[Megathread] DotA 2

[RobertoCarlos]

Nothing really to talk about. No major balance issues that aren't already covered (fucking potm agh's), and it's gonna be a few weeks before any esports drama starts up.

Pretty much. Weird how boredom makes people turn on each other quicker than anything. Mind you I'm pretty bored waiting for legion have even been playing a few dota games. Same shit just seems to be more like LoL every patch. Even that TI map reminded me of LoL for some reason. Now getting monkey king hero

[StrawberryZebra]

I'm pretty sure we've been getting a Monkey King hero "soon" for about as long as Pit Lord has been 95% complete. Lets face it, we've had Monkey King Bar in game for a long time now so its not as if its just thrown in out of the blue.

Looks like a hero thats totaly obnoxious to play against though from having a look at his planned Dota 1 abilities. Illusions all over the place, temporary invulnrabilities, the works. Really hoping he ends up in a different form than the originally planned one. Fingers crossed it paves the way for more completely new heroes to be added in the future though, ideally at a slightly faster rate than one every couple of years or so.

[Kralljin]

Looks like a hero thats totaly obnoxious to play against though from having a look at his planned Dota 1 abilities. Illusions all over the place, temporary invulnrabilities, the works. Really hoping he ends up in a different form than the originally planned one. Fingers crossed it paves the way for more completely new heroes to be added in the future though, ideally at a slightly faster rate than one every couple of years or so.

I simply fear that it's just another PL.

Had hoped they would add some Ranged Carries, DotA currently really lacks Ranged Carry heroes.

I mean there are some, like Medusa, Trax and Sniper but outside of that, even some other ranged carry heroes don't have any issues with going Melee, like Gyro.

[PizzaSHARK]

Pretty much. Weird how boredom makes people turn on each other quicker than anything. Mind you I'm pretty bored waiting for legion have even been playing a few dota games. Same shit just seems to be more like LoL every patch. Even that TI map reminded me of LoL for some reason. Now getting monkey king hero

Nah, Manni was pitching his little hissy fit during TI, so that's not bored people turning on each other, that's just Manni throwing a temper tantrum.

I don't think borrowing ideas from LoL is necessarily a bad thing, as long as they're balanced properly.

[StrawberryZebra]

Had hoped they would add some Ranged Carries, DotA currently really lacks Ranged Carry heroes.

It's a niche which is really underserved at the moment, I agree. Most of the ranged Agi heroes play more like Int ones at the moment, where they rely more on their nuking power than right clicking. Even if you include Enchantress, Silencer and OD you're still only looking at a handful of them.

The problem is how do you go about making them different? Drow, Dusa, Clinkz and Sniper have most of the bases covered already when it comes to ranged right clicking power, and if you push them more towards their abilities you end up with Heroes like Mirana who rely more on their nukes than attack damage. I'd much rather have someone unique than Sniper 2.0 just because we're short on ranged hard carries.

[Deleted]

I simply fear that it's just another PL.

Had hoped they would add some Ranged Carries, DotA currently really lacks Ranged Carry heroes.

I mean there are some, like Medusa, Trax and Sniper but outside of that, even some other ranged carry heroes don't have any issues with going Melee, like Gyro.

There's a lot of ranged carries in the game. There's 13(and a half) agility ranged carries alone not to mention multiple other int carries. I don't understand how those are missing at all.
You could say a Ranged Strength Carry role hero is missing(fuck Huskar), but what I'd like to see right now is more of a meta shift towards contesting the offlane/trilane vs trilane. During TI6, very often offlane heroes would just instantly buy Iron Talon and ditch the offlane and there really weren't many trilane vs trilane situations(in most matches I saw, when there was a trilane vs trilane, one of them would just tp to the other side). Almost all the early game aggression is support rotations.

[Kralljin]

There's a lot of ranged carries in the game. There's 13(and a half) agility ranged carries alone not to mention multiple other int carries. I don't understand how those are missing at all.

13 Agility ranged "carries".

First off, Carry heroes are safelane heroes to me, PotM doesn't go Safelane, Razor rather rarely, SF is usually mid.

Next to that, a lot of these ranged agility heroes benefit from going Melee or don't give a shit because they are that tanky.

For example, Gyro is ranged but benefits from going Melee due Barrage and usually builds himself that tanky to stand up to a lot of Melee heroes without any issue.

Another example is Weaver, due his piss low range he's hardly ranged and due his Shukuchi he doesn't give a shit about going Melee either.

If you go by that, a lot of these Ranged Heroes find themselves very often in Melee Range simply because they directly benefit from it.

If you throw in certain Int heroes, it becomes even weirder, Storm is no real ranged hero, if does he damage, he's in Melee ranged, same as Leshrac.

[PizzaSHARK]

13 Agility ranged "carries".

First off, Carry heroes are safelane heroes to me, PotM doesn't go Safelane, Razor rather rarely, SF is usually mid.

Next to that, a lot of these ranged agility heroes benefit from going Melee or don't give a shit because they are that tanky.

For example, Gyro is ranged but benefits from going Melee due Barrage and usually builds himself that tanky to stand up to a lot of Melee heroes without any issue.

Another example is Weaver, due his piss low range he's hardly ranged and due his Shukuchi he doesn't give a shit about going Melee either.

If you go by that, a lot of these Ranged Heroes find themselves very often in Melee Range simply because they directly benefit from it.

If you throw in certain Int heroes, it becomes even weirder, Storm is no real ranged hero, if does he damage, he's in Melee ranged, same as Leshrac.

If you want to expand it further, Lina is almost an inverse (Lina Inverse being an inverse... hurr), using spells to bolster her ability to click and that seems to be the direction Valve are pushing her with them lowering her BAT to 1.60. Almost exact opposite of potm agh's builds, where potm's click becomes less and less relevant as she gets more and more nuke potential, they seem to be wanting Lina to be using her nukes less and less for pure damage and more and more for keeping Fiery Soul stacks rolling.

Fiery Soul is, arguably, already the best passive in the entire game. It's almost always one of the first abilities taken in AD. Even if you can't secure a low-cost, spammable spell to combo with it, it's still worth taking even if you have to take two normal spells to use it with because its effects are so good. I definitely think we'll see some right-click focused Lina builds in the next several months. And, of course, people will say it only became viable because her BAT was reduced by 0.10 sec, and not the plethora of items that greatly benefit her ability to right-click that have been added in the past couple of patches and not because she was already good as a right-click hero in the mid/late game and was just not used because overpowered potm agh's basically functioned as a better Lina.

[StrawberryZebra]

There's a lot of ranged carries in the game. There's 13(and a half) agility ranged carries alone not to mention multiple other int carries. I don't understand how those are missing at all.

Quite a lot of them are orentated more around using their spells than their right clicks though. Additionally, as Kralljin mentioned, they want to be in melee range too usually. Mirana, Gyro, Razor - They all want to get up in there. If you exclude those who want to get up close, those who can alternate between melee and ranged, and those who are really, really short ranged, you're not left with many who want to stand as far away as they can and shoot people to death.

Compare it to the number of melee heroes who just want to get in there and right click people. Guys like Sven, WK, CK, PA, Alch, Ursa, Slark, LC, Lifestealer etc etc etc. The "right click you to death from miles away" heroes are small in number. Its not a problem as such, but a few more ranged right clickers to choose from would be nice.

[Lysah]

I don't think right click Lina is going to happen in serious games, sadly, the hero is too paper still. She already does plenty of right click damage off her combo, so you might as well just build euls aghs for the utility as usual and then go nuts with right click after that if you want to. Bloodthorn would be a great item on her anyway.

There are plenty of ranged carry options, the issue is that they're all bad for one reason or another right now. The biggest reason is echo sabre, honestly. Sniper is a fantastic hero and one of the hardest right clickers late game, he gets to the point at 4 or 5 core items where he permastuns anything he looks at, and since his sight is an entire screen it becomes extremely hard to push into him or even team fight at all. But, getting him there is the problem. It's so easy for certain lineups centered around melee cores to break high ground at 15-20 minutes, around the time even a well farmed Sniper might have one big item. At this point he simply doesn't do the damage to stop it and the game ends, so you can't pick him or people will just rush you with a Huskar cheese draft or something.

[PizzaSHARK]

That goes back to blink dagger being too strong. I think blink fell out of favor for Sven (which results in him getting kited in circles), but it's popular on most of the other melee cores, or they already have high mobility without it. Sniper doesn't have a ridiculously overpowered push+silence like Drow has in Gust, and he doesn't give his team 900g in free damage 3 minutes into the game, so he's not popular.

Melee heroes and especially STR melee heroes typically have much more health and armor than ranged heroes to make up for their lack of range, but lack of range isn't a problem when shit like Blink Dagger exists, and I have no idea why Echo Saber hasn't been nerfed yet. It's literally double damage on demand, and on a fairly short cooldown at that. It's basically Geminate Attack on a stick. It's an item I don't think ever needed to happen.

If they want to copy an LoL-like item, I remember there being an item that buffed your next autoswing after casting a spell and that was pretty interesting. I remember it being a core item on Blitzcrank since he had a spell that already buffed his next swing... so that next swing would get double-buffed. I suppose it'd amount to being no different from Echo Saber since stuff like Dark Pact, War Cry, etc are cast immediately before engaging anyway, though, and it'd probably be hilariously broken on a hero like Bristleback.

[StrawberryZebra]

Melee heroes and especially STR melee heroes typically have much more health and armor than ranged heroes to make up for their lack of range, but lack of range isn't a problem when shit like Blink Dagger exists, and I have no idea why Echo Saber hasn't been nerfed yet.

I think Hurricane Pike was intended to fix the Blink Dagger issue, it's a pretty solid option for heroes like Drow and Sniper anyway, allowing them to both instantly gain some distance and get some easy hits off on dangerous melee heroes. If it worked out as intended or not is another matter. Unfortunately it seems like we're going to get ourselves into an arms race situation here. Where Melee grab Blink Dagger so they can quickly get into range, then ranged buy Hurricane Pike to counter Blink Dagger. Then to fix this melee get their own Force Staff type item...Its just never ending.

Moving on, supposedly Underlord out tomorrow. Expect him to be instantly picked and to feed like its a homeless shelter not a game of Dota. If you're playing All Pick, you've been warned!

[PizzaSHARK]

I think Hurricane Pike was intended to fix the Blink Dagger issue, it's a pretty solid option for heroes like Drow and Sniper anyway, allowing them to both instantly gain some distance and get some easy hits off on dangerous melee heroes. If it worked out as intended or not is another matter. Unfortunately it seems like we're going to get ourselves into an arms race situation here. Where Melee grab Blink Dagger so they can quickly get into range, then ranged buy Hurricane Pike to counter Blink Dagger. Then to fix this melee get their own Force Staff type item...Its just never ending.

Moving on, supposedly Underlord out tomorrow. Expect him to be instantly picked and to feed like its a homeless shelter not a game of Dota. If you're playing All Pick, you've been warned!

That's what I mean about power creep. They need to stop making every new item overpowered and then having to buff the old items to compensate, they should just stop putting overpowered shit in the game. Icefrog's heading a team that's been doing this for how many years? Surely he/they can get a general sense of "yeah this will probably be too strong" while it's still in internal design and testing.

[Lysah]

If they want to copy an LoL-like item, I remember there being an item that buffed your next autoswing after casting a spell and that was pretty interesting. I remember it being a core item on Blitzcrank since he had a spell that already buffed his next swing... so that next swing would get double-buffed. I suppose it'd amount to being no different from Echo Saber since stuff like Dark Pact, War Cry, etc are cast immediately before engaging anyway, though, and it'd probably be hilariously broken on a hero like Bristleback.

Yeah, and hilarious trinity force was considered overpowered for quite a long time and a must have item on virtually every single carry in the game. Even the weaker cheaper Sheen was such a massive power boost at such a low cost for a lot of champions. Turns out giving people controllable damage on demand is always absurdly strong. One of the reasons I think LoL avoided items with actives for so long - it's not even because they think it's too complex for their baby players, I think they just knew it would be a bitch to balance and balance isn't one of their strong points so they avoid it.

Yeah but, what happens when the game is perfect? Goes stale! Re-balancing heroes and items is pretty much the only 'new' content or change of gameplay MOBAs get. I personally feel they intentionally over-buff some things just to create a powershift and change up the game until the next patch.

Yeah this is absolutely something they do. I don't think anyone seriously thought Mirana needed buffs and they gave her an aghs to boost her straight into top pick because she's a fun hero everyone likes to see.

[PizzaSHARK]

Yeah but, what happens when the game is perfect? Goes stale! Re-balancing heroes and items is pretty much the only 'new' content or change of gameplay MOBAs get. I personally feel they intentionally over-buff some things just to create a powershift and change up the game until the next patch.

Pff, that's the same as saying games like chess and poker and shogi and go are stale because they haven't changed in hundreds of years

But yeah, Valve deliberately break the game to force meta shifts.

[StrawberryZebra]

I don't think they deliberately "break" it as such, but its easy to see them trying to shake things up by pushing some underplayed Heroes in to the spotlight for a while. But I'm pretty sure they knowingly set Heroes at the point where they're too good on release, then nerf them to the point that they're too weak just to find where those points are for that hero. Gives them free reign to adjust in the space in between those two points as and when needed without breaking them completely by the time they're added to captains mode.

We're in for another big post-TI shake up patch soon too no doubt. It goes without saying that we'll be seeing the usual buffs to CM's ult and Lich as well as a selection of totally random Agh's upgrades that no one is ever going to bother getting. This time around, I'm thinking one for Bounty Hunter that does something pointless like makes Jinada deal bonus damage to tracked targets or something equally useless.

And if that doesn't shake things up enough, we've got a completely new Hero on the way too. If he really is going to be PL v2.0, then expect to see lots of Earthshaker.

[Kralljin]

I don't think they deliberately "break" it as such, but its easy to see them trying to shake things up by pushing some underplayed Heroes in to the spotlight for a while.

Still waiting for Rooftrellens turn.

Nice hero if you ignore the game for 25min to finally get Agha and then ward the entire map to steal farm from everybody.

But seriously, outside of his insane Base damage and Living armor, the hero is hardly useful.

He's just like Pit Lord: 1 Decent Skill, decent ult but two horrible skills.

[Bapestar]

Still waiting for Rooftrellens turn.

Nice hero if you ignore the game for 25min to finally get Agha and then ward the entire map to steal farm from everybody.

But seriously, outside of his insane Base damage and Living armor, the hero is hardly useful.

He's just like Pit Lord: 1 Decent Skill, decent ult but two horrible skills.

Really? I have gotten many compliments playing tree. Maybe a small buff would do him good, but I don't think he needs a major buff. There are some heroes that are just underrated and thats why they are not picked, not because they are bad.

[Kralljin]

Really? I have gotten many compliments playing tree. Maybe a small buff would do him good, but I don't think he needs a major buff. There are some heroes that are just underrated and thats why they are not picked, not because they are bad.

The problem is, as with many similiar Str that rely on spells: His Mana pool.

You burn yourself oom by using Living Armor too much, then you can't use Living seed to start any harass the Offlane hero, which you really need because Roof cannot catch any Hero without boots, his super slow atk animation doesn't help there either.

Next to that, unlike Ogre Magi, he has low base armor and poor health regen, which means you can't really zone the offlane hero on your own, while his super high Attack damage allow some compensation against Melee heroes, against Ranged you'll be out of tangos after 3minutes.

Secondly, he's a poor farmer, he has, as said above, high attack damage but that doesn't help to flash farm any camps, it takes a lot of time (and incoming damage) to just farm one creepcamp.


You can compensate this by buying Iron Talons, stout and tranquils, but that is a lot of money for a support,which will require a Soul Ring on top of that because no Arcane boots means piss poor manapool.

Honestly, if you jungle with Roof and then come out with Midas after ~11min and your team still has actually not lost the game, they would win without you.

If you want to shine as Treant in the early game you need another Sup that brings some disables to the table that allow you to land a few auto attacks, then Roof actually becomes pretty nice, but that also requires an offlaner that can be killed, Void is basically immortal unless you have some major nukes + silence early on.


As said above, he's like Pit Lord, a Support hero that still can have some major impact in the lategame, his Ult can shut down any 4 / 5 sec Bkb, Living armor basically tells the enemy team : Take a tower in one try or waste your time, he's very potent at countering Rat strats because a lot of towers will be back at 100% unless you perma harass them.

He's a Support that needs to be supported during the early game, but there are Supports around that can have a major impact if you let them have some gold and still really contribute to some kills without the need of yet another support.

Finally, Nature's guise poorly scales with levels and is an extremely situational skill that is easily countered by the enemy.

[Lysah]

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2593663919

God bless "new hero new hero new hero!" syndrome.