My First Game as Carry

With all the DotA I play (which, really isn't a whole lot imo), I generally only play 2 roles; support (more specifically, the selfless 5 who literally pisses people off because he buys -all- of the wards) or occasionally an offlaner (read: Dark Seer, lol). The point is that I just don't care to hit creeps very often.

Months ago, I said I was gunna actually start playing carry and mid. The plan was, well, to just fail. Makes no sense to play the game and have little-to-no clue how to actually do anything else. Aaaaannnnndd.. after putting it off in lieu of learning a buncha other supports (WHY DIDN'T I ACTUALLY LEARN LION WHEN I STARTED LOOL) I finally played my first game today. (On my "I'm gunna try dumb stuff" account, for anybody who's gunna try to look at  my dotabuff for it).

I played Gyro. Just like every nightmare and every time I "try not to support", everything that could go wrong went wrong. I'm sitting in a lane with a friggin' Earthshaker behind me, in the dark, against a Viper and a PA. Needless to say, I didn't hit creeps for a while. I easily didn't die, and actually baited them into diving tower and getting a double kill for their efforts (well, they got my ES, but he was a noble sacrifice at that point). Also didn't get a flying courier 'til 22 minutes in. Typical "Dogy's-not-supporting" game for me.

After everybody came to party in my lane and we dropped the tower, everybody left. And it was time for me to do the thing I imagined being bad at; hitting creeps. In retrospect, I was pretty bad.. as to be expected. I went Aquila > Phase > Morbid, and I think I got it at a decent time considering I had Lane Winning Snake in my lane (in retrospect, I think I shoulda started double tango and tried to get a basi, but I mean I didn't die sooo). After I got it... I kinda just... sat in the jungle for a while.

Like, I didn't wanna push anywhere 'cause I didn't have wards for a while. I couldn't farm my entire jungle because I had a Shadow Friend (yes, Friend) who'd occasionally come take 3 camps, then go across the river and kill 3 people or something. So I just kinda sat around hitting what I could and eventually stacking ancients for myself.

It didn't cross my mind 'til after my BKB that I should send the hammer out first. Like, I knew of the strat before and it crossed my mind, but it didn't strike me as "relatively important" 'til after the fact. Best believe I got my demon edge ASAP when the time came. HoD > BKB > MKB (there was a PA) > Satanic. Pretty standard for what I know, but I justified them in my mind as I got them. (Kinda had everything up to the MKB set when I saw the picks)

I'm also pretty sure I had the wrong logic about Flakking' / Barraging camps, as I pretty much never had mana to fight.

So the only other thing to really reflect on was the team fights.... which... I wasn't a part of many, I guess. I dunno, I had a really aggressive team that went and hunted a lot of people, so I didn't really feel the desire or capability to go join much. I kinda laughed when I went to flank some people, literally said "Hmm, I kinda dunno who I should go on", and proceeded to actually slap every button on my keyboard and sporadically click on anything that moved.... and everything blew up. I meeeeeean, my hindsight is pretty sharp (I think), but everything at the moment was just a roller coaster of trial-and-error. And buttons

Eventually, we bodied people, bodied Roshan, bodied some towers, and ended the game. -shrug- The game, as a stand alone event, was actually super insignificant. But hey... I managed to actually have decent farm and not feed.

or something?