Dota 2 Xiao 8 considering temporary retirement

Xiao 8 The captain of the winning team of the International 4 has announced that he would be taking  an elongated break from the competetive scene of Dota 2.

Speculations are rife that this is mainly due to his wife's pregnancy.

Xiao 8 was considering retiring after TI3 itself. However the Owner of Newbee decided to approach xiao 8 to form a new team built around him. it would be a dream team comprising star players who would be focused just on winning the international.

Newbee is a team that emerged in early 2014 during the Chinese reshuffle that happened prior to the fourthInternational tournament. Originally dubbed "Dream Team 2", the rumors started after captain xiao8 made a post on his QQ micro-blogging page after LGD Gaming's win in the Dota 2 League Season 4 in Las Vegas, saying "New start in 2014 after 3 years in LGD", forever Dream 5.".^[1] The rumors later placedTongFu and Invictus Gaming members Mu, Faith, Hao and ChuaN in the team together with xiao8.^[2] A few weeks later, the team was announced to be competing in the third season of the Sina Cup, but the roster was not yet revealed. As Invictus Gaming had announced that Faith would be staying with the team, rumors now placed ZSMJ and Banana in the team. After TongFu announced on the 20th of February that the team would step down from the competitive tier and focus on the amateur scene, and Banana was announced to be staying in iG as a backup player, many now saw the veterans ZSMJ and KingJ as the last two members of the new "Dream Team". On the 23rd of February 2014, the Chinese ACE Dota organization announced that the transfers were complete and the now dubbed team "Newbee" consisted of xiao8, Mu, Hao, KingJ and ZSMJ.^[3] Later team Newbee announced on its QQ micro blogging page that the club was officially established on the 28th of February, and that a transfer fee of 500,000 RMB (~81,000 USD) had been agreed upon between the new club and xiao8's old team LGD Gaming.

The organization later also announced that former RisingStars player Sydm was part of the team in the role of coach, and former Noah's Ark player Li was the teams leader. Li is a veteran WC3 DotA player who played with xiao8, Yao, DD and DDC on team Dream, which may or may not have been the origin of the teams first rumored name Dream Team.

Zhang 'xiao8' Ning's statement taken from his weibo:

"Even though I am reluctant, I have still decided to temporarily leave this stage. I am very lucky, I have accomplished my dream. I am very thankful for every teammate and opponent that has grown alongside me, along with the fans that have supported me all along. Because of all of you, my life has been more exciting."

With this team newbee should be playing with a replacement at least until we are clarified on Xiao8's role in the future Team Newbee

Sources : 

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Newbee

How to increase your Solo MMR

Hey after a brief delay we are back to blogging again :D 

So the topic for today is how to increase your solo MMR. As we play the game of dota 2 we realise that in order to get better players we need to have a good matchmaking rating. 

The matchmaking rating is in general dependent on the ratio of your wins and losses. The more the difference between wins and losses the better your MMR. 

Basically its like the better your MMR, the better players you would get against and with you. 

It just helps you improve your game. 

GETTING BETTER

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Watching replays - What do we pay attention to?

The enemy dives a tower: Should we have TP'd in or did I TP in and die?

Teamfights:

Did the right hero initiate?
Should we have taken the fight?
What was our positioning prior to the fight and after initiation? ( was it good was it bad ? )
Did we have a coordinated gameplan as to whom to focus?

Deaths: What was the cause?

Bad positioning
Initiating at bad timing
Over extending
Bad map awareness
When did we go agressive and why? When did we go defensive and why? Were these the right decision

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During the game

General

Can I get the kill? Will I die in the process? Is it worth it?
Whenever you decide to show yourself, pay attention to the enemies positioning on the map.
Always expect the worst: 1 enemy visible but 4 missing from the map? Expect 5 of them together.
Should we go agressive or defensive? Initiate from the right angle depending on whether you have the upper hand.
Someone needs to be the guys that notes the time of Rosh (support)
Someone needs to be the guy that stacks ancients with the creep (Offlane / Support / Jungle) because the carry needs to get the lasthits.
Captain has to call the shots often and in detail
Generally you don't want to gank a sidelane hero that is 1v2 or 1v3 anyway. He'll play safe in most cases and will be hard to gank. Also pay attention to what hero is in that solo lane (easy escape?)
Dropping tower aggro: Attack command an allied unit
Scoop: Whenever you get a last hit, quickly look at your mini map. A great tip to practice map awareness.
Dying? Quick buy 1 or 2 TP's
Always check your opponents' items and skills before going into a fight. You wouldn't want to have a situation where you miss the fact that one of them has a BKB, Abyssal Blade, or most importantly a gem.

Support

Are you losing the lane?

Leave. The worst thing you can do as a support if you're in an unwinnable lane is stay there and soak up xp while doing nothing. Let him get solo xp so he's at least overleveled and underfarmed instead of underleveled and underfarmed. Oh, I should mention I'm assuming he knows how to play and doesn't over extend and die to get 2 creeps per minute and just sits back and soaks xp to get overleveled, you might have to mention that to him if he's bad.

Now that you've left, what do you do?

1) Protect runes for mid

2) Gank mid with good rune

3) Smoke gank mid

4) Gank opponent safe lane

5) Go to different lane and stay there to push forcing pressure off your safe lane (often called "making space")

6) Hate on mid again

7) Ward aggressively instead of defensively. People often think when they're behind they have to play defensive. However, warding opponent jungle and running at their AM while he's trying to farm can slow him down/get a tp reaction from the axe/wd and they waste time chasing you (again, making space)

8) Smoke gank again

9) You should have a level advantage on your cores from 2 solo lanes and you protecting mid, use it mid game to kill people and turn xp into gold

10) See who's doing well on your team, follow them around (if they need +1 to kill, if they don't let them do what they're doing and just sit far behind them in case of ganks) and help them kill people so you get assist xp/gold and they're safer cause you can sacrifice yourself to make sure the person doing well doesn't die

11) Hope your carry isn't full retard and can make use of solo xp

12) Farm jungle yourself. It might actually be better your carry gets solo xp and you get jungle farm from pulls, but that's a judgement call.

13) Stack ancients/large camp. Use judgement though, if your mid is getting pushed down at 5 minutes you're probably not going to get to farm those ancients. You can hang out while your carry kills it for some levels.

Basically, there's tons of things to do when you lose laning phase unless you get crushed and die 3 times each. Then the game might just be over.

Don't stare at the cliff while you're warding. When warding, shift queue. Place the ward and Shift click somewhere else so the motion is fluid. Want to make this worse for your opponent? Stare at a cliff you're NOT warding while you know they have vision of you.
If you feel you're getting yourself into a warding war, stop dropping obs there. Maybe you can drop another sentry if you have a way to get vision of the cliff ward, but that's about it.
If you have the room to carry a stick and 3 branches, keep it that way instead of upgrading into a wand.
After you upgrade the courier, your next item should ALWAYS be a TP scroll. Suddenly being on the other side of the map is a strong surprise and easy kills. Even easier is TP'ing when someone is tower diving. Free double kill for you.
Even if you're a support, don't let last hits go to waste. When pushing, try to be the first to kill the ranged creep When pulling, last hit those neutrals
Fight the urge to TP to a lane when you're in the fountain. Keep the cooldown fresh and save gold for when you're actually needed.
The scoreboard assist counter means NOTHING. What matters for kills is that you're around them. Assist gold is always evenly split among heroes in a 1300 radius of the kill, even if they didn't damage them. When you narrowly survived a dive, mind your position, but don't run back yet. If your team turns the fight you can maybe throw out another spell and in the worst case benefit from assist gold.
Ask yourself this one question all the time: "Am I safe?" Always travel with someone else, even when warding. Looking for some farm? Take farm close to where your team is or a tower of yours. Are you going to iniate? Make sure your team is ready to follow up so you don't die.
Always carry a TP from min 5-6 onward.
If you are babysitting, focus on denying creeps.
Don't single pull unless you want to push the lane.
Always consider buying a smoke at the start of the game.
Try your best not to pull at 1 Min game time as your carry usually does not have enough damage or experience to last hit under tower. Wait until the 3rd wave to pull and while waiting you can harass the enemy offlaner so that you carry can get some last hits and either get a quelling blade or his boots!

Mindset

Be positive. Don't question other people's decisions, rather say what you think would be best. E.g: "Luna, I think a BKB would be good for you here." is better than "Luna, why are you not getting a BKB?"
History is irrelevant. There's no point in talking about something that happened 10,5 or even 2 minutes ago while the game is still in progress. It is however relevant when watching replays.
NEVER point out what someone did wrong. There's very little chance they will take into account what you, a random pub, said, let alone apply it to that exact game.
What can truly help is to warn your team of things that may happen or are happening, not things that have happened, those are for the replays.
"Because Rhasta died so many times, this Slark is now super fat." are some of the worst things you can say. Instead you should be asking yourself what you and your team can do to stop him now. Can you outfarm him, can you gank him, how strong is he, etc.
"We lost". No you didn't. "ff plz" is something you should NEVER be saying. People that give up when they fall behind, will never learn to play from behind and thus will never be able to turn around a game. A lot of pub players will start to get arrogant and overextend and/or start buying things like rapier when they are ahead, this is your chance to strike back. Don't queue up if you can't focus on an entire game without giving up on it.
Don't play when you're tired.
Take a break after a loss
Switch between unranked and ranked if you get some losses in ranked
Play heroes with a big impact. Avoid passive farmers, especially junglers.
Communicate with you team. It increases teamwork and reduces flame.
It's all about confidence in your team and not being greedy yourself.
Mute the damned. There is no helping certain people, and fighting them will not help at all. Mute them the second you are certain they will have nothing of value to say in the match and forget they exist.

CREDITS

http://slashstrikesguidetosoloranked.weebly.com/
http://team-ehug.com/MVvYI2C9Hv5MyAGf.pdf
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211882174#206020

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Last hitting practice

"dota_tutorial_start lasthit" in console
Pick shadow fiend
Don't buy items or get any skills
Get 60+ last hits by 10 min.
82 last hits is perfect, so you should be getting 70 actually in a freefarm lane

Steam Sharing

Steam has Enabled steam sharing. Steam sharing is an innovative concept wherein you can let your family Members / Friends  play on steam . Now remember steam games can be shared not with an account but with a PC. So you wil need to personally login from that PC in order to be able to share your games.

In order to be a part of steam sharing you need to be a part of the following group :

Click here To Join the group


Also you cannot choose which games to share. Its either all or 0 .

How to share Games On Steam :

Coaching Update

COACHING

SOCKETING

CRAFTING

SHOWCASE VIEW

UPDATE NOTES

TRADE SCENARIO

FUTURE 

           Dota 2 got a new update. And there are loads of features added in this mode.

Right from the experienced players ( 2 new heroes), to the new players ( coaching mode) this update has something in it for everyone.

Read on to catch a glimpse of everything in this update

Coaching : 

   New to dota 2?

Dont know how to play? Getting confused with all those immense number of heroes. The different items? How to make them?

Maybe you need some help from someone.

Yes

coaching is available now in dota 2. You can get an experienced person to coach you in game.

He will be able to see your clicks. You will get a specific audio and chat channel with your coach. You can directly talk to him.

Now you ask me , isn't this cheating? Your coach  would be able to see where enemy heroes are . He would be able to warn you or tell you where enemy is ?

No. He cannot cause his vision will be limited to what you can see.

Coaching is a very innovative concept introduced in Dota 2. Dota 2 has a very steep learning curve. Its important for experienced players to be able to help newer players in the game.

You will get a person who will calculate the risks attained with a particular move. Slowly he will be able to guide you and be able to tell you how to improve your game. The direct chat with him would be able for you to pace your coaching according to your learning speed.

As a coach you will have the following advantages : 

• Watch game from student's perspective
• Ping at the map / minimap ( your student can see this)
• Highlight parts of the HUD ( this will help him to know where his items are located for eg)
• Draw on the ground ( Helps to draw paths to go ./ fog of wars)
• Communicate via text / voice ( extremely useful  / personalized )
• Provide guidance  / Coaching to entire team ( coach multiple players at a time)

Find a Coach

Here is how you can find a coach for your party / yourself. You can invite any one from your friends list to be your coach.

Coach Invitation

To a coach, when his student invites him to coach him, he will get an invitation that looks as above 

Coach - Student Chat ( hero selection screen)

The student and coach can talk to each other during the hero pick phase.

Coach Student Chat ( In game)

Inside the game too the coach and student can talk to each other as shown in the picture below

Coach HUD highlight

The coach can highlight any part of the shop / HUD to show the student what is it that he is referring to. 

This will help the student to learn how to buy items

It will also help him get a better understanding of the general layout of Dota 2

Coach - Toggle

Since a coach can teach multiple students at one go, he should be able to switch between his students.

The following pictures show the same

Coaching is available only in private lobbies and in Public Matchmaking. It is not available in team matchmaking / tournament matches at the moment. 

If you feel i have missed out on anything in this guide please feel free to comment

I will be soon coming out with other guides in a day:)