How to play BH

Recently a trainee of mine (pacman) and myself decided to continue his courses on melee heroes, this time featuring Blade Hunter. We figured since this is the most popular melee around, it would be good for him to become familiar with important ideas such as charge cancel, how to combo and use potions as well as how watch the map and play in general.

Replays below. This is the only way I know how to do anything regarding replay sharing so I'm noob:

http://www.mediafire.com/?k75ld8hbzzy4k8v,zm4aom22vaxb53l,2u0qha24r4wszgo

FUCK YOU.
THESE WERE THE FIRST GAMES I PLAYED ALL DAY. I WAS FUCKING DRUNK ON FERMENTED CAMEL-MILK (no lie. for realz)
but really, don't watch these.

alex: you're a chicken-fucking taco.
oh, and actually, this is a pretty good idea, but lets post full games, not 1v1's. lets make some inhouses were we lane bh vs bh?

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

Well, with KrK to save you then sure, you are going to be just dandy

And fermented camel milk - that doesn't even exist. And dairy products don't produce ethyl you noob.

dumbboi the huns drank fermented mare's milk.'

but really, i'm embarrassed about the ratio of bm to skill i showed in this replay.

lol alex

i know that the replays in your hands were a potential danger to pacman... and you do it lol

lol, nah pac is still sex with his melees. Problem is other than him and possibly Artemis, there really is no other melee player in NA that we practice against so most of our playing has been adapted vs range heroes and that kind of messes things up when you do melee match.

I understand there aren't that many melee players, but don't ask me to play Blade Hunter.

LOL! YOU ARE SO FUNNY LATELY!!!

Alexander wrote:LOL! YOU ARE SO FUNNY LATELY!!!

yay I don't know if it's a good thing but whatever

Just think, why are melee heroes less popular (hint: it starts with an h).

Cyclo wrote:Just think, why are melee heroes less popular (hint: it starts with an h).

horus is melee too and gh, FF,
bh still good heroes, dont think evry melee has to be T1. problem on popularity is that many T1 heroes counter them: gaia, janne , hades, horus(havent play him in new patch so im not sure. and melee counter themself too.

Well numerically there are only 9 melee heroes among 38 choices.
I personally quit melee cuz charge cancel is extremely hard to master (I mean like Nostalgia's),
and without perfect use of it going melee becomes pretty stupid (let's not talk about Horus here)

Melee is unpopular because it is hard to use. Range heroes are generally easier to use because of controlling space, whereas melee heroes require, as KrK pointed out, good charge cancel technique as well as mind games since you have to get close to actually do anything.

lol i feel like thrallsa: play so much against casters that you learn to counter your counters...
then lose to a scrub like alex in melee vs melee

i need a mentor. ARTEMIS. TEACH ME.

You just had a mentor, BITCH.

LOLOLOL.

k About the melee easier than range thing. If you have a 2/1 health stat then it's hard to stay alive when someone attacks you. For example who's harder, Soul Hunter or Blade Hunter? I think it's simply different. With Melee you have to worry less about range since most melee heroes simply have aoes radiating out from themselves for damage. The one's that have more than 1 spell that requires aim are Force Fire, Orochi, Zeros, and Quakers. So you have to deal with charge canceling, but you don't have to worry about aim as much. When I say more than 1 spell that requires aim I'm strictly speaking of aggro spells, not Genesic/BH/Lur's ults. that they use the one time at the beginning of the battle usually. Almost all melees have high damage and are tanky, this makes them better for pvp but they suck vs. buildings since they can't range them like a ranged hero.

The reason I think they've gotten less popular was H for Hades. Hades snipes people just as well as melees, has a gay pylon for pushing, and is quite fast with booster.

But it also could be that (for noobs) they don't like melees as much anymore because of more characters that are anti-melee have become more popular. Janne(forcefields), Berr.9 (mines), Hades(pylon>melee farm), I can't think of others it's too early in the morning.

first off, my melee beats macanas hades 90% of the time.

second, you don't play melee, so why are you trying to judge?

third, yes... soulhunter is hard. he is ranked 2 hardest. duran is ranked 3rd hardest. with 2 exceptions tho, melee is harder

fourth: finalblow takes very good aim. what are you talking about? it is split into 4 quarters and to land all 4 means you are gosu.

5th: see number 2

on a side note a b9 with enough regen to spam that many mines early to actually stall u is sacrificing the early game completely... its much better just to buy a pot and counter pot the first melee pot since b9 has enough dps from a pot to match any of the first melee pots...

as for the whole character difficulty, its mostly what the person's like... for example, personally i find positional and support chars the hardest to play cos im really not patient enough and i just wanna kill shit (so i find abel,janne etc a nightmare to play even tho majority of ppl say they easy)

as for melee vs range aiming, melee combos are generally easier to land but harder to execute right cos that first hit needs to be spot on otherwise u fail and u go cry in a corner... (except duran in which case u got a bitch of a combo to do all game long if ur doin it right)

as for melee unpopular no idea in NA but in EU its cos everygame tehre are at least 2 melee counters XD

@ Cyclo

I'm not going to take it farther than this, but this is another example that you contribute more theory to the forums than I do.

1.) "It's hard to stay alive when someone attacks you"

Many ranged heroes have blink, stun, slow, trap or something to compensate what they lack in tank ability with positional play and defense. It's going to depend on matchup. Obviously something like GF versus BH is just retarded, but Abel vs Quakers (sigh, KrK....) is just pathetic the other way around. In fact one of the reasons you don't see too much melee being popular is because good players will harass the balls out of you in the early game and some melee like Zeros just get slowed down way too much. You have to learn how to reverse split well as well as getting your timings right for leveling in the first few levels rather than just standing back, attack move to split and farm from a distance.

2.) "Who's easier, Soul Hunter or Blade Hunter? With Melee you have to worry less about range since most melee heroes simply have aoes radiating out from themselves for damage."

Apples and oranges. Blade Hunter is not as easy as people make him out to be, and late game if he hasn't fed hard it takes ALOT of combos to own. In the beginning, sure it may only take one combo to kill, but that kill has to be methodically planned out and trust me it's not that easy. As far as the AOE comment - what are you talking about? Lur and BH C is *melee* range. Blazing is the farthest traveling autoattacking skill, but it got nerfed a while ago. Autoattacking abilities mean nothing if I have to get close to you.

3.) "The one's that have more than 1 spell that requires aim are Force Fire, Orochi, Zeros, and Quakers. So you have to deal with charge canceling, but you don't have to worry about aim as much. When I say more than 1 spell that requires aim I'm strictly speaking of aggro spells, not Genesic/BH/Lur's ults. that they use the one time at the beginning of the battle usually."

BH/Lur require aim. It doesn't matter how many times you use it or when you use it. It requires aim. If you play against someone who's good and plays positionally, charge canceling into their area and aiming on them with something like hook is not as easy as you make it out to be. And those aren't the only melees that require aim. Duran? X is a targetted skill, upswing is a targetted skill and C has to be aimed with correct distance to do the most damage. Genesic is the only one that lacks reliance on good aim and that's why he's popular among other reasons.

With that said, "you have to deal with charge canceling" is so much harder than you make it out to be. Charge canceling is the thing that separates good players from bad ones, period. It requires good aim and fast reflexes, as well as pretty good APM.

4.) "The reason I think they've gotten less popular was H for Hades. Hades snipes people just as well as melees, has a gay pylon for pushing, and is quite fast with booster."

Firstly, melee was never popular in NA. Lala, MishenEx (in the BoA), Hiphophammer, iDra (when he was trolling) were the only notable people who played melee in the old days, with to a lesser extent Aether, Sareve and Bill. These days you have pacman, myself, pseudoku and you could put Artemis in there as well. And that's it.

Secondly, Hades isn't the reason either. A few melee own Hades with good charge canceling and lane control. True other melee matchups are retarded (like Zeros or Horus, although I haven't tried the new Horus now vs Hades), but overall that's not the reason at all. If anything, it is the reason for the tiers. Zeros is tier 4 because he has low life and takes a shit ton of harass from top tier hero Hades, as well as doing low damage with AA.

5.) Hero choices are not why melee became unpopular. Melee will always be unpopular because charge canceling in and of itself is and always will be harder to master than 90% of the heroes other than SH or Zava. A melee without CC is practically useless, whereas most popular ranged heroes do not require that kind of targetted micro and clicking to have a good/influential result on their lanes (i.e. Abel), but rather just smart playing.

The reason melee and SH/Zava are difficult is because you need smart playing and good blinking/CC combined.

@SadFace

1.) Tell that to Barsark.

2.) Melee combos are not easier to land at all. Why? Because you have to be in melee range to do them. Unless you talk about DTS, but that's not really a combo. Which all of this takes us back to the point about needing charge cancel, so I rest my case.

@pacman

I agree 100% with you.

TLDR:

1.) Cyclo, you have no idea what you are talking about because you don't play melee. Trust me when I say you can't speculate about what it's like.

2.) Sadface, see above regarding the two points.

3.) Pacman, ysobad.

4.) KrK - I hate you.

SadFace wrote:as for melee unpopular no idea in NA but in EU its cos everygame tehre are at least 2 melee counters XD

Well, Abel and Janne both were popular at some point (Abel around September, Janne around October)
but after all in NA there aren't many who continues to use those supportive characters,
so there aren't many of "counter" factors for choosing melee in NA.
(Don't tell me FDF or B9 is hard counter to melee.
I would rather blame 99% of NA people all going economic builds.)

Hey hey hey hey................. My average pot count is like 20 per game

Alexander wrote:KrK - I hate you.

<3
I agree with your essay up there for the most part,
but things like Abel and Janne require a very sharp accuracy in both reflexes and map reading,
just to let you know that they are not the "easiest" heroes in CT.
You're bringing me up to a temptation to write a list of characters' difficulty in general lol but whatever.

Alexander wrote:Hey hey hey hey................. My average pot count is like 20 per game

I'm just saying in general. I admit you've gone through a little bit of style changes over the past few months.

lol. I never said Abel or Janne were easy. I don't think there are many "easy" heroes to play other than Fang or Horus, but you and I have talked about this before that there are some heroes that lend themselves easier to someone new/with less skill and ones that require top skill to play. I was simply saying that hero like Abel overall can make an impact in their lane and team with less micro/apm than a melee can since CC is required. I would say map reading is a basic skill everyone needs to have to play at a higher level.

btw on a note of the landing combo i mean once u get in range... obviously u get a huge headache of trying to get in range but once ur in range a melee combo is easier than a ranged combo providing u land that first hit cos there is little need to guess where theyr tryin to dodge if u hit them with w/e melee combo as ur pointblank...