[Megathread] DotA 2

[veiledy0]

Was it the same for normal matchmaking then I guess? Because it was really odd, although half of them were probably smurf accounts anyway, since I doubt someone playing for the first time would know to buy back on Puck and teleport to illusionary orb before it disappears to clean up a team fight.

That happened and I cried. There was nothing I could do but compliment the Puck.

Not sure about normal, but I think in normal it's pretty common since forever. Because I don't see any other logical explanation for how in 2 consecutive games I'm playing mid against a guy who gets 1 CS per wave as Kunnka, brings Tangoes but doesn't trade any harass, and uses X without having Torrent at all, and then next game it's a bottle crowing Lanaya who misses 1 out of 5 Psy Blades on me.

[EqualWin]

• Fixed Ranked Matchmaking not obeying its level restriction.

Apparently it was bugged for a week or so.

Orchid into Deso sounds stupid. By the time you're getting Deso people will have more than 7 armor (the whole point of getting Deso is getting it early and making it take opponents into minus armor, that's why it works well on heroes that already have armor reduction (Lanaya, SF, Weaver, Dazzle)) and you'd be better of with something that builds into a lategame item (Demon Edge/Crystalis/Eaglesong).

Also, you can just buy Medallion instead of Deso on Clinkz, because when it comes to killing heroes, it does the exact same shit anyways. Clinkz is an early game beast, and in pubs he's best played with a load of cheap as fuck items. People rush Orchid way too often on him, and end up with mediocre usefulness (same as those mongoloid Weavers rushing Linken's against 0 single target abilities/against Zeus), when you could be on a beyond godlike spree with Threads, Medallion, Aquilla and Soul Ring/Bracer on those heroes.

deso still good imo, plus you destroy towers as well.. that game I ended with like 25kda so it was pretty fast deso/orchid. my idea was get soul ring bottle into deso but since I was snowballing i got both pretty fast, but most of the game you need the orchid or sheep first.

[Charge me Doctor]

Anyone seeing a huge amount of TBD dogs lately? Like PL and Rubick in this game, they fed Tide to 9 0 in 8 minutes, and a few other games where the team that has a TBD player is guaranteed to lose.

I actually happy about seeing this "TBD dog" as Viper in my game. Maybe you confuse "TBD" with "Bad players"?

[PizzaSHARK]

We would have a shitload of other skills to change also. BS ult goes through BKB... must be fixed. How come Bane ult works on bkb? Better also fix that. Searing arrow works on magic immune, but Drow frost arrow does not? Should also be fixed. Oh, and all types of illusions should be exactly the same because it may confuse new players when they work differently. We should also boil damage types down to only magic and physical. Confusing with that pure dmg thing.

They fixed the BKB piercing thing with 6.82 by describing it as Spell Immunity... and then making notations on skills which go through Spell Immunity. At least it's noted somewhere.

Pure damage exists because it's a way of ensuring a skill always does X damage, regardless of any modifiers. You could have Purification do 480 magical damage - which means it then does the same 360 damage against enemies with base 25% MR - but then that's going to be impacted by adding magic resistance or effects like Veil of Discord, Ancient Seal, etc. I realize you're trying to make an appeal to absurdity with this, but it's not working.

I actually have to disagree with you on this.

He would literally shut down basically every single initiator in the game if you gave heartstopper aura stopping blink. There would be no fear of ever having anyone blink in on you ever basically, and that's more broken than Blink in any way. He wouldn't be good against just a "specific" setup, he'd be good against almost every single one then. I think personally Heartstopper Aura is fine as it is, it's free harassment against melee early game, and you can't run away with low hp against him.

This implies that picking Necrolyte wouldn't in itself open your team up to certain methods of counterplay. If they picked a hero that is very effective at making blink initiation difficult, you either don't pick blink initiators, or you pick them and think of different ways of getting things done.

Did you know that Pugna disables blink initiation with Epicenter when a nether ward is anywhere nearby? SK gets zapped on completing Epicenter but before the blink can be used (even if shift queued), omg Pugna OP breaks blink daggers. Except Pugna has his own set of strengths and weaknesses and if you were just absolutely dead-set on playing SK the exact same way you always do instead of modifying your playstyle to compensate for a particular enemy hero, you could just fucking ban Pugna before picking SK.

Also if you open up the view from just pro games, you can't ban Necro in All Pick. Granted, that might not be the most competitive mode, but it's still a played mode.

The game is balanced around captains mode in a tournament setting. Anything that happens outside that might be irritating but is irrelevant for balance purposes, otherwise Faceless Void and Sniper would've been deleted years ago.

To be honest, I'm surprised it wasn't done when it was moved over to the source engine. The transition from Dota 1 to Dota 2 was the perfect opportunity to remove WC3 mechanics and substitute them with updated ones which aren't bound by the same limitations.

Risk of alienating existing DotA players. Hell, people still bitch about the changes from CS 1.6 to Source to Global Offensive and will refuse to play any version but their favorite.

[EqualWin]

They fixed the BKB piercing thing with 6.82 by describing it as Spell Immunity... and then making notations on skills which go through Spell Immunity. At least it's noted somewhere.

Pure damage exists because it's a way of ensuring a skill always does X damage, regardless of any modifiers. You could have Purification do 480 magical damage - which means it then does the same 360 damage against enemies with base 25% MR - but then that's going to be impacted by adding magic resistance or effects like Veil of Discord, Ancient Seal, etc. I realize you're trying to make an appeal to absurdity with this, but it's not working.




This implies that picking Necrolyte wouldn't in itself open your team up to certain methods of counterplay. If they picked a hero that is very effective at making blink initiation difficult, you either don't pick blink initiators, or you pick them and think of different ways of getting things done.

I hope they stop trying to make the game more noob friendly, this isn't LoL. Those mechanic were there because balance, by making them easier to understand or less complicated look what happened. they fucked up a lot of other stuff like urns canceling blink procing cold snap, removing ta refraction.

also Necro is already good at it is (really good late game canceling buybacks, he's a really good counter to spectre) there's no need to make that annoying aura even more annoying lol

pugna cancels only sk initation, necro would counter every1.. pretty much like spectre but w.o cd

[Hermanni]

implies that picking Necrolyte wouldn't in itself open your team up to certain methods of counterplay. If they picked a hero that is very effective at making blink initiation difficult, you either don't pick blink initiators, or you pick them and think of different ways of getting things done.

Good luck playing without Blink initiations against a team that can pick their entire lineup knowing you won't be able to Blink on them. Heartstoppers range is the exact same as that of Blink Dagger if you know precisely where to click, but good luck landing a Hoof Stomp on a moving target when you can't even Blink past them. Try being an Earthshaker defending your base when Necro is there in the front of his team and you've no way of getting close enough to land a good Echo. Maybe you could smoke and go for the solo flanking move, but that's very risky against a team with some awareness.

Pugna's ward, after being placed, is quite easy to observe and destroy, and Sand Kind is pretty much the one hero he can completely stop... except SK has Burrowstrike on top of his Blink, and a smart SK player can simply start his ultimate far enough from where he expects you to have warded and use his stun to close the remaining gap. And Pugna isn't naturally built to be tanky enough to just waltz in your face to drop the ward in the best possible spot.

And you can't just say "ban the hero" - you know 99% of Dota games are played in modes that don't involve banning. And having a hero that sits as a 100% first ban in competitive isn't good for the game, either.

Like I said if you had your way there would be 2 options - either scrap the entire skill and probably the hero too or make the skill be completely out of balance. Seems like a pretty steep price because of something you should figure out within a few games with or against Necro - "okay so this skill goes past magic resistance and immunity but doesn't stop Blink? Got it." Unique hero design is that makes dota the game it is, and if such design is bad in your books there's plenty of more streamlined games.

[Deleted]

I don't know if anybody is watching the WCA Alliance vs C9 series, but Loda's Naga is just absolutely filthy. It feels a lot like Burning's Naga or Bulldog's Prophet back in the day where if you let it through the draft, you will lose.

It's just incredible how disciplined Alliance are capable of playing, and I can't help but love seeing it get to C9 every time the two teams match up.

[Sorcereria]

The amount of 80min+ games is just making me fall asleep every game this patch. Completly entertaining... At least I can catch up on sleep times.

[minteK917]

Not sure about normal, but I think in normal it's pretty common since forever. Because I don't see any other logical explanation for how in 2 consecutive games I'm playing mid against a guy who gets 1 CS per wave as Kunnka, brings Tangoes but doesn't trade any harass, and uses X without having Torrent at all, and then next game it's a bottle crowing Lanaya who misses 1 out of 5 Psy Blades on me.

Its been like that forever really for unranked. If i go to dotabuff and check my game only half of them get tagged very high skill, the rest goes untagged and it seems usually those are the shit games where im 100% stomping or have to carry 100% of the load most of the time. Im guessing unranked tries to give you a balanced match, but if its too hard it just goes for what ever it got in the queue.

There also seems to be no real block like in ranked for team queue with lower hidden mmr players. I got my brother to play the game and it was obvious we were literally only playing people from his ranking. Like people with under 20 hours played, crazy games where i get 200 cs over the next guy lol.

[Sorcereria]

FU**** NICE. Get 3 dutch retards control my character with all disabled help DISABLED. Basicly no control over my hero. Nice 6.82 patch. Recent game on huskar. First get me blocked by IO, than have no control over hero even though enemy team managed to kill me before abandon.

Dont get how is this still possible to hide your steam account in order to prevent harrasment reports on steam account not only dota2...

Infracted

[veiledy0]

Its been like that forever really for unranked. If i go to dotabuff and check my game only half of them get tagged very high skill, the rest goes untagged and it seems usually those are the shit games where im 100% stomping or have to carry 100% of the load most of the time. Im guessing unranked tries to give you a balanced match, but if its too hard it just goes for what ever it got in the queue.

There also seems to be no real block like in ranked for team queue with lower hidden mmr players. I got my brother to play the game and it was obvious we were literally only playing people from his ranking. Like people with under 20 hours played, crazy games where i get 200 cs over the next guy lol.

Ye, it does look like it. I played a normal game last night, and if you compare the CS and/or GPM of me and the Radiance Naga on my team, and the item choices of their Meepo and Huskar you can see that the disparity between teammates in both teams was really there.

[PizzaSHARK]

I hope they stop trying to make the game more noob friendly, this isn't LoL. Those mechanic were there because balance, by making them easier to understand or less complicated look what happened. they fucked up a lot of other stuff like urns canceling blink procing cold snap, removing ta refraction.

Look what happened because they didn't fix this years ago instead of waiting until half the fucking house is built on a foundation that was sinking before they even had more than the frame up.

Granted, we're talking about the War3 engine, which was never really intended to do what they made it do, and what was basically a one-man effort for the most part. But that gives even more reason why this stuff should've been handled with the transition to Dota 2 rather than striving for perfect parity, which they never did anyway (how many bug reports went ignored when discrepancies between War3 heroes and their Dota 2 counterparts were noticed?)

And you can't just say "ban the hero" - you know 99% of Dota games are played in modes that don't involve banning. And having a hero that sits as a 100% first ban in competitive isn't good for the game, either.

And no one gives a fuck about those modes, because they aren't captains mode. At least, that's what everyone has always said when major balance issues crop up. "lol just ban them"

And I agree 100% ban isn't good for the competitive game, but that's happened in most major patch cycles, or pretty close to it.

Like I said if you had your way there would be 2 options - either scrap the entire skill and probably the hero too or make the skill be completely out of balance. Seems like a pretty steep price because of something you should figure out within a few games with or against Necro - "okay so this skill goes past magic resistance and immunity but doesn't stop Blink? Got it." Unique hero design is that makes dota the game it is, and if such design is bad in your books there's plenty of more streamlined games.

Unique hero design has nothing to do with it. You can have heroes with unique, interesting designs and playstyles while still sticking to consistent gameplay mechanics.

Maybe they shouldn't have taken HP Removal out of the game and just listed four distinct types of damage instead. But even then we'd have problems and exceptions because apparently either no one over there is thinking three steps ahead, or they deliberately don't worry about these kinds of thing.

But 6.82's changes to damage types very clearly imply that Valve wants to make the game simpler and more consistent, to reduce the sheer number of hurdles in the way of newbies getting into the game, but then they immediately go back and make a single, special exception for a single skill on a single hero. They already took Bloodseeker out and retooled him, if Heartstopper Aura was going to be a problem, they could've easily done the same for Necrolyte.

[StrawberryZebra]

Not sure about normal, but I think in normal it's pretty common since forever. Because I don't see any other logical explanation for how in 2 consecutive games I'm playing mid against a guy who gets 1 CS per wave as Kunnka, brings Tangoes but doesn't trade any harass, and uses X without having Torrent at all, and then next game it's a bottle crowing Lanaya who misses 1 out of 5 Psy Blades on me.

My games seem to have huge imbalances in player skill, (or lack of), most of the time too. There are hundreds of explanations for it though, it isn't necessarily the matchmaking that's at fault. Maybe it was Kunkka's first time playing the Hero? I certainly don't bother checking through everyone's profile to bother finding out. Maybe he was queuing with friends? Its certainly common enough and can easily upset matchmaking balance.

Looking at the final score of a match doesn't really tell you much about how good someone actually is, games can be hugely snowbally. There have been plenty of times I've queued with friends and got stomped by another stack. Only to queue again, play the same stack as before and totally stomp them in return.

I hope they stop trying to make the game more noob friendly, this isn't LoL. Those mechanic were there because balance, by making them easier to understand or less complicated look what happened. they fucked up a lot of other stuff like urns canceling blink procing cold snap, removing ta refraction.

I applaud them for the effort. They're not trying to over simplify the game as people make out, just to make it more approachable for new players. Its an area where they could make lots of changes without affecting game balance at all. For example, they could add in the option for range indicators on your spells, I know some already have them, but extending that to include all spells. Its a way to ease new players into the game, while having no effect at all on existing players.

You also have to consider that the "side effects" of changing HP removal to Pure damage were actually intended. I'd like to think that some thought goes into these kinds of changes, and that they knew what they were doing. It now means an Urn is now an effective way to stop people Blinking away when they're already in combat. I know most of the people who buy Blink Dagger are usually initiators who don't really care about escaping, but its great for stopping the likes of Puck escaping. Its also not going to stop Heroes like Tide from being able to initiate with Blink, so ultimately its a relatively minor change in that regard.

As for Cold Snap and Refraction, it gives Invoker another build option at least. Usually Cold Snap builds will have their Forge Spirits to trigger Cold Snap anyway, so I don't really think the Urn is that big a deal past the early stages of the game. It also gives options to deal with Refraction too for Heroes without DoT's in their skill set. I've always thought of it as being a very binary skill, your opponent either has DoT's and can remove it very quickly, or they do not and you can probably kill them outright if you're on equal footing.

[veiledy0]

As for Cold Snap and Refraction, it gives Invoker another build option at least. Usually Cold Snap builds will have their Forge Spirits to trigger Cold Snap anyway, so I don't really think the Urn is that big a deal past the early stages of the game.

QW utilizes Cold Snap a lot more (in means of quantity, not quality) than QE, because it's a build that solely relies on pick-offs and teamfights (and QE rarely buys mana regen items like QW does, so you can't really spam it), and it won't have Forge Spirit(s) until at least lvl 9, so the Urn triggering it is actually quite excellent. QE will never buy Urn anyways.

[EqualWin]

. It also gives options to deal with Refraction too for Heroes without DoT's in their skill set. I've always thought of it as being a very binary skill, your opponent either has DoT's and can remove it very quickly, or they do not and you can probably kill them outright if you're on equal footing.

its bad, TA main skill is her refraction.. she's good against hero that dont have dots. and she get "countered" by hero with dots.. now every hero with a item that cost 900 gold counter her main skill. I hope it get fixed, also OoV cancels Blink dagger now, thanks to that "fix" which is pretty much pointless, I doubt it would "help" new players..

Also not like they're fixing it and making it more noob friendly, they're removing mechanics which were there for a reason. I doubt that icefraud agreed with it, or maybe they're not smart enough to realize how many thing it would fk up lmao.

[Deleted]

http://www.twitch.tv/arteezy/b/574582399

If you want to learn SF. His laning is top notch and his Raze/auto-attack weaving is the best in the world.

[Deleted]

its bad, TA main skill is her refraction.. she's good against hero that dont have dots. and she get "countered" by hero with dots.. now every hero with a item that cost 900 gold counter her main skill. I hope it get fixed, also OoV cancels Blink dagger now, thanks to that "fix" which is pretty much pointless, I doubt it would "help" new players..

Also not like they're fixing it and making it more noob friendly, they're removing mechanics which were there for a reason. I doubt that icefraud agreed with it, or maybe they're not smart enough to realize how many thing it would fk up lmao.

what? buy an item to counter somethings? really, thats like totally unheard of.....

[Deleted]

Did anyone encounter or heard anything about people being able to drop you from game? We just played a game where they got smashed hard, started feeding intentionally for a while and then enemy ES just said "guys sorry to inform you, but this game won't count, DDoS inc" and in about 3 seconds connection problem, everyone dropped, game safe to leave - no stats recorded. We reconnected after a while to finish the job, but still, how? Shouldn't the games be hosted on valve servers? Is there IP visible from the console?

If anyone was extra interested in the match - http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/940575553 . It seems the game was counted after all, at least according to dotabuff.

[EqualWin]

what? buy an item to counter somethings? really, thats like totally unheard of.....

you dont even know what we are talking about i guess. that's not my point, they removed a mechanic to make the game less complicated.. and they seems to forget why it was there in the first place, do you even remember why venge wave of terror was changed to hp removal? because it was op, and they totally forget about that when they made that pointless fix.

[Sorcereria]

SNA vs NoT game 2

I dont know, whether shall I laugh or cry even though I bet so much on NoT.