There's a distant light (#distant light#) / A forest fire burning everything in sight

Let's talk about DOTA 2 (hereafter, pedantry fans, DOTA) a bit more.

Let's talk about a couple of the Heroes - the characters you can choose as your avatar in the fightin' world - a bit more. But mostly, let's talk about the benefits of knowing the people you play with.

Timbersaw is a - and I may be wrong here, but anyway - purple goblin in a mechanised suit with a pathological hatred of plant life brought on by, apparently, trees invading his home and killing everyone there. I'm not making this up; check the link if you think I'm the insane one.

Timbersaw is very good at hitting things and, with a bit of play and a bit of skill, good at flinging himself around the map, either fucking up what's between him and a tree or getting out of trouble quicksmart.

My friend played Timbersaw for the first time this afternoon, and with the use of some guides and a couple of games' worth of experience, had mastered him by this evening. (He's like that.)

Because of this, we ended up in a Ranked Match - i.e. one where winning or losing affects a rating of how good you apparently are - with three other players, who chose characters which, with the right amount of skill (and maybe a little luck) are stone killers in their own right.

Io is a wispy-blue ball of light. (He is also, apparently, "A fundamental of the universe". Again, read the bio if you think I've gone mad.) 

Io is a support hero. He has abilities tailored to healing allies and moving around the map with a quickness, along with an offensive spell handy for creep (soldier) control or, with skill, hitting enemy heroes. 

I chose Io because I thought, hey, support, why not. Our team was all kinds of tanky - i.e. heroes with high health and damage - so a support might work out well. 

I also chose Io because it's kind of, to be honest, fun. You can fling yourself around the map and help people out if you feel like it, and maybe cause some damage here and there - and if you survive long enough, you become a force to be reckoned with. 

Eventually. 

I ended up trying to support, getting my ass handed to me, and wandering off to basically do my own thing for a while to try to build up strength. I walked the earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, wandering around the jungles, killing neutral creeps (little camps of creatures) and making gold and buying items, raising my strength, dreaming of one day being useful to my team. 

My team which, fact fans, basically won the game without me. While I was farming to try and get useful, they went and killed the enemies, and worked their way into the base, and basically just won. 

Every now and then, I can sense what my friend is thinking. 

This time, I could sense he was thinking "Will you just fucking help". By this point the game was knocking on an hour in play time, which is kind of silly. They were holding our team back, and I was just floating around the map, doing my thing, because whenever I tried to help - seriously, whenever - I got badly, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked up. 

So this is dedicated to the patience of my Timbersaw-playing friend, for putting up with my inability to play support properly.