Image by Swade
The International is absolutely the focus of this week, but to save yourself some trouble later on, we still strongly recommend keeping up with your weekly quests. Luckily, this week they are extremely easy.
Three quests from this week’s lineup stack very nicely. Dealing magic damage, disabling enemy heroes go hand-in-hand with playing support. Concentrate on the top tier meta supports for this one and you should be fine. Here is a refresher on what was top tier a couple of weeks ago and still stays very much relevant.
We would also recommend giving Crystal Maiden a try. Play her in the same manner as you would play Lich and Undying. Start the lane with as many Mangoes as you can afford and get some extra as soon as possible. Spam your Frostbite on an enemy hero, get Crystal Nova level two and keep harassing the enemy core, opening up a kill possibility.
Her aura is exceptionally strong, especially in well-coordinated pro games, but the first two or three levels are Crystal Maiden’s power spike: with enough mana she is more or less the strongest hero in the game. Utilizing it and getting to level three or four through kills is recommended.
Then, once you get your aura, start thinking about other item progressions and sustainability. Caveman spam works wonders in asserting early dominance against most lanes. The only bad lanes, where you should consider getting Aura earlier, are the ones against Lifestealer and Juggernaut, or against dispel heroes like Abaddon, Oracle, Legion Commander etc.
Jakiro also makes a lot of sense, both in terms of meta and in terms of weekly quests. He is not exactly the strongest meta support, but can be devastating in the right hands. Moreover, he is at his best at lower level average MMR.
Landing stuns is easier, people continuously stand in Macropyre and if your cores are being a bit too passive, which is almost always the case in lower level games, you can take the situation into your own hands and keep shoving in waves and pushing towers with your Liquid Fire.
Do not sleep on his damage output in the later stages of the game, especially once you get your Shard. Percentage-based damage is always relevant. One very important “trick” to learn when playing the hero is to have Liquid Fire on auto-cast, Liquid Frost not on auto-cast and using Liquid Frost as you would use a targeted spell on a priority target. This way you apply both Fire and Frost in a single auto-attack.
As a support you rarely get to stand and hit people, not that you should. This trick saves quite a bit of time, especially on a rather clunky hero like Jakiro. Moreover, Liquid Frost works as a pretty good pseudo-setup for Ice Path: just aim your Ice Path while the projectile is in the air and you should be fine.
Getting the other two quests is also pretty easy. One just assumes you play 6-7 regular core games, getting creeps this way is easy. The amount is probably even lower, considering you will be playing some support this week.
The high-five one can be done in one victory in a party. Just get mega creeps, find a secluded corner and start spamming the hotkey. You will probably waste less than a minute of the enemy time, which is unfortunate and a bit BM, but you only need to do it once, so your karma should be ok.
What do you think of this week? Share your tips and trick for the weekly quests in the comment section below.
