Farming, the simple act of last-hitting creeps to get the gold out of them, becomes a complicated process when you consider 1-3 other heroes in your lane competing with you for those creeps, heroes harassing you, the added complication of farm-aiding items like Logger’s Hatchet (Quelling Blade), and other players trying to gank you and thereby prevent you from farming.  When it comes down to it, farming well is something that takes timing, map-sense, and most importantly, discipline.  Here is a look at everything about farming, so that you can master it.

Fundamentals

Last-Hit

The first thing to learn is not to auto-attack.  You will get way more money by deliberately last-hitting creeps than by simply smacking them continuously and hoping to luckily get the kill.  Don’t be lazy!  Dota and HoN are task-intensive games that require high APM to optimize your lane control and farming capability.  A focus on last-hitting instead of auto-attacking also allows you to deny creeps, which reduces your opponents’ farm and experience gain, and can also be essential for heroes like Blood Hunter (Bloodseeker), Zephyr, or Soul Reaper (Necrolyte) who rely on denies for healing, mana recovery, or other abilities.

Generally, the best way to last-hit is to “spam” the S key (stop command) until the correct time to apply the last hit to the creep.  This will prevent your hero from attacking or moving until the correct moment.  Some players like to pace back and forth instead of stop spamming, but in practice this is a weaker method.  Spamming stop allows you to hover your cursor over a specific creep that you will be targeting or in that general area instead of having to click near your hero continuously to pace and then move your cursor at the last instant to the creep you will be last hitting, click it, and account for the varying time it may take your hero to get there (if you are melee or pacing outside of your ranged hero’s attack range).  Therefore, the act of spamming stop to last hit, while generating a much higher APM rate, is actually a simpler and easier process which results in much better farming output, which is why it is used by the best players.

Harass

Farming successfully is not all about last-hitting.  It is also important to harass the enemy, that is to damage them with your attacks and spells intermittently while you are farming.  This will cause them to play more cautiously, be able to compete for fewer last hits, or have to leave the lane completely or die if they do not have enough health regeneration items or consumables.  Harassing is most obviously applicable when playing as a ranged hero, where it is easy to reach your enemy with an occasional attack in between last-hitting.  In some cases, harassing can completely dictate the course of the lane, like with a ranged hero going against a melee hero, where the ranged hero can sometimes harass the melee hero completely out of the lane and achieve free farm.  Although harassing is generally less useful with melee heroes since you must get closer to the hero to attack them and are generally just trying to avoid being harassed, it is just as important in lanes where melee heroes are going up against other melee heroes and must harass each other for control of the creeps.

Prioritize Tasks

It is a good idea to prioritize tasks like killing enemy creeps, denying allied creeps, and harassing the enemy.  Then try to act in accordance with this order to optimize your play.  This prioritization can be different given the current situation and you should think about it every individual game.  For example, if you are soloing against a carry hero with a ganking hero, you might prioritize denying creeps and harassing above your own farm, in order to hinder that carry’s farm.  Generally I like to rank actions in the following way:

1. Last-hitting enemy creeps
2. Harassing the enemy
3. Denying allied creeps

This means I will always try to attack a enemy creep to get the experience and gold if I can kill it with the next attack.  If no creeps are that close to being killed, then I will attempt to harass the enemy.  If I am unable to do so, then I will try to deny one of my own team’s creeps.  This is a good general prioritization to have because it puts your own farm and success first and foremost.  Harassing is next most important because it directly hinders your opponent; if you can harass the enemy enough you may get complete control of the lane (free farm), or have an opportunity to kill them.  Finally, you deny any creeps you can, which hinders their future growth by limiting their experience and gold gain.  Again, this is just a general guideline and you should always try and think about what the best priority would be given your specific situation.  For example, if you are playing Blood Hunter, you’d likely prioritize denying creeps above harassing the enemy since it is so important to your healing and survival in lane.

Early Game Tricks

There are a number tricks you can use to get a farming edge in your lane.  Some of these are specific to the hero you are playing.  For example, as Legionnaire, a common strategy is to get a early Iron Buckler ( shield) and then continuously right click the enemy hero in your lane, starting at level 1 (especially if they are melee).  This will cause all the enemy creeps near you to attack you (which won’t hurt much due to Iron Buckler) and you’ll get a lot of spins, causing a ton of damage to the nearby enemy hero as well as the creeps, and massively increasing your lane control.  There are tricks you can do with every hero so just pay attention, be creative, and watch what your enemy is doing any time you are getting crushed so you can use their trick later.

There are other tricks you can use every game on any hero.

Right click/Attack the enemy: Just like in the Legionnaire example above, you right click or attack click an enemy hero, which will cause nearby enemy creeps to aggro you.  This time, instead of tanking the creeps, you move immediately back, which causes the creeps to chase you a little before getting back to their business.  This trick is used a lot in HoN at higher levels and can improve your farming position a lot (so you can last hit creeps without getting harassed as much) by getting the enemy creeps behind your own creeps, but sometimes this just leads to both teams tugging the lane back and forth continuously.

Mind Games: Here is a good trick if you are soloing, and especially if your opponent has more base damage and is just waiting to deny creeps from you when they get low.  When a creep is getting pretty low (but not low enough to last hit), you throw an attack on a creep next to the one you want to kill.  You opponent thinks you are going to try to double hit the low creep and immediately attacks it right after your attack animation goes off.  Then you just send in a follow-up attack on the creep you actually wanted to kill and you get the gold without him denying it.  Winning solo lanes is generally all about mind games like this, and tricking your opponent so you can get all the cs.

Know Your Role

Look at your hero and figure out what your immediate role is with regard to your team: support, ganking, carry, etc.  A ganking or support hero laning with a carry should focus on harassing and denying and never compete with the carry for last hits.  If you’re the carry and the support is trying to take your last hits, ask them nicely to stop, and just get a Logger’s Hatchet (Quelling Blade) to out-hit them if they’re a moron who doesn’t listen and wants to lose the game.  If you’re a ganking hero, then stop farming and get out of the lane as soon as you’re level 5 or 6 and start hitting the carries on the other team to stop them from farming.

Use Farming Aids

The recent addition of Logger’s Hatchet (Quelling Blade) to the game has made it much easier for melee heroes to last hit early in the game.  Another great item, specifically for melee agility heroes, is Stout Shield (Poor Man’s Shield), which boosts your last hitting power with an agility increase and allows you to survive enemy harass in lane with a solid 20 damage prevention on any incoming attack.  Consider getting this very cheap and beneficial item early in the game any time you’re playing as a melee agility hero.

Don’t Nuke the Free Farm!

This is a common mistake committed even by experienced players that know better, but lose their discipline and get frustrated or lazy and start using their mana on free farm.  There are several logical problems with nuking creep waves to farm:

1. It pushes the lane back to the enemy.  A lane that is pushed to near your tower is easy and safe for you to farm, and dangerous and nearly impossible for the other team to farm; keep it there as long as possible!
2. It is a waste of mana.  Free farm doesn’t require any mana to get the money out of it (it’s free!), just good timing and patience.  There’s no point in using that mana when it’s not needed, and then not having it for your ultimate when a team battle happens a little bit later.
3. Your spells will be on cooldown.  You just used Chain Nova on a fat pile of creeps.  Sure you got a lot of money very quickly, but you could have got that money anyways by just attacking and now there is a huge team fight and that important spell isn’t ready.

Don’t Team Farm!

It only takes one player to get the maximum amount of money out of a free farm lane.  Don’t walk or (worse) teleport to a lane your ally is already free-farming!  This is a mistake that causes your team as a whole to lose money.  You are better off farming the woods or ganking enemies, both actions which will increase the overall economic gain of your team.

Types of Farm

Free Farm

Free farm exists in any lane without an enemy hero in it.  There is no competition for the creeps and so they are “free”; you should be able to get the most amount of money possible out of each creep wave by last hitting every single creep!  Keep your discipline and don’t get sloppy.  Get all that money!  Cherish that free farm, for it may not last long.  If your opponents are free farming, go gank them asap, or they will come out with loaded inventories!

Lane Freezing, Pulling, and other Creep Manipulation

Lane freezing is the act of manipulating a free farm lane while you farm it so that it doesn’t push forward towards the enemy or back into your own tower.  This is done by auto-attacking (if your lane needs more push to balance out) or attacking and denying your own creeps (if your lane needs more pull to balance out).  It is best to freeze the lane near your tower where you can farm it indefinitely with a certain level of safety.  This forces the other team to a. have less farm since that lane is locked down and they cannot farm it or b. organize a gank to kill you and prevent you from freezing the lane there.  Never push a lane back to the enemy unless you have the specific intent to push and destroy enemy buildings, otherwise you are just giving your opponent more farm, as they will be able to farm that lane in the future, and you won’t.

Another thing you can do (more easily in Dota than in HoN) is to block creeps with your hero in order to set up the battle between Sentinel and Scourge creeps in a desirable spot, like on the edge of a ramp in a solo lane.  If you block your creeps heavily so that the initial creep battle occurs on the ramp near your tower, then you can harass your opponent freely, while they must attack uphill, with limited vision and 50% miss on ranged attacks.  This is a great tactic that will give you an edge in your lane, especially if you manage to continuously freeze the lane in a desirable location like this.

Pulling Creeps

Pulling creeps is very important in the top Scourge lane and the bottom Sentinel lane.  Pull neutral creeps towards your lane and get them to attack your team’s creeps that are pushing in that lane.  Your creeps will then tank the damage of the neutral creeps, while you wait alongside, unharmed, to apply the last hit.  You can also deny a substantial portion of your team’s creep wave in the process, which keeps gold and experience from your opponents.

Creep Stacking

Neutral creeps spawn every minute on the minute so long as there isn’t a block like a creep corpse or observer ward in the way.  You can easily stack creep camps up by pulling them away about 5 seconds before the minute so that their camp area is empty when the clock hits :00.  One way to maximize the potential of this method is to use a captured creep via Whispering Helm (Helm of Dominator) to stack Ancient creeps every minute while you go about your business with your hero elsewhere.  Later, when you have stacked several camps, you can come back and cash in, as long as the other team doesn’t find and raid it first.

Jungling

Jungling, or farming mainly from neutral camps, is a viable option on heroes like Tempest (Enigma) and War Beast (Lycanthrope) that have summons who can tank the creeps for you.  In other cases you will likely want to pull creeps as long as possible before taking to the forest entirely with a relatively cheap early-game item like Helm of the Black Legion (Vanguard) or Abyssal Skull (Vladmir’s) that will allow you to either tank or lifesteal enough to continuously jungle.  Also remember to stack creeps when you are attacking a creep camp and the game clock nears the beginning of a new minute.

Spam Farming

Farming through spam is something that you would generally avoid because it pushes the lane, but is good on heroes like Thunderbringer (Zeus), Wretched Hag (Queen of Pain), and Defiler (Death Prophet), which have good AOE spells.  Prune a lane with attacks to have  creeps at low hit points before firing off a nuke to get the last hits on these creeps while simultaneously harassing the enemy hero(es) in your lane in the process.  This is an effective way to farm and control your lane, but requires a source of mana regeneration like Bottle or Ring of Sorcery (Arcane Ring).

Lane Hopping

Lane hopping is a tactic whereby you bounce between lanes to pick up free farm, usually with Post Haste (Boots of Travel) or a stack of teleport scrolls.  This can get you very farmed, but generally is only a viable strategy against a lesser, undisciplined opponent who pushes their lanes out repeatedly and wont gank you effectively.

Tags: creep manipulation, creep stacking, creeps, Dota, Farming, farming aids, free farm, harassing, HoN, Jungling, lane freezing, lane hopping, lane pulling, last hitting, nuking farm, pulling creeps, Spam Farming, team farm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 12:33 AM by daggius and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.