Help with Luna?

Okay, lets start with Items. How far ahead do you see the match going?

Is either looking to Push hard and fast/fight early on? (i.e. GG before 20:00)

Very rare in Pubs, but in these cases, you want to ignore any Farming Items and rush a Drum of Endurance or Ring of Aquila (if someone else is building the Drum) and a Magic Stick/ Magic Wand, then go straight into your Core Items -> Power Treads, Black King Bar and Manta Style.

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http://dotabuff.com/matches/733162935

My latest (still old ._. ) and greatest Luna game, a very hard and fast Pushing Game, very early on. Luna may well be strongest in hte Mid-Game, but you can easily dominate the Early-Game with her too. <}3

Not much to say really, we pressured, we Killed and then we Pushed, it was easy since there was nothing that could stand up to us early on since all of their Heroes needed Farm and Levels to be effective, our Supports did not however 8{3 . It was a very easy game, mostly due to a difference in skill levels (No surprise that the 5 Carry Team were all n00bs huh? 8{3 ).

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Is the game going to be a Farm-fest for the 1st 10-15 minutes?

This is quite likely in Pubs, unless the other Team has a good Snowballing Hero in Mid-Lane. If you feel like you're going to be 2 vs 2 with only an occasional Gank from Mid during the Early Game, then consider Farming a Hand of Midas or, alternatively, a Helm of the Dominator (more on HoTD later).

Does the game look like it's going Late?

How you approach this depends on 1 thing, do you have the advantage Late Game? If you do, make sure you get plenty of Farm (it helps if a Support is willing to Stack Jungle Creeps for you), if you feel it's a good idea to get an HoTD, then Stack Ancients with a (Pink) Satyr while you're at it. Farm up well and Press your advantage once you have it.

---

http://dotabuff.com/matches/665987276

This is one example. Some people will tell you that a Faceless Void outcarries a Luna. These people just aren't as good at Luna as I am! 8{3

Most Heroes are in trouble if they get Chronosphere'd, but I maanged to make Void waste a few, by getting Eclipse off before he could Chrono me. We both had our Ults down, but that meant that Void had to back off, while I peacefully Split-Pushed all his Lanes faster than he could keep up with! 8{3

Since the Safe Laners and Mids on both Teams were pretty greedy, it was obvious the game would continue for a while, so I focused on Split-Pushing to delay the Game while outfarming Void (ingore his GPM ***back, he got a lot of Kills later on) and Sniper. I went for a Hand of Midas this game, since I knew that our Offlane Weaver couldn't hold Bot Tower for very long, meaning our Ancients were exposed after about 10:00. Add in a Nyx Asassin and you have a good reason to not Feed Stacks to the other Team (they still kept going to our Ancients to Farm anyway). We also had the problem that a Treant Protector wasn't going to let Towers fall too easily...or so i thought 8{3

By about 30:00 I was 2 levels ahead of the rest of their Team and was fighting our Morphling for highest GPM...he won the fight over who got the most Jungle Farm ._. but I got all the Tier 2 Towers and most of the Lane Farm to myself (Treant tried, I was too good) 8{D

After I got my Core Items + a Butterfly, I started Pushing even harder. It only takes so much pressure on their Tier 3s before the other Team cracks and Feeds in a badly chosen Teamfight, or I eventually whittle their Towers down to nothing. As per usual, the former happenned first, and we took advantage of it to take out a Tier 3 + Meele Rax. We kep Pushing our advantage and eventually took out 2 sets of Rax. By this point Void had started to realise, that he was never going to catch me in a Chronosphere without me Eclipseing his arse, so he started Ratting too. It didn't work and he was eventually caught and punished for such foolishness.

Eventually we got Mage Creeps and won. GG EZ, the end. 8{)

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If you're not going to win the Late Gamehowever, try to outfarm the other Team and win in the Mid-Game, consider a Hand of Midas/HoTD to ensure a lead, but if not, rush your Core Items and fight!

---

As for how to play Luna, here are some general tips

1) There are 2 main builds to follow, 4-1-4 and 4-3-2. Levelling Moon Glaives early on is a good idea if you intend to Push straight away, but I'd avoid this if you're not playing in a 4 or 5-stack as it requires competent Teammates to follow through.

2) Once you have lvl6, you can easily 1 vs 1 against most Heroes, lvl 1 Eclipse is better for Ganking, don't try using it on more than 1 Hero until lvl11 as 4 Lucent Beams don't govery far against 2 or more Heroes. My favourite foo...I mean Offlaner to Lane against is Timbersaw, since it's sooooo easy to bait them into the perfect position for an Eclipse 8{3

What you do is let your HP drop a little bit (be careful they don;'t have backup before doing this), to tempt them into try to Kill you. Next, you need to make sure that they Timberchain into you, putting it on Cooldown and them far behind the Creep Wave. LET Eclipse RIP! If they survive for 4 seconds, naturally, they will try to Timberchain away because they want to live, time Lucent Beam to hit them while the Chain is extending to cancel it and out it on Cooldown for another 4 seconds...then Right-Click them to death. At lvl6, even a Timbersaw with full HP will die to 5 Lucent Beams to the face! 8{3

3) Helm of the Dominator is apopular choice on Luna, but I'm not a fan of it. Simply because everyone knows that a Luna is going to Stack and Farm Ancients, so guess what? They'll go and Farm YOUR Ancients constantly (it happens to me EVERY game! T-T ). Thus, I prefer Hand of Midas. You get your payoff instantly and you aren't creating extra Farm for your enemies. My most hated pet hate when someone I play with Picks Luna is that they never seem to understand how bad it is to build a HoTD against Tinker...SERIOUSLY?!!! -_-

4) Black King Bar is always gotten before Manta Style, but if you're not fighting early on (usually because you're Split-Pushing and trying to delay the Game), consider getting a Yasha before Black King Bar as it will speed up your Farm and the increased mobility helps with Split-Pushing. Note: this only happens in about 10% of games (30% in Pubs).

5)If the Game goes Late, you need to Split-Push to gain control of the Map and choose where you Teamfight, so after Manta Style, Tank yourself up! Satanic is the most common choice, but a Heart of Tarrasque can work too, Eye of Skadi is vastly underrated on Luna and when combined with HoT/Satanic, Butterfly and Daedalus, her Illusions are quite scary to deal with. 8{D

Okay, lets start with Items. How far ahead do you see the match going?

Is either looking to Push hard and fast/fight early on? (i.e. GG before 20:00)

Very rare in Pubs, but in these cases, you want to ignore any Farming Items and rush a Drum of Endurance or Ring of Aquila (if someone else is building the Drum) and a Magic Stick/ Magic Wand, then go straight into your Core Items -> Power Treads, Black King Bar and Manta Style.

---

http://dotabuff.com/matches/733162935

My latest (still old ._. ) and greatest Luna game, a very hard and fast Pushing Game, very early on. Luna may well be strongest in hte Mid-Game, but you can easily dominate the Early-Game with her too. <}3

Not much to say really, we pressured, we Killed and then we Pushed, it was easy since there was nothing that could stand up to us early on since all of their Heroes needed Farm and Levels to be effective, our Supports did not however 8{3 . It was a very easy game, mostly due to a difference in skill levels (No surprise that the 5 Carry Team were all n00bs huh? 8{3 ).

---

Is the game going to be a Farm-fest for the 1st 10-15 minutes?

This is quite likely in Pubs, unless the other Team has a good Snowballing Hero in Mid-Lane. If you feel like you're going to be 2 vs 2 with only an occasional Gank from Mid during the Early Game, then consider Farming a Hand of Midas or, alternatively, a Helm of the Dominator (more on HoTD later).

Does the game look like it's going Late?

How you approach this depends on 1 thing, do you have the advantage Late Game? If you do, make sure you get plenty of Farm (it helps if a Support is willing to Stack Jungle Creeps for you), if you feel it's a good idea to get an HoTD, then Stack Ancients with a (Pink) Satyr while you're at it. Farm up well and Press your advantage once you have it.

---

http://dotabuff.com/matches/665987276

This is one example. Some people will tell you that a Faceless Void outcarries a Luna. These people just aren't as good at Luna as I am! 8{3

Most Heroes are in trouble if they get Chronosphere'd, but I maanged to make Void waste a few, by getting Eclipse off before he could Chrono me. We both had our Ults down, but that meant that Void had to back off, while I peacefully Split-Pushed all his Lanes faster than he could keep up with! 8{3

Since the Safe Laners and Mids on both Teams were pretty greedy, it was obvious the game would continue for a while, so I focused on Split-Pushing to delay the Game while outfarming Void (ingore his GPM ***back, he got a lot of Kills later on) and Sniper. I went for a Hand of Midas this game, since I knew that our Offlane Weaver couldn't hold Bot Tower for very long, meaning our Ancients were exposed after about 10:00. Add in a Nyx Asassin and you have a good reason to not Feed Stacks to the other Team (they still kept going to our Ancients to Farm anyway). We also had the problem that a Treant Protector wasn't going to let Towers fall too easily...or so i thought 8{3

By about 30:00 I was 2 levels ahead of the rest of their Team and was fighting our Morphling for highest GPM...he won the fight over who got the most Jungle Farm ._. but I got all the Tier 2 Towers and most of the Lane Farm to myself (Treant tried, I was too good) 8{D

After I got my Core Items + a Butterfly, I started Pushing even harder. It only takes so much pressure on their Tier 3s before the other Team cracks and Feeds in a badly chosen Teamfight, or I eventually whittle their Towers down to nothing. As per usual, the former happenned first, and we took advantage of it to take out a Tier 3 + Meele Rax. We kep Pushing our advantage and eventually took out 2 sets of Rax. By this point Void had started to realise, that he was never going to catch me in a Chronosphere without me Eclipseing his arse, so he started Ratting too. It didn't work and he was eventually caught and punished for such foolishness.

Eventually we got Mage Creeps and won. GG EZ, the end. 8{)

---

If you're not going to win the Late Gamehowever, try to outfarm the other Team and win in the Mid-Game, consider a Hand of Midas/HoTD to ensure a lead, but if not, rush your Core Items and fight!

---

As for how to play Luna, here are some general tips

1) There are 2 main builds to follow, 4-1-4 and 4-3-2. Levelling Moon Glaives early on is a good idea if you intend to Push straight away, but I'd avoid this if you're not playing in a 4 or 5-stack as it requires competent Teammates to follow through.

2) Once you have lvl6, you can easily 1 vs 1 against most Heroes, lvl 1 Eclipse is better for Ganking, don't try using it on more than 1 Hero until lvl11 as 4 Lucent Beams don't govery far against 2 or more Heroes. My favourite foo...I mean Offlaner to Lane against is Timbersaw, since it's sooooo easy to bait them into the perfect position for an Eclipse 8{3

What you do is let your HP drop a little bit (be careful they don;'t have backup before doing this), to tempt them into try to Kill you. Next, you need to make sure that they Timberchain into you, putting it on Cooldown and them far behind the Creep Wave. LET Eclipse RIP! If they survive for 4 seconds, naturally, they will try to Timberchain away because they want to live, time Lucent Beam to hit them while the Chain is extending to cancel it and out it on Cooldown for another 4 seconds...then Right-Click them to death. At lvl6, even a Timbersaw with full HP will die to 5 Lucent Beams to the face! 8{3

3) Helm of the Dominator is apopular choice on Luna, but I'm not a fan of it. Simply because everyone knows that a Luna is going to Stack and Farm Ancients, so guess what? They'll go and Farm YOUR Ancients constantly (it happens to me EVERY game! T-T ). Thus, I prefer Hand of Midas. You get your payoff instantly and you aren't creating extra Farm for your enemies. My most hated pet hate when someone I play with Picks Luna is that they never seem to understand how bad it is to build a HoTD against Tinker...SERIOUSLY?!!! -_-

4) Black King Bar is always gotten before Manta Style, but if you're not fighting early on (usually because you're Split-Pushing and trying to delay the Game), consider getting a Yasha before Black King Bar as it will speed up your Farm and the increased mobility helps with Split-Pushing. Note: this only happens in about 10% of games (30% in Pubs).

5)If the Game goes Late, you need to Split-Push to gain control of the Map and choose where you Teamfight, so after Manta Style, Tank yourself up! Satanic is the most common choice, but a Heart of Tarrasque can work too, Eye of Skadi is vastly underrated on Luna and when combined with HoT/Satanic, Butterfly and Daedalus, her Illusions are quite scary to deal with. 8{D

So, for a really new player what do recommend I max first? I usually do Moon Glaives and Lucent Beam first and upgrade Eclipse whenever possible.

1) There are 2 main builds to follow, 4-1-4 and 4-3-2. Levelling Moon Glaives early on is a good idea if you intend to Push straight away, but I'd avoid this if you're not playing in a 4 or 5-stack as it requires competent Teammates to follow through.

And I presume I should always last hit and not auto attack? I last hit anyway but I suppose if I'm pushing early it would be better to auto-attack. Anyway, you're a big help Xyrus, always appreciate someone as helpful as you :)

I suck at luna too, and this has helped me quite a bit! One step closer to not feeding as luna :D.

Just run across a Luna thread. Somehow reminds me of game 2 between Titan and Newbee lol. If anyone still remember that Eye of Skadi by Hao.
Great tips from Xyrus btw, thanks man !