[Megathread] DotA 2

[Ichy]

Tide is beefy support hero with 4 defensive skills(2 damage reduction, 1 slow and 1 stun), and he's fairly item independent. You can't really nerf him without changing some or most of his skill toolset, he's just too good designed hero. Ravage is easy to use, anchor screws over enemy carries, and he can easily survive after blinking into enemy team. If you want to counter him, improve on your teamplay, else you have to realize that dota isn't balanced around pubs.

love this, many forget that at the core of MOBA game play is team play/team cordination. I've lost several games with a team of "great heroes" because we couldn't coordinate/play well with one another. Also have won many games with hero combinations that would make any one double take, simple because of team coordination.

[Lysah]

I've been playing Windrunner a bunch recently when my team needed support. She's...very good. You really have to get used to setting up your stun but once you've got that, she works well. Nice thing is she has her built-in escape so you don't need to worry about any items to help there besides force staff (which you don't get for the escape anyhow)

I still find Windrunner bad. Every time I see her try to solo the hard lane I end up forcing her out of it or killing her repeatedly. She's just a walking shackleshot, the rest of her kit is pretty pointless. The second you miss your stun you've wasted an entire pick for your team.

My opinion, of course =p

[Jinto]

Tide is good but not OP in any serious play. In pubs though he is probably borderline OP as it is a fairly easy hero to play reasonably well and typical pubs don't have the coordination against his ult.

[Strygwyr]

Even in better pubs tides loses his ultility right around the time things get interesting. By the time people have built up some items and the game starts getting good, hes nothing but a ravage bot with a price tag on his head. And even then... a sub-par ravage basically guarntees a loss in the team battle because he doesn't do much else. Unless you build him as some hybrid semi-carry (and he is almost useful) in which case, why didn't you pick void?

[Ultraviolet Harmonies]

Tide doesn't really have serious weaknesses; he has mana issues for the first 20 minutes like almost every STR hero, but arcane boots on him and/or his teammates eliminate that problem entirely (also maybe a bracer or two and of course a wand.)

He doesn't really have serious strengths bar his ultimate during the mid-game. His toolset is good, he is difficult to lane, easy to shut down and to gank. I'd draft a ton heroes before tide in a solo offlane role. He is underwhelming solo mid. He doesn't work well in a trilane, because he needs the experience to be noticed at all. Against an uncoordinated team in a public game where everyone consistently stacks up and nobody invests in magic immunity I'd consider him one of the best heroes in the pool - too bad midskill pubs are so mundane.

But hey, let's just list all the abilities and think that somehow that constitutes as an argument and let's act surprised when people think you aren't providing one. That works too.

Instead of constantly claiming to have this insight in high-tier organized DotA games, why don't you just post some match ID's along with your statements? You keep talking about the professional scene - yet you have not posted a single professional game as an example.

[Deleted]

He doesn't really have serious strengths bar his ultimate during the mid-game.

Get ulti get RO get Shiva = win.You can destroy enemy team. Tide is ok.

[Lysah]

Tide is a common pick in all skill levels, you guys should stop pretending he is average just to be antagonistic. Everyone here knows he is a top tier pick.

[Deleted]

Tide is a common pick in all skill levels, you guys should stop pretending he is average just to be antagonistic. Everyone here knows he is a top tier pick.

There are better AoE control heroes than him (Crystal,Enigma oh yes f*cking enigma the best mofo in town) but he is still very good hero and he can easily win the game.

[Lysah]

There are better AoE control heroes than him (Crystal,Enigma oh yes f*cking enigma the best mofo in town) but he is still very good hero and he can easily win the game.

CM is garbage, Enigma has half the AoE and needs to channel - easy to stop before he has a BKB. Different heroes for different teams.

[Jangri-]

CM is not garbage. Don't you dare, by far the most fun support to play in pubs. She's not exactly an aoe control hero though.

[Finear]

CM>ALL

[Lysah]

CM is not garbage. Don't you dare, by far the most fun support to play in pubs. She's not exactly an aoe control hero though.

Hands down worst hero in the game. Absurdly weak, horrible animations, pitiful damage and speed all around. Nukes aren't even very good, their utility is nice but so many heroes can do a better job (Jakiro as mentioned) at what both of her main spells accomplish. Around mid game she completely falls off to as pure of a ward bitch as it gets, she literally drops dead the second anyone looks at her. A warlock can kill her in seconds flat. Pathetic.

Cannot tell you how many games I have lost because CM was on my team. Yes, she can help you win your lane, but if the game lasts longer than 25 minutes it becomes 4v5. Hell, just the other day I was PL and had radiance at 19 minutes, ended up something like 20-4 and lost the game. Why do you think I lost? Well, in a team fight, CM would basically use nova and run to fountain or die - 4v5 from the start. Against the enemy team supports (invoker, pugna) she simply could not compare. They were able to farm sheep sticks and euls and BKBs while all CM had was a force staff and 800 health at level 16.

If you want lane control pick Lich instead. He automatically drags the creep wave to his tower and has the exact same slow utility CM has, combined with a much greater nuke capability and 315 movespeed instead of 280 so he doesn't die the second someone breathes on him. Frost armor is also far more useful against carries than frostbite ever will be.

tl;dr
I could not possibly hate a hero more. Please stop picking CM when you are on my team and losing the game for me, I really do not appreciate it.

[Deleted]

If anyone wants a copy of Dota 2 I have a spare one. no idea why though I only played the beta for 2 hours out of the months I have had it.
Just PM me your Steam name and i'll add you. First come, first serve.

[PizzaSHARK]

Tide is beefy support hero with 4 defensive skills(2 damage reduction, 1 slow and 1 stun), and he's fairly item independent. You can't really nerf him without changing some or most of his skill toolset, he's just too good designed hero. Ravage is easy to use, anchor screws over enemy carries, and he can easily survive after blinking into enemy team. If you want to counter him, improve on your teamplay, else you have to realize that dota isn't balanced around pubs.

I'm not using pubs as a balance metric. I'm using pro games and "high skill" games on the first and second page of the live games page. Absent any direct information from Icefrog and/or Valve, I can only assume these are the kinds of games they're pulling their data from, and Tide is overperforming in these games.

I still find Windrunner bad. Every time I see her try to solo the hard lane I end up forcing her out of it or killing her repeatedly. She's just a walking shackleshot, the rest of her kit is pretty pointless. The second you miss your stun you've wasted an entire pick for your team.

My opinion, of course =p

That's how it feels if you went hard support once the game reaches a point where Powershot lacks any real impact on the fight. Every time I've gone pure support on her it feels like she's useless past about 30 minutes. Seems like you really need to be picking up some damage items like Orchid and MKB to have a real impact on the lategame.

---------- Post added 2012-10-19 at 12:48 AM ----------



Fun group stages game Na'Vi versus Empire. Na'Vi picks Omniknight and Phantom Lancer.

But I wasn't really impressed with Puppey's Omniknight. I'll watch the replay in-game tomorrow and follow him around but it didn't seem like he was doing anything with Omni that another hard support couldn't have done, aside from a couple of Guardian Angel tower dives.

Scandal's Rubick kept feeding Dendi's TA in mid with the help of Rhasta and/or Omni, and everyone knows how ridiculous TA gets if you let her get some early ganks... running around damned near two-shotting supports at 13 minutes with those fat Meld hits. And while they're mostly feeding TA kills, XBOCT is on bot freefarming with his PL, 100 damage at level 8 is crazy. XBOCT later said during an interview with Tobi that the Eblade was a troll pick and that it's a bad item on PL (watch all the idiot Na'Vi fanboy pubs buy it anyway because XBOCT bought it, hurr hurr.)

I also never felt Scandal made the most out of the Rubick-Omniknight matchup, which should be giving his team a natural advantage. I guess because Dendi would just pop up and fold him like a cheap plastic chair, so whenever he stole Repel he didn't get to keep it for very long.

Chaos Knight still seems like he's outperforming Sven and Leoric. I guess Sven has a little bit more a niche now with his improved cleave, but I just don't think you can argue against a 3 second stormbolt (on average) combined with a blink, and personally I think CK's ulti is better for breaking towers/rax than Sven's. Poor Leoric's just left out in the cold, I guess.

Lysah, I'm sure you'll enjoy watching WR get chased out of her solo long lane. She definitely seems to be pretty easy to pressure out of the lane. She landed some amazing shackles, but I wonder if she was just too far behind in XP to have a strong impact on the game.

[Lysah]

I don't find CK is really all that much outside of his ultimate. Leoric will always be terrifying because he can commit in a way no other hero in the game can. People fight and die over aegis because it is just that game changing, and this guy gets a free one every 60 seconds. Actually, his is a super aegis, he doesn't spend as long on the ground and he applies a pretty heavy slow to anyone trying to camp his grave. Leoric's crits are also much more reliable than CK, and his stun might as well have no cooldown. Adding a projectile speed to chaos bolt was the change necessary to bring CK down to average, in my opinion. I still find Leoric one of the best heroes in the game if built properly. With items he really has no counter, your options are to simply outfarm him by a lot or end the game before he gets items. The change to shadow blade giving attack speed has actually made it surprisingly good on a hero like Leoric as well, nothing says "f*** you" like popping out of stealth in the middle of their team and two shotting someone, only to get back up after they blow three ultimates on you.

But I digress, any hero with items is good. I compare carries to their maximum potential unless their early-mid game is something noteworthy, such as Viper, who might die down as the game goes on compared to others but has an absurdly powerful level 6-16. CK might beat Leoric at ganking. I think he certainly loses in team fight initiation.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't find CK is really all that much outside of his ultimate. Leoric will always be terrifying because he can commit in a way no other hero in the game can. People fight and die over aegis because it is just that game changing, and this guy gets a free one every 60 seconds. Actually, his is a super aegis, he doesn't spend as long on the ground and he applies a pretty heavy slow to anyone trying to camp his grave. Leoric's crits are also much more reliable than CK, and his stun might as well have no cooldown. Adding a projectile speed to chaos bolt was the change necessary to bring CK down to average, in my opinion. I still find Leoric one of the best heroes in the game if built properly. With items he really has no counter, your options are to simply outfarm him by a lot or end the game before he gets items. The change to shadow blade giving attack speed has actually made it surprisingly good on a hero like Leoric as well, nothing says "f*** you" like popping out of stealth in the middle of their team and two shotting someone, only to get back up after they blow three ultimates on you.

But I digress, any hero with items is good. I compare carries to their maximum potential unless their early-mid game is something noteworthy, such as Viper, who might die down as the game goes on compared to others but has an absurdly powerful level 6-16. CK might beat Leoric at ganking. I think he certainly loses in team fight initiation.

Yeah. I think you're right when you're talking about a big late-game teamfight, but CK's so much better at skirmishing and small fights than Leoric because getting tagged with a 4 second stun is a guaranteed death most of the time in situations like that. He's also extremely hard to kite because of his low cooldown blink and high move speed, and his ulti gives him automatic "ward traps" with a blink (lvl 3 ulti produces enough illusions that you can almost always trap someone between them following a blink) and an enormous DPS increase.

Just seems like CK's a better choice because he's not too much weaker at 40 minutes, but he's much stronger at 20 minutes.

I guess Sven finally has a niche as a push-oriented semi-carry with his buffed cleave.

[Hermanni]

Absent any direct information from Icefrog and/or Valve, I can only assume these are the kinds of games they're pulling their data from, and Tide is overperforming in these games.

How is Tide overperforming in those games? Like UVH pointed out on the last page, the only bracket in which Tide might "over"perform is in the low-midskill bracket. Why don't you just try to come up with some actual facts like mentioned match ID's or statistics as they're all readily available instead of basing everything on your perception or pro player worship. Instead of "this hero overperforms because I say so" or "this hero has no weaknesses because I say so and I know because I watch pro games and all that."

I play in page 1-2 games most of the time when I solo queue and I've on-off watched dota-hon-dota2 pro circuit from 2008 onwards but I don't try to build every argument solely on my own observations and opinions.

Also I smell a pretty strong bias in this CM hate. I don't feel like arguing the matter but I'm confident I'd outperform Lich support with CM 4 games out of 5.

[Jinto]

I am like 24-3 on one account with tide and maybe 6-6 on another account with tide. Difference being that the first I solo queue and second I queue with friends and play CM mode.

Anyway people should do a mmo-champion 5v5 or something. Most of the time discussion is only relevant when you have actually played with or against the people you are debating with.

[methwow]

anyone want i got dota2 invite msg me steam

[Lysah]

Also I smell a pretty strong bias in this CM hate. I don't feel like arguing the matter but I'm confident I'd outperform Lich support with CM 4 games out of 5.

I can personally guarantee if you face me as CM, it doesn't matter what hero I am, you will feed. She really is just that easy to kill. The only games I've seen CM do well in were because her team was already dominating. Like I said, she is strong in lane, for all of about 10 minutes. A roaming CM can be powerful but wards immediately counter it and with her absurdly slow movespeed if she walks across the map and fails to get kills she is DEFINITELY going to have a horrible game now that she's level 2 when everyone else is 7.

My opinion is like this - if you want to end the game quickly, you pick heroes like Leshrac who can actually help a push. If you want the game to last 60 minutes pick heroes like Lich.