[Megathread] DotA 2

[Alraml]

dat 5 int team?

I love intelligence heroes what can I say =P

I think it was Storm/Chen/Windrunner/Rubick/Shadow Shaman

I love to see it but it never happens in games I play because ofc "hurr derr I must go agi hard-carry" x4

[PizzaSHARK]

In HoN there was a forfeit option. As soon as your team was not leading and someone died twice at fifteen minutes - a concede vote would start. If you did not want to concede, these people would afk in fountain or votekick you. Truth is forfeit options are a lazy exit for players who are incredibly mediocre.

Yeah, I saw that in LoL. It's a conundrum because you're screwed if you're in a game that's a lost cause, but if you give the option, then people will abuse it.

I don't know, have you considered the option that these people actually are at your level? What basis have you when saying that the matchmaking system is broken? Do you have any form of tangible proof at all? Are you delusional?

No, I'm not. I'm not an expert by any means but I know not to run into a jungle on my own when four of their team are missing. I can figure out when someone is baiting. I know not to run past the river when it's nighttime and NS is missing. I ward jungle camps to put a cramp on their jungler. I counter-ward their wards. I get dust, I get sentry wards, I get Necrobook. When I play a carry, I know when I should be farming and know when I should be participating in fights. I know that if our tower is getting pushed and we can't defend it, to use the opportunity to push one of THEIR towers so it's not a complete loss. I know how to last hit, I know how to deny, and I'm learning how to stack creep camps to jungle more efficiently.

I'm not expert, but I put effort into learning. I watch pro games partly because I want to learn and partly because they're just fun to watch. I pay the fuck attention to what the pros are doing - skill builds, item builds, and WHY they are going those skill or item builds.

I know I am better than the people I have been getting teamed with lately (and, sometimes, the people I've been set against - I won a game a night ago like fucking 34-3 or something insane like that), because they aren't doing those things. They'll feed NS by overextending at night when NS is missing, they're level 5 while jungling when the solo mids are lvl 8, they don't even ATTEMPT to gank or otherwise mess with the enemy jungler despite it being basically a guaranteed kill in pubs due to lack of coordination on teams. More than anything, they buy items based purely off of the recommended items and never, ever deviate even when the game demands it. If they're support, they don't buy wards or chicken unless it's on their recommended items list, or they buy carry items (lol, Venomancer.) They buy Helm of the Dominator and NEVER get a creep. Basically, they have no fucking game sense.

And that's fine, game sense is something that takes experience to get, and I'm still learning a lot about it myself. But my opportunity to improve as a player is limited when I'm playing with and/or against players that are significantly below my level, not to mention the occasional asshats that are just there to grief and troll.

And frankly? It's fucking frustrating to be wanting a good, evenly matched game and get nothing but curbstomps one way or the other. I mean, sure, it was a nice change of pace to be curbstomping someone instead of BEING curbstomped, but I didn't really learn anything that game because I was never pressured. I mean, fuck, I was 7/1/8 as Dazzle at like 25 minutes? There's no way I'll have that kind of income in a real game, and if I just wanted to test items I could just play a game vs bots in WTF mode.

Well that's ironic.

How so? I'm very much aware of when my losses are due to me making mistakes and when they're due to my teammates making mistakes. In every single game I've lost, I can spot where I made mistakes, where I can do better. Avoiding those mistakes might not have changed the outcome, but I can still recognize them.

Has anyone followed PotM Bottom? Lately they've been playing incredibly well, their games against CLG and Quantic in Prodota2 league were a real pleasure to watch. Really professional DotA at its peak.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the PB-CLG games in PD2. 1 and 2 were a bit of a curbstomp, but game 3 was absolutely fantastic. I was really pleased to see Luna seeing some play and I enjoyed seeing Jakiro, too. Jakiro's really fun and it was interesting to see a pro team field him, learned a few things.

[Elgand]

I've abandoned more games in the past week than I have in the previous 110+ hours I've played D2.

I read most of your posts, though I admit I only read the first sentence of your most recent post. Amongst all that, this statement really stuck out to me.

If the MMR system is screwing those that are abandoning games, I say Bravo to that. Maybe you should attempt to learn in those games that you are losing. Start warding, give advice to the noobs. Raging and abandoning seems to be your flavor, and that mentality should be punished.

[PizzaSHARK]

I read most of your posts, though I admit I only read the first sentence of your most recent post. Amongst all that, this statement really stuck out to me.

If the MMR system is screwing those that are abandoning games, I say Bravo to that. Maybe you should attempt to learn in those games that you are losing. Start warding, give advice to the noobs. Raging and abandoning seems to be your flavor, and that mentality should be punished.

Start warding? Dude, I play supports. Support is my favorite role, and I end up playing them even if I want to play something else because NO ONE ELSE plays support. Hell, even the people that end up randoming into a support don't play support.

Like I said, I ward. I counter-ward. If we need dust, guess who's buying it? Guess who ALWAYS has a couple of TP scrolls on hand when NO ONE else on my team even considers buying one? If the team needs a gem, guess who ends up buying it? Dude, I sacrifice for the team because it's my job as a support. But I have to fucking have a team to support! Do you not understand that?

Since the past week or two, nine times out of ten I'm running around with just boots and a bracer at 25 minutes because I've been hemorrhaging gold into wards and dust and other shit, I get instagibbed by the TA or NA or NS or viper or sniper or what-the-fuck-ever my idiot teammates have been feeding all game, and then my own fucking team rages at me for "feeding." "omfg noob rubik" "gg omni nub", shit like that. And I'm the one that gets punished, for not wanting to put up with another 45 fucking minutes of that shit after I've already forced myself to endure two fucking hours of it previously?

Give advice to them? Do you know how fucking well that works when they're Brazilian or Russian and don't speak English? Do you know how well that works when they're your standard e-thug faux macho twat that thinks he's a total baller and that 0/6/8 Omniknight is just some trash scrub? "0/6 stfu noob," that's how well it works. And I'm not raging at them. I say please. I say thank you. I congratulate them on bringing down a tower or getting kills or avoiding a gank. I don't harp on them for suiciding or overextending or running into a fucking trap that's so goddamn obvious a retarded toddler could spot it from five miles away. And it doesn't fucking matter because they don't fucking care.

Dude, my problem isn't that people are bad at the game. Sometimes you get people that speak English and know they suck at the game, and know what? I love those people. I adore them, I love having them on my team, or even on the enemy team. Even if we lose, I don't get upset because I know it can be used as a learning experience for them. They know they suck, they admit they suck, and they show a willingness to learn, so they can get better, so they can learn from their mistakes. That's fucking awesome, I love people like that, even if they mean I lose a game. I never rage at them, I'm always polite to them, and I always offer encouragement because those people fucking matter. They're the kind of player that is the lifeblood of a fun game, the kind of people you want to take care of encourage them to keep playing, because they aren't fucking asshats hiding behind some kind of shield of anonymity. They treat others with respect and friendliness and it's important to return that to them, because you don't want them to get scared off.

Maybe I should attempt to learn in the games I lose? The fuck do you think I'm doing, dude? If it's 10 minutes in and we're down 20-2 (and I've fucking had games like that), I just ignore everything else and go into the jungle and practice stacking creep camps or go to a lane and focus entirely on last hitting and denying (which is questionably useful past like lvl 4-5 since by that point your damage and attack speed are high enough that it becomes trivial) or wander around experimenting with ward placement spots because I know I'm not gonna get anything else useful from the game.

But I could just create a botmatch and do that, and probably get a better experience from it because I won't have to endure my team raging at me and threatening to report me for not trying to solo defend a half-dead t1 tower from a full team of enemies that have a serious gold and XP advantage.

Do you realize I'm not going to learn anything useful about the capabilities of my current hero, or the enemy team's heroes, when I'm going to be getting into a 1v3-5 against a team that has a substantial gold and XP advantage? Do you know what pro teams have to do if their opponents get a significant gold and XP advantage? They have to play defensively. Let them take the towers if necessary, but don't die. Just don't die, keep farming, but don't die. Turtle in your base if you have to, but don't die. Try to pick off stragglers on their side that are farming ancients or jungles or whatever, but don't die. If you can get a numbers advantage, push a lane and try to take a tower, but don't die. Try to prevent them from taking rax, but don't fucking die.

Do you have ANY fucking idea how hard that is to do when your team is filled with e-thug twats or Brazilians or Russians, who you can't even communicate with? The e-thugs won't listen and the BRs and RUs probably don't speak English. How are you supposed to help them understand why suiciding into a full team for one kill is a really bad thing when it means they can rax you if they don't listen to what you're saying, or can't understand what you're saying?

Do you see where I'm coming from? Do you see how motherfucking frustrating it is? I'm not suggesting that they remove or lessen the automatic penalties for abandonment, I'm suggesting they find some way of improving the MMR system so that I'm not getting matched with or against these kinds of players anymore. If they just want to get drunk and troll and grief and just shit around... man, that's perfectly fine, everyone deserves to have fun. Just... those kinds of people ruin my games and I really don't want them in my games.

[Rustedsaint]

gona have to agree with pizza here, this game is starting to make me rather racist against the br/russian players who join Uswest/east server.

[PizzaSHARK]

gona have to agree with pizza here, this game is starting to make me rather racist against the br/russian players who join Uswest/east server.

The BRs and RUs bother me less than the little faux macho e-thug twats that seem to infest every game these days, honestly. At least the BRs and RUs have the excuse of generally not speaking English very well.

[Lysah]

At least they're not the "oh, you haven't heard of X pro team? Haha...noob...."

The people who think watching other people play DotA makes them good annoy me the most by far.

[Kuntantee]

No votekick, No surrender!

give advice to the noobs

This is not an easy task if player thinks he/she's good but actually he/she's shit. I've met two guys, most probably two friends. We lost because of those two guy and when I blamed them for lost, they wanted to learn what was their mistake and how to improve. These kind of people are rare. Most of the time, when you say "you're doing wrong" or similar thing, you will get flamed, no matter how kind your way of telling is or there will be some Russians who can't speak English and refuse to cooparate. You can't even tell them their mistakes, they won't understand you.

I play supports. Support is my favorite role

This is why you lose. If you really want to win, play a strong mid like invoker, qop, tinker or even aggressive rubick. Get those early levels and crush their side lanes. My win rate when i pick one of those heroes is beyond %70 since last three months(I mostly pick invo). I don't even pick a carry when i solo queue anymore. I pick heroes who needs nothing other than early levels. Supports have limited impact on game if your team mates suck but an invoker will have its full potential even your team mates can't do much. Or you can pick easy-way-to-win-pub-game heroes like lycan or ursa. I only pick a support when I feel like I don't want a serious game, again I don't pick carry anymore because the carries I like(eg. Spectre) requires good support which you won't have in pubs. If you ask me, games like DotA and LoL is not good for your mental health when solo queued. Especially if you take it seriously. Add players to friend list who you think they performed well in game and queue with them.

[Lysah]

I told one of MY friends that pipe was a bad choice on Kunkka in a game where the other 4 heroes on our team were ints/supports. He refuses to ever play with me again, won't even talk to me. Apparently trying to give him advice is the worst offense I could have committed.

In the MOBA genre, trying to help is easily the most insulting thing you can do to a person apparently - just remember, everyone is God's gift to DotA.

[Sackman]

So whats everyone's favourite hero so far?

Mine is Invoker because of the complexity, and because Kael was my favourite boss in wow lol ^^

[Kuntantee]

So whats everyone's favourite hero so far?

Mine is Invoker because of the complexity, and because Kael was my favourite boss in wow lol ^^

Invoker is my fav. hero as well . First I like his appearance, second I like chain-casting spells. Invoker can land 3 spells in a row at early game which is so deadly and killing people with sunstrike is the most fun thing in DotA. I can't even keep myself watching the landing of sunstrike sometimes

-Oh that was a epic escape!
-boooom, no it wasn't...


By the way, best way to practice with invoker is trying to chain-cast all spells in -wtf mode.

[PizzaSHARK]

No votekick, No surrender!


This is not an easy task if player thinks he/she's good but actually he/she's shit. I've met two guys, most probably two friends. We lost because of those two guy and when I blamed them for lost, they wanted to learn what was their mistake and how to improve. These kind of people are rare. Most of the time, when you say "you're doing wrong" or similar thing, you will get flamed, no matter how kind your way of telling or there will be some Russians who can't speak English and refuse to cooparate. You can't even tell them their mistakes, they won't understand you.

Most of the times I've been teamed with people who were together, at least one of them was complete shit, was entirely responsible for the loss, and ALL of them flamed and reported me when I tried to explain (politely!) the reason they're wrong, and why it cost us the game. And then when I (POLITELY!) suggest that they play some botmatches together so the shitty player can learn the basics of the game (like not hitting "autoattack" and then apparently going afk and dying to a fucking tower), I'm an "ass" for not wanting them to ruin someone else's game - my game's already ruined, no point in crying over spilled milk... but why do you want to go ruin someone else's game, too?

I dunno man. When you get a competent team against competent opponents, DotA is amazingly fun, even though I disagree with the "beat broken with MORE broken" design. There's strategic and tactical depth and there's room for innovation and trying something different or new, which was something LoL was missing.

It just seems like the MMR system is shit these days. Like I said, about three weeks ago most of my games were pretty good. I won a little more often than I lost, but they weren't curbstomps or even significantly mismatched. Now all I get are idiot teammates or idiot opponents and at least a few games a week are absolute curbstomp 20 minute wins or 20 minute losses, and I end up waiting 3-5 minutes for a game (my search bar gets wider than Africa) instead of ~2 minutes.

The DotA 2 dev forums mentioned "fixes" to the MMR system in response to player complaints. If this is "fixed," then...

This is why you lose. If you really want to win, play a strong mid like invoker, qop, tinker or even aggressive rubick. Get those early levels and crush their side lanes. My win rate when i pick one of those heroes is beyond %70 since last three months(I mostly pick invo). I don't even pick a carry when i solo queue anymore. I pick heroes who needs nothing other than early levels. Supports have limited impact on game if your team mates suck but an invoker will have its full potential even your team mates can't do much. Or you can pick easy-way-to-win-pub-game heroes like lycan or ursa. I only pick a support when I feel like I don't want a serious game, again I don't pick carry anymore because the carries I like(eg. Spectre) requires good support which you won't have in pubs. If you ask me, games like DotA and LoL is not good for your mental health when solo queued. Especially if you take it seriously. Add players to friend list who you think they performed well in game and queue with them.

I know. I have to play a carry if I want to win.

But that's the thing, picking another carry when my idiot teammates already instalocked 3 hard carries with no utility isn't going to help. I'm gonna HAVE to buy wards and HAVE to buy chicken and HAVE to buy dust and HAVE to buy chickenwings, because I know they fucking won't, and that's going to put me at a significant disadvantage against my lane, and god help me if I want a solo mid or expect Ursa to fucking jungle like he's supposed to. Plus, I just don't really enjoy the carry gameplay style and don't think it's as interesting or tactically complex as the support playstyle, or as versatile (see: Windrunner, Shadow Demon, etc) especially since once you're done farming it's basically blink in/BKB in, and right click until everything stops moving.

See, it's frequently only my teammates that are pants on head retarded. Most of the time, the enemy team has a relatively balanced lineup (almost never more than 2 carries without utility skills) and while there's probably one or MAYBE two of them that are absolute shit, more likely they're all relatively decent. Probably gonna build Helm of the Dominator and not have a creep, but they usually seem to figure out when an area is warded and usually don't cross the river when two of our heroes are missing.

[Sackman]

Invoker is my fav. hero as well . First I like his appearance, second I like chain-casting spells. Invoker can land 3 spells in a row at early game which is so deadly and killing people with sunstrike is the most fun thing in DotA. I can't even keep myself watching the landing of sunstrike sometimes

-Oh that was a epic escape!
-boooom, no it wasn't...


By the way, best way to practice with invoker is trying to chain-cast all spells in -wtf mode.

Yeah I am spamming bot matches at the moment, learning the spells and learning how to mix them together, when you rock your first combo it's a great feeling, particularly when you know theres so many more combo's to find and master.

[Lysah]

It just seems like the MMR system is shit these days. Like I said, about three weeks ago most of my games were pretty good. I won a little more often than I lost, but they weren't curbstomps or even significantly mismatched. Now all I get are idiot teammates or idiot opponents and at least a few games a week are absolute curbstomp 20 minute wins or 20 minute losses, and I end up waiting 3-5 minutes for a game (my search bar gets wider than Africa) instead of ~2 minutes.

The DotA 2 dev forums mentioned "fixes" to the MMR system in response to player complaints. If this is "fixed," then...

The MMR system definitely needs some work but there's really nothing you can ever do about it. Like I explained before, at the end of the day the point of the system is to ensure every player (EVERY player) has a 50% winrate, give or take. This means that, yes, if you get above 50% you should expect to start getting games you simply cannot win; the system will intentionally stack the odds against you because it thinks that you are mathematically better than you are (since your winrate is above 50%). This will be true at all skill levels, even if you are at one of the highest MMRs in the game, it will balance you out by simply giving you massively garbage allies because, mathematically, you should be able to carry them.

The MMR system has never and will never acccount for the fact that this is a TEAM GAME. That's too much complexity and as far as making sure everyone has 50%ish winrate it does its job. Whether or not you want to say that it's creating "fair games," as people would like to believe, is up to you. I don't buy it, I definitely get games every single day that are lost before picks even happen. I also get quite a few wins where someone goes 26-0 and the game ends up probably even less fun than the horrible losses.

All you can do is keep playing knowing that, after enough losses, you are virtually guaranteed a win. Whether or not its a fun win is up to chance, it seems, but until Valve adds in the non-rated queue that they claimed they would add one day you're kind of stuck.


@Above
DotA2 is better than DotA1 for a variety of reasons. Probably the biggest are aesthetics and triggers. So many spells work much better without the limitations of the WC3 ME.

[Finear]

By the way, best way to practice with invoker is trying to chain-cast all spells in -wtf mode.

or
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75495922/InvokerTrainer.htm
!

[Lysah]

Uh-huh... but ... isn't it the same game mechanically ? I mean, ok, its a new engine, new graphics, but the core is virtually unchanged? Not to mention those lazy guys can't afford to bring my lovely little Phoenix into Dota2 atm

Same game, just...newer.

[Kuntantee]

or
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75495922/InvokerTrainer.htm
!

lol it's fun..gave it few try and my record on timed is 32 spells but I play with a shitty keyboard. I also recast all of orbs for each spell. I don't know how you do but even I have two quas and one exort up I press three times to quas in order to guarantee the cold snap invocation.

[Elgand]

Start warding? Dude, I play supports. Support is my favorite role, and I end up playing them even if I want to play something else because NO ONE ELSE plays support. Hell, even the people that end up randoming into a support don't play support.

Like I said, I ward. I counter-ward. If we need dust, guess who's buying it? Guess who ALWAYS has a couple of TP scrolls on hand when NO ONE else on my team even considers buying one? If the team needs a gem, guess who ends up buying it? Dude, I sacrifice for the team because it's my job as a support. But I have to fucking have a team to support! Do you not understand that?

Since the past week or two, nine times out of ten I'm running around with just boots and a bracer at 25 minutes because I've been hemorrhaging gold into wards and dust and other shit, I get instagibbed by the TA or NA or NS or viper or sniper or what-the-fuck-ever my idiot teammates have been feeding all game, and then my own fucking team rages at me for "feeding." "omfg noob rubik" "gg omni nub", shit like that. And I'm the one that gets punished, for not wanting to put up with another 45 fucking minutes of that shit after I've already forced myself to endure two fucking hours of it previously?

Give advice to them? Do you know how fucking well that works when they're Brazilian or Russian and don't speak English? Do you know how well that works when they're your standard e-thug faux macho twat that thinks he's a total baller and that 0/6/8 Omniknight is just some trash scrub? "0/6 stfu noob," that's how well it works. And I'm not raging at them. I say please. I say thank you. I congratulate them on bringing down a tower or getting kills or avoiding a gank. I don't harp on them for suiciding or overextending or running into a fucking trap that's so goddamn obvious a retarded toddler could spot it from five miles away. And it doesn't fucking matter because they don't fucking care.

Dude, my problem isn't that people are bad at the game. Sometimes you get people that speak English and know they suck at the game, and know what? I love those people. I adore them, I love having them on my team, or even on the enemy team. Even if we lose, I don't get upset because I know it can be used as a learning experience for them. They know they suck, they admit they suck, and they show a willingness to learn, so they can get better, so they can learn from their mistakes. That's fucking awesome, I love people like that, even if they mean I lose a game. I never rage at them, I'm always polite to them, and I always offer encouragement because those people fucking matter. They're the kind of player that is the lifeblood of a fun game, the kind of people you want to take care of encourage them to keep playing, because they aren't fucking asshats hiding behind some kind of shield of anonymity. They treat others with respect and friendliness and it's important to return that to them, because you don't want them to get scared off.

Maybe I should attempt to learn in the games I lose? The fuck do you think I'm doing, dude? If it's 10 minutes in and we're down 20-2 (and I've fucking had games like that), I just ignore everything else and go into the jungle and practice stacking creep camps or go to a lane and focus entirely on last hitting and denying (which is questionably useful past like lvl 4-5 since by that point your damage and attack speed are high enough that it becomes trivial) or wander around experimenting with ward placement spots because I know I'm not gonna get anything else useful from the game.

But I could just create a botmatch and do that, and probably get a better experience from it because I won't have to endure my team raging at me and threatening to report me for not trying to solo defend a half-dead t1 tower from a full team of enemies that have a serious gold and XP advantage.

Do you realize I'm not going to learn anything useful about the capabilities of my current hero, or the enemy team's heroes, when I'm going to be getting into a 1v3-5 against a team that has a substantial gold and XP advantage? Do you know what pro teams have to do if their opponents get a significant gold and XP advantage? They have to play defensively. Let them take the towers if necessary, but don't die. Just don't die, keep farming, but don't die. Turtle in your base if you have to, but don't die. Try to pick off stragglers on their side that are farming ancients or jungles or whatever, but don't die. If you can get a numbers advantage, push a lane and try to take a tower, but don't die. Try to prevent them from taking rax, but don't fucking die.

Do you have ANY fucking idea how hard that is to do when your team is filled with e-thug twats or Brazilians or Russians, who you can't even communicate with? The e-thugs won't listen and the BRs and RUs probably don't speak English. How are you supposed to help them understand why suiciding into a full team for one kill is a really bad thing when it means they can rax you if they don't listen to what you're saying, or can't understand what you're saying?

Do you see where I'm coming from? Do you see how motherfucking frustrating it is? I'm not suggesting that they remove or lessen the automatic penalties for abandonment, I'm suggesting they find some way of improving the MMR system so that I'm not getting matched with or against these kinds of players anymore. If they just want to get drunk and troll and grief and just shit around... man, that's perfectly fine, everyone deserves to have fun. Just... those kinds of people ruin my games and I really don't want them in my games.

Justify abandonment however you will. My comment still stands. I have learned alot of lessons from sticking around in a game that was a sure loss, from unique item builds to laughable item ideas (Dagon couriers).

You did suggest that the MMR system was broken and although it can use tweaking, it certainly isn't the hellfire and brimstone end of the world scenario that you would paint it as.

If the mmr system is truly that bad for you, pay attention to those people that you play with who seem competant. Friend them, and build a group of people that can queue as 5. I have done this in many other games, although I haven't had to yet in dota 2.

[Deleted]

So whats everyone's favourite hero so far?

I'm gonna go with Alch. Because dodging storm hammer with my ult is just best feeling ever.

[PizzaSHARK]

I'm gonna go with Alch. Because dodging storm hammer with my ult is just best feeling ever.

Rubick. Killing people with their own spells does not get old. At all, ever.