Escaping the 1500 MMR Bracket

Having difficulties escaping the nightmarish realm of 1500 MMR? I bet you're just sick of being paired with a loser in every game right and if this didn't happen then you'd have little trouble reaching the next level of competition right? Well, no... It's not like that at all, and in fact having that mindset is your first and biggest downfall.

Ever seen someone with thousands of games played and still stuck in the 1500 bracket? It's not that all uncommon, and it's because of their arrogance that they'll be forever a slow learner. Do yourself a favor and begin a new journey in HoN today... be humble and accept your mistakes. Take responsibility for lost games and NEVER accuse another person because of a loss, no matter how tempting it is. Even if you got 4 complete noobs in your team who've never played a game in their life... deal with it and move on. Everyone was new at some point and raging isn't going to solve anything. Anger makes you think irrationally and cause you to do things that's worse for yourself and everybody around you. If you can have a clear head and act on things that will benefit you and your team, you already can achieve what 99.9999% of the population can't. Ignore what everyone else says when you make a mistake, HoN has quickly turned into Heroes of Nugget-heads.

Most everyone plays HoN as a way to project their ego onto other players. Ego is the same as self image, they want everyone to know that they're the best... that they're better than YOU and everyone else. This is why people treasure their KD ratio and other stats so immensely, to the point where they rage over a single kill steal. Stop caring for those things really... HoN would be so much a better game without those things. Everybody is playing HoN as their own thing instead of playing it like a TEAM game. At its core, HoN is a game heavily reliant on teamwork. Without stats like KD ratio, there would be far less games where everybody wants to pick a carry.  

Here's a word of advice for you. Instead of playing the game for yourself like everybody else does... play it and make decisions based on what's best for the TEAM... not your beloved KDR or GPM. This will make you a much more beloved player and higher level players would want you on their team more often. Buy wards, upgrade the courier if you have to, even if you're not the support. Go pick a babysitter if no-one wants to babysit the poor scout, and yes even if he's a noob. You have to do your best to support a noob scout, and if you can do that, then you're a great support and highly worthy to be put in the upper divisions of HoN.

Yes, some games you will lose and there's nothing you can do about it. It's not your fault, but you should always be thinking what you can do differently next time. Meanwhilst everyone else is blaming each other, you're actually IMPROVING.

Bad Luck Syndrome

Throughout my thousands of HoN games, I don't think I've ever heard someone say 'I lost this game because I got bad luck.' /internet sarcasm

Seriously, every single loss, someone just has to say 'Why do I always get paired up with the bad team?' and it frustrates me to see this. I've learnt over time to just ignore someone who says this and treat them as a LLL, low life loser.

Here's why Bad Luck Syndrome is a myth:

No-ones perfect and everyone has bad games right? Look at your recent games, and see how many you've done badly in. Probably you had one bad game every 3 games? Or perhaps every 5 games? Or maybe you're real good and only do badly once every 7 games. If you're any better than that, then reaching 1700 shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So let's be generous and assume everyone is quite good and only does badly once every 5 games. We're being quite generous here too. Now that should mean that in a game with 10 players, at least 2 should have a 'bad game' right? So yes you will probably almost always get at least that one noob on your team. You get some lucky teams and some bad ones. The real good players can win for their team in these bad situations, but in general, no-one is unluckier than another.

If you've played hundreds of games then the chances of you being significantly more unlucky than another person is EXTREMELY slim. I won't bother anyone with the maths here, but lets just say that it's near impossible. Even if you are extremely unlucky, you can be that skillful player who wins games for his teams in tough situations. But to do that, you gotta firstly take responsibility and MAN UP. Don't be afraid to fail. Take the leadership role if no-one in your team does. 

Experience is Key

Once you have the correct mindset, breaking out of the 1500, 1600 bracket is much easier than it may seem. You don't need to make a new account because that proves nothing. You gain at least 20 MMR for each win if you create a new account and you'll be paired up against other 'basic' account players. Instead, aim for 1700 MMR on your MAIN account. The only way you're going to ever improve if you keep playing and learning from your experience.

The more you play, the more you get used to the heroes and the more you start predicting how much damage your nukes and auto attacks do to the enemy. This experience will allow you to know when you should attempt at a kill and when you shouldn't. You also develop other things such as greater map awareness, knowing which heroes you should choose and items you should buy... 

As you get more and more experience, eventually you'll have such great map awareness and such a great understanding of the game that you'll be able to predict the enemies' exact plans and movement at times. You'll know if someone is jungling or waiting for a gank even if you have no vision of them. The very best players in HoN all have this ability of being able to think a step ahead of their opponent and it can only be developed through hundreds or thousands of hours of experience.

Learning from Others

A fast way of learning is by observing how the professionals play. Watch the HoN streams on twitch.tv and watch closely what the top players do in pub games. Each person has a unique way of playing, whether it's AngryTestie's safe style of play or Moonmeanders crazy pubstomp style, just copy what you like about how each person plays. "The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal." Every player will have a strong point and you should see what their strong point are and add that to your arsenal. And a side note: Don't buy codex on heroes like bramble unless you're actually Moonmeander. 

Common Mistakes and Misconceptions in HoN

Disclaimer: This is written purely from a Normal Mode 5v5 point of view

With the balance patch coming soon and big changes being in the air, a look at in game tactics is now quite redundant but for the memories of many games and to just rant about teammate's mistakes in numerous games, I find writing some whining and trash talk an educational guide a surprisingly good idea.

The atmosphere is tense. Both teams have lost their outer towers. All raxes (barracks) are still standing. After a significant lead early on, the situation is slowly becoming better for the other team due to their powerful lategame carry. As a teamfight begins and your enemies make minor mistakes and the situation starts looking good for you as you pick four of them off one by one without a single loss. With four people down your jungler heads back to the woods, your carry begins to static farm a lane and a support moves back to defend a base tower from three creeps while the final two members of the team are screaming to take Kongor.

Sounds familiar? Unless you have had strategically focused teammates constantly this is probably something that can happen at any rating below 1800, I admit that this is a pretty dramatic and exaggerated image but all of these happen constantly in games I play. As some people immediately noticed the correct course of action here would have been to move in and push down some raxes or force buybacks (taking Kongor is probably the second best option depending on a lot of variables though). Remember to try and focus down the melee rax first if you have the time and only when in a hurry go for the less armored ranged rax. A mistake like this can easily be heavily punished just by the game going on long enough for the other team's carry to take over the game or if the other team had been more midgame inclined they might have found a situation to push through your raxes and prevent your hard carry from reaching a peak in power in the lategame.

In case you disagree about pushing the raxes, hear me out on what's wrong with the other options. All of these can be valid options in some situation but I deliberately created a situation where I feel that these are all  worth less than pushing.

Back to the jungle: Here the main point about the jungler staying is to take the raxes but in general it's somewhat common for junglers to spend too much time in the jungle as it's often better take over an empty lane and possibly deny an enemy hero's chance of freefarming, just try not to push the lane and if someone who can't take neutral creeps comes to the lane you should let them take it and return to the jungle.

Static farming a lane: In this situation your carry could go farm but ensuring that the raxes go down, even if the enemy has a buyback or two, is the most important thing. A viable alternative is for the carry to go backdoor/creep skip/push another lane to get at least minor damage on a base tower or possibly soften it up for once the rest of the team is done with the other lane and ready to take it down.

Defending against three creeps: If you really thought that someone needs to go defend a tower against three creeps, you have a lot to learn, even if the tower is low health those little creeps won't take the raxes or force your team to buyback which is something a lot bigger that you should be doing to the other team. It can sometimes be okay to go back but remember that a tower can turn a lane's push the other way quickly and your job is to punish the other team when you have the chance so don't waste it.

Taking Kongor: The two people wanting to take Kongor are definitely onto something by realizing that you should capitalize on four enemies being down but in the example I gave the other team had the big scary lategame carry and would probably turtle the next seven minutes even without the threat of losing a teamfight against a token.

Seeing the same mistakes repeating themselves constantly has at times caused raged and annoyance for me and I feel relieved getting a chance to let this all out. I'm thankful to everyone who read this far and to make this something closer to a guide I'm going to add some general tips for different roles and behavior that will hopefully help make games more enjoyable.

This is lost cc: Seriously, there is always the possibility of a series of serious mistakes that causes the other team to lose. If your team won't pass that concede vote, no matter how difficult it may be try to remain positive and keep doing your best. I have had a game turn around from a situation where I just finished backdooring the first rax down from the enemy base when the other team took our final raxes before I could tp to defend.

Noob sw, never come with team: I've seen so many games that go wrong just because someone picks a carry and tries to be extremely aggressive before ten minutes. Carries are built to utilize farm and only the most flexible carries can go around that concept. A hero like Sand Wraith is close to useless before becoming a total beast after 25 to 30 minutes of farming and because of this reason they aren't to blame when you lose a teamfight 4v5. Even if someone makes the mistake of not being there for a teamfight when they should have, everyone that went into the fight without that noob has also done something wrong and sometimes you'll be able to handle the situation without them.

Empath: I was farming: Also a quite common mistake is farming on the wrong hero. I've seen an Empath taking jungle camps which is just wrong in so many ways unless they need a little ward money or are 50g away from finishing Astrolabe/Tablet of Command. It's completely fine to farm a little for your core items or to take some experience if you are close to a level that you need. It's also a smart idea to get what gold and experience you can from an empty lane if you aren't needed elsewhere, just try not to push it and let someone who can make better use of the farm take over. Stacking camps for your carrys is also usually worth the time when you don't have much else to do, stacking with the current creep leash times is done by pulling aggro at X:53-X:57, assuming you lead the creeps as far as possible.

Omg team, why didn't you go?: It's extremely important to assess the situation and decide when to go in as ten seconds could make a difference with cooldowns or an item brought by the courier. When you see the enemy team clustered together you may have a good chance for AoE combos, or if they are spread out you might be able to focus one or more heroes down to give you the advantage in the upcoming fight. It's important to be on the lookout for any situation where the other team is not ready but it's also possibly even more important to make sure that your team is ready before suiciding and being outmanned in a teamfight. If the other team is better suited for teamfights or you can't organize people to defend in time, it may be best to let a tower fall and have part of the team farming somewhere or trying to counter push a tower. This will force the other team to decide between pushing and defending/trying to pickoff the lone hero. In a situation like this it's usually extremely important to carry a tp.

All mid pls: Your team obviously has a limited amount of heroes and you can sometimes handle situations without everyone there. It's obvious that you won't need your whole team to gank a squishy support but you should also consider this for situations where you believe you can leave one or more people to farm. An example of this would be three of the other team's heroes pushing a lane with the other two too far to help if your team jumps on them with four while the fifth player is somewhere farming or as I mentioned earlier, your team might handle a fight while your carry was busy farming.

That's all for now, I will carefully assess all feedback I can and try to respond to it.

HoN Top 5 Plays Of The Week - April 19th

Scumbag Network  

Once again delivers an amazing video of the Top 5 Plays of the week for the 19th of April.

In this episode you will get to see:

• Moraxus: Sidestep God turning a 2v1 fight.
• Myrmidon & Behemoth turning the tide in a gank gone wrong!
• Rally, Magmus & WitchSlayer executing the perfect combo
• Fayde delivering amazing plays to save his support Demented Shaman
• Valkyries fast reactions and perfect juking turning what should've been a sure kill for Pyromancer

With a hilarious bonus clip, of the longest cannonball in HoN.

Pandamonium should certainly consider talking his jumping skills to an olympic level!

So what are you still doing here! Get one with it watch the video!

3.0.9 Patch Notes

== New Content == 

 - Added new Deadwood Alt Avatar: Toadwood Deadstool * Deadwood may be the only creature immune to the lethal spores of the Rulian Marsh, yet he has allowed them to take root and disfigure him so he can spread the destructive seeds throughout Newerth. We hope the Legion likes mushrooms on their pizzas...
* Releases 4/18/2013

 - Added new Pollywog Priest Alt Avatar: Penguin Priest * All hail the Penguin Priest, who has waddled from his arctic southern flock to bless us with his presence! If thou chooses this divine flightless fowl to battle the Hellbourne, thou shall kneel for the duration of the combat, for the sake of reverence and to not make the Penguin Priest feel so short.
* Releases 4/24/2013

 - Added new Hammerstorm Alt Avatar: Hammer Lord * The massive hammer and ornate garb of the Hammer Lords originated in the mines north of the City of Iron, when they were used to protect royalty in case of a collapse. Now they are reserved for the elite mountain warriors who can both wield the crushing hammers and parade the elaborate armor: The Hammer Lords!
* Releases 4/26/2013

 - Added new Arachna Alt Avatar: Arachnabot * Doctor Repulsor and The Electrician know that among the many phobia daemons, Arachna strikes the most fear in the hearts of man and beast. Now they seek to mass-produce a mechanical version of the multi-legged murderess, an Arachnabot even more cruel and soulless than the original!
* Releases 5/1/2013

 == Bug Fixes and Optimizations == 

- Updated all of the sounds for heroes to decrease memory usage significantly 
- Fixed how sounds load to lower memory usage

  Dust of Revelation 
- Visual effects now match the AoE more closely

  Arachna 
- When used in conjunction with Restoration Stone, fixed the second Spiderling on the same target so that it won't die at the same time as the first one does if the target is still alive when the first Spiderling expires.

  Armadon 
- "Miss!" popups no longer appear on top of Armadon when he uses Spine Burst and the projectiles impact invisible units

  Devourer 
- Gluttony's Guttling Hook animation has been optimized

  Gauntlet 
- Gauntlet is no longer able to break out of forced order commands (e.g. Legionnaire's Taunt, Dampeer's fear effect) if his Grapple hook latches onto something after the forced order is issued

        Lodestone 
- Rocket Drill's visual linkage no longer persists if he gets unbound before he reaches his target destination (ie, by Devourer's Hook)

  Martyr 
- Sol's Conviction aura shimmer sound is now much quieter when an ally hero is affected

  Pandamonium 
- Fixed a rare bug where his corpse stands up if he dies when he is in close proximity of his opponent during his Flick jump

  Torturer 
- Dominatrix Torturer's Chain Reaction animation has been optimized

 - Fixed the following heroes standing up when using certain spells just before death:
* Chronos (Time Leap)
* Grinex (Shadow Step)
* Gunblade (Grappling Shot)

- Fixed Enhanced buff icons sometimes behaving oddly on Mac and Linux clients
- Fixed ally cooldowns appearing as '-s'
- Fixed an error with the Alt Courier List
- Fixed an error with the status icon for players on the scoreboard
- Game Tooltips optimized and include the following fixes:
- Fixed the Combat type not showing up in the tooltip when hovering the icon of the selected unit
- Removed   the combat type line from the hero info tooltip (hovering your portrait in the top left) as the trigger it needs/uses doesn't exist
- Fixed the courier's name being outside the tooltip when hovering his portrait
- The tooltip from hovering portraits now resizes, thus the courier tooltip doesn't have a space at top where the player name should be
- Improvements to the Match Making Invite a person window
- The list of players now works from top down, with the search bar at the top
- Name colors work based on the option you have selected for the friends list
- The people you have invited are now indicated, this indication is removed once you close the invite a player window
- People in your group, even if they are in your friends list, should no longer appear in the list
- Fixed the double click behavior when inviting people
- Clan tags are now included on names in the list, and can be used when searching
- The Report A Player detailed info text is no longer reset when you collapse and re-expand the window
- Fixed the Report A Player window 'shaking' sometimes when expanding the detailed text box
- Fixed messages with '):'s not displaying correctly
- Fixed buttons on certain notifications not working if they aren't saved into your notification history
- Removed the repick hero button from test++, as the functionality for it no longer exists

*UPDATE* HoN Blog is Under New Management

Over 4 months ago, it was announced that HoN Blog would be closed and never posted on again. Andrew, the previous owner of this blog and a close friend of mine, had been on the verge of retiring from writing for quite some time, as he had important things to attend to in life. Whilst he still isn't sure whether he will stay active in writing or not, he has passed down this blog to me and I very much appreciate it.

From this moment on, HoN Blog will now be in conjunction with my other gaming website, Gaming Point. We will also be undergoing several major changes throughout the coming times, and as you may have noticed already, many comments have been removed. There has been about a thousand spam comments which has been manually removed and in the process, many non-spam comments were removed also and we apologize for the inconveniece. Any post on this blog that is older than 5 days will have comment moderation enabled. This means that for your comment to appear on a post that's older than 5 days, a moderator will have to approve it.

There have also been several adjustments to the blog and certain rules imposed which I would like to make clear. Please refrain from using swear words in the comments. I'd like this blog to become as professional as possible and we will be deleting comments with excessive swearing or harassment. Please no insulting other members as well.

Another new feature we've added to this blog is that the posts made on this blog will also be advertised on several other gaming networks. Hopefully, we can gradually increase our target audience and grab the attention of other gamers into our blog.

Are you interested in writing for HoN Blog?

Now that this blog is under new management, we currently lack writers who specialize in Heroes of Newerth. If HoN is your passion and you would like to write about it, and be heard by a large audience, then please send an email to: 

You can write anything thats related to HoN - guides, patches, alts, competitions... anything. However, you must have decent English skills and make none or very little grammatical mistakes.

Thanks for reading this and we will miss Andrew very much. He will still be around for now, but he won't be active.

TL;DR

HoN Blog is back and active

Comment moderation is enabled on posts older than 5 days

Avoid commenting using foul words 

We need some people to write about HoN on our blog, contact the email mentioned above in the post.

Feel free to check out the HoN Videos on our new site at Gaming Point.

So Long HonBlog, Welcome Kongor's Den

Today I officially announced this blog is closed and move to a new address. Also from now on, the HonBlog will be known as a new blog named Kongor's Den and will continue keeping the duty as your no.1 source for your daily HoN needs. But now, We also add the Garena South East Asia HoN stuff there, so we are welcoming the Garena HoN players.

A Short introduction about Kongor's Den, its still the same blog as honblog with the same design, but tidier with minimalist design. Coming up with addition of the Garena HoN contents, such as the events and coming up next is the competitive plays too.

We are also very excited to announce that we are now recruiting a new team members to help us fulfill this duty, you guys can read the full information in the new blog.

And the new blog will start with a fresh new contents, so it means the past changelogs from the 2009 closed beta times and all of the stuff will not be there, you guys can still check the HonBlog archives for the old stuff, like the HoN 2.0, Seven Deadly Sins, etc.

After all of this years, We are really thankful for you guys, our loyal readers and supporters for reading the blog and support us. And because of that We are adding the Garena stuff to help uniting all of the HoN Players all around the world in a one stop place.

Visit Kongor's Den now !

And Im sorry for the past few weeks if this blog is like dead with no updates and fresh news, its because im preparing the Kongor's Den, and I do apologize if the surprise is not really big and amusing, but please expect a giveaway in order to celebrate the new blog, coming soon !*oh also im moving the blog since the address is a little bit weird too fyi

2.6.31.1 Patch Notes

== New Content ==

- Added Pandamonium Alt Avatar: Muay Tigermonium
* From deep in Death's Cradle comes a new kind of warrior - a beast whose fists, feet, elbows, and knees have been honed into weapons far more deadly than claw and fang. This unstoppable fighter has entered the fray not to fight the good fight, but simply to keep on fighting for his honor and to prove once and for all that Muay Tigermonium is the greatest there is!
* Releases on 12/07/2012

- Added a new Maliken Alt Avatar: Young Maliken
* Winner for the second avatar shuffle! Young Maliken comes to us from a time before he fell to temptation. This is the mighty General of the Legion of Man during the great wars with the Beasts, the one man who could unite the disparate tribes of savages into an army like the world had never before seen - and who would bear the trophies of his conquests for his enemies to fear.
* Releases on 12/10/2012

- Added a new Chipper Alt: Chiprel Strike Squad
* When Chipper is not enough to handle your Hellbourne problems, who you gonna call? Chiprel Strike Squad of course! This trio of fearless Chiprels brings their brand new war machine to the battlefield to chop down the competition. These are the Chiprels you need...AND the Chiprels you deserve!
* Releases on 12/12/12

- Witch Hunter celebrates 180 days since release. Enjoy the new price of 250 Gold or 500 Silver
- Hook Madman celebrates 60 days since release. Enjoy the new price of 390 Gold or 1500 Silver

12.12.12

You guys, better get ready for this 12th December 2012