General DiscussionThe point of having a hard carry?

I like your argument. But yes there is a reason to do it. The reason is that plans fail. The hard carry is not a back-up in case you can't win 4v5. He is a plan that is very likely to win late game and that allows you to play a defensive game early. Defensive play is much easier because it requires fewer resources, you get the towers and up hill and vision...you get the good positions. In any stand-off you win because you do not have to fight now....The hard carry plan is all to give you this defensive advantage early and then you attack later when the hard carry is powerful enough to make it easy to attack.

Even if the hard carry team has lost a few towers and is down some kills...they are often still in a very good position to win the game. The definition of "losing" the early game for a 4 protect 1 strat really should be more like "wow we are down 6 towers and 20 kills at 20 minutes". That is a dangerous position. If you are only down 2 towers and 5 kills at 20 min you are likely to win the game. So maybe being down 4 towers and 12-15 kills is sort-of a break-even point...provided you did secure 20 min of free farm and stacks for that hard carry. If you did not secure the farm, well then you failed the strat.

"If you did not secure the farm, well then you failed the strat."
This right here is what I consider a loss. When even your own jungle is too dangerous(starvation dota). I've been a part of plenty of games that have ended(ancient destroyed) in under 25 minutes(both win and loss). The teams that do this have no hard carry and they "must" end it that fast, but that is also their goal from the get-go. Just like going level 1 rosh is a huge gamble that can pay off incredibly well, so is going without a hard carry, though less risky I believe.

I dunno, I suppose I'm just kind of publicly justifying in my head the strategy of not bringing a hard carry and looking for confirmation.

Oh sure, not using a hard carry is a good idea also. It can be a more powerful strat...but it is riskier. You must attack and you must win. Failing ganks or early teamfights can make winning impossible.

Let me ask you...do you think it's riskier to go with a hard carry or to go no hard carry outside of full stacks?

Strategy is fairly pointless if players are bad and not really together on a team but randomly thrown together. The team that feeds most early and most often losses. The other team wins by default.

Hard carries are for late game, obviously. So when you have a very hard carry on your team, your plan is to take it late, play defensively, and lose as little map control as possible so your carry can farm without being in danger. If you put yourself in a position where the enemy team CAN play starvation dota, then your strat already failed and it's GG. The difference is skill and heroes, like if you have Alliance playing their favourite heroes and they all play really well, they can still lose against something like Io+CK because the draft was better, but if both teams have equal drafts, then it's all about skill, positioning, and teamwork.

There is no ultimate strat like going no hard carry or 5 hard carry, you have to pick according to the enemy draft. If they have a Faceless Void or Naix or PL, you obviously want a more aggressive early-mid game lineup with heroes like Puck, Bara, Leshrac, etc. and perhaps an insurance hero like NP who can backdoor if your strat fails. If the enemy team has no hard carry, have a bunch of defensive heroes with strong early-mid game abilities to win the fights 5v4 like Visage, Earthshaker, etc. in order to slow the enemy offensive or completely hault it and win the game.

Overall, the ultimate strat is countering the enemy strat.

"Overall, the ultimate strat is countering the enemy strat."
See this is a problem I have with everything you just said. You have to have some kind of idea of what you should/want to do regardless of the enemy because if you're both just waiting to counter the other, no heroes get picked other than heroes that can vary greatly.

So if you have to bite the bullet and pick first...there has to be a...I don't want to use the word better here...but I hope you know what I'm driving at...

I thought you were talking about CM? All other game modes are pointless once you start playing real doto

Even in CM, you have to pick something. You can't always expect your opponent to reveal to you their strat. If you're picking heroes first in CM, which is the _____ one to go?

I mean does this game basically come down to someone just picking a strat at random(for the most part) and the other team always picks its counter? And then we just see who has the stronger 4 man(essentially)?

Let's say you get into a game of CM and the most obvious bans happen. Io and Batrider. Now you have to draft your first hero, what is the best hero in your opinion that you want for your strat that is most likely to be banned next?

Most cases this is something like OD, Alchemist, Lifestealer, Nature's Prophet, Weaver, or Visage. Be sure you ban the counter to your hero before you draft though (Don't draft Alchemist without banning Naix). Then the enemy team is forced to pick something they believe is strong against your pick, then you bend your original strat to counter the enemy's counter, and so on so forth for 3 more drafts/bans.

To put it simple: Start with a strat, ban your strat's counter heroes, pick the hero most likely to be banned for your strat, bend your strat to counter the enemy's attempt at countering your strat, ban your counter/likely draft for enemy, pick more strong heroes.

Obviously if you pick OD, enemy team will consider Nyx, and if you pick Alchemist, enemy team will consider Naix, and if you pick Naix, enemy team will consider razor. Obviously you can't ban EVERYTHING, but the point is to give the enemy team less room to think, force them to pick worse heroes, then counterpick what they were forced into picking. If you ban out Razor and Weaver, the enemy team will have a shitty time countering your Naix and will HAVE to pick much much much more farm reliant heroes, or take a worse pick like PA and PL. Then you draft around it.

Hard carries are needed a lot of times to pick up slack later. I feel the best way to go is have a 4 man active roam team with tower pushing and ganking while the carry just farms his items up as needed.

This is feel works best as it ensures you have a late game to rely on should all else fail and it means that you are pressuring their team while keeping the focus off of your carry giving him the needed 25 odd minutes of farm. Its a tough two sided coin because sometimes I have been wiped by a fast pushing team with no reliable carry but sometimes this backfires if you hold on long enough they will phase out due to no late game and with you able to up the needed items on the carry they don't stand a chance.

Different strokes for different folks. Some games will call for two carries http://dotabuff.com/matches/352727900 this one I went in the offlane as Luna and it worked because they were so focused on trilaning the top to keep our carry shut down they forgot we had another bot and I was able to out play the Sven a little. Some games will be a fast push and others the turtle game with your carry farming etc. like this one http://dotabuff.com/matches/346550784 I am an average carry player at best but in the end the fact that they lacked a stable late game carry meant we were actually able to clean out their whole base with CK and Alch after just one and probably the first won team fight for our team. From a loss to a victory simply because we had the late game and turtled.

:My two cents.

Heres my take on it and I'm damne sure its spot on...

Its safer and more reliable.

When you don't pick a hard carry or you're outdrafted for the late game, your lineup basically screams "WE NEED TO BE AGGRESSIVE/END FAST." The scissors-paper-stone of dota is Ganking>Pushing>Turtling>Ganking. This is very true, mind you.

Without a carry, you need to accomplish one of these two things; push fast or gank like hell. However, these two things are not east to accomplish. A pushing lineup can be spotted from miles away during drafting and plenty of popular meta heroes come with creep clearing skills, be it supports/mid/offlaner or even the carry. In other words, you're taking a huge risk by forcing tower pushes because a decent team will not readily give openings against a pushing lineup. So you're basically fighting the opposing team who has tower support.

Whereas with a hard carry lineup; you take towers when the opportunity presents itself. Say a successful gank or trading towers.

So you might want to gank... but yet again a decent drafter will not pick a lineup full of heroes which are easy to pickoff especially if he notices you're prioritizing early/mid aggression heroes. There are many precautions to ganking but the most powerful one is simply hugging the towers. Warding and counterganking put the ganking team at a complete disadvantage if the turtling team positions well.

In other words, with no carry, you put yourself at a disadvantage and neither teams will intentionally do this thus resulting in carries becoming a crucial role. Carries allow you to make mistakes and recover whereas for early game or aggression based teams, losing a teamfight usually means you can never catchup against a team with a carry. Neither team would want to put themselves at this disadvantage.

Ganking>Pushing>Turtling>Ganking is very accurate however most heroes have skillsets including all three elements. For example, QoP or THD. In other words, a lineup specializing heavily in one of these three strategies will always be disadvantaged against a more balanced one with a carry as a failsafe.

IN SUMMARY; DEFENSIVE TACTICS WITH CARRIES > AGGRESSION unless your aggression lineup heavily counters the opposing lineup.

It's way too hard to win early enough in a pub match. It's possible by 5 man roaming or ganking a lot or forcing team fights early to win before a hard carry comes online but it's way too hard to get a pub team that cooridinated.

Now non pub matches maybe if you pick the right heroes. There's a lot of semi carries that can snowball and win early like pudge, qop. You get enough magic/disable and you can get way ahead of another team but even then, it's not like hard carries are completely useless early. Medusa at 6 has a really good defensive ult, void has chrono, lifestealer has a pretty good ganking snare.