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A list of bot woes
Since I like to play a lot of bot matches, I thought I'd put into the forums a list of the things I've noticed are wrong/poorly realised in the bots behaviours.
Passive Laning - Some bots are deathly afraid of you, to the point that you can position yourself between them and the creep wave so you can get all the last hits and denies. If they're ranged, you can scare them off just by walking towards them. It means you can verse a Tiny or Lina mid lane, arguably some of the most dangerous mid heroes, using a hero like Juggernaut or Spirit Breaker, and get all the farm.
Reply Spell Casting - Bots don't seem to like using spells at all whilst laning (with exceptions), unless you first use a spell. It gets to a point where Tiny or Vengeful Spirit will only use spells once you've used one on them. This is particularly funny when you trigger their response spell, which kills you, and could have much earlier.
12 minutes, end laning phase - At around the 12 minute mark, suddenly all the bots decide that laning phase is OVER, and begin to hive-mind into one big five man push. This is incredibly annoying when they decide to five man push different lanes, trading towers all the way to tier 3.
Doing Roshan! - At the most ridiculous times, the bots will all suddenly decide it is time to do Roshan, like after a deciding team fight, when they're inside the enemy base, and every hero is dead for 30-60 second respawn timers. It can be incredibly frustrating also to watch the entire enemy team decide to do Roshan with no real advantage and you can't contest it because the btos don't respond to pings. Although you can counter that simply by pushing down as many towers as you can. It's worse when your bots decide it's Roshan-o-clock and you have to defend a five man push into towers.
Attacking Base - Deciding matches draw out for ages, and can often turn around because the bots, seemingly at random, flee the enemy base after a team fight. If the player is still in there, then he gets squashed by the 3v1. Also Bots aren't very interested in pushing tier four towers and have a tendency to head back to where a new creep wave spawns to clear it before going towards towers again (even when there's creeps tnaking the towers). But worst of all is when a tier 2 or 3 tower is being pushed, all your bots are there and they refuse to engage the enemy until the tower goes down. Bots don't defend towers, they kind of just sit behind the tower and hope it doesn't die.
Jungle - Bots are just horrible with jungle, whilst I understand there isn't any bots who jungle (yet!) from level 1, they chose horrible times to farm up, namely when all the enemy team is dead! You don't need more farm when you've just won a team fight, you need to push your advantage, and their towers. Also bots could afford to do more jungle / laning and less five man pushing after 12 minutes.
Port Ganking - Sometimes bots decide to port into your lane to do a gank, but unfortunately can be deadly obvious so escape is easy, or worse, outright walk away as soon as they port in!
Push, Push, Push - Bots don't like farm and all bots, regardless of composition or numbers, will push a certain lane. They can even do this into enemy base, and on their own. Then when the enemy inevitably shows up, they get mega ganked and killed because they're on their own, or at best with one or two other heroes. Also bots push late game even when three of their heroes are dead, instead of being cautious.
GOOD HEROES
1. Bane - Has to be the most annoying / powerful hero so far, rarely to never is passive mid, harrasses, last hits, pops all his CC, uses his heal nuke at game-changing times, nerfs the carry's damage and is in general a real badass. So many times has he used a clutch ult to decide a team fight. Best hero you have.
2. Razor - Has got it down, even after it hits 12 minute team fight fest you can see him quietly farming in some lane or another and he's always concentrating on getting his items up (and he farms pretty well if left alone). Apart from sometimes dropping parts of his satanic to pick up Aegis, Razor is a good asset to the team and a hard enemy to kill since he tries to keep parity on gold and xp.
3. Windrunner - Although if you're careful you can make very few shackles latch anything, windrunner uses her arrow intelligently and is generally an absolute pain to kill. Also if she ever gets Orchid she becomes very scary with help.
4. Vengeful Spirit - Probably not a great hero but it's hilarious to see Vengeful get a triple kill at random in a team fight and attempt to carry with a Manta late game. Also ult-disrupting channels is pretty clutch. Although she does have the tendency to use ult in melee range, or ulting herself to certain doom (but which Vengeful doesn't?)
BAD HEROES
1. Crystal Maiden - Has to be the worst hero bot ever, as this bot makes any match a 4v5 with hero killing gold for the five. Problem starts really immediately as Crystal Maiden has absolutely no lane presence at all. At the start of the game (arguably when she's at her strongest as a hero) this bot does absolutely no harass, at best tries to deny one creep per wave and doesn't hit a single spell. Late game she switches form, becoming Chuck Norris with no farm, running into five heroes on her own. She exhibits qualities all the bots have but is like the perfect amalgam of all retard qualities rolled into one hero bot.
It's gotten to the point that I refuse to play bot matches with or against her if I can, as she spoils any match she's in.
2. Kunkka - Has mental deficiencies, because whilst he tries his hardest to land that torrent and hit that ship (sometimes at horrible times, sometimes being really key), he never uses his X Marks the spot ability (whatever it is called). He also doesn't build very good items late game, nothing game-breaking like Daedelus Splash or anything befitting his semi-carry role.
3. Tiny - Whilst he's never going to be a bad hero, tiny takes his ganking role a bit too seriously sometimes, by randomnly blink comboing into five clustered enemies. Whilst that is excellent initiation, often times he does it when no one is around and dies a quick death. He also likes to do lvl 2 or lvl 4 ganks and he just isn't generally powerful enough to do ganks effectively before 6+.
I hope this post has at least some useful information in it, that can be of help, if not maybe a fun read/wall of text.
Thanks.
Oh and to add something I like about bots, they pick up and will use Divine Rapier, and handle gems etc. very well. It's funny to feed bots Divine Rapiers!
Passive Laning - Some bots are deathly afraid of you, to the point that you can position yourself between them and the creep wave so you can get all the last hits and denies. If they're ranged, you can scare them off just by walking towards them. It means you can verse a Tiny or Lina mid lane, arguably some of the most dangerous mid heroes, using a hero like Juggernaut or Spirit Breaker, and get all the farm.
Reply Spell Casting - Bots don't seem to like using spells at all whilst laning (with exceptions), unless you first use a spell. It gets to a point where Tiny or Vengeful Spirit will only use spells once you've used one on them. This is particularly funny when you trigger their response spell, which kills you, and could have much earlier.
12 minutes, end laning phase - At around the 12 minute mark, suddenly all the bots decide that laning phase is OVER, and begin to hive-mind into one big five man push. This is incredibly annoying when they decide to five man push different lanes, trading towers all the way to tier 3.
Doing Roshan! - At the most ridiculous times, the bots will all suddenly decide it is time to do Roshan, like after a deciding team fight, when they're inside the enemy base, and every hero is dead for 30-60 second respawn timers. It can be incredibly frustrating also to watch the entire enemy team decide to do Roshan with no real advantage and you can't contest it because the btos don't respond to pings. Although you can counter that simply by pushing down as many towers as you can. It's worse when your bots decide it's Roshan-o-clock and you have to defend a five man push into towers.
Attacking Base - Deciding matches draw out for ages, and can often turn around because the bots, seemingly at random, flee the enemy base after a team fight. If the player is still in there, then he gets squashed by the 3v1. Also Bots aren't very interested in pushing tier four towers and have a tendency to head back to where a new creep wave spawns to clear it before going towards towers again (even when there's creeps tnaking the towers). But worst of all is when a tier 2 or 3 tower is being pushed, all your bots are there and they refuse to engage the enemy until the tower goes down. Bots don't defend towers, they kind of just sit behind the tower and hope it doesn't die.
Jungle - Bots are just horrible with jungle, whilst I understand there isn't any bots who jungle (yet!) from level 1, they chose horrible times to farm up, namely when all the enemy team is dead! You don't need more farm when you've just won a team fight, you need to push your advantage, and their towers. Also bots could afford to do more jungle / laning and less five man pushing after 12 minutes.
Port Ganking - Sometimes bots decide to port into your lane to do a gank, but unfortunately can be deadly obvious so escape is easy, or worse, outright walk away as soon as they port in!
Push, Push, Push - Bots don't like farm and all bots, regardless of composition or numbers, will push a certain lane. They can even do this into enemy base, and on their own. Then when the enemy inevitably shows up, they get mega ganked and killed because they're on their own, or at best with one or two other heroes. Also bots push late game even when three of their heroes are dead, instead of being cautious.
GOOD HEROES
1. Bane - Has to be the most annoying / powerful hero so far, rarely to never is passive mid, harrasses, last hits, pops all his CC, uses his heal nuke at game-changing times, nerfs the carry's damage and is in general a real badass. So many times has he used a clutch ult to decide a team fight. Best hero you have.
2. Razor - Has got it down, even after it hits 12 minute team fight fest you can see him quietly farming in some lane or another and he's always concentrating on getting his items up (and he farms pretty well if left alone). Apart from sometimes dropping parts of his satanic to pick up Aegis, Razor is a good asset to the team and a hard enemy to kill since he tries to keep parity on gold and xp.
3. Windrunner - Although if you're careful you can make very few shackles latch anything, windrunner uses her arrow intelligently and is generally an absolute pain to kill. Also if she ever gets Orchid she becomes very scary with help.
4. Vengeful Spirit - Probably not a great hero but it's hilarious to see Vengeful get a triple kill at random in a team fight and attempt to carry with a Manta late game. Also ult-disrupting channels is pretty clutch. Although she does have the tendency to use ult in melee range, or ulting herself to certain doom (but which Vengeful doesn't?)
BAD HEROES
1. Crystal Maiden - Has to be the worst hero bot ever, as this bot makes any match a 4v5 with hero killing gold for the five. Problem starts really immediately as Crystal Maiden has absolutely no lane presence at all. At the start of the game (arguably when she's at her strongest as a hero) this bot does absolutely no harass, at best tries to deny one creep per wave and doesn't hit a single spell. Late game she switches form, becoming Chuck Norris with no farm, running into five heroes on her own. She exhibits qualities all the bots have but is like the perfect amalgam of all retard qualities rolled into one hero bot.
It's gotten to the point that I refuse to play bot matches with or against her if I can, as she spoils any match she's in.
2. Kunkka - Has mental deficiencies, because whilst he tries his hardest to land that torrent and hit that ship (sometimes at horrible times, sometimes being really key), he never uses his X Marks the spot ability (whatever it is called). He also doesn't build very good items late game, nothing game-breaking like Daedelus Splash or anything befitting his semi-carry role.
3. Tiny - Whilst he's never going to be a bad hero, tiny takes his ganking role a bit too seriously sometimes, by randomnly blink comboing into five clustered enemies. Whilst that is excellent initiation, often times he does it when no one is around and dies a quick death. He also likes to do lvl 2 or lvl 4 ganks and he just isn't generally powerful enough to do ganks effectively before 6+.
I hope this post has at least some useful information in it, that can be of help, if not maybe a fun read/wall of text.
Thanks.
Oh and to add something I like about bots, they pick up and will use Divine Rapier, and handle gems etc. very well. It's funny to feed bots Divine Rapiers!
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