A balanced team usually consists of 1 semi-carry, 1 carry, 1 offlaner, and 2 supports.

A support can be a lane support or a jungler. The best support heroes for beginners are;

1) Lich king

2) Lion 

3) Lina

4) Witch Doctor

5) Abaddon

Jungling support heroes

Crystal Maiden, Enchantress, Chen

When the game begins, the supports usually get the courier. If someone has already bought the courier (show-offs) or another support bought it, you should probably get some observer wards or sentry wards. (for dewarding or laning against invisible heroes)

First and foremost, you will need to have photoshop and also download the Pattern/UV sheet of the gun you want to create. We will be making a skin for the P90 since its one of the easiest. You can download the Pattern sheets here:  https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6BFjXblqNzoLWRFR25BMk9oQXc&usp=drive_web#grid

You also need VTFEdit

At the above site, click SMG –> P90 , open and download the smg_p90.tga file.

Open photoshop, and open the .tga in photoshop. Resize the file to 1024 x 1024.

Duplicate the layer. Right click on the selected layer (Background) and Duplicate Layer, click OK.

Now you’re going to need a pattern. We will be using a random pattern downloaded from google images as an example. Open the pattern in photoshop, Go to Select –> All. Your image will be selected. Then go to Edit –> Copy.

Go to your smg_p90.tga file and select Edit –> Paste. Select the Magic wand tool. If you dont see it try clicking Shift+W. Look at your layers,on your right. Make sure you have your tga layer selected the background copy  (not the pattern). With your Magic Wand selected, click on the largest image of the P90.

Select the zebra pattern layer. Go to Select –> Inverse

Select the Eraser tool. Default (press E). Erase your pattern layer.

Save your finished file as a .tga.

Open your .tga file into VTFedit. Open VTFedit, click File –> Import and import your .tga file. Press OK to save as a .VTF file.

We are now done with the pattern creation. The next step is to open it up in-game. You need to have the developers console enabled first. To enable developers console, Launch the game (CS:GO), Go to OPTIONS –> GAME SETTINGS and Enable Developers Console (~) –> Yes. Press this (~) and it will bring up the developers console. This can also be used for hacking, but that’s illegal of course.

Type workshop_workbench into the console. It will open up this;

Click the drop-down, select Custom Paint Job. Select choose pattern and open your .vtf file. There are a few things you need to change as well.

You will need to change your gun to a P90 and drag all the offsets and rotation to the left. You can adjust the Wear dial to change the guns usage appearance. And lastly , make sure ignore_weapon _size_scale is ticked.

It will look something like this;

Its done, finally. In order to submit you will have to take some pictures and stuff. Just make sure the design is original. Use F12 to take pictures in-game. Vote for my design here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=215798361  if you like it . Hope this was helpful.

Dota 2 Trading Guide

This guide will show you the basics of trading. Trading usually depends on item value. The value of the item depends on a few other things.

This guide will not be based upon prices, item prices dont really play a big role here. The value usually depends on these factors;

1. Wishes/Wants
2. Rarity
3. Item Age – New/Old
4. Heroes

We will be using this site: http://dota-trade.com/ as a base for this guide. Just sign in with your steam account, its totally safe.

Wishes/Wants and Rank

In the image above, you can see a bunch of recently added items. Dota 2 items are divided into a lot of different categories. The 3 basic types are common, uncommon and rare items. Of course there’s more, but it wont be covered here. The slot named off/wis stands for offerings and wishes. As you can see, these items are new, thus the offerings are less than the wishes. The higher the wishes as compared to offerings, the higher the value of the item.

The rank of the item also indicates value, but in this case, since the items are new, their ranks have not been updated. If you look at the last item, Shadow Tracers for Nyx, you will notice that its ranked 96 – which is extremely high thus extremely valuable at the moment.

Item Age and Rarity

The paragraph above covers everything for new items, but how about old ones? The above factor still applies here, so always be sure to check the wishes and rank of each item when trading.

The 3 basic rarities are common, uncommon and rare items. The value of rare being higher than uncommon and commons being the lowest (easily obtainable) but this only applies for items that are of the same ranks. Most old items are usually below a rank 10 depending on your heroes sets. Some sets are more valuable than others.

The most common trade ratios are

1 common : 2 random commons, 1unc : 2 random unc, 1 rare : 2 random rare. You can trade 1:1 of the same rarity if you each have items that you want/have on your wishlist.

Click on the trades icon at the top of  http://dota-trade.com/ and you will see a bunch of people who have the items you want or have. But of course, you choose your prices, how much you want or how much you give is up to you.

What is a random rare/uncommon/common item etc?

A random rarity item, refers to any low ranked, low quality or non-set item. For example;

In this picture you can see, the off/wis, rank, rarity and type – non-set item. Non-set items are often lower ranked when compared to set items but this doesn’t apply to all heroes.

Heroes

Some heroes do have better equipment than others. But what really indicates this? Popularity maybe?

Heroes with items of low value: Axe, Omniknight, Witchdoctor etc..  not really sure why though