The YCM DOTA 2 Thread

[Aerion Brightflame]

'Logo soon to be inserted here'

 

The title says it all, let this be the official place on YCM to discuss all things DOTA. Be it builds, Hero advice, or even just bragging about a specific game. If people want to they could post there Steam ID's, or at least there YCM names here so people can know who else plays in order to organise games and the like. Since that would be something enjoyable to do every now and again.

 

Members:

Horus Lupercal

Madsen

Tormented

Maribel Hearn

 

For those of you who don't know what DOTA 2 is, well it's the sequel to a Warcraft 3 Mod (The original mod being DOTA 1 of course) that was an extremely successful MOBA. It's free to play and available on steam, and is one of the more succesful games of it's ilk to date. 

 

And whilst I would love to explain more, instead I'm just going to link a few helpful sites to visit if you want to get into it more. 

 

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Dota_2_Wiki - The wiki, a great source of information on the items, heroes, and even featuring a few links to beginners guides on the main page. 

 

http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck - One of my favorite guides to help you ease the transition into the game if you are the sort of person who likes to read up on something first. 

 

http://dotavods.com/ - A site with many many competitive video's featuring commentary's for someone who just enjoys watching these games, or wants to see a few games of it first. I found it very interesting when I was starting out to watch pro play. 

 

I suppose we could do with a starting topic so I guess; which Hero's do you guys enjoy using the most? (Bland I know but hey it works). Likewise what are peoples thoughts about the links I posted, are they suitable for newer people to what?

[Madsen]

Woot go Horus! Add me up. I'm not the most experienced (~450 games so far) but I know a lot about general theory so ask away.

 

The links are fine, but I'll say this: you learn the most by following much better players (pro game streams and VODs) and by watching explanation of someone noob friendly (Purge, Merlini - check out their youtube stuff).

 

As for my favorite hero, it's Windrunner. I love mobility and generally the skill set and variety she provides. I also play lots of: Weaver, Bounty, Clinkz, Viper, Bristle etc. Basically utility/semi-carry. Favorite position is usually offlane, but I honestly can play every single role (although my worst are mid and hard carry - except for certain heroes in those positions).

 

edit: and here's my dotabuff so you can tell me how shit i am

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/81134415

[Aerion Brightflame]

Woot go Horus! Add me up. I'm not the most experienced (~450 games so far) but I know a lot about general theory so ask away.

 

As for my favorite hero, it's Windrunner. I love mobility and generally the skill set and variety she provides. I also play lots of: Weaver, Bounty, Clinkz, Viper, Bristle etc. Basically utility/semi-carry. Favorite position is usually offlane, but I honestly can play every single role (although my worst are mid and hard carry - except for certain heroes in those positions).

 

 

Wow, I've still only played about 60. Admittedly I've played almost every Hero in addition to that, and watched about twice as many pro-games, so I don't consider myself entirely noob like either. 

 

For the most part I like to play the hard support. Because I enjoy the feeling that I've been the reason the rest of the team hasn't died to an Ursa or a PA or whichever of the 5 carries got the most feed. It's also the reason why I want to stop playing with 4 other randoms (Since I can actually do team-work and thus higher level stuff with the practice), or even just make a semi-casual team. 

 

When other people already take support roles (Even if they aren't dutiful in warding and the like) I generally take more semi-carry/ganking roles. So Storm Spirit, Slark, Nyx Assassin (With some farm as opposed to a hard support one). And occasionally I do carries, but those who are more like point and click, like Shadow Fiend or Tiny. (And Tiny mostly because ganking with him is soooooooooo fun) 

[Madsen]

Hah trust me, it gets no better. My 450 games have all flown by and with the current meta games are 30 minute-ish. I probably play a bit too much but it is what it is. Doing my calibration matches currently, it would seem I'm somewhere around 3.2-3.3k possibly so that's kinda saddening. Hoped I was better :<

 

edit: oh, and, trust me, the more you play, the more roles you will develop. I played mostly hard support if in a higher skill match and hard carry in bot matches and limited heroes, but then you'll have a phase when playing support will drop off for you. Then you'll take up core positions and then, once you find yourself in a higher skill bracket or playing with a competent support buddy, hard support will become much more appealing again. In lower levels it's all about buying "support" items (classic fallacy in pubs) and denying creeps but once you realize hard support is all about being active on the map at all times it becomes much more interesting. You'll find yourself with less average gold since a responsible support will always have wards and smokes, but you're so much active.
 

Some points I'll make that probably won't be that relevant since your carry is probably a potato, but keep them in the back of your mind:

 

- staying in lane with your carry hurts him a lot. I'm talking mainly about modern 1-1-3 lane setups where your carry and you two are against an offlaner, so if it's a 2-1-2 full of harass you probably should babysit the carry, but otherwise, you're just taking exp from him, messing up his creep agro and last hits.

 

- since you would be outside of lane other than when ganking the enemy offlaner or protecting your carry from a gank, the best things to do are to stack jungle camps, clear some that you can, pull them to fix your stupid carries lane equilibrium fuckups, look for ganks for your mid/offlaner and generally messing with enemies lanes

 

- wards are maphack, seriously. For 150 gold, you get so many more openings and information about the enemy team. I know this is repeated so much, but knowing when someone's coming for you and when you can make what move does a lot. If you're a squishy support and no one wants to come with you to ward, get a smoke for 100 gold since warding doesn't break smoke.

 

- level one jungling is so bad for all heroes which aren't Nature's Prophet, Enigma, Enchantress and Chen, so get a smoke, leave your cores in lane, and gank that stupid fucking enemy Ursa, Axe, Legion (shivers), stuff like that. Punish stupid pub mistakes.

 

You might probably be aware of most of this, and a lot of this probably isn't really easy to coordinate with pub teams but keep it in mind for when you get that rare stack of randoms who are smart and cooperative (oh who am I kidding, cyka blyat)

[EHN.]

Do you have any advice for transitioning into Dota from LoL? (Only if you have played it before). I may consider playing both depending on my impressions of the game, I'm going to play some over the next few days.

[Madsen]

Do you have any advice for transitioning into Dota from LoL? (Only if you have played it before). I may consider playing both depending on my impressions of the game, I'm going to play some over the next few days.

 

The game is admittedly a bit more complicated and has a lot of mechanics to relearn when transitioning but people with prior experience in this kind of game have a bit of an easier time with some 0-100 things complete newbies might have trouble with (map awareness etc). Valve recently introduced an option to new people which allows you to specify if you've played this kind of game, and if so which game, and it makes adjustments based on it (for example, Dota's map is by default in the bottom left; selecting League as your previous experience flips it to bottom right etc).

 

All heroes are available from the start - the game is completely free to play. You can buy cosmetic items (which you also get by...just playing), so the game is a bit of a beast to take in, with all ~117? heroes to learn - luckily there's a mode which limits it to 20 heroes. You can also find out lots about heroes by just taking a minute to read their skills. Community members can submit player guides for heroes, explaining items and item choices as well as skill builds and skills in general.

 

One thing I think people transitioning from League is Dota's tower aggression which takes a fair bit to learn, but as many other Dota elements, learning stuff like this can give you a huge advantage. It's much easier to spot the difference between a higher skill bracket player by how they manipulate tower and creep (minion) aggro to their advantage. 

 

You don't have stuff like Recall, you have to buy teleport scrolls which take you to any of your allied buildings on the map. A lot of things are in common with League, like how overwhelming items, skills, heroes are, but you get used to it. You also don't go back to base to get items, you have a courier (player bought) deliver them to you in lane.

 

A lot of heroes are really unique. There's a hero who can steal enemy heroes spells. There's a hero who uses 3 basic elements to invoke 10 different spells, based on combinations of those 3 elements. There are so many things that are much more unique and special in Dota than you could imagine in League. Except with some heroes, you can't really spam spells as you can in League. There are plenty heroes with high cost spells than you can use 1-2 times before running out of mana. Of course, a lot of this is alleviated by items and how the game is a bit differently placed.

 

The meta has less of an impact. You know how in league, you have 1 guy go top, 1 guy mid, 1 to jungle, and 2 bot? That's a maybe in Dota, depending on heroes. You can go 1-1-3, 2-1-2, heck, 1-2-2 if the heroes can do it...you can do anything in Dota - everything can work.

 

Download the game. Play the tutorial and a few bot matches. I can't tell you anything to convince you unless you try it and play a decent bit, honestly. I doubt someone could convince me to move to League now, with the time investment I've put into Dota, and especially now with the GODDAMN MAP EDITOR FOR DOTA coming out? No way. Go play it, and remember - Dota is balanced by everything being batshit crazy OP. And it's amazing.

 

EDIT: Here's a couple of examples for my last point that I read from League players going to Dota:

 

"Earthshaker was this support, who could create gigantic walls that block off the entire lane and is just a walking stunlocker. He needed next to no farm, but once he got it he could land devastating ultimates that did gigantic damage. Comparatively I really feel like in LoL there aren't really heroes who are just truly barebones in their item needs/wants."

 

"Nature's prophet was a hero who could literally teleport anywhere on the map, any time. But it wasn't just that, I remember being really excited just by the simple idea of being able to summon your own trees to control and to jungle with them. Not at all like the normal LoL jungling which just involves autoattacking with some sort of aoe ability and a bit of health regain."

 

"Riki - a hero that's invisible...forever." (other than attacking, obviously)

 

"Stuns - wait, a stun longer than 2 seconds?" "Fuck that, 6 second silences is where it's at" (Note: you can get 5 second stuns which is hilarious. It's a really hard skillshot, though)

 

"BKB - an item that gives you complete magic immunity. No one can nuke you, stun you, anything. You just go on a rampage for 5-10 seconds"

 

 

I'm really sorry for the huge ass wall of text, I hope you read it and join the Dota community, but

 

tl;dr - play it if you want to know

[Aerion Brightflame]

You might probably be aware of most of this, and a lot of this probably isn't really easy to coordinate with pub teams but keep it in mind for when you get that rare stack of randoms who are smart and cooperative (oh who am I kidding, cyka blyat)

 

Yeah, I knew all that and already do it all in games. Hell, I even do the things unheard of in low level pubs, counter-picking and buying match-up relevant items =O The only thing I can't do as often is rotate about the map, because almost all games wind up being 2-1-2 and I have to stay in the general area to make sure the potato gets any farm. And not die in certain lanes (Ursa for example is a pain in the arse because I have to deal with him since people let him get close).  

 

The only exceptions are when I use dedicated roaming supports, like Boots first Treant Protector (He is soooo fun in pubs, because people think they can man fight you at level 1, realise the mistake, turn to run, and get chased down fast). 

 

For the EXP bit I generally stack camps/pull the lane to get myself a bit of farm. Tho then people wonder why I appear to just be wandering all over the place ect ect. 

 

I know it won't get immediately better, I just feel like if someone has enough time and dedication to basically work as a pair (Or even more so), ect ect I'd get more enjoyment from the game than in low level games as it is now. 

 

Do you have any advice for transitioning into Dota from LoL? (Only if you have played it before). I may consider playing both depending on my impressions of the game, I'm going to play some over the next few days.

 

Basically what Madsen said, tho I think that last hitting creeps has higher importance in DOTA than in LoL so there's that. But it's easy enough to learn after a few tries with a hero, you get a feel for the rhythm. 

[Madsen]

 

 

Basically what Madsen said, tho I think that last hitting creeps has higher importance in DOTA than in LoL so there's that. But it's easy enough to learn after a few tries with a hero, you get a feel for the rhythm. 

 

This is so true. Not wasting time and getting gold and xp is such a big deal, in lower levels just killing creeps while everyone is sitting around doing nothing gives you a huge advantage.

[Aerion Brightflame]

Speaking of low level games, do you think it'd be worth putting something about how to deal with some of the more common 'pub-stomp' hero's in? To help give a leg up as it were. Or even just a list of friendly hero's for newer players and ones to definately avoid? 

[EHN.]

The game is admittedly a bit more complicated and has a lot of mechanics to relearn when transitioning but people with prior experience in this kind of game have a bit of an easier time with some 0-100 things complete newbies might have trouble with (map awareness etc). Valve recently introduced an option to new people which allows you to specify if you've played this kind of game, and if so which game, and it makes adjustments based on it (for example, Dota's map is by default in the bottom left; selecting League as your previous experience flips it to bottom right etc).

 

All heroes are available from the start - the game is completely free to play. You can buy cosmetic items (which you also get by...just playing), so the game is a bit of a beast to take in, with all ~117? heroes to learn - luckily there's a mode which limits it to 20 heroes. You can also find out lots about heroes by just taking a minute to read their skills. Community members can submit player guides for heroes, explaining items and item choices as well as skill builds and skills in general.

 

One thing I think people transitioning from League is Dota's tower aggression which takes a fair bit to learn, but as many other Dota elements, learning stuff like this can give you a huge advantage. It's much easier to spot the difference between a higher skill bracket player by how they manipulate tower and creep (minion) aggro to their advantage. 

 

You don't have stuff like Recall, you have to buy teleport scrolls which take you to any of your allied buildings on the map. A lot of things are in common with League, like how overwhelming items, skills, heroes are, but you get used to it. You also don't go back to base to get items, you have a courier (player bought) deliver them to you in lane.

 

A lot of heroes are really unique. There's a hero who can steal enemy heroes spells. There's a hero who uses 3 basic elements to invoke 10 different spells, based on combinations of those 3 elements. There are so many things that are much more unique and special in Dota than you could imagine in League. Except with some heroes, you can't really spam spells as you can in League. There are plenty heroes with high cost spells than you can use 1-2 times before running out of mana. Of course, a lot of this is alleviated by items and how the game is a bit differently placed.

 

The meta has less of an impact. You know how in league, you have 1 guy go top, 1 guy mid, 1 to jungle, and 2 bot? That's a maybe in Dota, depending on heroes. You can go 1-1-3, 2-1-2, heck, 1-2-2 if the heroes can do it...you can do anything in Dota - everything can work.

 

Download the game. Play the tutorial and a few bot matches. I can't tell you anything to convince you unless you try it and play a decent bit, honestly. I doubt someone could convince me to move to League now, with the time investment I've put into Dota, and especially now with the GODDAMN MAP EDITOR FOR DOTA coming out? No way. Go play it, and remember - Dota is balanced by everything being batshit crazy OP. And it's amazing.

 

EDIT: Here's a couple of examples for my last point that I read from League players going to Dota:

 

"Earthshaker was this support, who could create gigantic walls that block off the entire lane and is just a walking stunlocker. He needed next to no farm, but once he got it he could land devastating ultimates that did gigantic damage. Comparatively I really feel like in LoL there aren't really heroes who are just truly barebones in their item needs/wants."

 

"Nature's prophet was a hero who could literally teleport anywhere on the map, any time. But it wasn't just that, I remember being really excited just by the simple idea of being able to summon your own trees to control and to jungle with them. Not at all like the normal LoL jungling which just involves autoattacking with some sort of aoe ability and a bit of health regain."

 

"Riki - a hero that's invisible...forever." (other than attacking, obviously)

 

"Stuns - wait, a stun longer than 2 seconds?" "f*** that, 6 second silences is where it's at" (Note: you can get 5 second stuns which is hilarious. It's a really hard skillshot, though)

 

"BKB - an item that gives you complete magic immunity. No one can nuke you, stun you, anything. You just go on a rampage for 5-10 seconds"

 

 

I'm really sorry for the huge ass wall of text, I hope you read it and join the Dota community, but

 

tl;dr - play it if you want to know

 

Wow, thanks for the support, I really appreciate it. Going to try it out a bit this weekend and tell you guys how it goes.

[Madsen]

Speaking of low level games, do you think it'd be worth putting something about how to deal with some of the more common 'pub-stomp' hero's in? To help give a leg up as it were. Or even just a list of friendly hero's for newer players and ones to definately avoid? 

 

I don't think cherry picking heroes to counter in the op would be necessary. If someone has issues dealing with heroes they can just say it and we'll have a discussion hah.

 

Speaking of anyone heroes, just played my second to last calibration match. Wanted to take Weaver (for like the 3rd or 4th time in my calibration, he's an ez hero lol) and half a second before I pick an enemy guy picks him. Luckily also wanted to play Doom that game so I just got him. Doom craps on him so hard, not even his linkens did much. I love that he later sold his Linkens to get BoTs to try to throne us but they were so down and we were like a 5 late game hero team so we managed to squeeze the win out.

 

Offlane Doom was really fun.

Match ID: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/822699717

 

@EHN np, I'm very enthusiastic about Dota haha, go for it.

[Aerion Brightflame]

I don't think cherry picking heroes to counter in the op would be necessary. If someone has issues dealing with heroes they can just say it and we'll have a discussion hah.

 

Speaking of anyone heroes, just played my second to last calibration match. Wanted to take Weaver (for like the 3rd or 4th time in my calibration, he's an ez hero lol) and half a second before I pick an enemy guy picks him. Luckily also wanted to play Doom that game so I just got him. Doom craps on him so hard, not even his linkens did much. I love that he later sold his Linkens to get BoTs to try to throne us but they were so down and we were like a 5 late game hero team so we managed to squeeze the win out.

 

Offlane Doom was really fun.

Match ID: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/822699717

 

@EHN np, I'm very enthusiastic about Dota haha, go for it.

 

Calibration match? 

 

As for that match, few things I take notice on - There Brewmaster is... interesting. Both skill build and items. I mean, he was so gold deprived it looked like, not even having Ag Scepter in a 40 minute game. And then not skilling Drunken Haze despite you having 3 Right Click Carries seems really odd. 

 

I'm also suprised that there Tiny didn't just go for broke with Hyperstone and BOT's to try and rat a victory. 

 

I've also never seen Naga Built for not just split-pushing/farming with Raidience, so that's interesting. 

 

And yeah, Doom's not bad in the offlane. He's going to get some farm no matter what happens (But hey, it's one of the two things Doom does). And he's tanky aside from his base armour. 

 

I also love the triple refresher orbs on your side - They couldn't do anything in any form of team fight against two Ag Scepter Dooms, and two Black Holes, and OD dropping the Hammer twice. Nor could they split push you since you know Naga Siren laughs at the imitation to her. 

 

But no nicely done I must say. Your 5 carries were better than there's. 

[Madsen]

You have to play 10 matches before you get your MMR shown. I just know roughly where I am because one of the people I played with in a calibration match mentioned it was around 3.2k.

 

Couple of notes:

- I presume the Brew sold some expensive items but the game ended before he could spend it (the items in his inventory are like roughly 7k gold). He was mid against OD so I presume he didn't see the need for Drunken Haze in the laning stage...plain strange not to get it at all, though.

- Tiny had high expectations going into lane so I think his first item was a no boots Midas. He got shut down in lane though, since...

- Naga was a support. Naga is a legit support, even though people nowadays play her as the annoying as fuck carry that she can be with Radiance, he dual laned with the Morphling, so she was able to pull the wave back, and deny the Tiny and Weaver exp and some gold. (First items were Magic Wand, Urn, Arcanes and once we snowballed a bit he got Diffusal and Manta to help out in teamfights. Nice dude actually, though he whiffed some major Sleeps -- one actually negating a Black Hole haha)

- I was always gonna go for a utility build, since getting the Alpha Wolf relatively early meant I could be a relatively big source of damage with double Aghs Dooms and my 350-500 dmg crits. Aghs Refresher Doom is scary. Enigma Refresher was a pretty obvious choice here since we could take advantage of the fact that our teamfight was so much better and I guess OD thought hammer was his biggest contribution so he got a Refresher too. Really fun to do, actually, albeit expensive.

- It all came down to spreading out the gold and experience between our 4 cores. With Morphling farming safe lane against Tiny/Weaver which were unable to force him out (especially with Naga), Enigma jungling, OD having an okay time at mid and me having the batshit crazy recovery mechanism that I have in Devour, it was easy to get the key items to ensure our pretty sloppy play would win.

 

I really wish I had been more aggressive in lane, since I got level 6 pretty early (earlier than Jugg did obviously) I could've gone in, harassed him and doomed for the kill. The Visage he was laning with and him just didn't have the damage output so I regret being as careful as I was but I guess it went alright. The whole game was just a mess of overly passive play from our team but we won so it wasn't that big of an issue obviously.

 

I love this though - I don't get a lot of chances to reflect on my games haha.

[Tentacruel]

Part of me wants to get into it, but I don't know if I have the time.  I'm only level 21 in LoL and I feel like I'd rather spend the time getting to 30 than starting a new MOBA from scratch.

That and what I've seen from the community hasn't convinced me that they're any better than LoL's. 

[Madsen]

That and what I've seen from the community hasn't convinced me that they're any better than LoL's.  

 

Wat happen

[Tentacruel]

Wat happen

"OMG DOTA 2 is so much better than LoL you should play DOTA 2 instead."

 

On every League of Legends video.  

[Makο]

"OMG DOTA 2 is so much better than LoL you should play DOTA 2 instead."

 

On every League of Legends video.  

This is the same boat I'm in.

 

I'm not the kind of guy to take a dump on any MOBA (in fact, I occasionally dabble in Strife when I'm not full-timing League), and I do honestly want to try it. But every time I see anyone say "Oh, you should DOTA instead of LoL" I'm driven further and further away from it.

 

See, I love League of Legends a lot. Sure, some things in the game aren't exactly great, and the skill cap might be a bit lower (though I can see this being debated), but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's people taking a huge shit on things I like in favor of something similar.

 

I'm probably still going to try it, but it bugs me to the core.

 

...Another thing that kinda bugs me, is that everything doesn't seem as clear. Mechanics seem less crisp. Teamfighting seems less fun. Though, this is, with little reasonable doubt, just because I don't play it. If I ever stepped into it, that'd probably change.

[Brinolovania]

Well, since apparently people who play LoL are posting in here...

 

I've played a little bit of Dota (only against bots), and watched some of The International (including games 2-4 of the finals), because of an IRL friend who plays it. My observations, in no particular order:

 

[spoiler=Long list]

- The HUD at the bottom is annoyingly large. Like, having the hero's portrait is nice, but it would be even nicer if I could actually click down there.

 

- I no comprendo why the secret shop is necessary

 

- Seems to be laggier than League (at least for me)

 

- Holy hell, why are there so many jungle camps?

 

- I suppose you get used to this with time, but everything (turret tower shots, ranged autos, dashes) seems to have longer range in LoL. It at least feels like I can hit stuff over more of the screen.

 

- Why is it that with Puck (yes, I realize it was dumb to play Puck as a noob), you have to use 'd' to jump to his Q? With everything like it in LoL, you'd just have to press Q again, which is nice.

 

- I DO feel friggin' rich when I manage to get a last hit, 'cause creep gold is a bigger number than minion gold

 

- The LoL lane meta may be always the same, but at least I understand it :C

 

- Why did the tutorial make me take like 10 years of my life to farm to 6 T_T

 

- The fact that there's an item that has an active that just makes you die is quite the thing

 

- Windranger just walking up to turrets, whacking them until an enemy shows up, and then running like hell is pretty fun

 

- I concede that Juggernaut's spin to win is better than Garens

 

- MY GOD, DO HEROES EVER SHUT UP? Like, I like my characters to talk, but I also like if they stop once in a while.

 

-Losing money on death. Blergh :(

 

- The pick-ban system for pro play is weird

[/spoiler]

 

I probably won't be playing Dota any massive amount, 'cause I like LoL (and I have spent a little bit on it). And game is hard. Also, in the vein of what Mako and Tenta were saying, I haven't exactly heard things that would make me think Dota's community is any better than League's. And league's community is pretty bad.

[Aerion Brightflame]

Well, since apparently people who play LoL are posting in here...

 

I probably won't be playing Dota any massive amount, 'cause I like LoL (and I have spent a little bit on it). And game is hard. Also, in the vein of what Mako and Tenta were saying, I haven't exactly heard things that would make me think Dota's community is any better than League's. And league's community is pretty bad.

 

 

"OMG DOTA 2 is so much better than LoL you should play DOTA 2 instead."

 

On every League of Legends video.  

 

I must say - Whislt there are some members of the community who are like that, as a whole the community has improved greatly since the game started. The majority of people I've played against have been pleasures to play against, and I'd happily play with them again. It's only so often you get the bad lot, and that drops off somewhat as you get higher up. 

 

I understand that yes, there are people who say that about LoL. But the same is again true of a lot of things. 

 

I would at least advise everyone to try the game, even if it means just doing a YCM party so we can advise you guys as you play. 

 

 

've played a little bit of Dota (only against bots), and watched some of The International (including games 2-4 of the finals), because of an IRL friend who plays it. My observations, in no particular order:

 

[spoiler=Long list]

[/spoiler]

 

I may as well talk though some of the ones which I can - 

 

• You adapt to the HUD as you play. It bothered me at first, but now it's just like second nature. You just have to more the screen a bit more. 
• The Secret shop isn't necessary as such, it's just to make certain items slightly harder to acquire in certain circumstances. I think at least. 
• The number of Jungle Creeps is just to increase diversity (Since certain Heroes profit from diverse Jungle Creeps), and to increase the Jungle difficulty. Since it used to be way to easy to jungle. 
• The bit about Puck is just because by default 5th abilities go to 'd'. It's simpler to make all of them go to 'd' than to make it per different hero (Since not all Hero's 5th abilities are like Pucks, they can be just independent). And don't worry, there are worse Hero's to play as a beginner. At least you didn't pick Meepo. 
• The Tutorial isn't reflective of actual leveling speeds (Kinda obviously). It usually takes about 5 minutes worth of creeps in a solo lane to hit level 6. 
• Well if it's annoying you that much, I think there's an option to mute your own Hero. I personally love it because you get brilliantly timed moments from Hero's on occasion (Like Enigma saying outplayed after your teams Ember Spirit got a double kill and escape the other 3 of the opposing team) 
• The pick ban system is just to create variety in games and to stop obvious centralizing around certain Heroes. Not even format dependent ones, just Heroes that a team is outrageously good at using.

 

 

 

- Naga was a support. Naga is a legit support, even though people nowadays play her as the annoying as f*** carry that she can be with Radiance, he dual laned with the Morphling, so she was able to pull the wave back, and deny the Tiny and Weaver exp and some gold. (First items were Magic Wand, Urn, Arcanes and once we snowballed a bit he got Diffusal and Manta to help out in teamfights. Nice dude actually, though he whiffed some major Sleeps -- one actually negating a Black Hole haha)

- I was always gonna go for a utility build, since getting the Alpha Wolf relatively early meant I could be a relatively big source of damage with double Aghs Dooms and my 350-500 dmg crits. Aghs Refresher Doom is scary. Enigma Refresher was a pretty obvious choice here since we could take advantage of the fact that our teamfight was so much better and I guess OD thought hammer was his biggest contribution so he got a Refresher too. Really fun to do, actually, albeit expensive.

 

I really wish I had been more aggressive in lane, since I got level 6 pretty early (earlier than Jugg did obviously) I could've gone in, harassed him and doomed for the kill. The Visage he was laning with and him just didn't have the damage output so I regret being as careful as I was but I guess it went alright. The whole game was just a mess of overly passive play from our team but we won so it wasn't that big of an issue obviously.

 

Yeah, Naga can be a support, I've just felt she's gotten worse at being so (Especially if TI4 shows anything, since all of the handful of support Naga games were loses I believe). Especially since in this game she just transitioned into a carry. 

 

I think he made the right choice tbh. In late game you'd be taking teamfights as 5v3 because of Doom. Double Black Hole gives you so much disable, and Morphling was already right clicking hard enough. So he didn't need to be a right click carry here - Capitalizing on your teamfight with double Hammer was literally the best thing to do, because there's nothing they could do against you then. Especially with song set-up. 

[Madsen]

I was gonna write up a rant about how dumbfoundedly stupid some things said were, but what it boils down to, is this.

You have a mental and possibly financial attachment to one game and not the other. Continue playing the one. I can't convince you otherwise. If you don't like Dota, you don't like it. Fin.

 

- The HUD at the bottom is annoyingly large. Like, having the hero's portrait is nice, but it would be even nicer if I could actually click down there.

This is because Dota 2 is the successor to DotA. DotA, based on Warcraft 3's engine, had this hud setup, with the hero portrait, and the map on the bottom left. There was no need to change this.

- I no comprendo why the secret shop is necessary

See above point.

- Seems to be laggier than League (at least for me)

This is because Dota has many more mechanics that seem complicated to League players. Things like turn rates, attack animations, cast points, activation delays.

- Holy hell, why are there so many jungle camps?

See, again, if you played the game you'd know this and stop asking stupid questions. The jungle in Dota isn't meant for one dedicated jungler every game. There's again, many more amazing mechanics in Dota. You can stack camps, you can pull them out to lane, the creeps are unique and since there are more unique heroes in Dota, etc. There are so many jungle camps because there were this many in the original, and it has proven to be a good setup.

- I suppose you get used to this with time, but everything (turret tower shots, ranged autos, dashes) seems to have longer range in LoL. It at least feels like I can hit stuff over more of the screen.

Dota is just differently paced. You can't spam spells every time they're off cooldown in Dota (until you get farm) and this just comes back to having more mechanics.

- Why is it that with Puck (yes, I realize it was dumb to play Puck as a noob), you have to use 'd' to jump to his Q? With everything like it in LoL, you'd just have to press Q again, which is nice.

The cast point on the jump is nearly instant. Double tapping Orb would be a nightmare.

- I DO feel friggin' rich when I manage to get a last hit, 'cause creep gold is a bigger number than minion gold

Which just makes carry roles rewarding.

- The LoL lane meta may be always the same, but at least I understand it :C

I don't even

- Why did the tutorial make me take like 10 years of my life to farm to 6 T_T

No it doesn't?

- The fact that there's an item that has an active that just makes you die is quite the thing

And you have to use the hotkey for the item and then click on the ground specifically next to your hero.

- Windranger just walking up to turrets, whacking them until an enemy shows up, and then running like hell is pretty fun

She's not the only one who can do this.

- I concede that Juggernaut's spin to win is better than Garens

gj

- MY GOD, DO HEROES EVER SHUT UP? Like, I like my characters to talk, but I also like if they stop once in a while.

Yeah, but that's why Dota heroes are so much more endearing. They interact with other heroes, your choices and general things happening.

-Losing money on death. Blergh  :(

punishment for death, blergh

- The pick-ban system for pro play is weird

...how so?

 

 

 

sigh, people. I am disappoint. Stop listening to stupid vocal minorities.

[Maeriberii Haan]

Alright, gonna dive in on this one, though I mainly dabbled in the original DotA (and still planned to do so until I get a stable enough connection).

 

Been playing for 5 years, but still pretty shit. Mainly used Ursa and Ezalor, though can use most of the other heroes to some extent.

 

Would only watch this thread like a hawk for now until I can properly shift fully into DotA 2.

[Tentacruel]

Someone prefers another game to the one I do.  Oh no

[Maeriberii Haan]

God, please don't let this turn into yet another DotA/LoL bashing thread filled with needless arguments about why either game sucks. While it hasn't reached that point, it's starting to smell like that.

 

Seriously.

 

And here I thought this game could start having a proper discussion thread.

[Aerion Brightflame]

How about from here on out, we leave LoL to the LoL thread, DOTA 2 to this thread, and save the arguments for somewhere else. The point of this thread is to discuss, assist, and yes encourage people on here to at least try DOTA because that way we can all enjoy this game together if we so wish. Whether they like it or not is a different matter, and one that should be saved for a different thread. 

 

Frankly if you want to argue about that sort of stuff, just piss off of this thread so I don't have to ask for it to be locked. 

 

Which means (And I'm not calling you out or anything Toyo, I mean no offence, I understand that Madsen's points came across in a worse manner than I assumed he meant them) posts like this:

 

 

Someone prefers another game to the one I do.  Oh no

 

should not be happening in this thread. Period. 

 

Now please people, just be mature individuals for once on this site, and stop making me have to state things that should be obvious for a thread like this. 

 

OT: Time for a new element of discussion. 

 

By the end of August we should be getting our newest Hero put into the game, the Snap Crackle and Pop of DOTA, Goblin Techies. For those of you who don't know of the Hero, he's the wiki page on him: http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Techies

 

But essentially he walks around planting explosives wherever he goes. 

 

Now I want to know what people think about our upcoming hero, whether they like the concept, or play to play the heck out of him, or even just feel like he's unhealthy for the game? Share your opinion, ask any questions you are unsure about ect ect. 

 

And keep the discussions civil please. 

[Makο]

God, please don't let this turn into yet another DotA/LoL bashing thread filled with needless arguments about why either game sucks. While it hasn't reached that point, it's starting to smell like that.

 

I'm the same way. I am legitimately interested in playing DotA 2 sometime.

 

However, I would assume that ADHD there made that comment for the same reason I'm thinking: Madsen seemed rather... passive aggressive (or actively aggressive, depending on who you ask) and condescending towards pacman and his comments/questions. To be fair, though, ADHD's comment was unnecessary. At the same time, the Topic Creator answered Pac in a way that wouldn't get this sort of reaction.

 

Either that, or I'm misreading everything. In any case...

 

I'm trying to get an average size comparison of the default DotA 2 map compared to Summoner's Rift. Someone got like a percentage comparison or something?