Level 5 Codex: A Heroes Of Newerth Blog

HoN Shenanigans

2012-03-24T19:18:00.002-04:00

Well as I promised here it is, our next HoN video! Here is the link to our channel - Here

Video of great shananagins soon!

2012-03-21T19:28:00.002-04:00

I will start today on a video of great HoN shananagins. I will probably be putting it out in the next 4 days. Stay tuned ;)

Overpowered Heroes: 3/10 Drunken Master

2012-03-10T20:53:00.004-05:00

When released, drunken master was not known how to use. It took approximately two weeks before the booze kicked in and people actually knew how to play him. It's all to simple, sol's bulwark and a sheildbreaker was all needed to commence pwn city. Once you had these items it is easy to do good, but you do need a good set up for this to happen. Solid 250- 300 gpm and it was possible to get the items required. Usually best when put in mid position. Logger's hatchet, iron buckler, and a hardy set of runes of blight. Necessary to keep rune control and you are potentially set up for domination.

I'm not here to teach you how to play drunken, I'm here to tell you of how overpowered he is. Negating all enemy spells, 25/50/75 attack speed, with 4 drink charges 20/30/40 reduction of all damage. With previous items discussed (negative armor items,) when combined could possibly tear threw a man's soul. Best situation for side laning would just to have a support that let's you farm. Ghost marchers are my recommended boots, with the speed you can catch up to people and lunge them. Drink often, thus would be drunken's advice to play him. Health is restored to drunken when using drink, this is very useful if you have damage over time on you. When laning mid you are gonna want to buy a blood chalice, drink will keep your health pool up but in order to use your skills and drink you will need this very important item.

In the hands of a pro drunken can be very deadly, in the hands of a less skilled player can be very different. Yes it's true, you can use this argument for any hero. Drunken is the tank/carry and it's very easy to use your lunge and totally mess it up, potentially screwing up the entire team fight because the hero you lunged went the wrong direction. An average player can do good with drunken as well, this doesn't mean you can just play drunken and own face every game. He's is counter-able as well, a well timed level one gank on the lonesome drunken mid can mess up his game severely. As a player myself, I like to play mid heroes and go mid about 75% of my games. As a mid player I absolutely hate facing drunken master mid, even though i can have a ward at the rune spot and I see it first drunken can stagger to the rune very quick and wins rune control. Rune control is a big factor in winning mid, so this makes it very difficult. Maybe it's just me, but I believe drunken is in the top 5 most over-powered heroes in today's HoN world.

Honportal

2012-02-26T17:49:00.002-05:00

We've merged with http://honportal.org/

We are now officially writing for honportal.org! Don't jump out of your chair. We know you love this blog :D and while Schlesinator and Clutchtastic are going to fully dedicate themselves to Honportal, I am also going to dedicate myself to honportal but I will still write some articles for this blog. I will be doing more "fun" posts on honportal while clutchtastic will be doing a variety of covering professional games etc. Schlesinator will also be doing things like me and pro game coverage too. I know I'm going to dedicate myself to Honportal 100% but that doesn't mean I can't leave the other 50% to this blog. I will be doing about 3-5 posts per week on honportal, and I hope to do about 2-3 posts a week to this blog. So check out http://honportal.org/ it's awesome and they have an amazing professional team, which includes players such as - Freshpro, Chessie, noobG, Limmp, and Moonmeander. So check it out! We'll see you there!

Contact Us

2012-02-16T19:49:00.001-05:00

Clutchtastic - ClutchtasticHON@gmail.com
Schlesinator - SchlesinatorHON@gmail.com
DrSpecific - DrSpecificHON@gmail.com

Feel free to e-mail any of us.

Our First Video - Soulstealer Fails

2012-02-15T21:17:00.001-05:00

Check it out! We just started a youtube channel and here is Schlesinator's first edited video. Not too bad if I say so myself. Leave some comments and tell us what you think!

Underpowered Heroes: 2/15 - Sand Wraith: A Useless Mirage

2012-02-15T21:13:00.010-05:00

This article is the part of an ongoing series presented by Level 5 Codex Blog. In it, we detail the current overpowered and underpowered heroes in Heroes of Newerth. The series will adapt and evolve just as Heroes of Newerth adapts and evolves.

In Heroes of Newerth, Sand Wraith used to be a god. In a game dominated for a while by hard meele carries - Chronos, Magebane, Dark Lady, etc. - Sand Wraith was the hardest of the hard (que the jokes). His dissipate was even more ridiculous pre-nerf; instead of 4/8/12/16 it was 5/10/15/20. That just made Sand Wraith even more tanky. Core on Sand Wraith was a quick helm of the black legion that made him nearly impossible to kill early game, boots (red or steam depending) and then a mock of brilliance as quick as possible. The mock had two amazing benefits. First, it increased Sand Wraith's farming ability, allowing him to get items to make him even more tanky, such as a Frostwolf Skull. Second, because Sand Wraith illusions received the mock aura, his ultimate became massively useful in team fights.

In fact, Sand Wraith with a mock was such a game changer, competitive teams built their entire strategies around him. Draw out the game and support Sand Wraith became synonymous with a victory. On the pub scene, my co-blogger Schlesinator and myself often played together with me on Sand Wraith and him on Wretched Hag. He was (and still is) quite the Hag player and was able to dominate the mid game enough for me to get my mock and ensure a victory. I can recall countless games where we would be on the verge of defeat when I would obtain my mock. The next team fight would immediately reverse our fortunes - even if we had lost a set of barracks - and from there we would go on to dominate. Boldly, I would put our win percentage at at least 80% with the Hag-Sand Wraith combo.

However, that was then and this is now. There are several reasons why Sand Wraith is virtually useless now. First, as I pointed out earlier, Sand Wraith has been nerfed a bit, most notably his dissipate. However, more importantly is just how useless he is early and mid game. He requires crazy amounts of babysit, which is a problem, especially in today's Heroes of Newerth game environment. That leads to my third point. Gone are the day's of meele carries. Magebane is making a bit of a comeback and Drunken Master is really good, but mid-game or push teams or a late-game ranged carry are stronger picks right now. Valkyrie, Aluna, and Silhouette can all fill that roll and each of them are viable early and mid game heroes. They are able to participate in ganks and team fights and are much better natural farms than Sand Wraith. In addition, heroes like Karken, Cthulhuphant, and Keeper of the Forest can be useful for pushing and dominating the early and mid game through their tanky presence which also allows them to be viable late game. That leaves no room for Sand Wraith and that's why today, he is one of the most underpowered heroes in Heroes of Newerth.

Aaaaand We're Back

2012-02-15T20:51:00.003-05:00

As anyone who actually looked at this blog every once in a while (which was probably no one, not even my mom), could tell, Schlesinator and I took a 'break.' Now that doesn't make much sense; we had just started. We can assure you, it was unplanned, but now we're back. Schlesinator got a sick-nasty new desktop and I got my laptop back from Dell after a two week hiatus - part of the reason behind our absence. Now, we plan on making this blog bigtime.

The two of us got serious today and sat down and skyped for a few hours and bounced ideas off each other. We now have lots of new content to add. But first, I want to introduce DrSpecific as a new contributor. He brings plenty of skill, knowledge, and humor to the blog. Back to the content. The following are ideas on types of posts we are gonna add.

Overpowered and Underpowered Heroes - We love S2, they've made a great adaptation of Dota and added plenty of their own flavor. Still, no matter how good S2 is, they can't always keep perfect balance. There will always be overpowered heroes we gripe about as HON players. Here they are profiled on a list that will be continuously updated.

On the flipside, some heroes just never seem to get picked. Some are because they are hard to play, such as Ophelia, but others just suck. Here those heroes are profiled. That list will also be continuously updated.

Throwbacks - This article by Schlesinator is an example of a throwback. He talks about Engineer's glory days back in beta. At that time, Engineer was ridiculously overpowered. Any articles where we wistfully reminiscence about the past will fall in this category. Hopefully, this section will bring back memories for veterans or provide context and history for new players.

Videos - Above, I mention Schlesinator's sick new desktop. It also came pre-loaded with some sick video editing software. We now have a youtube channel. It's going to have plenty of sweet videos. In fact, as I write this, he's working on editing a Devourer video.

Top Plays - Similar to Honcast, we would love to have a weekly or bi-weekly top plays series if we get enough viewers to have audience input. When we get to that point, we will set up an inbox of some sort of submissions.

Pub Stomping - Trying not to sound too arrogant, Schlesinator, DrSpecific and I are pretty good HON players. I took a long break, but I'm getting back into the game. The other two guys are still dang good. We're able to Pub Stomp for fun and we will provide you videos. Comments are welcome to give us ideas.

Guides - Everyone loves them. No promises though. We'll see.

More - We won't be limited to this content. Stuff like interviews with top players are a dream that someday might be realized. Again, ideas are welcome!

So that's what's going on with Level 5 Codex. Hope to see y'all around!

The Power of Push

2011-12-19T04:02:00.000-05:00

At the end of this post is both an entertaining and hilarious video. The level of play is questionable to say the least and there is an obvious skill separation between the two teams, but the video offers useful instruction.

The Legion team picks five heroes, Jeraziah, Demented Shaman, Accursed, Slither, and Wildsoul. The first three heroes have something important in common; the ability to heal and prevent death. That allows for a more effective push by preventing death (obviously) as well as freeing heroes from having to go back to the well to heal. In addition, their healing ability allows the Legion team to pull off an early Kongor kill with the help of Wildsoul and Slither. From there, with extra experience and a token, the Legion team simply storms the middle lane and wins in a swift and violent fashion. To further their ability to push, the Legion team adds a mana ring, supplying their all-important healers with a virtual infinite supply of mana, especially because of the low mana pools in play at lower levels.

Here is the movie, enjoy.

Favorite Hero: Blood Hunter

2011-12-13T01:20:00.006-05:00

In Heroes of Newerth, like all video games, noobs come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they can be hard to spot, but pretty often a player's hero choice can give it away. Scout is a favorite of noobs, followed closely by Bloodhunter. Considering he's one of my favorite heroes, that must make me a noob.

That said, I don't really care because Bloodhunter is so fun to play. As a meele hero with a fast attack animation, Bloodhunter is an excellent last hitter, and his passive skill gives him health back every time he finishes off a creep. Combined, this makes Bloodhunter an excellent solo mid hero with very few counters.

As such, Bloodhunter can take over games. By dominating the mid lane, Bloodhunter allows his team to dominate the mid-game. By getting levels, Bloodhunter's ultimate skill can be deadly against lower level foes and makes for a great ganking weapon.

There are two main items builds for Bloodhunter I have adhered to are rushing a codex or rushing a mock of brilliance. When I first played Bloodhunter, I preferred the first build. An early codex made for easy ganks and ridiculous fun. It also prevented Bloodhunter from scaling. More recently, I have switched to rushing a mock. That allows Bloodhunter to be very effective in mid-game team fights and allows him to farm making him moderately viable late-game.

And that my friends, is why Bloodhunter is one of my favorite heroes.

Engineer's Glory Days

2011-12-13T00:50:00.012-05:00

Back in Heroes of Newerth Beta there existed a few of ridiculously overpowered heroes. However, no hero comes close to the hero that was known as Engineer's turret. I distinctly have hilarious memories of chucking that little guy up on a cliff and watching later as a lowly support hero walks by and gets rape faced in a few seconds. In Beta before the mines, before all the tricks with the turret, the turret was manly and only shot at heroes. No messing around. Its sole focus was that of rape.

The only thing that was needed was a charged hammer and shoes to instant win any game. Teamfights start breaking out. And what do you do as an overpowered Engineer you may ask? Drop your turret, drop your ultimate and run away from everyone like a pansy. Or sometimes I would like to ninja a turret behind their team and bait them into Ralph's line of sight.... Yeah....my turret had a nickname... so what? You jealous?

But yes. Engineer has to be the most overpowered hero in the history of overpowered heroes. Not only this but it was ridiculous to see how long they kept Engineer in his overpowered state. If you did not play HON back in beta day, watch this video so you may fully understand the days where an Engineer pick was an insta-win pick.

Welcome to Level 5 Codex

2011-12-13T00:44:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Level 5 Codex. This blog is going to be a collection of all things Heroes Of Newerth compiled by two buddies, Schlesinator and myself. We intend to bring our audience the best and most ridiculous content when it comes to HON. Thanks for reading.