SA, NA, Lightning Revenent, Venomancer, will be added on to the backlog, along with Bristleback, Silencer, Doom Bringer, Lord of Avernus, Treant Protector, Bane Elemental, Shadow Shaman, Earthshaker, Lord of Olympia, Queen of Pain, Prophet, Twin-Headed Dragon, and Goblin Alchemist.

That makes 37 heroes. Whoosh. Almost halfway there. I probably would be playing more if I wasn't so obsessed with playing Enchantress almost every single game.

Really, it's a lovely hero. It can solo, it can support, it can do well farmed or not farmed, it's notoriously difficult to take down, it can do both early and late game. Et cetera. Of course, there's always the problem that it has absolutely no AoE whatsoever, making it considerably less useful and considerably a slower farmer (for neutralling especially, and the low base damage and attack speed compounds this. Impetusing neutrals is just a little too wasteful).

I do agree that it IS kind of weird that people would reject the opportunity to be part of a larger more experienced pool of players just because of the stigma that one gets by not being the "first team". I'll leave it at that because I seriously am in no position to and can't actually consider any of the factors involved to comment any more.

I've decided to dedicate this post to doing a little self assessment, and perhaps be proud of what I've actually improved at.

What Ant can do:

1) Throw single spells effectively in engagements. Past that however, it starts to get screwy. I guess I sort of had this all along. I can plan and find out the best situation to cast ONE spell ONCE in an engagement, mostly ultimates. It started out with Chain Frost, and then went on to Warlock's Infernal, and even Doom later on. I guess I can sort of get good Epicentres in too, but I stay off Sandking for reasons such as everything other than Epicentre kind of misses.

2) Follow instructions. Verbal instructions followed very quickly. You wouldn't believe how slow some people are at doing so. The sad consequence of this of course is that it results in blind faith sometimes and a little mistrust after you blindly follow a command, but meh, I trust my teammates. Mostly. I've sort of developed a mind of my own, but I've also learnt that do or die, no matter what your instincts tell you, always follow what LuX says INSTANTLY.

3) Last hit. I guess it can be said for most other competitive players, but I can safely say that I've never been in a situation where the opponent can completely shut down my farming or denying by out last-hitting me all the time, safe for some absurd base damage difference situations in which case most of the time I can drive the opponent away. I HAVE however, been able to totally shut off an opponent's farming and denying by simply constantly out last-hitting him all the time. That being said though, I still ain't as good as Tofu - gotta give some credit to him, he simply has one of the best last-hit timings I've ever seen. As we all know too, last-hitting is rarely ever the deciding factor in lane control.

4) Not get caught stupidly. I play very safe, most of the time, other than a few moments when I decide to just charge in for fun. I guess it's mostly from being a first piority swap target. Most of the time in early or mid game, I play heroes that are required in the large clashes to be alive to cast one crucial spell, like Chain Frost or Infernal. I usually farm by virtue of not dying.

Now we move on to what Ant can't do. For sleep's sake I shall only list half of them, or less:

1) Hit AoE ground-targeted spells. Like I said, I've missed every AoE spell in the book that requires you to target the ground, the smaller AoE ones on a much more regular basis. Part of the reason I don't QoP is because there's this thing about missing Sonic Wave... and I miss carrion swam, impale, nether blast (I actually miss this more than I hit), you name it, I've missed it. Did I tell you about the time I missed Infernal?

2) Farm OMFGGODLIKEFAST under pressure. Mostly because I don't take risks, and also because I somehow or other can't KS. Yet another reason why I don't QoP. My QoP has a regular Skadi timing of 35 minutes. ALL the time. Not too fast, not too slow. You are NOT going to see a 20+ minute Skadi on my QoP, simply because I don't take the risks required to get those essential kills required to farm that fast. It's because of this that my late game farming is rather horrible. In reality, the chance that you're going to be caught if all 3 lanes are pushed up and you're farming one of them, isn't really that high if your team is competent enough. However, I simply have a phobia of farming late game when the entire enemy team is in the fog.

3) Ward. I can only ward for myself. Most of the time, I simply can't maintain ward control in the map. It's really beyond me how people can constantly up wards, and at the places where the enemy heroes will always seem to pass too at that particular few minutes in the game.

4) Command. I'm good at following orders, but giving them is a different story. I don't know if I'm bad at it, but I simply DON'T. There's a little self-confidence issue here, and I simply don't have the confidence or the courage to take responsibility for commanding my team into a make or break situation. Then again, I haven't really tried, and haven't really had the need to. In fact, the only time I do give out instructions is when my team or a teammate is really blowing, in which case it's mostly more of whining than commanding. Otherwise, I give "friendly suggestions".

There's much more to cover, like farming in lag, backstabbing well, sensing wards, etc. etc. but sleep is important now because I can actually get it.

I also notice that I tend to take my hero logs in phases. I'll be trying a particular kind of hero for a while for a few heroes, then move on to another kind for a few heroes, and on and on. Oh well, I need to think of a way to keep logging to one or two paragraphs max. Then it'll be much faster to clear. I really, really, want to get it done, just so I can look back at it when I'm finished and see whether I've changed my thoughts about anything, and see how limited I really am.