Early Game & Objective Guide for Garden of Terror (Patreon)
Content
Best early game start is to do camps at 1 minute. Usually it is better to start with siege giants camp since it is safer with you taking less damage, less likely to be invaded. Do not try to do both camps at the same time, this is very dangerous and you basically automatically lose to any invades because your team is too split to defend either side. Better to do the camps 1 at a time, 1 right after the other.
The standard lane storm league lane setup is 4 man rotates mid-bottom and does camps, while your solo laner either rotates mid-top for double soak or stays top to keep control of the shrine. If your solo laner is good at taking camps, then make sure someone goes to cover the soak while he does camps.
The objective is similar to cursed hollow, so many of the same tips apply here. If you see the next seed is on the other side of the map, then it is okay to hold the camp and cap it 30 seconds before the seed spawns so the enemies are forced to choose between the two. A common mistake is prioritizing this too much to the point where you dont do the camp, it is better to do the camp than hold it for two minutes because by that time the camp would have almost respawned again.
Remember only the 3rd seed does something, giving up the first two is acceptable if you have a good reason. Good reasons can include split pushing and trading a fort for 1 tribute, defending enemy camp which would take your fort if left uncontested, or just avoiding very unfavorable fight positions if it is on your enemies side of map and close to their forts.
In higher ranks the best play is to usually prioritize soaking and camps over the seed, because it is very difficult to cap the seed with the 4 guards. Also without the full team there, it is easy to get the channel interrupted by any long range poke which only requires 1 or 2 heroes to do.
Once your camps are all done and the soak is covered, then making a quick rotation to try to secure the seed with the entire team is optimal. However, if your team does not defensively poke and insists on dying 4v5 no matter what, sometimes it can be better to just go along with them even though it is not the best play.
When you are defending against the objective, focus down the overgrowth that is summoned first, it is easy to kill but will disable your buildings for a long time if you do not focus it. Also look for undefended garden terrors and try to take those down first.