Elf vs Hu

[FML|Renaud]

In a replay a while back some ppl asked what to do, because elf had no chance.

Elf vs Hu is not all that imba, especially at high level.  Hu battle tends to last a while, and that's perfect for Starfall and Healing Rain.  However, most player have trouble defending their main rather than winning battle, so lets look at that

1) Surround your main hall.
Once you drain your main mine, try to surround with hall with other trees or moon well.  Tanks won't be able to reach it, and this will give you time to teleport and defend your main.

2) Build AP behind wells
This sound stupid at first, since AP are pretty useless, and moon wells are essential for your survival.  However, the tanks will try to go around the moon wells to target the AP, unless they are manually targeting the moons.  Even if they manually target the moon, they will destroy them a lot slower than they would by A moving (and they wont be hitting your Air if you move in and out of battle)

3) Have multiple main hall.
Easier for the elf to do since they can uproot once they drained the expo

4) Building AOW in front of your main
(I personally almost never do it)  Gives you a first line of defense, and it can heal itself by eating trees.  Don't uproot them if they have gryphons... ancient dies in seconds to magic


Probably other things you can do, but those are the only one on top of my head.  There are a lot of strategies that involves other units... but I don't build units other than chims and hippo!  (archer to creep, and dots from time to time... but rarely)

[rygorych]

Here is one other way:

Team them.

And avoid bullshit 4.5 hours game, I duno, sounds like a good idea, maybe?

[FML|Mage]

My biggest problem with the match revolves around 2 issues.

The first is expos.  I find that the human usually either comes to my expo and kills it before I can tp there.  This is able to be solved by good scouting, but can still screw me over at points.  The more troublesome part is when I have multiple expos being hit by tanks.  I try to uproot, eat trees, and repair, but it still puts me completely on the defensive and I have trouble keeping them alive and gaining any gold from them.

My second problem is mass tp.  I find myself unable to go on the offensive because they'll mass tp to my base, force me to tp back to it, and then mass tp out.  Same for expos, they'll just hit and mass tp out or mass tp there. 

Any tips on those?

[L77]

Look at Renaud's base build for the finals, it was hard to mass tp that cause he had 2 other halls and a ToE that only 1-2 tanks could reach.  Another method v mass tele is to just plain block your base off.  Hard to do on some maps, though.  Expos are another story, though.  The true strengths of mass tele are defense and map control.  Teletanking really isn't too viable against good people.  I dunno, I generally find that if I can force the human to fight where I want him to fight (his expos, beseiging towers, etc), I have a better chance against him.

And AP's really aren't that bad, since you already ideally will be fighting at your wells (also help prevent bat/light air harasses).  AoW's are good, too.  Cheap and an extra few seconds before whatever's coming can hit your wells.

[FML|Renaud]

1st)
Pain in the ass, the best case scenario is that you are able to eat trees in a way that only 1 tank can hit you at once, but this will usually fuck you up, especially since you don't have time to do that if they are hitting your main with there main force while doing it, best counter would be to scout and attack them before they can (but yeah I hate that!)

2nd)
You can do a door in your main (an ancient of war blocking the entry, so they cant mass tp )
If he is very good, you can keep your army in your main, and only send heroes (with tp staff and elf staff) to harrass his main and tp away

[FML|Renaud]

Also (but that's not only vs hu) I like to have a tp staff to fake tp
I see someone harrassing my expo, even if i have nothing I tp staf to that expo (make sure to cancel before going!)  Usually the sight of the tp will make ppl back away

[FML|Mage]

Sorry, I was unclear on my second point.  It's not really I'm worried about them going into my base.  It's that they go right outside it, chip away at my base and make me tp, then they just mass tp out.  I lose 350 gold and they lose nothing, and they're clearly winning the map control battle.  Good idea on the staff of tp though, I may have to try that one.

[FML|Renaud]

yeah, there is nothing more annoying than losing something while your enemy doesn't lose anything :(

[Redkeekee]

Theres one thing not mentioned that I sometimes like to do on occasion in regards to good scouting for expo-destruction-prevention.  If Potm still low level owl instead of wasting moon juice on mana and having limited scout mobility from slow birdy, or if not using her at all, I sometimes make 1-2 hunts, put sentinel at key viewpoints near expos or main and then use them to scout around because of fast move speed and maybe catch an expo without towers and do some harass or something.  Obviously this wouldn't be too great on huge maps with lots of angles like Gold Rush but on some of the other smaller maps with clear pathways seems good.

Drawbacks include owls getting picked off and the wasted food/gold but I think if you put birds in really good spots and get full value out of hunt scouting could be worth it, thoughts?

[FML|Renaud]

i've been suprised how many players either don't notice the hunt's owl, or simply don't know how to dispel it!

I think it could be worth it to creep with hunt instead of archer;  It's stronger against rush and gives you a pretty good scouting later in the game.  Also it usually scares whoever is next to you
"O crap hes a &#^%# solo noob, I better not try to attack him"

The draw back is that you can't kill flying stuff, but most map are all ground creeps anyway

[FML|Mage]

I've actually given a lot of thought to getting some hunts early on.  The problem I have is that if you go straight hunts it slows everything else down terribly.  If you go archers -> hunts... well there's really not much point.  You only need 3 or 4 archers to creep most camps, and the harder camps you'll probably have 2 or 3 heroes for.  I do like the idea of sentinel though so maybe I'll mess around with this a bit.  Also always make sure to toss it as far back in the forest as possible haha.

[rygorych]

No point: archers are much stronger than hunts assuming you have a tank first hero - better dps and positioning. If anything, get hunts after t2, when you have more freedom with resources.

I kill owls on sight though, gl keeping them vs good players.

[FML|Mage]

I don't think I'd bother for anything but human.  I just think it might be helpful as a very early warning when tanks are heading my way.

[Redkeekee]

I agree with rygorych, archers are much stronger early game by far.  I would never open hunts or even mix them in any army.  As soon as I was ready to commit I would kill them off.  However even if the players you're up against are good and dispel the owl, in my opinion even that one time could be worth it, depending on your advantage or disadvantage in the given match.  The first time I thought of using Sentinel was when I was in a 3-way with 2 humans and one was massing hawks while the other was invis mortaring me on TM.  So I put 2 sentinels up along the path to my natural near the shop and near the green creep camp to see the invis mortars coming while dealing with the army of hawks.  I ended up losing to corner tower + level 7 alch stupidity but I didn't lose my expo to the invis mortar noob once.  Just food for thought.

[FML|Mage]

I've never really found invis morts to be a problem honestly.  I don't think a human worth their salt has done it recently.  And, wisps can be used to scout tanks.  I really like the idea of using sentinel, but I'm not sure I'm sold on the practicality of it.