Carry.
In one of my recent games my team had a great start, but our Luna decided to go for Scepter as her first big item. We failed midgame miserably...
http://dotabuff.com/matches/538949821
As a carry, you must have great knowledge of the game, wrong items choice may lead to disaster.
Hard support by far is the toughest because you have to play defensive, buy wards/courier and basically just sit back while your carry gets last hits. Its hard to not want to jump in the fight and stay reserved.
Hardest thing I find is "when to ward" because I'll go out to ward river or jungle or enemy jungle, then "SURPRISE" I'm ganked. I will get screamed at for going alone, but the team forgot they were screaming for me to place wards. Can't hold smoke/sentry/obs and tp scroll all the time so somethings gotta give on item room. You can safe smoke and ward, but when you're out of room you're just out of room.
Best luck I have soloing MMR is just click on the hardest carry I can and follow him all over the map regardless of if he is jungling, or trying to solo farm.
Semi/Init/Hard carry is ez mode IMO. I can last hit like no other (except for razor his animation confuses me). Just my opinion. Hard supports are a rare breed in low brackets like mine... :O
Every role can be excelled to a maximum amount of complexity. Every role has some "hard" aspects, that differ much.
A decent carry must be able to farm fast and do not die. The hardest part is his decisionmaking: Do I particpate in teamaction, or do I farm. If I participate in teamaction, how do I do it? Wich target to focus, how to position etc.
A decent midlaner has nearly the same choices on when to leave his lane and start to gank. He needs runecontrol, the ability to farm, positioning etc.
A decent pos 5 support must be able to get xp and farm, without disturbing higher priorised heros on both aspects. He must be always in the center of the action and also try to not feed, while having low farm. He has to master many mechanics (optimal movment for stacking etc.) and have huge knowledge (warding/counterwarding).
A decent pos 4 must gank, jungle and be able to micro many units. you have to be able to play chen, visage and ench. Thats hard enough to micro so many heros. You need to know when to move out of your jungle and push etc. Midgame u lose effectivness and need to deal with it, without feeding and still doing usefull stuff.
A decent Offlaner must be able to get farm and xp in the laning phase. Hard enough against trilanes. In midgame you need to catch up on farm, while still playing an active role. BH, NP, Clock, LD all rely on some farm but can't be absent in midgame.
Mid lane is the hardest, gankers a close second. Ganking is hard, hard to communicate and cooridinate ganks with team many times, hard to successfully gank avoiding their ward spots, and it's high risk high reward. If you pull it off your team is way ahead, otherwise you gave up a ton of early farm moving into position.
Mid is hard just cus it's you vs one other guy, usually the most skilled will win, and you also need to balance between when to leave lane vs stay and farm or push. Most other lanes can be won simply by having a strongly lane setup, mid is not so.
Hard support isn't that bad. You typically have the strongest disables which are much easier to use than it is to position properly on a hard carry. Positioning with a support is usually easier than a carry since carries must be in position to get kills yet not get killed. Supports can hang back and play defensive or go aggressive with abilities but don't have to time right clicks so much.
I think position 4 is the hardest to play because of micro-intensive heroes, but really... all positions are hard. Carry players seem to have the easiest way because they're right-clickers, but it's all about the decisions they take during the game.
I know each position has responsibility and so on and chances are if your carry fails, generally you lose. I just think If your hard support fails in a pub and doesn't ward or counter ward and up the courier fast and those sorts of things it makes everyones job a lot harder. The hard support can almost set the game up to be a success or a failure.
I would go out on a limb to say a really poor hard support can go a long way to losing you the game from very early. That's why I say its the hardest as its the first place your team mates look if the game is going poorly.
All fair points so far though
Each role is the "hardest" depending on how you look at it.
Mid can be thought of has the hardest because it is a 1v1 match and you have to win.
Offlane can be thought of as the hardest because you are 1v2 or 1v3 and you have to not die while still getting XP and some farm.
Carry can be thought of as the hardest because you are responsible for winning the late game and have to make sure you dont mess up any last hits
Supports can be thought of as the hardest because you have to be able to know how to ward, counter ward, zone out enemies, rotate for ganks, and be relevant and not die throughout the game with no farm and very few items. Support heroes are also generally the micro heroes.
Personally, I would have to say in pro dota that support is the hardest role.
I do not agree with picking one role and say: It is the hardest.
Just take a look on every team, and see who has the influence: It differs. In some teams the midlaner is outstanding compared to the rest of the rooster, in other teams it is the offlaner/support/carry.
For me Xboct is the weakest member of navi, cause he tends to play russiandoto overaggressive.
For fnatic N0tail is for me the strongest, while H4nni is cleary not on his level. Same goes for era.
In DK Iceice, Mushi and Burning are a bit better, than the rest of their rooster. Burning meanwhile seems to be weaker, cause his strength in farming is not as important as early participation for carryheros. The role has changed a bit.
Every role fits a certain playstyle more, and even the roles differ with the current meta. Burning was way stronger when more hard guys were dominating the metagame, cause his strength in farming is just awesome. The current meta is just for more active carries and fit more for Xboct. The chinese teams did so poorley in TI 3 cause (not the only cause but for me the main reason), they were not as familiar with wisp. The nerfed wisp is not nearly as stronk, so supportplayers that did not cover him, but maybe dazzle or lich are now ahead.
If you are a more carefull and passive player (do not take the initative), carries and offlaners might fit for you better.
If you like to be on the battlefield from min 1 on and love playing aggressive, pos 5 is for you.
If you love microing a lot of stuff and be active pos 4.
If you like to duell and take the pressure of midlane, while constantly making the decion between farm and gank, take mid
I love playing carry, while a friend of mine simply hates farming. For me it is a nice contest against the clock to reach my XX asthits per minute. Also I love beeing full farmed and a demigod among humans on the battlefield. Nothing is more fun than playing a fat carry. I love the pressure and decionmaking lategame.
For my friend carrying is sitting on a lane lonley while the others have fun. He wants to leave the lane as soon as possible and take action.
Hard support is one of the most thankless, I'll say that.
DON'T TAKE MY FARM.
*spams need wards*
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WHY DON'T YOU HAVE MEK YET?
*died 5 times trying to keep the carry alive*
@9v1 burning weaker than his roster? Dude is a farming machine....
Xboct is not wealer than the rest of the navi line up. They want him playing aggressive
@9v1 "The chinese teams did so poorley in TI 4 cause (not the only cause but for me the main reason), they were not as familiar with wisp. The nerfed wisp is not nearly as stronk, so supportplayers that did not cover him, but maybe dazzle or lich are now ahead."
who is the champion of ti4? loled
In the laning phase solo mid is really the hardest if everyone is doing their job. The carry has to get lasthits but... its usually against no real pressure. The supports have to ward, harass, deny, stack pull... but its pretty much all PvE and support heroes have large advantages early. It is the easiest part of the game for them. Offlaners are maybe 1 v 3, but they don't actually have to do anything hard. They just need to leech xp and maybe snipe a few creeps. The mid solo however MUST constantly outplay while worrying about rune control, lasthitting, and rotations. He will be putting in his full effort and attention during this period.
In mid-game pressure ramps up on the offlane hero who typically has to make plays at high risk, often with skill shots. If the offlaner fails mid-game momentum stops. If you are behind its the offlaner who has to make something happen to bring it back. This part of the game is typically the easiest for mid-solo heroes who often have a level and item advantage. Micro heroes (usually 4 position) also have to perform at this point. If they can't turn their multiple unit advantage into something significant mid-game they fall off so the pressure is on them to make plays.
Late game is most difficult for hard supports because they must continue to disable and ward which was really fairly easy early when they were powerful. But now the slightest mistake will kill them and often lose the game by making the team 4 v 5 and lack vision. Late game is also the most difficult for hard carries because the pressure is on them to perform. It may seem like they would have it easy late game because they have a large item advantage, but they have to use that power to full effectiveness and this is actually much harder than lasthitting. ALL pro level carries are experts are farming, what differentiates them is their target selection and positioning in teamfights as well as position on the map. Because a carry has so much power lategame their choices often directly lose or win the game at this point.
Support, there is no possible way to argue it isn't support. So what if you have a shitty lane in the offlane, or you have to farm as a carry, or you have to gank as a mid. You have to do EVERYTHING as a support PLUS you are poor and squishy.
^^^^ Thanks wink agreed. Hardest role.
@ Bob
Yes I get that a lot "DONT TAKE MY FARM" Spams "NEEDS WARDS" like 500 times... derp I would have wards if you wouldn't dive the enemy tower while I'm trying to shallow grave you.
@ Relentless
Overall support has the hardest time right? Just pick one :P Don't dissect it into early/mid/late :D I'll sum it up: Support stack/pull creeps, early, ward early, courier early, deny early, harass early. Ward all game, typically is entrusted to buy support team items (MEK/PIPE/DRUMS/ETC) and has the lowest EXP/GPM out of the team.
It's just my opinion, but mid is heavily reliant early on the support warding runes on river for them to have rune control, and if the offlaner is having a bad time, its time to TP out of safe lane and go help your hard offlaner....
A lot of stuff falls on the support and if it isn't played out right early, the dominos fall into place for a loss. I think right clicking your way to last hits is way easier with a good support. If not then the game falls apart.
I said Burning seems to be weaker, not IS weaker. He just fits better with other carries. Antimage or Morph are not the carries of the current meta. For me burnings strongest heros (togehter with LD who is in the meta, but not suiting burnings style). Thats because the actual meta carries just fit aggressive carries like xboct better than farmmachines like him. And Xboct is weaker than Dendi or Puppey. Thats my oppinion on him. Since Ti 3 and during the tournament he made big improvments but sometimes he just rambos in like the average russian doto player we know from pubs. He is still an outstanding carry and player. But in a team full of outstanding players, he falls a little behind.
And I disagree with relentless on the "hardest" laning stage for mid. Sometimes you get an overaggressive lane against your carrylane, forcing the carry to play extremley cautious but still to be expected to get farm. lets say they run aggressive trilane with venge or veno as carry. Thats hard to deal with.
The Midlane is simply equal on chances. You need to control runes etc., but honestly: If the enemy has no extreme runeluck, and nobody interfers, there is no reason to die on midlane until ultis are up, if you have not failed the draft. So till lvl 6 its just last hit and deni, don't do stuipid thinks and be aware of ganks. With a decent rune you can gank. Its more luck, draft and the rotation of supports that should decide the mid.
Id say the hardest lane is the trilane, and still would not consider any role played there as harder. Every role in dota is hard in special ways.
Trilane starts with a huge advantage against solo offlane, because you outnumber the enemy hero by 2. So you are expected to kill him 1-2 times in the first 10 min. If you fail this or even give him a kill you allready lost the lane.
Also playing trilane vs trilane takes alot of coordination and cautious plays. Its so easy to fuck it up. If you give the enemy trilane a lead by getting 2 kills, you are in big trouble. If the enemy makes no mistakes afterwards, you simply need help from other lanes, or you get stomped.
Playing against a trilane has the lowest goals to reach, but they are also hard to accomplish. Just dont let them kill you and bind 2 supports there so they can't rotate. You are only expected to not feed. Everything else in the laning stage is a bonus. So you create a lot of space. If you get xp, you are allready way ahead. If you get farm its even better. If you kill them, you win big times. On the other hand, you have to take into account, that the goals maybe set lower but still harder to achieve.
@Flop
Corrected it
Well Caveman I really don't think hard support is the most difficult role. I pick it a lot because I do find it easier, less pressure, and more fun.
I think overall mid-solo has always been the hardest role, requiring a wide range of skills, mechanical skill, game knowledge, decision making... mid-solo needs all of it and has more pressure to perform on average over the course of the game. But while I say that... its not hardest by a lot. Its slightly harder than other roles. But the point is a mid-solo player can't be deficient in any area.
If you are talking about gaining MMR in pubs... then yes support is definitely the hardest role. Support in pubs has the extra difficulty because supporting people who suck is much harder than carrying people who suck or ganking enemy feeders faster than your feeders feed. Supporting people who are incompetent is very difficult. But for pro-games or even just real team games I think mid-solo is harder.
It depends on the skill level but in general, no, support is not hard. Take warlock or tide for example. All you have to do to contribute is press your ult at the right time. It's much easier to activate a couple abilities and buy wards than it is to maintain good positioning as a carry so you are getting necessary farm and not dying and securing kills.
Still disagree with you relentless. In pubs hardcarry is the hardest role to play, because you rely on others. You need a support to create space and zone enemies out. How often u end up with a support, that just sits in the jungle and doing singlepulls and let you alone with enemy ds.
The opposite, a support doing great job while having a carry or mider that just sucks balls deep, is not so often the case. Everybody can play basic carry (rightclick till enemy is dead). Also you have the option to take the first action to make your mider/offlaner/carry snowball. You can set him on the rail.
Its mentally more challenging to support, because it just sucks to support a guy, who clearly does not know what hes doing (even it is not as often the case as vise versa). Esp if you have a carry that overfarms and does not contribute to the team, while you get steamrolled and he could join.
Agree with 9v1 to a degree. It's very dependent on the skill level you're playing. At some really high levels a good support will get pwnd by the enemies and you still lose, thus support becomes the harder role. But in general I feel you on this one. It's not that hard to lane support.
If the carry sucks it does not matter how much farm he gets and how well protected he is. The problem is not getting the carry farm. I can and do easily and nearly always secure free farm and even early kills and towers for my dumb pub carry. But then he goes and uses that advantage to:
[1] get hand of midas and feed the extra gold with stupid decisions
[2] not attack towers, but dive towers until he dies to far in to save
[3] not attack anything at all in a fight but instead micro his position until the fight is lost
A good carry CAN find farm without wards or just place wards himself. I do it a lot. A good support cannot make a stupid carry actually use his attack. I see so many fights where a sniper with 500 dps items does nothing in a fight but cast his ult once, then die.
When I watch replays for the people who post on dotabuff saying "this game! why? why!"... I see low MMR carries 2k to 2.5k range usually that actually do zero attacks in fights because they are just walking and keep missclicking on the ground instead of a hero. It doesn't matter how many items your carry has when he does zero attacks or maybe 1 or 2 and then dies forgetting to click his bkb. I know 4k to 5k MMR ppl rarely see carries that bad... but really its quite common in typical pub games, the games dotabuff posters think don't exist but are actually nearly all games of dota played by all the ordinary dota players of the world.
As MMR goes up 9v1 is correct it becomes easier and easier to support. But when those you are supporting are terrible (average pub MMR is 2.2k) support is definitely the hardest role to make win. There are games where denying creeps or pulling creeps will make your 2k MMR carry report you. Some people do not know what do when creeps are pulled and simply die to the creep wave in panic. There are players from LoL who consider denying creeps cheating. There are games were stacking the ancients will get your 2k MMR carry killed because he won't know how to kite them. There are games where warding does nothing because no one EVER looks at the mini-map.
"The supports have to ward, harass, deny, stack pull... but its pretty much all PvE and support heroes have large advantages early. It is the easiest part of the game for them."
I disagree. Early is when the support players can win or lose the game for their team. It's usually the most difficult part of the game as support because you have to eeeeeeverything. You have to be ready for ganks on all lanes, make sure your team knows where the opposing team is so they can farm and not get ganked, stack, pull, harass, gank, secure runes and more. I'm not saying support is more difficult than any other role but saying that supports have it easy early game is just bs.
If you are against an aggressive tri-lane it might be hard, but don't you agree that supports have significant advantages in low level, starting items situations?
Stacking and pulling is not hard. Warding correctly is not hard. I mean you have to know how to do it... but its not like it takes some sort of special effort or skill. Harrassing an offlane hero does take some skill, watching the map to respond to ganks does take some skill but I find that this part of the game is when I am virtually certain to succeed as a support. Its later that I run into more difficult situations where heroes often have level and item advantages on me and yet I still have to accomplish pretty much all the same things I did early game when I was stronger than them.
So I think the early game is the easiest part of the game for support heroes.
You are correct in that support heroes usually are the strongest early. Playing support is not that mechanically difficult in the early stages of the game but strategically it's the most taxing time as a support (at least in serious games). So technically we are both correct. I find the strategy part of Dota the most difficult and that I would guess goes for most Dota players. There are many public players that have better mechanics than professional players but that doesn't mean they can just be picked up by a team on the spot. Even extremely skilled players like arteezy have struggled in professional matches because he lacked the competitive experience other players have.
One of the things I was always amazed by the most was when you played with an experienced captain/caller that could really read the game. He would know exactly where and when to gank, how we should move, when we should back and when we should do this or that. It's not perhaps what most people think of when you think of what makes a player skillful but to me it's quite important to me.
I think it's specific heroes not roles
Supports are all about decision making but until 4.5k mmr they really don't take much skill to play well
Some heroes naturally win their lane and some are just easy to play
The most easy role is definitely mid. You somehow have to battle last hits with the opponents mid but it's not as bad if you miss some of them, you can just win your lane with your skills. Your only role is to not lost ur lane by dying repeatidely, if your carry has a good amount of farm and your offlaner too, no matter how bad you lost the mid you will still win the game. In mid game you will procure an advantage to your team with your superior exp and gold, and late game you dont really have that much impact.
Just to illustrate here is my last pudge game :
http://dotabuff.com/matches/537657609
I was 10-1 (1 was a deny) and team was about 13-2 when we start losing, early I killed their mid (drow) 4-5 times, I ganked left and right, but somehow our others lanes was so screw and my teamates so bad that we kept losing team fights.
A huge factor to the win is usually if your offlaner dominate his lane, get farms and kill their carry, then no matter how bad you lost mid you'll win the game.
Relentless in one thread you rant about how supporting in lower brackets makes it hard to win, then in next post how support lane is the easiest role. Well which is it? Support might be harder to win with because you have less overall impact but it isn't that hard to play. Playing a carry properly I feel is harder to play.
The position where you try and take on more than your role, which is going to have to be every game, or almost every game in pubs.
I use to care a lot more in D1, to the point of buying couriers and wards for myself since no one else was going to do it.
I kind of slacked off here on D2 because uhh... for some reason there's some standard for buying courier/semi-warding (60% of the time) (30% of the time being right) in ranked CM mode.
It really depends on your lane/all lanes, how good your team is and how good the other team is. On average though, I prefer to carry. Supports use up too much gold on consumables on a consistent basis to be of greater use in terms of "ending" the game.
Their presence is absolutely important, but still bases itself around creating space for carries, babysitting carries, everything for the carry.
So when your carry fails, you're more likely to fail.
But if you've made it to the stage where your supports are failing yet you're not, I feel as though you should have a bigger chance.
I'm also the person to never quit, I don't even bitch that often. Whereas if I'm supporting a crybaby, it's going to be real hard for me to be even nicer to them, and they're probably not going to co-operate much.
@ Albinoblackbear
I think you've been too lucky in your carry role having many supports babysit you too much. I bet you'll just breeze through to 5K MMR going those ez support roles.... snore.
Yes I agree mid is the easiest by far. I'm tired of supporting someone else do it :P I'm taking mid and put up my beach towel and paracel up and sip on a coconut drink with sniper mid.
Where is the support love? I had a thread about an "ALL CARRY" game and barely had anyone say "oh yeah i've had it work once" and post a game over it. You carry turkies are spoiled by my hard work.
@caveman
Lol totally not the case. I go through hell and back in my head like 80% of the time.
I guess I'm somewhat masochistic if I enjoy Dota 2 this much.
But the other times where we lose by miles or win by miles, super super boring. Unless I learn something... but generally it's just picks.
Support roles are hard as well, I think equally hard, I just think one has more capacity than the other since the other is based around highlighting the previous!
But back in D1 APEM it was always almost an all carry team vs all carry team. They'd all complain at the beginning of the game, "well no supports again gg".
I hate supporting assholes though... how do you do it? Like I think I even got banned that game...
I last picked veno, bought smoke/sentries/tango/rop
as they're already saying I probably suck
then we try to FB spectre top with veno/ES/luna, but spec does the hill/dagger trick where she skips to the other-side of the map that we can't get to. as I'm pulling lane and watching for next FB timber finally says - no tp? after he dies on our team
ES says "sorry don't have one"
i go to the shop and buy two, so that i can help him the next time if i can
we eventually kill spec, seconds after, timber dies, gets mad
ES says, "should i tp?"
timber says, "no point they already took tower"
so i go pull the lane again and he dies and says, "supports shoulda tp'd before tower went down"
it's like dude... either ping or say something before it happens because i dont have two freaken pair of eyes
Wookie I am talking about very different situations. In low MMR winning games as a hard support is the most difficult because, just like you said yourself, you have a small impact. Helping a bad player start well won't make him be good. Putting him ahead does little to prevent the bad player from feeding later anyway.
In the other post I am describing how support heroes have inherent advantages in the early game. This is the easiest part of the game for them to play.
Support is neither the "hardest role' nor the "easiest role". Each role had its own advantages and disadvantages. I think overall mid is slightly harder than other roles. But its a not going to be the hardest position every game or in every part of a game.
@ Craven
Yeah I feel ya there. Communication breakdown is the #1 failure. A lot of the weight really falls on the support as you see.
On another part, I get sick of ES attempting to carry when he is a slot 4 most of the time and should assist on taking part in ward/tp/courier duties. Makes me throw up when I see him attempt to save all his cash for carry items. Makes me upset! :(
EarthShaker: But I can crit. hit for over 2k with enchanted totem! I must get AC and Daedalus! I must be a carry!
Me: But I'm stuck as ward bitch while you have a ton of cash, and haven't been able to afford mekanism until the 30 min mark. Thanks doucher!
Warding and pulling against a solo offlaner is simply not enough. You have to kill him. The offlaner faces three heros, that he forces to be on his lane. If he keeps this for several minuts and does not die, the trilane has allready lost. Thats why ds is nearly always banned. He is so fucking annoying to handle, he can stay in safe distance, get xp and farm. He does not need to block the pull, cause he can get ionshell on your pull.
i think hard supports do big impact on the game and they are responsible for Vision / Babysit /stack/ Suicide to save a carry / early roams mid can boost their mid hero a lot and thats an overall big impact on the game.
thats my opinion... Never Been A Support but i really respect true hard support players
Ahaha yeah, but I prefer carrying pubs as I explained, but I still think both roles equally important. But you gotta have thickskin to deal with those assholes.
I dont think any role is actually harder than everything else, but lets say you have one person better than the others in the stack, what role would you have him play (lets say he can play everything)
I think
-If its a really trench tier game, its carry. Below 3k just let him play carry (or he can mid, but carry is fine too.) Carry player can just have a friend playing a support with stun and ping where to ward and tell when to stun, thats basicly what trench supports have to do to win. If carry takes all possible last hits, he will have a lot higher farm than enemy carry, who will miss a lot.
Support is easiest here.
-If its 3-5k, go mid mostly, thats where you can do most. Im not sure whats easiest here.
-If its a pro game, Im not saying it has to be support, but you dont want anyone less good on a support, when you will play literally without items and has to be at the exact best position to not feed at all times. Carry falls back in difficulty there, couse everyone should know the mechanics a carry should know, and its all about decision making, but your whisp can tell you what to build or go in / go back, you dont have to decide alone, if you cant. as support, your carry cant ping where you should stand.
I see carry as easiest here, but Im far from being pro, so its just what i see, it can be the opposite.
Im not saying offlane isnt hard, its just you cant save the game if other 2 lanes feed hard and you cant completly shut down enemy carry alone most of the time. There are those games when the best player on offlane is good, if the carry can take the free farm, but the offlane player can farm up later better than if it would be the other way around, its best if hes offlane. I mean, if the other player (whos now carry) would be offlane, then they would have a farmed carry (they have it now still) and an underfarmed offlaner. Then better player goes offlane.
it depends on multiple circumstances
Do you have a vagina???Yes????If so, then that means you dont have the balls to play a 1-3 role and you should just be a ward bitch.
etc.
^ Its not that... I just dont need the big numbers to grow my e-peen and most guys dont wanna play support, someone has to. I dont mind playing it. It was same in wow, most girls played healer, though it was most of the times actually harder than a damage dealer who just had to press the same rota over and over again while standing still / doing same movements as healers.
You might think you are choosing to be a support but it is actually just your ovaries deciding for you
@9v1 That's why I hate trilane in pubs. Usually they're setup wrong but do it by default cus someone demands solo offlane, and then usually the support aren't coordinated enough to score a kill and you all end up underleveled.
@Sampson
Chauvinist detected.
P.S. Was it your penis who told you to play Bounty Hunter? =)
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I know each role is unique but which role is the hardest to master?
My opinion is hard support... All the work and death, struggle, harassing, denying. You get little to no farm, minimal items, no glory. Hard supports eat a lot of shit.