me play some more Lock Pick  games, try out some strategies. Well i feel more comfortable with the mode i will improve this post with some captain strategies ;)

DreamHon - Initial Coverage

In the last weeks I have been a bit away from the gaming scene. I have to study for my own finals but i cant avoid to give you some feedback from the DreamHon final.

As you well know the 8 finalist are BlackFade, FNATIC, TradeMark, Tt eSPORTS, Team GA, BYOC, MUFC and ORANGE eSPORTS.

The favorites are TradeMark and FNATIC But we have to pay some attention to BlackFade.


Anyway I'm supporting FNATIC, but they are in the same "skill rank" as TradeMark.

So far BlackFade got a win Vs Orange eSports awesome plays by LezzQQ with Bubbles, and FNATIC got an easy win Vs MUFC!

Stay tunned for the FNATIC  BlackFade cover ;)


UPDATE1:

BlackFade just got a crazy win against FNATIC while Orange eSPORTS got his 1st  win against MUFC, also Orange eSPORTS lost again this time Vs Tt eSPORTS.

From now on i will be able to follow the DreamHON stream. Expect a better cover of the DreamHon from now on.

Anyway you can check the Stream and more info at dreamhon.com.

Next stream TradeMark Vs Team GA. I expect an easy TDM win. Stay tunned for more updates ;)

UPDATE 2 :

TDM Vs BlackFade steam is up. Moonmeander already got a 1 0 1 score with Silhouette at min 2. Fear the men :D

Bkid with a 6 min Alchemist bones!  That gpm will it the 400 mark pretty soon!

There it is! 415 gpm at the 20 min mark. I have to say it is a really strange item build for hammer (lets not even talk about the maxed splash :D), alchemist as 1st item even before boots, but well played 1900g at min 6!

WOW BlackFade just got a genocide while TDM tried Kongor and BlackFade got mid lane melee Rax. After that TDM won the next Kongor fight (4 deaths for BxF 2 for TDM) and got kongor after that.

Awesome game! lets see how it goes. Anyway 3 genosides for TDM at min 30, even without mid melee rax it will end up being a win for TDM(17.500 gold lead and 22.700 xp lead for TDM).

GG's wp called, Victory goes for TDM. Carry Hammerstrong :D

The HonCast best 10 plays of the week (1/6)

This week was full of awesome plays, i simply love the top 1!

Take a look:

Enjoy it ;)

Avatar Shuffle Winner - Chose wisely

Scorcher Won the Avatar Shuffle contest. Now it is up for vote, to decide which  Hero will receive this new Avatar.

Chose between:

• Magebane;
• Pyromancer;
• Revenant;
• Riftwalker.

Fell free to express your choice here and vote at Hon's forum.

Ravenor Hon Spotlight

The 2 week mark "strikes" again and with it another hero is launched by S2. I'm proud to present Ravenor, a strength ranged hero(flux is not alone anymore!).

Ravenor looks like a funy hero to play, and you are mistaked if you think his 1st ability is OP. It is not like bubbles wave. You actually need to hit the target to blink and it does not wor in creeps so it cant be used as an escape mechanism. The shield looks like an easy way to pown your lane, and if you had the 2nd ability well byby squishy hero!

Take a look and see it for your self ;)

Hon Community Collaboration Balance Patch

Well the tittle says it all. A new patch is coming up tomorrow and it will be a massive one.

S2 gathered around with the community and reworked a bunch of heroes and items. I don't have the inside about all the changes, but I'm able to give you the list of reworked heroes and items so as some of the changes made.

Heroes:

*Andromeda
*Blacksmith
*Blitz
*Chronos
*Cthulhuphant
*Defiler
*Demented Shaman
*Gauntlet
*Glacius
*Fayde
*Hellbringer
*Jereziah
*Kinesis
*Kraken
*Madman
*Magmus
*Moon Queen
*Ophelia
*Pebbles
*Plague Rider
*Predator
*Rhapsody
*Scout
*Shadowblade
*Slither
*Succubus
*Swiftblade
*Tempest
*Valkyrie
*Warbeast

Items:

*Bound Eye
*Hellflower
*Pickled Brain
As for the item changes:

•  Bound Eye was really nerfed! Its is now impossible for the courriers to carry/pick up the eye, this makes it impossible to "scout" wards with the courrier or  to pick up a lost eye on the map, another nerf is the fact that if the other team picks up your eye it gets disabled and can no longer be used;
• Hellflower also got nerfed, as far as I know its duration was decreased by 1 second (5sec to 4 sec);
• As for Pickled Brain i can only guess! Maybe back to 1000g?

Hero changes:

• Pebbles ultimate no longer removes attack speed, instead it increases base attack time. But what is the difference? Its easy attack speed items will no longer drastically improve Pebbles attack speed;
• Valkyrie her javelin was nerfed so that is harder to hit a 5 sec arrow at lvl 1. This will change all the skill guides. I will play her 1st then see if it is really in need to rework the guide.
• Hellbringer this is really the funny part, 2 days ago a follower (John i believe) asked me why people don´t play Hellbringer anymore... well besides his ultimate he is pretty useless! this will change now. S2 will unnerf his dead boil, giving his original damage back. We will see Hellbringer back on competitive play!  

As for the rest we will need to wait until tomorrow ;)