It's a collection of Dota 2 in-game guides.
The goal is to make a guide for every hero and position it can be played on and add up information about alternatives and timings for every item, as well as have every build be up to date. It's not about making Core Crystal Maiden a thing. The main purpose of the project is to provide players with up-to-date builds trends and show the way to make weird stuff work, if you really want.
Right now there aren't many builds available, but I'm working on it.
Initially it was started as "untraditional" builds, right now all the builds are based on high-rank stats (Divine stats provided by Stratz.com and based on custom reports made with League Report Generator), stream VODs and opinions from hero spammers.
Unlike Standart Hero Builds (from Torte De Lini), every Nerds Hero Guide is built around the idea of player being "advanced" player. A guide isn't plan for your game, but more like a collection of drafts and ideas that points out general patterns in item builds, suggests situational alternatives for various situations and made with "don't need to search for an item in the shop" principle in mind.
These builds tend to be the "all in one" stuff. The most of items that you may want to buy while playing on the hero in the position are going to be there.
However, there are more categories than usual four you may see in other guides.
The categories I'm using and brief explanation:
- Starting items. Default one for any starting items set. However, there may be multiple categories for starting items depending on lane and position (usually just two). While in strategy phase all of starting items categories will be mixed together, they will be marked with their lanes. There may also be some items you should buy if you have some extra money for whatever reason (e.g. you are support and your first priority starting items are wards and courier, but if somebody bought them already, you will be buying whatever else remains here
- Early. Items you should buy early on. Timing is flexible, but usually it's what you buy before 5-7 min mark.
- Core. Your main items you need to come online (or start farming, depends on your hero). Usually something before 20-25 min mark.
- Situational Early. Items that may be bought inbetween or instead of early/core items. Example one: you are laning against Batrider and you want to buy Magic Wand, but don't want to buy it every game on the hero - it goes here. Example two: usually you would buy Mask of Madness, but in the specific game in specific circumstances you would like to buy Hand of Midas for the same reason - it goes here (another axample would be Euls and Kaya).
- Lategame. Extension items you would like to buy after your Core items are done. The order is usually preserved and items in this category are usually your "ideal lategame plan", however sometimes you may swap things around. In some guides it's more like a list of suggestions that you may mix and match as you wish.
- Situational. Replacement and extension items for mid to late game. For example, Black King Bar and Monkey King Bar for most of the heroes goes here (you don't want to buy it every game, but in some cases it may be necessary).
Additional categories:
- Core Transition. Used for some heroes that may be played as both core and support. Contains items to turn your support hero into a lategame core.
- Utility. Used in support and offlane core builds, usually contains items that you don't really need yourself, but need for your team. This category is used separately usually when you don't really want and need these items for yourself anyway.
Other notable stuff:
- If the guide has three tomes in its last category, it has detailed descriptions.
- Every category is shifted to have 4x items and don't have lines with only one item in it.
- Skill builds, item builds and talents selections are ALWAYS situational and the builds are made so you don't need to search around for alternatives too long. However, when in some cases it's noted specifically that the choice is really situational or there may be list of specific situations for that choice. Items may also have a list of alternatives in their descriptions (good example - Vengeful Spirit Core guide).
You can use the builds list to see all the things I already made. You can also go to GitHub of the project to look over all the changes that were made. And you can also leave your feedback at github and suggest your changes here via issues. Or you can go to [https://discord.spectral.gg/](Spectral Discord) and discuss all the builds here.
You can also look over the .build files (they are pretty human-readable).