[Megathread] DotA 2

[Demidov]

Rendering quality together with anti-aliasing are the parts that effect FPS the most. If you decrease it, you should be fine. If your computer is running the game @ low FPS even if you decrease rendering quality, that means there are some other problems like out-of-date driver etc.

Right now, I am running the game @45-55 FPS with all settings are on but anti-aliasing and %80 rendering quality with high quality textures. My laptop's spec is

GT 630M, I7 3610QM, 8GB DDR3, WIN 7

Before my current computer, I was running the game @50-60FPS with all settings are off and %50 render quality with low textures on my old laptop with following spec:

Intel Core2Duo P8400, Nvidia GT 8600M, 3GB DDR3, WIN7

It's pretty okay if you get FPS drops with low-end GPUs in action because your GPU has much more to handle(more hero, more spells etc.) As an example, webs of Brood mother was causing 10-15 DPS drop when I was playing my old computer. What is your computer's spec?

My computer specs are quite fairly low. GT 440, 2GB DDR2 ram, 2.4ghz dual core 64 AMD. I will see into upgrading some more RAM before buying a new PC altogether, thanks for the info! I will try toying around with the rendering quality, right now it's set on the highest.

[Deleted]

I've had games where OD's have rushed for stacked INT and blown up teams with their ulti, but they have no right-click and they have no durability and it's a matter of time before the ulti stops one-shotting people and you're left with a 4v5 because OD is useless.

My point is that OD is a carry, so you're picking him instead of another carry - if you picked OD, you aren't getting Sylla or AM or Luna or whoever else. As a right-click hero, he requires way too much farm, and he doesn't provide any kind of utility and requires too much farm/XP to be usable as a support.

Your example for a farmed hero would be Radiance on a Sylla. With that, boots 1 for him and the bear and a single stout shield, he'd have a net worth of 6300.
On OD, 6300 gold is enough for Treads (-1400), Force Staff (-2350) and he'd be 250 gold away from a Mystic Staff.


At this point, assuming level 11, OD would be doing 500+ damage to non-ints (this is on the low end), especially sidelaners and then finishing them off with his 94 Pure + 128 Normal damage rightclicks (and that's with rank 1 orb and 0 Astral stacks up)

Wait, forgot to count in the bonus mana from Aura, sec lol.
There we go.

OD is a counter pick to Invoker, that's why he was added shortly after, if my memory serves me well here. He can mid against Invoker and win, using prison to deny creeps and lower his damage. He can effectively avoid all of Invoker's main combos with prison. Of course, the best part in my opinion, he can avoid stacking int so that Invoker has the same or more than him and his ultimate effectively removes Invoker's mana pool. Ever tried to go tornado>meteor>dblast>sun strike>cold snap with 150 mana? Yeah, every single one of those spells costs 100-200. He doesn't have to one shot Invoker with damage when he already one shots him with an instant oom.

Let's not forget that OD can still do ridiculous damage without INT stacking. Getting items like bloodstone/mek will make him hard to kill and he will still have the mana to hit 500 damage a shot. One of the highest direct hit damage heroes in mid game, for sure. I don't know how anyone can NOT like OD, his damage mid game is very borderline too much.

Shut up, you suck. ._.

[Finear]

I will see into upgrading some more RAM before buying a new PC altogether

if you are running ddr2 dont bother
it wont help you much (anyway not in dota) and ddr2 prices are way to high because it is no longer manufactured

[Underskilled]

How is Sheep, Orchid, RoA not a carry build on OD? That's about 93 damage added to his orb + whatever other stats they give.

I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying his general build gives him both carry potential, and a lot of disabling options if you're not going to be carrying. I'm basically saying if it isn't looking like you're going to carry (Haven't been farming well, not getting a lot of kills, etc) then your build will still make you a powerful disabler.

I assure you I'm not speaking ill of OD, as he's one of the few carries I'd actually enjoy, but him being labled as only a carry, seems odd to me, he's much more than that.

[Deleted]

Quite a few things could be said about VG although they've done very poorly so far in the tournament. You put together a team of the best ladder players but for some reason you don't end up with the best team? Who knew.

I think VG can become a real top team if they just practise together and work on their obvious mistakes. In my opinion, their weakness is their supports right now. Fenrir is out of position so often and overall just poor support-play. Cty is oozing with skill and their mid player can hold his own against the likes of Ferrari. But you see even though they lack so much experience and make poor decisions sometimes, they can still give the top teams a challenge (game 2 against iG). They had a chance winning against MUFC but that game 2 was overall sloppy play from both teams.

[PizzaSHARK]

put him on mid?

He's only good in mid versus another INT, and even then he's still vulnerable to harass and has zero ganking potential or rune control. I guess we'd see him as a counter-pick to Invoker, but Invoker doesn't seem as strong a mid anymore after his damage nerf and I think most teams pick a different carry anyway. Luna and Sylla seem to be the trending ones lately.

[Deleted]

He's only good in mid versus another INT, and even then he's still vulnerable to harass and has zero ganking potential or rune control. I guess we'd see him as a counter-pick to Invoker, but Invoker doesn't seem as strong a mid anymore after his damage nerf and I think most teams pick a different carry anyway. Luna and Sylla seem to be the trending ones lately.

>Versus another int.
>100 mana Tiny.
U whot.

[Hermanni]

He's only good in mid versus another INT, and even then he's still vulnerable to harass and has zero ganking potential or rune control. I guess we'd see him as a counter-pick to Invoker, but Invoker doesn't seem as strong a mid anymore after his damage nerf and I think most teams pick a different carry anyway. Luna and Sylla seem to be the trending ones lately.

I have to ask. Have you actually played OD mid before? Or against a good one? I recall that I've told you before that OD is one of the best solo mids in the game, and I even recall elaborating upon it so I'm not sure why you'd say that he doesn't seem like a strong mid.


Firstly, his stats. He has the highest or second highest base damage of all ranged heroes and the fact that he can easily get more even at level 1 makes it easy for him to outfarm almost any hero. With his ability to deny easily and completely deny experience from single creep with Astral Imprisonment and his lane control (described later) he will also outlevel his enemy.

It's true that OD can devastate and int hero's ability to lasthit against him, but with his damage it should be easy enough against non-int heroes as well. At least intellect heroes can still cast some spells few levels into the lane, while it will be fairly safe for OD to play as agressive as he wants to against a Tiny that doesn't have mana for his combo (or even one spell) or a Pudge that can't afford a Meat Hook. The only way they'll be able to threaten you or other lanes alone is if they leave the lane for a while or stand far enough to avoid getting AI'd, in which case you're free to lasthit everything without contest. If enemy melee heroes attempt to lasthit 5 minutes into the lane, you'll land a barrage of 100+ damage autoattacks on them and they'll give that up fairly quickly.

The other things OD has going on for him is that he actually deals massive amount of damage with just levels and little to no items through Arcane Orb. With just, say, Treads+Null Talisman+Force and level 11 with 1-4-4-2 build his Orb adds up to +82 pure damage to his attack at maximum mana. At level 14 and same items, up to 135 damage. Assuming no AI stacks, too. OD deals extremely high rightclick damage with high utility items (Force Staff, Scythe, etc) which can't be said of many heroes. While his ultimate might not deal high damage on intellect heroes, if you use it early in the fight the mana drain effect isn't a laughing matter. Same goes for Arcane Orb's illusion and summon destroying trait which often goes overlooked. And I almost forgot to mention how powerful Essence Aura can be when you 5-man push with heroes such as Leshrac or Tinker.

It's still important to remember that OD suffers from two weaknesses. Firstly, he is highly susceptible to ganks in the lane. The other thing is that as has been mentioned he doesn't deal with enemy BKB's very well. With a Scythe he can still destroy an enemy before they get to use one, though, and ideally OD should be able to either focus other heroes than those with BKB and maybe have teammates that can damage or control a BKB'd enemy. Still, if you put an OD in mid against almost any other hero and he doesn't get ganked (or rather, you can protect him from ganks because any decent players will attempt to gank him whenever possible) in the first 10-15 minutes you'll often come to witness one of the bigger snowball effects around.

There isn't a single occurrence in Dota 2 where I haven't dominated mid with OD at least until enemy team has started throwing more heroes at me. Not like that is something worth bragging about, really, but I'll just mention it so you don't think I might have based my opinion on just theorycrafting.

---------- Post added 2013-01-01 at 06:35 AM ----------

I think VG can become a real top team if they just practise together and work on their obvious mistakes. In my opinion, their weakness is their supports right now. Fenrir is out of position so often and overall just poor support-play. Cty is oozing with skill and their mid player can hold his own against the likes of Ferrari. But you see even though they lack so much experience and make poor decisions sometimes, they can still give the top teams a challenge (game 2 against iG). They had a chance winning against MUFC but that game 2 was overall sloppy play from both teams.

I'll agree that on individual skill they're very promising, but their lack of experience and team cohesiveness really shows. They did well in games 2 against iG and MUFC, although since both times the first games were such stomps I wasn't entirely sure if the other team was slightly throwing for them. But that's just stupid speculation. That game 2 against MUFC was a bit painful to watch, I was pretty sure they would have just had the game if they had capitalized their AM having full inventory and ~400 CS ~35 minutes in, but they just did a series of mistakes that allowed the enemy team to get enough items up on PL and supports and even defend their racks. And then cTY seemed to get confused about not instawinning with his very early peaked AM and got all confused about his items and the max distance on his blink. I could usually argue that selling your Battlefury might be a good idea when you're sitting at full inventory, but against PL and Tinker...

But like you said, I too will be interested to see how they will do if they stay together as a team and get a few months of practice in.

[PizzaSHARK]

It's still important to remember that OD suffers from two weaknesses. Firstly, he is highly susceptible to ganks in the lane. The other thing is that as has been mentioned he doesn't deal with enemy BKB's very well. With a Scythe he can still destroy an enemy before they get to use one, though, and ideally OD should be able to either focus other heroes than those with BKB and maybe have teammates that can damage or control a BKB'd enemy. Still, if you put an OD in mid against almost any other hero and he doesn't get ganked (or rather, you can protect him from ganks because any decent players will attempt to gank him whenever possible) in the first 10-15 minutes you'll often come to witness one of the bigger snowball effects around.

There isn't a single occurrence in Dota 2 where I haven't dominated mid with OD at least until enemy team has started throwing more heroes at me. Not like that is something worth bragging about, really, but I'll just mention it so you don't think I might have based my opinion on just theorycrafting.

Maybe it was just that the enemy team had Pudge and Clockwerk, then. I had no trouble dominating Pudge in mid, and he couldn't land a hook to save his fucking life (juked him constantly), but Clockwerk had no issues hooking me from across the map, and his bullshit Q fires off so quickly that I couldn't even break my way out of power cogs - apparently OD's attack animation is longer than 0.7 sec. Imprisoning myself helped, but it's at best 4 seconds of dispersion while cogs last 8 seconds...

I still don't know if I agree with you saying OD is a dominant mid. 450 range is pretty small and it seems like he'd be easily victimized by a ranged hero with a good orb - maybe Viper or Drow, when she makes it into CM. I wonder if Silencer with a Curse build would be viable against him - all of his spells cost a lot of mana, and while Silencer is INT and would be losing damage due to Imprisonment, if you cast Curse after OD hits you with an Imprisonment, he's got nothing he can cast (that will break the curse, anyway) and will lose a lot of mana and health to it. Plus, Silencer's orb is 600 range versus OD's 450.

[LolretKJ]

I've been playing a lot of Huskar recently, and I noticed he's pretty OP.
Besides people that outrange him, is there really any counters to him, once he gets some decent lifesteal?

[Underskilled]

I've been playing a lot of Huskar recently, and I noticed he's pretty OP.
Besides people that outrange him, is there really any counters to him, once he gets some decent lifesteal?

Shut him down early game, disable after he ults, Blade Mail, etc.

Strong? definitely, not OP though.

[Leonard McCoy]

I've been playing a lot of Huskar recently, and I noticed he's pretty OP.
Besides people that outrange him, is there really any counters to him, once he gets some decent lifesteal?

I like him to but hes mostly a pub stomp hero. He's not drow or fucking Nighstalker. Every fucking game with Nightsalker. NS is the defiintion of pub stomp.

[PizzaSHARK]

I've been playing a lot of Huskar recently, and I noticed he's pretty OP.
Besides people that outrange him, is there really any counters to him, once he gets some decent lifesteal?

His ulti might be OP, but I don't think he's OP overall. BKB prevents his ulti from doing damage, and Blade Mail can make him explode if he tries to ult you. He's pretty much just a ganker, so if he doesn't get a lot of kills early on, he'll struggle to stay relevant.

He's a really good pubstomper though, people don't seem to understand that Huskar is at his most dangerous when he's at like 20%.

[Lysah]

Luna and Sylla seem to be the trending ones lately.

Luna was huge in China for a long time in DotA1, I was surprised she wasn't already heavily used. She's been buffed a lot since then.

Also, I don't think Drow will beat any hero mid. Her orb takes too long to cast, people can just walk away. What she excels at in mid lane is hugging the tower and sniping creeps with her 180 damage at level 6. With that in mind, a naked OD hits 1200 something mana just from his aura and that means he's already doing 200+ damage a hit mid game. Add in a few items such as int treads and force staff and he can get near 300 pretty easily. It's not uncommon for OD to 2-3 shot supports, I'm not sure why you think his right click ability is anything but fantastic. And, like I said, if he's against heavy competing ints that will keep up with his int gain he can stack mana instead, still do heavy auto attack damage, and drain their mana with his ult instead of doing minor damage. Invoker/QoP/necro/any other caster carry is useless when oom.

[LolretKJ]

His ulti might be OP, but I don't think he's OP overall. BKB prevents his ulti from doing damage, and Blade Mail can make him explode if he tries to ult you. He's pretty much just a ganker, so if he doesn't get a lot of kills early on, he'll struggle to stay relevant.

He's a really good pubstomper though, people don't seem to understand that Huskar is at his most dangerous when he's at like 20%.

With Scepter his ult is on like a 6 second cooldown. I usually go power treads --> helm of the dominator --> scepter --> shadow blade. I destroy people with that build usually. It's probably because I'm in low MMR though, I don't play the game all that much, maybe 2-3 games a day.

[PizzaSHARK]

What's with people circlejerking on heroes like Shredder and Bloodseeker being "countered by TP scroll"? Who cares if they can TP out? That's 135 gold wasted, probably on a support (that's basically a set of wards or bag of dust) who doesn't have much gold to begin with, and it also wastes a 60 sec TP cooldown, meaning they can't be there to defend the tower or whatever when you start pushing it.

Hell, Nightstalker is countered by a TP scroll, too (durr, just TP after he voids) and yet he's been used off and on throughout pro games all this year. I mean, if they think Shredder or Bloodseeker are just garbage, that's one thing... but this circlejerking over HURR DURR BUY A TP is fucking stupid.

[LolretKJ]

What's with people circlejerking on heroes like Shredder and Bloodseeker being "countered by TP scroll"? Who cares if they can TP out? That's 135 gold wasted, probably on a support (that's basically a set of wards or bag of dust) who doesn't have much gold to begin with, and it also wastes a 60 sec TP cooldown, meaning they can't be there to defend the tower or whatever when you start pushing it.

Hell, Nightstalker is countered by a TP scroll, too (durr, just TP after he voids) and yet he's been used off and on throughout pro games all this year. I mean, if they think Shredder or Bloodseeker are just garbage, that's one thing... but this circlejerking over HURR DURR BUY A TP is fucking stupid.

Word.
10chars

[Charge me Doctor]

The thing is, if Russians want to speak in Cyrillic they have an entire server where they can do just that and everyone will understand them. If you play on any other server you're expected to speak English because that's the lingua franca and nobody will understand you if you speak in Cyrillic. It's not racist to suggest that the people who don't comply with this are to be punished and/or forced to play on their dedicated server only. It's racist to suggest that ALL Russians are like this and should be segregated just because they're Russian.

The thing is, if i que for 3-5 server at one time, i can't see a huge label "YOU ARE JOINING X SERVER" to determine, if i am allowed to talk in my main language. And when i ask on a game start "русские есть?" to determine which server i connected, i get a huge flood of shit from both teams for being russian or typing in cyrilic. Even when i misstype (since i can't see what kind of keyboard layout i have currently on ENG or RUS, i often type something like "ыы" which is same as "ss" but in rus layout) i get flamed like i killed a child and ate him

[Kuntantee]

What's with people circlejerking on heroes like Shredder and Bloodseeker being "countered by TP scroll"? Who cares if they can TP out? That's 135 gold wasted, probably on a support (that's basically a set of wards or bag of dust) who doesn't have much gold to begin with, and it also wastes a 60 sec TP cooldown, meaning they can't be there to defend the tower or whatever when you start pushing it.

Since you don't like "TPing out" solution against Bloodseeker, I would like to hear your own solution about what to do when bloodseeker is about to kill you.

Also I am not sure why it's stupid? Could you elaborate more because It works like a charm against Bloodseeker.

[Lillpapps]

You dont have to TP all the way back to base, closest tower or maybe 2 towers away is enough. Its a lot more than 135 gold if you die.