Heroes of Newerth

Control and teamwork are the true essence of Heroes of Newerth. But, to have one you need the other. Teamwork begins before the game, as does control. Controlling the lanes in Heroes of Newerth dabbles into the multiple facets of the game, from the picking of heroes, to the coordination of the team. If control is to be established, a player must be able to control all of the multiple factors efficiently.

Picking Lanes

I called solo mid first!

Many people pick early on without really looking at the rest of the team, which causes problems when it comes time to lane. In a lane, the ideal is to be able to have two ranged heroes, but that is usually not possible since you usually have to pick melee heroes because they fit a specific role in the team. That means you will want to have one ranged and one melee in a same lane, so you can efficiently farm the lane without being harassed to hard early on. The range will be able to effectively attack the opponents to harass them, while the melee goes with denying and last hitting. Thoughts are needed to be put into what type of lane a team wants and who will go where.

Double Stun vs Babysitting

Stop stealing my last hits!

The question is not which one of the two is better, but which one of the two will fit in with the rest of the team. In a game where synergy takes top priority, the players have to look at the small aspects of every hero. Be it the fact that they’re Intelligence, Strength or Agility heroes, or stun, heal or DPS heroes.

Double Stun

A double stun lane will be quite effective for most lanes that plan to take early kills on their lane and allow for the sacrifice of early creep kills. They will get the kills but they won’t be as numerous as a babysat lane. The stun lane also has the versatility of dropping off the map to move to other lanes or otherwise called roaming around the map to allow one of the stunners to farm up a bit and the other to orchestrate a gank.

Babysitting

The idea of a babysitting lane is to look to the long term. It is made with the plan that the game will last to the point where the semi-carries or carries farm will matter enough to change the outcome of the game. In this situation, the babysitter will allow the carry to take the majority of kills while the babysitter keeps him alive with heals and/or harassment to the opponents. The babysitter won't be very well fed with farming but it will allow the carry to become the game changing hero, while some coordination should allow a decent amount of creep kills to go to the baby sitter.

Pushing and Pulling

Back and forth, back and forth - try not to get dizzy.

No matter what concepts a player must learn to master lane control, pushing and pulling are the key. The whole point of lane control, is the CONTROL aspect. Though quite broad categories, pushing and pulling can be broken up into multiple smaller facets of control. They vary from attacking heroes to taking aggression from creeps. The concepts are packed with many smaller and more direct ways to achieve success in manipulating the creep waves.

Attacking Heroes to Redirect Creeps

Attacking the enemy heroes comes in handy because the AI of the creeps. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) of the creeps becomes very useful when you want to move the waves back and forth because of how they target an enemy. In the need to pull a lane towards the tower, normally when you need to farm, target on en enemy hero and watch those creeps come running at the attacking hero. It is quite useful to pull back the lane and also quite annoying for the opposite team when they get harassed while losing creep kills.

Pulling Neutral Creeps

Such tactics are included in Pulling because of the fact that a whole creep wave disappears from the lane allowing the lane to get pushed very hard to your tower. In a cause and effect chain, it would cause for the heroes to farm much easier, leave the enemy creepless, and more money from the neutrals. The concept is explained much more in depth later on in the Creep Pulling section of this guide.

Runes and Roaming

You mean there's a reason they're running around with glowing slabs of stone?

As pushing and pulling allow control of a lane, as do runes and roaming team-mates. The two subjects are fairly similar because normally the roaming team-mates are the ones to take the runes so they may gank with the lanes they plan to move to. A roamer is used in the laning phase to provide support to the other lanes in an attempt to push the lane or gank an opponent. Most of the time, the roamer will be the player fighting in middle lane and so, will also be the first to reach level 6 and have his ultimate ready for use. Being the only one with an ultimate along with the opponent's middle hero, the ganker becomes quite effective because of the nature of ultimates.

The roaming heroes will pick up a rune, which respawn every two minutes. The runes are otherwise called power-ups and they do exactly what the name suggests. They power up the hero with either Double Damage, Regeneration, Haste, or Invisibility. A bottle is used to contain these runes for a time limit of two minutes, and when empty, they allow for a quick regeneration swig.



Now, as to how the roaming, rune whoring and gankers come in handy to control a lane. The lanes that are too aggressive for your team-mates to farm, or to even move away from the tower, give the opponent too much freedom to farm and gank. With the help of a powered up third hero, the tide turns very quickly and almost always ends up in at least one kill through the element of surprise. If organized well enough, the gank can end both heroes in the lane and allow for a strong push to turn the tables. Ganking is a very big part of controlling the flow of the lanes and the amount of deaths/kills the lanes allow. As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. In this situation, the more heads the better figuratively.

Roaming from the Get-Go

As roaming goes, many heroes begin after they have their ultimate or when their stun actually becomes effective for a kill. This isn't true for all heroes, some have the ability to begin ganking as soon as they come out of the well. They are quite lethal very early on and become a very big nuisance for enemy heroes who didn't expect it. Those heroes are usually stunners like Andromeda, Forsaken Archer and Blacksmith.

Grand Finale

Bake 1 cup teamwork mixed with 1/2 cup of lane control for an average of 45 minutes and enjoy.

All in all, if beginners can master this concept and the concept of teamwork, they have no right to call themselves beginners. Lane control is an absolutely vital part of early game and builds the foundation for the rest of the game. Mastering it will bring chaos down on the opponent and make the games you play a piece of cake.