General DiscussionLycan help: Am I doing this wrong?

Start with Stout Shield over QB or just get both together. Without a stout shield it's just too hard to jungle with him now.

^yes

also, i think first item medallion is worth it.

Start with not picking Lycan.

@ Sam

So starting items should be

1x stout shield
1x tangos
2x clarities
1x ring of protection?

First item medallion then go vlads?

@ wink

well........... IDK what to pick i'm tired of picking support or initiator. And my natures prophet sux.

No there is not enough gold to buy them all. But yes it should be shield, ring, tango and clarity OR qb, shield and tango. MoC first item is sometimes good but it doesn't give you enough HP sustain to stay in the jungle. It increases your farm speed a lot though.

So maybe this way:

Stout shield
quelling blade
tangos

(This seems I will be going back to base for mana/health 1x or 2x times though. My build above has 0 maybe 1 time for base return for health/mana) are you sure?

You mean the first build you wrote or the other one with shield? Because I just can't see how can you need to go back to base only once without a shield. Maybe if you buy it base I don't know. It could also be lucky spawns like satrys as well.

@ Sam.

Well the base 0 times or 1 time is my initial build top. Your build with 1x tangos/shield/quelling seems like I will be in base at least once before MOC and VLADS due to lack of mana and being able to cast wolves.

Here's how I jungle with lvl 1 lycan (seems to suffer on dire side more idk why)

with my starting items above:

:30 seconds wipe out ez creep camp (pull if needed to get next set)
1:00 kill second ez creep camp (take about 30 seconds)
1:30 Stay in lane or behind trees to absorb XP from lane and not last hit lane (unless they are just soloing bottom, but usually is not achieve lvl 2)
2:00 kill ez creeps (takes about 20 seconds)
2:20 step into lane or hide in trees to absorb more XP and wait for ez creep camp to spawn (Hit lvl 3 before 3:00 min mark)
3:00 kill ez creep camp AAAAAGAIN...
3:15~3:20 take out a med creep camp (either small/med satyr camp(no large) or mud golems, or centaur camp (no bird camps! too tough))
4:00 kill ez creep camp (Achieve lvl 4)
4:20 kill med creep camp (usually have gold enough for sages mask/ring of health and half gold for morbid mask at this point)
5:00 kill ez creep camp

And so on.... idk pretty boring at that point but if I am left undisturbed jungling for 10 minutes I can have vlads/moc and brown boots with the build I have. If someone ganks me then the game seems to be lost from that point. I typically buy a smoke and smoke into rosh due to pit being warded. Also I am not going back to base (unless harassed by enemy hero)

The way you jungle is I'm afraid way too greedy. You both take away the chances of your support getting levels and farm by pulling and also leech EXP from your carry. That is definetely not a good way to do it. Of course you won't ever need to go back to base if all you do is killing easy camps. Also you should have Vlads and MoC ~8 minutes if you do it well. The way you do it is a no risk no reward way, so it will almost always work the same way. What are you gonna do if they block your small camp? Yes, nothing.

^

Hrmmm yes I did have my creep camp blocked 1 time so..... this is making sense.

So I'll refrain from absorbing XP from the lane and leave it open for a support to pull (FYI VERY RARE to see a tri lane or 2/1/2 lane and a support pulling/stacking creeps in my lvl of play..... I do but I am really sick of playing support lately.)

So hold on sam..... Am I killing medium camps at lvl 1? Leave the ez creep camps alone the whole time? So I assume if this is to be done then I am killing ez/med satyrs mud golems, troll camp and eventually the centaurs then hell bear/bird camps? But doing this stick with your:
1x quelling blade
1x tangos
1x stout shield
and I can still achieve MOC/vlads in ~8 min?

BTW your guide is awesome on life stealer here is my game with your build/strat guide i tried this weekend:

http://dotabuff.com/matches/545993779

I had a rough start because I thought "oh they have no invis/gankers im set" then I had forgotten about the time change for night stalker... Woops! He shut my farm down early as LS, but then I came back later since they had no late game thank goodness.

I start with medium camps just micro the wolves so they soak some damage but they dont die.

I'm not 100% sure you want to go full out rat doto with lycan in a lower bracket like mine (~3400). He kills towers plenty fast without necro book and he can be a hero killer too. I think going MOC/vlads/bot then bkb then ac then deso or basher you can start helping in the team fights and do tons of dmg. Biggest issue I think will be in rat doto often your team can't help but feed 4v5.

I need to investigate this jungling strat as well cus I simply can't non stop jungle with lycan ever.

I'm not exactly sure about that timing because since whenever I play Lycan I have random gold so I am able to buy a ring and a clarity on top. The thing is not wasting your mana early. Try to avoid summoning wolves again till 3. If you need it though just do it. Also no, you can obviously kill the easy camp if you support went to gank mid etc or he just missed the pull. Everything but Centaurs from medium camps are killable, but wolves and ogres will be a bit harder. Only wolves and satrys will put you to level 2 though so check both camps and try to find them. Level 2 increases your DPS by quite a lot. I don't know maybe I can do a jungle lycan game soon and then you can watch it.
Also glad you liked the guide.

@ Let the wookie win.

Yeah you know, I may just get rid of the necro book and try it your way. Yeah that Necro book is expensive lvl 3. I do like if the other team kills my red necronomicon warrior they take a ton of dmg from him.

Yeah I think I'll try it your way I'll scrap the book (pun intended) and go bkb instead on him first after BoT. It was just highly recommended on another thread I posted a week ago to do that with Lycan.

@ Sam

Ah Random lycan playa! :O Yeah mana management on lycan is hard early. I need to micro my wolves more which is true what darkness said earlier.

Yes I think maybe 1 game out of the 12 I had someone stacking creeps and pulling if that tells you anything. That game I did avoid from eating their ez creeps. So only wolves and satyrs to lvl 2 then? Fair enough. Tough to find sometimes! Why I default to the ez camp is because i know they'll be ez every time! :)

Either way I think between you and wookie I have a good start at what I can and will change tonight when I get home and try this again.

Thanks,

JT

Taking the easy camp means the supports can't pull. You're supposed to do the mediums, ideally there's a camp that'll give level 2. Medium camps that give level 2 are the satyrs and the wolves, and the hard camps that give level 2 are the hellbears, the trolls and the large satyr. That'll either give you Howl or Feral Impulse which will then make farming the next camp easier.

Also think about dying and spending your gold before you die for faster base trips in the early game. You can tell your team that you're going to do this, or tell them to fuck off when they insult you for dying to neutrals. It's quicker to die, respawn at full and get back to jungling than it is to walk to base, get to full health + mana, then get back to jungling.

If you are going brown boots > necro 3 > travels, in the time it takes to have gotten necro 3, if you had gotten power treads instead of staying with brown boots, the attack speed, damage and extra wolves (from tread switching) would've made up for it's cost. if you upgrade browns to treads and earn 700 gold more (e.g. +35 GPM each minute for 20 minutes), they've paid for themselves, since you'll sell them back for 700g to make up for their 1400 gold cost.

In my experience, its not worth doing rat lycan in trash tier, you benefit more killing the noobs in the other team with carry lycan, forcing 2 tps in the tower your´re collapsing (since lycan can kill the other hero if only one guy tps in) and disrupting the team fight in the other lane, thats one of his shining strenghts imo.

I'm not a really good lycan too, need help and will keep watching this thread
I started with around 65%++ winrate when i had 20 games but suddenly it dropped a lot at around 30+ games into 53%
I usually rush mask of death and then MoC and then proceed to vlads, only suicide to heal myself once.

@gK I think the biggest issue is your team won't split push. Rat lycan seems to work best when your team 4 man pushes another lane so it forces enemy team to go fight them and give up a tower or rax to a solo lycan, or they split up and you peace out of your lane making them waste time while you get more farm, or they lose to the 4 man push. In solo average level pub play your team will still be in a laning/farming mentality as you push and will come to try to help you push and die and shit. So sometimes it's better just to team fight.

I tried the boots of travel my last game though and let me say I love them even not going full rat doto. Being able to tp into lanes to keep that farm going is sweet and freeing up a slot is big since lycans first items are cheap. If you go quell/tp/vlads/boots/moc/deso you're full. Obviously you can drop the quell but it's a very nice item to have when you're pushing as much as lycan does so being able to keep it as you build a basher or ac or necro book is pretty sweet.

did u try to dodge spells with ur ulti?

Seems to me like lycan in lane is better in just about every way than lycan in jungle. As with every other hero that isnt Chen/ench/enigma, running them in the jungle is just less optimal exp/gold, leads to your lanes being much harder for your teamates, and being utterly useless for the first 15 minutes of the game.

Why not just lane for 10-15 minutes then you can farm the jungle through the mid-game when there are no towers to push or supports to right click

I normally jungle Lycan or Ursa, I admit it is better to lane them. But at my level everyone picks carries. It is much faster just to jungle. Then you don't have 2 people trying to out last hit each other. I refuse to play support to 4 people who insta-pick carries, unless they have some nice spells for my Rubick to steal :)

scout shield 1 tango 1 healing potion 2 clairty

^ Do you skip quelling blade completely?

Lane lycan is better if you have safe lane + support. Otherwise jungle lycan all the way.

You don't have to skip QB, but you shouldn't start with it if you don't have an item to help you tank for your wolves, as you'll basically burn all your regen from one camp, or go to base after the first one.

@ Hung

Yeah In an ideal world I would have my support let me free farm my lane all day and harass the enemy heros. Yes a lane would do better for farm than jungle. But this is not the case. Lycan doesn't have at least a escape/stun/harass spell besides wolves. Laning would be very difficult IMO. Jungling is more guarantee for money without being bossed as much by enemy heros. + I can rosh if under ideal conditions in under 10/15 minutes. I may not achieve the gold I need for vlads/moc/boots/smoke in lane. I would basically need to get (say creeps are 45 gold a piece since it varies for simplicity) Vlads/moc/boots=3500 gold so 10 min=600 gold just absorbed by the system giving it to you, so I would need 64 last hits in lane in under 10 minutes to achieve the same goal. That is a tough road to travel getting 64.4 last hits in under 10 minutes with a lycan in lane.

@gK

Yeah i've noticed that teams at my trash tier will not play defensive and give up too many kills in 15 minutes then by then it is a tough road to play rat dota. I may just go man fighting. Didn't try lycan last night though but I may do it tonight.

@ Androgynus

You know, out of the 3 games I had last night you know how many supports pulled the ez camps? one, and it was because I did it: http://dotabuff.com/matches/547567378

Made me furious because it put my dazzle win rate under 60%. Unrelated note: Anyone likes antimage? If you can't continuously last hit even with a quelling blade don't play it......

@ Wookie

Agreed. Best way to play lane is a tri lane. This has worked for me before.

A few of the lycan guides ive seen have had starting items as Ring of Basilius and Tangos. What do you guys think of that or is it better to go for a QB or shield and more tangos/Clarity (ignore my terrible games as a judge i failed hard)

cant, the lv 1 wolf is way to weak for just basillus you need to tank most of the medium camp yourself so stout shield + quelling are preferred

The biggest problem of jungling a non-support non-ganker hero like lycan is that your lanes are significantly weaker. A lycan cannot gank, cannot help lanes at all. You cant have 2 supports babysitting a carry, so if your safe lane faces tough opponents your team is in trouble. By the time you get out of the jungle at 15 mins, your team will be at a serious disadvantage a lot of the time. The enemy carries will have you outfarmed and leveled, unless your team wins their lanes somehow which is unlikely given the 15 mins of 4v5.

I think the starting items like
1) QB+stout
2)QB+175 ring + tango + clarity
3) Basillus + tango
4) Sabe mask (375) + tango +etc

are all good. the difference between these options are small if we talk about the resulting likelihood of winning.

Some of the key factors IMO are.
1) map awareness and decision making. when to push . when to avoid and join team fights. when to abondon your teammate. when to leave your teammates to def highground while you split push to get rax.

2) early anti-gank . local map awareness. you can jungle when some of the enemy heroes are missing. just jungle some camp that you know can escape easily for u if they show up. like the camp near the lane. the camp near tower. near your laning hero.
Also, you can buy ward if you have to, to secure your jungle.

3) Time management, when to jungle and when to lane farm. Where to tp to maximize your gold gain.

Stout shield will tank a lot more dmg than a bassy, especially if you attack the correct camps first, ie small guys where blocking 20 dmg if half their dmg. You know how most players go bassy first on doom as well? I hate that build too, I always go stout shield, quell blade, tangos on doom, naix and lycan. It's just the best way to jungle imo.

@ whoji

Yeah thank you my map awareness has gone way up due to jungling. If I play this character, I seem to spend most of my time staring at the minimap now. Your starting builds I chose option #2, but i think i'll do #1 (i think you can buy tangos with qb/stout right?)

Toughest time I have is the warding. I am too greedy and need to ward if my support doesn't ward early. Also missing from that is do not pick lycan if bloodseeker/zeus combo is there (bloodseeker in general) or bloodseeker/invoker sunstrike combo. Of course I'll be dipping below 50% health jungling, so ez ganks for opp. team early.

Other hard counters early seem to be:

1. Night stalker
2. Riki
3. Bounty hunter.
4. Nyx assassin.

They all wreck farm and with or without map awareness they can grab you easy even if I'm staring at the mini map and go invis.

Yes RoB is nice for mana, but I think I'll try it this way tonight (if I go solo queue) Option #1 with tangos from whoji's, but mix in a neutral death, so i can go back to base and heal/get mana but won't do that if i'm close to death and can't purchase an item then i'll just walk it back.

Seems to be valid and will let me tank more in jungle. I was doing the option #2 but 2x clarities so I wouldn't have to base, plus go i will be killing med. camps instead of small (if i get a guy that pulls lane, if not i will just eat ez creeps for the first 2 minutes.)

I have been practicing a lot with different starting items and so far the best is definitely qb+ stout + tango. Qb is carried until you run out of inventory slots which doesn't happen until 30+ mins unless you have to buy dust. Qb also helps you to clear your first 2 med camps much faster so you have to tank less damage. Needless to say, stout is really must when you tank for your wolves. You have to suicide once if you don't get perfect camps and always go medallion first.

From my experience you can neglect easy camps completely they're not worth it. You should be able to kill roshan about 10:00~ (+-1min depending on camps). Sell stout before qb.

What comes to laning lycan, it's better of course but you have so much potential in jungle. You can tell your team to pick strong 2 heroes to safelane so it won't get completely crushed (I hardly ever play soloq so I don't know will randoms be able to pick properly).

Also I like to go BoTs before necro 3 because they help you farm faster and save item slots. With aegis you have 1 slot for tp/dust. Especially if you know you are not good with carrying tp then it's perfect item to get earlier. Necros are also little bit useful later on when you have maxed howl. Items are always situational though, personally I recently tried rod of atos and it's quite fun and useful for lycan since you lack any slow/disable. Even thought the 2 staffs are not that useful its fun item to play around with. Please almost every game get bkb, hardly ever it's not useful.

@-hg- HungLikeKimJong
Yes your other lanes are way weaker if you have lycan jungle but 15mins afk farming is not really realistic. Once lycan hits lvl 6 (6mins in) he can and must help if the safelane gets ganked. Often you turn it around and get kills instead. However if the enemies actually have brains and they have warded your jungle then more like 13min afk farm without helping can be more realistic but most of the time that's not the case. Also if you know how to play him you start the help your team and create chaos all around the map once you have killed roshan for the first time at 10-11mins in, not 15.

@ 44 Mikael

Thanks for your post.

Heres how my lycan game went last night on all pick:

http://dotabuff.com/matches/548747057

So needless to say not so well..... I ended up with the most kills (4) and 3rd on deaths (7).....

They smelled my cheese and warded the jungle. Big time. They warded 2 med. camps and the easy camp.

I altered my build after zeus was just smoking everyones ass (no one ended up killing him....) and had to get a common cloak for mag. resistance. I urged everyone else to do the same but no love.

Sadly, my lycan is now @ 10 wins and 10 losses over my career. In retrospect, that game when I knew the jungle was warded, and buying sentries that early in the game was out of the question, I should've just got out of the jungle and helped out the timbersaw top since he was getting raped all game.

Needless to say, the games I lose on lycan, my team averages over 1 death a minute 15 minutes in.

@ 44 Mikael,

Yes jungling seemed easier with the quell blade/tangos and stout shield and i microed wolves so they didn't die right away. I like this way better now versus my original post at the top. Granted.... if I would've won that lycan game I would've felt better about it.

I agree, I also use qb, stout and tango, and almost aways skipp small camps. In fact, you can start doing stacked ancients after lvl 6. QB also allows you to kill roshan quicker. I usually kill him under 10min mark.

@ GK

Last 3 games haven't been able to achieve this. I feel that my solo offlane the last 3 games has been sub-par, so after they die 6 times in 10 minutes it is extremely if not impossible to overcome this obstacle.

I have been able to do this prior but no luck lately. I may have better luck if I stress the point to the rest of the team to "play it safe" and "return to base if you're low dont be a hero"

IDK this is solo trash can queue so I can't really turn water into wine here.

yeah if the team cant hold fucking 8mins without losing their lanes not much you can do

yeah in retrospect, since the team composition was terribad, I should of just nutted up and repicked even though I did call out "I want lycan" early on.

Optimum team settings are:

1. Hard carry
1. Semi carry
1. Initiator/tank
2. Support/nukers

We had 1 support, 1 tank/initiator, and 2 hard carries and a semi carry. Opp. team had 4 nuker/supports and a hard carry pa. Much better team composition.

Where are you getting your "optimum team settings" from, totally ignoring the fact that many heroes can be semi-carry/support, nuker and initiator go hand in hand most of the time, and hard carries are not actually necessary if you have the right comp for that.

Its a list of balanced team composition. Yeah I can have 5 carries win a game or 5 nukers win a game or even 5 supports win a game but show me some stats where this is the set.

Hard carries are your backup plan if the game lasts over 30 minutes. Which... they usually do?

Here let me look at your last few games: http://dotabuff.com/matches/548582123 Wheres your support? Nyx is going "im a roaming ganker so fuck your wards/mek/pipe" so you lost.

All the games you won in the last 10 matches have that set of my optimum team settings. Can't say it works every time but highest chances to win IMO needs that composition. If not then its hard to win.

I just mean to say that roles are not set in stone and that heroes can be both an initiator, support, nuker, etc.

Uh I think your team comp was fine, timber is supposed to be able to solo lane and leech xp without feeding, CM + jug is a very strong lane combo and invoker mid is fine. Your team just sucked. Look at this lycan win: http://dotabuff.com/matches/547481997

All fing carry, we off laned solo AM cus CM was brain dead and wouldnt go lane with him (plan was drow solo safe lane). Still won though cus other team sucked. A lot of times bad play is blamed on the team makeup, especially in draft modes.

^ wait wait wait that was not an all carry team you had a CM too like me :O

IDK yeah timber was supposed to leech xp and wasn't happening. Wow you solo off laned an AM? Jeez he shouldn't of won his lane yet he did. Very impressive.

I am appreciating your game post so I can see even without necro book tower dmg was high. nice.

EDIT: I just re-looked that game and your opp team didn't really have a hard support unless tide went there. Elder titan looked like he gave it a go and filled in with a mek/urn. Their team composition wasn't really ideal either in my mind.

They did have:

2x Hard carry (PA, DK)
3x tank/initiator (tide/elder titan/ timbersaw)

So too much beef and not enough seasoning? (My dumb way of saying need moar squishy nukers?) I can't really compare apples to apples I guess now that I look over the game again since its pineapples and zucchini

Idk, their team was a bunch of idiots. Tide constantly ran into jungle to attack me, he'd gush and I'd run away. It did slow down my farm but it also caused him to be massively underelevled and after he did this a couple times our mid came and killed him.

AM somehow got a first blood solo in that lane. Pretty ridiculous.

Just don't be afraid of picking lycan simply cus your team doesn't have some magically combination. I would not pick him with heroes that fill the same role like NP or DP, you will probably need more disable and team fight, but if you lack carry and/or pushers go for it.

how the fuck can someone win a game with these kind of retards?

http://dotabuff.com/matches/551361663

seriously, why does anyone pick timber if you don't know shit about the hero?

Lacking a bkb most games

http://dotabuff.com/matches/555139864 So I played a Lycan game just now. Even though game was pretty one-sided you should still see how to jungle effectively.