General DiscussionWhat to do when....

Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye is a good option...

" You play SF in an AP pub then enemy just ganks you in lane every chance they get, dive you at towers without fear of your nuke potential, while team has no desire to help you with a good tp and such"

"map awareness" You can't control your team ganking mid, but you can control when you notice top or bottom missing right? Just because they didn't ward runes you can still see if they are not in lane correct?

" Also anyone know of a good mid hero that can win his lane and kill a fed Wraith King/Tanky Snowballing Carries cause other lane are retarded and feed every minute even when you do dish out good ganks?"

Slark

you have to play VERY cautiously with SF since you can't rely on pubs to help you, which means if you see a support that is great at roaming that is missing, you dont cross the river until they show up again on the minimap. use shadow raze from your high ground to secure creep kills. go jungle when the creep wave goes onto enemy high ground / in their tower

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, i guess you're right. Maybe i should have better map awareness. In the case though that an enemy roamer, let's say pudge who wasn't mid, doesn't show his face in all lanes and just roams. Dives you with a haste rune in your tower while invoker mid cold snaps you to death and you're still level 3 at this point. And both your sidelanes lost their lanes too. The fear alone of staying behind your tower not getting last hits because of this pudge, what do you do then?

As for slark, i guess it's a good hero, but i don't really like him. lol Maybe i'll just suck it up and play him then when i don't have a choice...

@RamboSalad

Yeah. lol. Maybe i should just stop picking sf unless enemy picks first in pubs. Man only decent games i get recently were from CM mode but the picks there kinda get boring and repetitive.

I dont think you have played enough SF games to know how far you can "over extend" and still be safe. That just comes with experience. I used to have over 70% win rate wihth SF but I guess I suck now

Well i played it a lot on my other account. Yeah, it's easy to snowball with sf against noobs but when your opponents already know how to counter it hard. It's just frustrating playing at that point. But yeah, enemy had like 500+ difference in mmr with me and i was highest on my team.... Solo against a 3-stack with high mmr. Well shit happens. I'm not saying i'm good though. i'm probably average at best, but i want to improve.

http://dotabuff.com/players/113402230

Thanks for being polite and real about it Alien good attitude will get you everywhere man. Need more peeps like you. I mean its true you just can't expect to solo queue and have everyone do what you want them to do. You can only handle you! :)

I think your other account you has enough to be comfortable with shadow fiend. I played him recently and lost a game with him a few days back and has been my only loss in 11 matches:

http://dotabuff.com/matches/588048143

Granted, I hadn't played shadow fiend in months. I was in a captains mode situation, I had 1 friend with me, then this other pubber kept wanting to play magnus or shadowfiend. I complied even though I knew a Kunkka pick was a big threat mid. I decided to play shadow fiend against kunkka and it was extremely difficult since his tide bringer kept hitting me, and I didn't get missing calls for timbersaw ganking me. Map awareness! :( Lastly, damn he is hard to last hit with.... I have a tough time last hitting with shadow fiend man. He is hard, since his base damage blows.

If I had to do it all over again, I would of picked zeus or blood seeker and would of muted the troll on my team that wanted magnus so I didn't have to hear his awful ideas.

Yep map awareness may of turned that game out differently for me in my favor. You know... I take it back, my friend did call missing on timbersaw..........multiple times and I didn't listen. Totally my fault.

SF has the same problem that Sniper has in middle lane during pub games. He can eventually win the lane 1v1, but if any of the enemy supports rotate to gank you, you're fucked hardcore. Warding and paying attention the mini map are your only hope. Once you have Shadow Blade and BKB, you can generally play more relaxed and extended.

@-hg- Cpt. Caveman
Yeah his base damage sucks. When you can't get the last hits you need early on and you get ganked again and again, you're pretty much screwewd. I'm cool against pudge 1 v 1 mid lane. I can beat him, but my problem is when i focus too much on last hits and denies that i lose my map awareness at times even if there are no wards and i get ganked a lot. After getting ganked i play really scared. Tower hugging, knowing the enemy might be ganking me again, so i miss the chance to get last hits. I mean there's just 1 hero missing all the time. That fear alone makes you lose the lane horribly. Thanks for the advice anyway, I'll try my best being aware of the map all the time without missing last hits and harassing the opposition in lane. As for kunkka, yeah i know it's hard as fuck to lane against him with his tidebringer. When hits level 6 or gets a good rune, you're pretty much dead if you can't avoid his torrent. Silencer is a good counter to him too. I usually use it against people who use sf. I get the glaives of wisdom first and just auto attack the SF with it on his high ground. Since i'm using a skill, it won't aggro the creeps, and sf just can't fight against you at level 1. In higher levels, he's also pretty much screwed cause silencer has a good skill set that won't allow you to throw more than 1 raze.

@Stinkoman
Yepp. They're both squishy as hell and easy to shut down by getting good ganks in, but when they do get out of control, you could get to the point where you can 5 v 1 the enemy team. lol.

funny, we had the same problem in my last game, and we couldnt even tp to help cuz SF died instantly...
He played for a short time in NextKZ so basically he shouldnt be that bad but still went back to mid and died again and again. And again.
BTW in our case he could have went to farm easy lane anytime he wanted to, maybe thought we are bunch of noobs who couldnt handle mid?!

I didnt check your match but theres always an option if the enemy is missing heroes, so potentially will gank: make the supps go where the enemy will show up and hide till the gank has started.

Lol, you just defined 90% of the games i play as SF. Allies lose lane, enemy supports realize lane is won and gank, SF dies. The worst part is, most times i manage to juke for like 10 seconds under the tower, i manage to get like two good razes on the enemies, i ping the fuck out of the tower for someone to help, and no one comes.
Then i check for TPs on everyone and realize that i'm in a shit tier.

Anyways, game is pretty much lost if you're getting tower dived like that. However, one thing you can do to get yourself back there is to gank lanes. Raze is so powerful early on, not only will you be helping out your allies but you'll also get gold. Transition that kill into a tower push (again, raze is so freaking powerful).

Also, a good solution is to secure runes by razing the enemy creeps. Invis and haste is a get out of jail free card, DD and illusion may trade your death into a kill, and regen won't save you but should keep you at full health.