Hard Carry

Vern Style


 The title indicates that this article is about the roles and methods of true carries.

True carry examples are: Void, AM, PA, Spectre, Troll, SA, Morphling, TB, sylla etc.

Definition and Role of a Carry:
The definition of a carry in DOTA is a hero that has the ability to make the game not fun anymore for the other team. That's the basic definition, but what I mean is that it is a hero who can become immensely powerful based on his/her item build and skillset. So powerful that he/she can take on 2 or more enemy heroes at once.

It is arguable that the carry is the most important role in DOTA. I beleive that this is a situational statement depending on how good your team is versus how good the opponent team is. For example, if you are playing in a pub, and you know all of your teammates, chances are the carry will not be a vital role. On the contrary, if you are playing in a scrimmage versus a team that is about as good as yours, the carry is most likely the most vital role.

The Role of a carry is one basically of farming. Farming = gold, gold = items, items on carry = gg. Farming comes in two different forms. There is creep and neutral farming, then there is enemy hero farming. In order to be a good carry, you need to be able to farm on your own. Relying on your team too much will generally result in failure. A good carry can continuously farm for gold in any circumstance, and if he/she is unable to at some point in time, they are able to develop new ways.

As a carry, you shouldn't be playing at your team's pace, but instead, your team should be playing at your pace. You are the one that will be putting them on your back and 'carrying' them to victory, so they should be the ones following your lead.

As a carry, you cannot get emotional while your team is losing. If you get emotional, it affects your game. Once your team is losing, you must be the strong one and eventually carry them to victory.

During a game, these are the things that you should be focusing on in THIS order:
 * 1) Survival - The most important concept for a carry. If you cannot survive, you will lose gold and valuable farming time as well as lane control. If at any point in time your teammates put you in a situation that you are too uncomfortable with (like a gank, for instance), it is not wrong to bail. Once again, this statement is only valid if you have somewhat good judgment, and good judgment comes from playing more =). That means, don't be a complete pussy, but being somewhat of one is okay.
 * 2) Efficiency/Constant Farming - Throughout the entire game, you need to balance survival and farming. Farming is second most important because that is your income. If you cannot farm, you must invent new ways to bypass that obstacle. Never force farming. What I mean by that is, if you find yourself dying (aka, not abiding by survival as your most important focus), then don't force yourself to be using the same method to farm! Find a new way, new place, new method, and if you don't know, ASK. Efficiency should be build into your farming. If it takes you forever to walk to your farming location, then try to farm at an area closer to you, that way less time is wasted not doing anything. TP's can be useful when utilizing efficiency, but just make a judgment call on the net income that you will accumulate after buying that TP.
 * 3) Item Build - Build the right items for your hero in order to carry correctly. If you build the right items for your hero (most likely AGI, DMG, and ATK SPEED items) you won't have an issue carrying.
 * 4) Actually Carrying - When you have completed enough items that you feel like you're ready to lead the team to victory, rally everyone together and push. If you don't push fast enough, the opponent team's carry may surpass you and end up winning for them.

There are a few rules that you should always abide by when playing carry:
 * If you must die in order to get one kill, it is never worth it unless the killed hero had a rapier or your team can win within the next 2 minutes.
 * If you are at low hp in a team battle, your teammates don't have any heals, and you can run, DO IT! (Once again unless your team will win within the next 2 minutes).
 * If someone comes to help you gank your lane, and you do what you can while keeping survival in mind, but the two of you still fail at the gank, just run back instead of dying.
 * Keep a positive attitude, and think that you can still win regardless of the score. I have seen comebacks from a ratio of 1:3 in terms of one team to another.

Starting Item Build
Solo: You need regeneration. Please don't be a noob and not start with regen if you are soloing. Depending on the type of carry you have, a few slippers (no more than 2) are usually good starting items in order to give you higher dmg to last hit easier. Better dmg = easier time last hitting. This makes quelling blade a good candidate as a starting item for many carries. Depending on the type of carry you have once again, for instance one with low hp, branches are also good starting items. Overall, just make sure that you have regen, and that you have enough hp to last long enough to use the regen.

Not Solo: You can get fewer regeneration items based on what type of hero you are laning with as your partner. If you lane with an aggressive int hero (such as CM, lion, or lina), you can probably start with a few tangoes and branches, in order to save up for your bigger and better items. If you lane with a melee strength hero, your starting build should be similar to the build you get as a solo.

General Main Item Build
The general rule of thumb is before you play the hero, have a good idea of the items you want as your end game items. Throughout the game, these items will be the items that you work towards at all times. A good carry is able to get these items as fast as possible. Also, have a few backup builds for your hero. Rank the builds from first priroity, to second priority, to third priority. Doing this will allow you to adjust your judgment calls based on how well you are surviving/farming in the game.

From your starting item build, if you are doing well in your farming, you can probably sell your early game items and still be okay, while getting the items that lead up to your end game items. If you are not doing so well in your farming, you will want to complete your slippers or whatever you are building into things like wraiths or bracers.

Let me give you some ideas of what I am talking about. If you are playing PA, for example... Your final item build will be something along the lines of Treads (or Travs), Satanic, Bfury, BKB, and any other dmg items that don't interfere with your already present skillset (like bfly or buriza would on PA). Pretend your starting build is 2 slipp. of agil., 3 tangoes, and a healing salve, and by 10 min into the game, you have 2000 gold, you can probably skip getting wraiths, and get Claymore as well as Boots of Speed. I cannot stress how important boots of speed are as an early item. Early as in, it should be one of your top priorities. Boots enable you to get away from heroes without boots, or they allow you to not be at as big of a disadvantage against those that already have boots. They enable you to properly juke (read Drew's guide on juking). All of this leads to survival, which is described above. After you have attained the above items, your next step may be to get broadsword, or anything that fits your playing style. If you find yourself low on HP in your lane often, then get ring of health [| then stop getting hit lul |]. Bottom line is, get items that go towards your end game build, while still being beneficial to you at the time of purchase.

Lets assume you are not doing as well as you'd like and you're getting pressured very roughly in your lane. Finish your wraiths then start going for those damage items so that you can take control of your lane in the case of a gank and actually be of some use.

Keep in mind, items with these attributes will be defined as 'carry' items:
 * Stun proc: Basher (Only get for melee) or MKB (ministun)
 * Evasion: Butterfly
 * Critical hits: Crystalys, Buriza
 * Lifesteal: Vlads, HoD, Satanic
 * Heavy Survival: Vanguard, Hood of Defiance
 * Immunity: BKB

Items of worthy notice:
 * Radiance - If you are able to get this quickly and control the tide of the game while surviving, you will be able to get any other item also very quickly. Read more on this in the Radiance article.

First Stage (0-10 min into the game)
This is considered Early Game. Your job is to establish your lane, survive, and farm. In more detail, you need to try to tower hug as best as possible. The tower provides you the only cover that aggressive harrassers will be afraid of, so utilize that. Methods of tower hugging include creep blocking every wave, pulling your creeps to fight neutrals, or choosing enemy hero as your attack target to where the creeps will target you. You should not be leaving your lane for ganks in this stage of the game, because more than likely, you are not strong enough to help much or get the last hit during the gank over a spellcaster on your team. Along with that, it is much more efficient for you to stay in your lane and get gold for yourself because... the carry's position is very selfish. If you find yourself outmatched, play more conservative (don't try to harrass the opposing team players in your lane as much). Become attuned to the timing in which the tower attacks creeps, and try to last hit according to it. Losing your first lane tower is okay if you are against a pair of strong pushers/harassers, just be sure to ask for help when your second lane tower begins to get destroyed. The point is not to push and destroy your opponent's lane tower, because that will disrupt your creep farming early on.

Second Stage (11-20 min into game)
Similar to stage one, and depending on your hero and confidence, you can choose to participate in ganking now. If your opponents lane tower gets destroyed, that is when you should make a decision to migrate to another lane to help and/or farm, or just play extremely conservative in your own lane. Another option could be that the items you have at this point in time have good correlation with your skillset and they allow you to neutral farm very efficiently. By all means, if this is the case, neutral farm with caution.

Third Stage (21 - 35 min)
You should have some pretty good items by now (or a single pretty good item *cough radiance cough*), and if you don't, you're behind. It's time to make yet another decision. Declare a push to your team and don't stop till second tower of a lane (unless you're 100% sure you can get that too) or begin ganking like wild. Either way, both paths lead up to pushing since ganking means pushing afterwards (if successful). You should probably reduce the amt of farming you do by this time unless you are seriously behind in gold and you have not been surviving. Your demeanor should change from conservative to somewhat more aggressive, but to the point where you are 80% sure you will live. This pushing will amass you a lot of gold from destruction of towers and hero kills. This is very vital to your position as carry because you will be able to quickly get your end game build and stay in or gain control of the game.

Final Stage (36 - and beyond min)
If your team is playing well, you should be near or at your end game build by 40 min. If your team is not playing well, you should have the items you need in order to survive while being useful in battles regardles of win or loss as the final verdict. If you do not have these items, you have not played carry correctly.

Team Battles
You are not an initiator until you are farmed up enough to taken on 3 or more heroes at once. Until then, you are just a DPS unit with lower HP than your strength counterparts. Entering a battle when the opponent least expects it is generally the best method for team battles as a carry. When you enter the battle, your target priority should go something like this:


 * 1) Big team battle threats - This would be heroes that can stun or disable your entire team with one spell. This includes ES, Enigma, Silencer, Witch Doctor, Tiny, Magnataur etc.
 * 2) Annoying Disablers - This would be heroes that primarily focus on single target disables from longer distances. This includes Lion, CM, Bane, VS, Rhasta, etc.
 * 3) AOE disablers - This would be heroes who's stuns are based on their positioning of the spell. This includes Lina, Leshrac, Sven, Slard, Centaur etc.
 * 4) Carry - Without a team backing him, the carry should not be as effective.
 * 5) Tanks - Rarely target these in team battles because the rest will rape you before you can kill their tank.

''Keep in mind that all of these priorities are based on full or near full hp enemy heroes. If at any point in time there is an enemy hero that will die in a few hits, kill him instead.''

To Be Continued...

Priorities

 * 1) DON'T DIE.
 * 2) DON'T GET HIT.
 * 3) Farm creeps and get every last hit; deny creeps to keep creep equilibrium.

Early Game Regeneration
However, its impossible to know the lane assignment beforehand, so you should only buy this from the side shop when you know or when you have a chicken.

If you are using these to heal from low amounts of hp (50%) back to full, these are not being used effectively. Also good juking utility.

A carry hero should not be concerned with this item, unless there is a specific plan beforehand for first blood where you would take enough damage for this item to be effective.

DPS Items
Everything in this section is dependent on the enemy lineup.

Defensive






basically makes you unkillable while it is active.

Special Case


good for gankers though.

Farming
: good for farming neutrals and also can be bought completely from the side shop.

however, does not fit this my style very well since the activatable ability should never trigger since you should never be getting hit.

Offensive


if you are getting this to counter butterfly, you have already been outcarried.







best when combined with other damage sources (command aura, other dps items).

Survivability Items




It is best to do a winning push as soon as the item is made, while the enemy team is unaware that you have this.



not as much as bracer but trades that for more DPS.