Exotic creep pulls and jungling in Heroes of Newerth

In Heroes of Newerth (a DotA clone), i know how to do normal creep pulls (legion bottom lane at :15 and :45 or hellbourne top lane at the same times), but I've seen people perform pulls from creep camps other than the obvious ones closest to the lanes.

What are the times/prereqs to pull from these camps?

Also, I've seen lots of heroes jungle from lvl 1. However, the only heroes of I can reliably/efficiently jungle from lvl 1 with are Tempest and Warbeast. Even with zeph i usually wait till lvl 3 and I have a good entourage of cyclones.

What item builds/strats allow lvl 1 jungle sustainability?

Solution 1:

Regarding pulling

You can pull the top and bottom medium creep stack (the ones closest to the lanes) at around 15s and 45s of each minute. With the new configuration, top (hellbourne) has much easier pulling potential while bot (legion) has a much harder time. When pulling bottom lane, try to keep the view on the returning neutral creeps by placing yourself at a strategical point or your creeps will lose sight of the returning neutral creeps. Another trick for legion pull is to get an axe and chop 1 or 2 trees to make a clear line of sight and thus make pulling much easier.

Another pulling strategy but applies only to hellbourne as far as i know is to pull the easiest stack in the middle towards the 2nd towers and catch the creeps but they'll go down easily.

Anothing pulling strategy that applies to hellbourne but requires an axe is pulling the heavy creeps right beside the top lane near the outpost shop. You need to chop a tree with your axe or blast the trees out with a fire based skill. Pull the creeps towards your creeps as they cross your tower and intercept them. The same thing can be done to push towards legion, you catch the legion creeps instead and let your creeps massively push hellbourne tower top OR you can use it to drag hellbourne creeps into the forest and get a rush on hellbourne tower, but its easier to drag them from the usual medium creep camp up top behind the tower.

Finaly, an important aspect to pulling is stacking. When you pull creeps at 54s of each minute and drag them out of their camp, you can STACK other creeps up to 2x (making that 3 sets of creeps). This is an important strategy to get a very effective pulling or for legionnaire which needs large stacks starting level 3/5 depending on your playstyle.

Regarding the heroes that can jungle

Many many heroes can jungle right off the starts some are better than others. Some require pulling, i'll put them in a list:

Direct jungle

• Wildsoul (Have a shield on booboo, focus attack speed and frostbrand)
• parasite (Have shield, armor and mana pots and use your parasiting, critical)
• legionnaire (Have 1 shield + regen trinket or 2 shields and STACK/focus on spin)
• ctuluphant (Have mana regen and optionnal shield, focus on shield skill dont remember name)
• tempest (Have teachers ring and mana pots to start, focus elemental and blast)
• ophelia (Have teachers ring and mana pots, focus on control skill)
• and probably some more that i don't remember off my hat like that

Indirect junglers, require pulls and attack speed items

• Zephyr Needs pull before level 3, focus shield and hope to get ranged attackers mostly to trigger your wind barrier skill and shield you. Focus on hp regen, attack speed and damage.
• Pred Go early for alchemist bones to get increase gold and attack speed, focus on strenght items after to increase life and damage, focus on passive attack skill and jump, keep mana immune for later when you gank...

Unusual junglers, you need special strategies and pulling

• Dampeer Native lifesteal is good but you need attack speed and damage period
• Blood Hunter Native lifesteal is good but focus a lot on sense to easily gank, attack speed and damage to survive

My 2 cents :)

Solution 2:

Three other decent junglers (but certainly not the only ones): Predator, Puppet Master and Legion.

Advance apologies as I haven't played in a few weeks so some of the names of abilities escape me at the moment, BUT, the generic playstyle is correct.

With Predator, his passive ability that allows him to leech a % of health with every strike is his main staying power. His Stone Skin and Venomous Leap ability are also great retreat abilities when threatened as a jungler.

Legion as a jungler is a tad more difficult, but it amounts to knowing how to creepstack and making the most out of his counterattack abilitiy.

Finally, Puppetmaster is difficult but not impossible. Whiplash + Attack Speed items + Health Potions / Bottle allow you to take down large groups without much downtime inbetween. A nice thing about a jungling Puppetmaster as well is that he is an excellent surprise initiator, and if you're jungling you can flex across lanes to set up ganks easily. Two disables that are just as effective early game as they are late game can be devestating to low level players with less means of escape. Puppetmaster can't really be done at level 1, but it's not difficult to start early on him and be a strong roamer, regardless.

edit: I've forgotten the obvious Ophelia, but she requires a lot more micro than most and is pretty much assumed to be jungling when picked.

Solution 3:

Level one Jungling can be done with a lot of heroes. However, it is not an "all in" approach that warbeast / tempest / pred/ dampeer/legionaire / wildsoul can do.

You do need to use lane pulls to pull of Jungling with zephyr from level 1, this isn't the all-in approach

The important question isn't at what time you should pull based on the clock, but it should be based on your solo lane situation. incorrect pulling of creeps can leave your lane mate completely f*cked for the rest of the game, potentially putting him in an easy to gank situation.

This is because the lane will get pulled and your tower will wipe out the enemy wave and you end up with a double stack of ally creeps pushing the lane to their tower. Deciding when to pull the wave with a hero lie zeph takes a lot of judgement. You should definetely pull the lane if the lane is pushed unfavourably. And in this case you should stack the creeps before you pull. This insures the neutrals destroy your creeps, thus pulling the lane back to the tower.

Secondly, leaving your lane mate at level 3 is a big no-no. You are either all-in in the jungle, or you stay in the lane till mid-game. Leaving your solo hero at level 3 will just get him ganked for the next 10 minutes.

Solution 4:

Wildsoul is also a great jungler (his bear can tank quite a lot).