[FAQ] What you need to know

[FiveS]

HoN FAQ: Crossing the border from mediocre to decent

So.
Since I offered Hinsky a bit of help in getting decent at HoN I've had a few pms from people on steam pretty much asking me the same questions. These are pretty much the same questions I see a lot of the time being asked on the forums and since I'm thoughtful I'm going to answer them all, right here. If you have any supplementary queries feel free to post them and I will endeavour to answer them to the best of my ability.

1. How do I find a team of decents/good people to play with?
2. How do I improve my game?
3. How can I get more competitive?
4. Who can help me?
5. What's happened to Replays?
6. I keep getting bad data/broken friends list/match stats/crash errors
7. How can I tweak/modify my copy of HoN?
8. How do I build X hero or use Y item?
9. How do I juke?

1. How do I find a team of decents/good people to play with?
Most people have been in this situation. You play a fair bit of HoN and you're keen at getting good, but you either don't have enough people to play with or the people you do play with are shit and inconsistent. The key to finding people at your skill level to play with is to play with a lot of people. Make a thread on gotgames forums advertising that you're keen to get good and give everyone your steamid. It seems obvious but if you get a bunch of people on steam soon enough you will find people that you enjoy playing with.

Another way to find a team is to try the Heroes of Newerth forums themselves. Although I would suspect this to be less effective, it's worth a shot if nobody on gotgames likes you.
HoN Forums - Looking for Team

2. How do I improve my game?
Getting jesus isn't easy, and you won't get jesus if you think you are jesus. I'm not jesus* and let's face it there's nobody on these forums who is jesus. Getting good at HoN is phenomenally difficult and take a lot of effort and practice. However, getting decent at HoN does not. By doing a few things you can make your game improve remarkably.

1. Stop playing Easy Mode.
Easy mode was not Dota and it isn't hon. If you want to play with decents you're going to have to learn how to play Normal Mode, as every competitive game is played as such.

2. Watch Pro Replays
You will learn much more quickly from watching than you will from listening. Watching a pro replay and seeing how they farm/juke/gank etc is an invaluable resource in improving your game. As well as this, groundbreaking strats are usually invented by the top tier teams, and watching their replays can help you steal them.

Pro replays can be found here. Just search for chu`/tabako/angrytestie etc etc etc and see how them/their teams play their games.


There are two ways to retrieve Replays

The Ingame Way
1: Copy the Match ID from the Match Stats Page

2: Open Heroes of Newerth and log in online, click the Match Stats, click on the Match ID field and pres CTRL+V to paste the match ID you just copied, press Fetch, then press Download Replay to download it. Once the downloading is finished, you will be able to watch the replay, by pressing Watch Replay.



The Download Way
1. Click the "Download Replay" button when on the Match Stats page in your browser

2. Copy the replay file to the specified HoN folder depending on your OS. If the replays folder is not there then just create it.



3. Run HoN and you will see a "View Replay" button


4. Open the Replay viewer and select your replay

source:http://www.gamereplays.org/heroesofn...-watch-replays

3. Play people who are better than you
Fact: You will stay shit if you keep stomping people shitter than you. Just like watching the Pro replays, watching is the best way to learn. You aren't learning anything by beating clueless idiots, and not only do you learn more by vsing people who are on your level/better than you, you also get a far greater feeling of satisfaction if you beat them after a difficult game.

4. Be open to criticism
Fact: As good as you may think you are, you do and you will make mistakes.
If someone criticises you for doing something wrong, don't immediately cast it off as irrelevant. Learn from your mistakes and be open to criticism, it's how you get better.

5. HoN Forums
Balance Discussion
Strategy
Fact: Reading up about how the HoN metagame works/ what the various strategies are will make you a better player. Pretty self explanatory here. There are a lot of good players on the HoN forums posting accurate stuff. However, there are also a lot of shit noobs posting shit stuff, so take everything written there with a grain of salt, as the person may not know what they're on about.


3. How can I get more competitive?
Considering the game is at this stage only in Open Beta, competition in HoN is understandably infantile. The only steady competition at the moment in Australia is the Cybergamer Ladder, found here.

To get the low down on where HoN is going competitively, you should frequently check out the Competitive section of the HoN Forums.

4. Who can help me?
Getting a HoN mentor/friend to help you out with the finer points of the game is a great step. There are many accomplished players on these forums and on the Heroes of Newerth forums themselves, especially the Ask a Question, Get an Answer thread. If you need someone to help you out just make a thread or throw someone a PM and I'm sure they'd be willing.


5. What happened to Replays?
Replays and Match Stats as well as stat updates are staggered/down at the moment due to the release of HoN into retail.


6. I keep getting bad data/broken friends list/match stats/crash errors
Gotgames isn't the place to post these errors. The HoN forums have a comprehensive list of quickfixes and an accomplished team ready to help you fix whatever problem it is you have. The technical support section can be found here.

7. How can I tweak/modify my copy of HoN?
Modding your HoN client can give you a big edge when it comes to competitions, and what's great about it is it is 100% legal.

HoN Modification Forums

First you'll need HoN Modification Manager
After you have that installed, it's as easy as choosing from the available modifications and installing them accordingly. The ones I use and find most beneficial are:

• Better Buff/Debuff Indicators
• Last Hit Assist
• Spell Channeling Bar

8. How do I build X hero or use Y item?
Posting a thread on Gotgames or on The HoN Strategy Forum will enable you to get a perspicacious insight from higher tiered players on how you should build certain heroes/use certain items.

9. How do I juke?
Juking is basically using the map's uneven ground and line of sight to your advantage in getting away from enemy heroes. Below is a map showing all of the hidden passages you can go through to juke on Forests of Caldavar.




*I am actually Jesus.

[jamiec]

i dun geddit

[creamy]

dun work~

[FiveS]

work in progress.
If anyone knows the button to change the text editor thing so you can see what your text looks like as you write it rather than seeing all the bbcode tags, i'd appreciate it
edit:foundit

[diz]

dude...

you try so hard.

[FiveS]

dude...

you try so hard.

Thanks

[Tom[wh]]

Usually you type the thread out before posting it.

edit; Actually I'm not sure

edit2; Actually yeah you do

[FiveS]

Usually you type the thread out before posting it.

edit; Actually I'm not sure

edit2; Actually yeah you do

I won't have time to type it all out right now and if I don't start now I won't want to start later.

[odd]

FiveS wanna HoN?!

[FiveS]

FiveS wanna HoN?!

gtg in like 20 cuz

[Jay Jay]

NOT COOL FIVES NOT COOL

[FiveS]

HAHA WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED

[Tom[wh]]

Fixed your failure

[FiveS]

Fixed your failure

Thanks man. How does that happen?

[Tom[wh]]

Not entirely sure tbh - Just a glitch or you hit a button :x

[FiveS]

Not entirely sure tbh - Just a glitch or you hit a button :x

super lame. cheers.

[Lock]

Something i would like to see is a big gigantic map with all the juke/hiding spots in the trees that people might not know about.

[geronimo]

really great read, great to see fives helping out the community to bring himself and others from low-tier to "decent". Be good to see the next few hon tournaments with a higher skill level due to these types of articles.

[diz]

really great read, great to see fives helping out the community to bring himself and others from low-tier to "decent". Be good to see the next few hon tournaments with a higher skill level due to these types of articles.

fkn LOL!

[Azza.]

Good start, hopefully you actually finish this one.

[deathdoG]

WE ALL FUCKING HATE YOU JUST FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[diz]

WE ALL FUCKING HATE YOU JUST FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

[FiveS]

Boys boys boys.

This thread isn't for you. You're all too good for this.

[Frogsplat]

"know one one gotgames is jesus" thats debatable

[FiveS]

"know one one gotgames is jesus" thats debatable

Please remove the quotation marks as that is nothing close to a semblance of a sentence.

[Innes]

know
lol
one one
lol

[omega]

guess this is what you do when your a pasty acne ridden michael jackson lookalike

[FiveS]

guess this is what you do when your a pasty acne ridden michael jackson lookalike

What is what you do when your a pasty acne ridden michael jackson lookalike?

[FiveS]

done~~

[deniM]

good read looking at a few links now

but do you know any websites that have video guides except for the channel on youtube which only covers about 5 heroes ?

i dont understand it when i read it but when i watch a video its mroe helpful for learning the hero

[FiveS]

good read looking at a few links now

but do you know any websites that have video guides except for the channel on youtube which only covers about 5 heroes ?

i dont understand it when i read it but when i watch a video its mroe helpful for learning the hero

I don't know any websites that offer that sorry. Best bet would probably be to get familiar with the feel of the hero, then read one of the Premium guides on HoN forums and then watch a few pro replays of that hero.

[Rivers]

good read looking at a few links now

but do you know any websites that have video guides except for the channel on youtube which only covers about 5 heroes ?

i dont understand it when i read it but when i watch a video its mroe helpful for learning the hero

Like fives said. Watch replays of pro players (preferably from scrims instead of inhouse games because some of the builds/roles they do in ih can be ridiculous and only someone as good as them could pull it off) and you will really learn lots.

[FiveS]

Like fives said. Watch replays of pro players (preferably from scrims instead of inhouse games because some of the builds/roles they do in ih can be ridiculous and only someone as good as them could pull it off) and you will really learn lots.

YES.

Should have mentioned this.

If you see a 1900+ player go stats frenzy on blacksmith and rape, that doesn't mean you should start playing stats frenzy, just that that guy is awesome.

[Lock]

Something i would like to see is a big gigantic map with all the juke/hiding spots in the trees that people might not know about.

thats a good idea, that should be implemented.

[FiveS]

thats a good idea, that should be implemented.

On it.

[SASQUATCH]

It might be an idea to add some notes on how exactly you download and play demos, apart from that it's look really good. Nice work fiveS.

[FiveS]

It might be an idea to add some notes on how exactly you download and play demos, apart from that it's look really good. Nice work fiveS.

Done and Done

[jamiec]

YES.

Should have mentioned this.

If you see a 1900+ player go stats frenzy on blacksmith and rape, that doesn't mean you should start playing stats frenzy, just that that guy is awesome.

I do stats frenzy when i'm ganking/tanking in ganks with blacksmith, i'm pretty awesome.

[FiveS]

I do stats frenzy when i'm ganking/tanking in ganks with blacksmith, i'm pretty awesome.

I mean
1.stats
2. frenzy
3. stats
4. frenzy
5. stats
6. frenzy
7. stats
8. frenzy
9. ulti
etc

[jamiec]

I mean
1.stats
2. frenzy
3. stats
4. frenzy
5. stats
6. frenzy
7. stats
8. frenzy
9. ulti
etc

yeah what's your point that's what i was talking about..