Heroes of Newerth Noobie Guide 2 – Basic Laning

If you haven’t yet check out my Noobie Guide 1 – Terms previously posted!

So you know the terms, you just picked your shiny new hero, and now you’re confused. You don’t know where to go, what exactly you should be doing, and worse yet your teammates are giving you the eye asking if you are AFK. Yep, you’re a noobie.

So let’s start this off. The first part of the game is called Laning. That’s when your team splits up in the 3 lanes (bot, top, and mid) and gains exp and gold by killing the waves of creeps and by killing other heroes. Normally it splits up to 2 heroes top, 2 heroes bot, and 1 hero mid. Now I’ve seen some weird things. I’ve seen 2 mid, 2 top, and 1 bot. I’ve also seen 4 (yes 4) top, 1 mid, no bot. They pushed to get first blood. It was fun! So choose your lane and/or wait for everyone to choose their lane and take whats left.

The first 20 minutes of a game can decide the rest. If your team isn’t laning very well, feeding the other team, and losing towers early then it’s more than likely that the game is over. It’s a rarity to come back from that. So let’s start with the basics of laning.

Last Hit

Last hitting is the single most important thing you can do until you are leveled enough to take out a hero. Last Hitting is timing your attacks to ONLY get the last hit on the creep. Who ever delivers the last hit on the creep gains extra gold. Timing can take a few games to get down. Especially if you have a hero you haven’t played before. You want to hold (H) your character close enough to the creeps and then hit A to attack an individual creep for the last hit. I remapped my hold keybinding to F so it’s easier on my poor little fingers. DO NOT AUTO ATTACK. Auto attacking pushes the lane. Pushing the lane in the early levels mean you get pulled farther and farther away from your tower. Being pulled away from your tower means the other team can and will pick you off.

~ I should note that using Hold to keep your character from attacking is good for range heroes. I don’t recommend it for melee heroes. If you are melee I suggest you just run back and forth and run around the creeps so that you aren’t staying in one place. ~

Denying

Now that you understand last hitting you are ready to learn about denying. Denying is last hitting your own creeps to reduce the exp the enemy gains and to make sure they receive no gold for the kill. By denying you gain exp faster than the other heroes giving a gap in levels. This can be extremely helpful early on. Denying is a form of harassment (explained next).

~ Side note, it is better to last hit your creep than to deny an enemy creep. If placed in the situation that you have to choose, last hit your own. ~

Harassment

Harassment is when you take small shots at heroes that get too close to you. Smart heroes will back away if they are getting hit by other heroes. Harassing players has some advantages: 1. You keep them from denying your creeps by keeping them away. 2. You make them weak. The lower their health the easier to kill them later on. 3. You can easily deny their creeps. 4. If you scare them enough to completely back away they gain no exp at all.

Now the disadvantages.. You will be putting yourself in a very high risk situation. When you attack an enemy hero the creeps will automatically attack you and vice versa. So if the enemy decides not to retreat, but rather stun lock you and try to kill you there’s a very good chance that you’ll die.

~ Harassment works best on melee heroes. Denies work best on ranged heroes. ~

Play Defensively

Sometimes you are the one being harassed. Sometimes you’re in a lane that the other team is pushing, hard. So what do you do? Stay back. Be defensive. You don’t have to attack the creeps to gain exp. In your options menu turn on the ability to see exp gain. Use that as a tool to see just how far back you can be, but still gain exp. They keep pushing you back to your tower? Fine stay there. Once their creeps push that far you gain the exp and last hit gold anyway because they’ll back away from the tower. They may get a little a head of you as far as levels but it won’t be by much because you’ll get their creeps anyway at the tower.

~If you are low health don’t be afraid to go back to the well. Don’t just hang out and wait patiently for your health to refill. All it does is give the other team an open invitation to kill you ~

Towers

Stay away from their towers at the early levels. Seriously. Stay away. The towers will own you early on. Don’t let that little green greedy demon inside of you run after the guy. Say you make it past the first tower. You will be low health and you got another tower to worry about ahead of you. Not only that, but you are now in their territory. Someone will come and finish you off. That is, if the tower doesn’t get you on your way out.

Your towers are an amazing defense early on. If someone follows you to your tower and you have the mana/health stun or slow them at the tower. Watch as their greed gets them killed.

~ While rare early game don’t forget you can deny towers too. Denying a tower deprives the other team of shared gold. ~

Soon to come:
Laning – Beyond the Basics.
Heroes List
Items List
Which Boots Do I Get?!
Why is my team yelling at me?!
And more!

Related Posts

1. Heroes of Newerth Noobie Guide 3 ~ Advanced Laning
2. Heroes of Newerth Noobie Guide 1 – Terms
3. Heroes of Newerth ~ A Lesson in Backdooring
4. Heroes of Newerth Basics Video