[Megathread] DotA 2

[Sackman]

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

That's awesome ty.

Invoking about 25 spells in 30 seconds, want it to be 60 in 30 though lol

[Alraml]

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 ^^

Have to go with invoker as well. Just because of how versatile he is

[Deleted]

That's awesome ty.

Invoking about 25 spells in 30 seconds, want it to be 60 in 30 though lol

Can't really do 60 in 30 with something like that. Sure you might be able to get close to it in an actual game but doing something like Sun Strike, Tornado, Alacrity, Ghost Walk doesn't flow naturally because all you're really doing is reading what it says on the screen and executing it.

[Alraml]

Can't really do 60 in 30 with something like that. Sure you might be able to get close to it in an actual game but doing something like Sun Strike, Tornado, Alacrity, Ghost Walk doesn't flow naturally because all you're really doing is reading what it says on the screen and executing it.

Plus the added time for actually placing the spells in-game as well as other things

[Kuntantee]

Plus the added time for actually placing the spells in-game as well as other things

Also you do not randomly invoke spells. You make a plan and invoke accordingly which is waaaay faster than you do on that training because you know next move of yours.

@Sackman
Instead of aiming for 60 invocations in 30 second, just go play games with players(not bots mind you) and try to chain-cast 3 spells. For example you can try chaos meteor -> defiling blast(proper spelling?) -> invoke cold snap and use it on target. This will guarantee enemy takes full damage from chaos meteor. Or try this, eul's scepter -> sun strike -> chaos meteor -> defiling blast. There is one even easier force staff -> forge spirits -> cold snap -> any spell you feel like. I mostly play exort invoker so these combos apply to exort build.

[Alraml]

Also you do not randomly invoke spells. You make a plan and invoke accordingly which is waaaay faster than you do on that training because you know next move of yours.

Of course. I'm definatly faster at executing a proper combo in-game then when a game is telling me what to do.

It's the same with those typing speed games, i'm a really fast typer but I actually struggle when being told what to type and not doing it myself

[conceit2]

...

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. This, 100%.

Due to my strange love for statistics and probablilty theory I have been thinking about the current state of the matchmaking system lately. [speculation]
Valve has the philosophy that the winrate should converge to 0.5 or 50%. This is by definition one of the requirements of a good matchmaking system (for a properly working matchmaking system, the chance of winning is equal to the chance of losing, and therefore equals 50%). However, there are multiple reasons why the current matchmaking system could be considered as broken.

As said before, one of the reasons the system could be considered broken is that it is difficult (if not impossible) to measure the entire team's MMR. Not only is MMR 'just a number', even if MMR was an unbiased esitmator of your exact skill measurement, some of us would still perceive the system to be broken. This is because this 'perfect' MMR would still have a certain variance (you can have a good day, you can have a bad day). Consider a population of ten people, 5 of them playing Radiant, 5 of them playing Dire. If each of them has, pick some number, 1500 MMR with 10 MMR variance each, then the total variance equals ten times your own variance (assuming skill is normally distributed, which is unlikely to be the case), which increases the chance on what we perceive as long winning/losing streaks and complete walkovers.
[/speculation]

tl;dr: Personally I don't necessarily think the matchmaking system is broken, though it could probably use some improvement, (or maybe Valve should even use another matchmaking method). Due to the nature of 'human skill' combined with the fact that your personal hidden rating is influenced by nine other players, we could perceive a broken matchmaking system, e.g. 'bad teammates', long win/lose streaks and complete walkovers. Since we don't exactly know how the matchmaking system works, there's probably some speculation here.

[Alraml]

Well i'm still dreaming of a 50% winrate. Still 18 more losses than wins

[PizzaSHARK]

Well i'm still dreaming of a 50% winrate. Still 18 more losses than wins

Ideally you should have 50% win/loss, but your losses should due to you being outplayed, not due to you being given 2-3 idiots as a handicap. I'm guessing the system assigns players a value based off of... something... and it just tries to ensure the total value for each team is equivalent.


Played some botmatches to test some item builds. Things I came out with:


- Support Axe is VERY good. Jungle him like usual, leave base with shield+ring+salve+branch. Make Tranquil Boots as your first item, then Buckler, then buy Mek recipe, and then disassemble boots and finish Headdress to have your Mek. I can usually finish mine around 10-13 minutes, which is insanely early for a Mek. Axe will have mana issues, so I go Counter Helix first and Berserker's Call after. I'm debating about skipping ulti at 6 to ensure I can always pop Mek and so I can max Helix one level earlier. Maxing Helix dramatically speeds up jungling, which allows you to get those support items VERY fast.

Support Axe's core: Mekansm + Arcane Boots + Force Staff. I had everything at about 20 minutes in with two deaths, one kill, and a couple of assists. I can't accurately assess how it'd be in a game with players, since players would know how to fucking teamfight, and good players wouldn't let you just do whatever you want in jungle. I was able to get Mek out before 11 minutes but I was also at <100 HP a couple of times, meaning I would be an absolutely free kill to any player that wandered on in. The main reason to run support Axe is because of how easily he farms, and because he can be jungled. He's a phenomenal pusher (you're Axe; camp between the towers so you intercept the creep wave) and once you can afford to start using it, Battle Hunger causes a ton of damage over time without allowing deny, and his taunt is pretty fantastic. He doesn't need BKB because Helix will pop off even if he's disabled and even if he dies, they're still stuck standing there until the taunt's duration wears off.



- Pusher Doomy is fun and seems to be effective. He needs a solo side lane for best results. Leave base with shield+ring+salve+branch, you need both shield and ring to help you not die due to your 0 armor. Doesn't need QB due to his enormous STR and top-tier STR gain, plenty of base damage and a decent attack animation. Access to jungle for creep skills is important.

Devour the first ranged creep you see (they do more DPS and are worth more gold than melee) to shift the balance of the lane towards the enemy tower (necessary if you're top lane Radiant and will thus have to search Dire jungle for creeps) or eat a melee creep if you want the balance to stay closer to the middle. Take one level of W at lvl 2, mainly for utility use (escaping, or you can use to easily take down the small jungle camps if someone was dumb enough to put you in mid.)

You should eat a jungle creep with your second Devour (they won't be available for your first), Kobold Taskmasters are your best bet for the speed aura. Eat a white satyr for Purge if you can't get a kobold. Purge has a high mana cost and tiny range so you probably won't be using it, but it's very great if you can get one off.

At Devour 2, you can eat blue satyrs for Mana Burn (great if you're laning against a STR hero, who will have a tiny mana pool), ghosts for Skadi effect on your attacks, or a blue ogre for Frost Armor. I still think speed aura from kobold is the best choice, but if you can't get one or you're getting harassed a lot, pick up an ogre for the +8 armor buff.

Take Level ? Death at level 4 for ganking when enemies begin hitting lvl 6. When you get Devour 3, you can eat a red furlbog for Thunderclap, which will be handy for ganking, but Purge from a white satyr is better, and in most cases kobold aura even better still.

When you hit 4 and get that LvlDeath skill, pay attention to nearby lanes and look for heroes that are or are about to hit level 6 and setup a gank. You'll be hitting for an impressive 280 damage after MR, which is a very significant amount of damage at that level for most heroes, if you combine it with a disable and some right clicks it's essentially a free kill. You should be at least level 6 yourself by time you're ganking level 6 heroes (since you're solo lane after all), a Doom can seal the deal on slippery heroes or get you a double kill vs most other lanes, just don't let someone deny your kill.

Helm of Iron Will should be first buy, gives you armor and regen for lane. Boots after that, and I usually like to make RoB before armlet for a little more armor and mana regen. Finish Phase Boots before Armlet, you can't do much if you can't catch people. Finish Armlet, and by time you finish Armlet, you should have an Alpha Wolf in your belly, where he'll stay there for the rest of the game. If you're having problems finding a wolf (it happens, shit sucks), try to eat a troll warlord for the net until you can get a wolf. Once you have phase boots + armlet + wolf you'll crit for about 350-425 damage; if you're doing this around 15 minutes this means you can pretty easily two-shot people, so abuse the hell out of it while it lasts.

Finish your Vlad's, and then build Maelstrom. Mjollnir after that, and then I traded in Phase Boots for Boots of Travel for more map presence. You'll be melting creep waves and raking in the cash, and Mjollnir's shield and Doom will still make you relevant in team fights. Heart will mean you can leave Armlet active at all times (I was at 92 HP regen with Armlet on, 84 with it off; about 120 regen with Heart+Armlet with W.)

For what it's worth, I think taking stats at mid levels after maxing Devour is better than your W. Your W only becomes really good when it's time to push, where the free Radiance burns down creeps and the regen can let you tank towers for your creeps. The extra stats give you the health and especially mana you need to really be a roaming, ganking monster in the midgame after you finish Armlet, extra points in your W (which will only really be used for the movespeed for the most part) don't help you. You really want to be able to pop off a Doom and any creep skills you have (if there's a wolf hanging around it's fine to trade the wolf for something else if your team needs it) and a LvlDeath to stop that TP from finishing, and you always need to have Devour on cooldown. Your mana pool won't be up to the task without those stats.


I'm still debating Mjollnir versus a Radiance. Seems like Mjollnir is the better choice due to the static shield (anti-carry), but it's something I gotta test. HH would probably be a really good alternative to Heart after your pushing item, not as much survivability but it's great for anti-carry uses.

[Lysah]

Carries can't fight back while doomed, would be better to get the drop on them and simply out carry, imo.

Radiance + max SE Lucifer does some very hilarious things to image heroes or TA.

[PizzaSHARK]

Carries can't fight back while doomed, would be better to get the drop on them and simply out carry, imo.

Radiance + max SE Lucifer does some very hilarious things to image heroes or TA.

Yeah, but I can't see getting Radiance unless you get it early... that'd mean rushing it before anything else beyond basic boots, because the AOE gets less and less effective as heroes (and creeps) get more and more HP. With a high attack speed, Maelstrom/Mjollnir shits out 140 damage Chain Lightnings (that don't lose damage on bounce!) very consistently and Mjollnir's Lightning Shield effect is amazing at making carries want to swap targets (pretty much every time someone hits the person with the shield on it craps out a 200 damage Chain Lightning at the person that hit them.) Doomy's W is also really expensive in the early and mid game when considering his limited mana pool - Doom is expensive, creep abilities are usually somewhat pricey (100-120 mana for the most part), you must ALWAYS have 60 mana for Devour when it's coming off cooldown, and you also might need to keep 110 mana in reserve for a Death so they can't TP away from you... it's why I like those 2-4 levels of stats between 7 and 11 so his mana pool isn't so cramped... plus the extra STR is hilarious since Doomy already has the best Strength in the entire game (though practically speaking Pudge probably outweighs him due to Flesh Heap stacks.)

Mjollnir provides the most IAS in a single slot of any item and it's barely more expensive than Radiance, and Maelstrom costs less than the Relic and provides more benefits as the stepping stone on the way to Mjollnir. The IAS means more Chain Lightning procs and also kind of makes the alpha wolf abilities more effective - more swings means more chances for a big crit, and Armlet already gives you plenty of raw damage. It's not that I don't like Radiance, but more that I can't really see a place to squeeze it in anywhere where it'd be effective enough to warrant the cost.

I usually use Doom on supports or disablers. Doom will disable a lot of passives like Blur, but I'm not sure if it disables stuff like Drunken Brawler or Coup de Grace. It's worth dooming a slippery hero like Anti-Mage or Morphling so they can't blink away, but usually dooming a support means they're out of the fight for the entire duration and since most supports won't have a lot of HP, it can also mean a kill if you can stab them once or twice.

[Rife]

Everything PizzaSHARK has said in the last few pages...

Totally, 100% agree with everything you've said.

I love watching Dota 2 games.
I love playing a good, competitive game.
A competitive game full of noobs beats a pro v pro pustomp every time.
Games with new players are 9/10 awesome because they're willing to listen to advice, play as a team and help out their allies. They're trying to improve and have fun, and that is fun for me to contribute to.

It wasn't that bad a few months ago because almost nobody left games. The breakdown these days for me during (Aussie) prime time is thus:
30% of games have 1 leaver inside of 5 minutes.
10% of games have 2 leavers inside of 5 minutes (so 40% of all games have 1 or 2 leavers before laning phase ends).
of the remaining 60% of games:
80% of them are decided by noob feeders doing obscenely stupid things on either my team or the enemy team.
20% of actual good games that go 40+ minutes and are decided by builds/teamfights/pushingpower/rosh/skilledplay/teamwork.

That's 40% of all my games being a waste of time 3v5's or 4v5's with the underpopulated team running around wasting time because they've already given up and only 12% of all my games actually being competitive and fun to play.

That's not even considering the games that involve picks that need to be specifically countered with teamwork or counter-picked like Lycan. Those games are just as fucking boring and stupid.

I play less and less simply because I'm not willing to play 10-15 games of bullshit asshat-filled one-sided curb stomps in order to RNG one decent game.

It's as simple as that. The game is amazing^c but its matchmaking system is fucked up beyond belief.

[PizzaSHARK]

New rule for playing Axe: if you do not dive the enemy fountain to ulti their courier, you lost the game regardless of what the scoreboard says.


Reddit ends up with a lot discussion threads that usually end up with the response of "deal with it" when people are grousing about having games ruined by asshats of any variety. I'm not sure where that response comes from, but why are people so tolerant of game-ruining players? Shouldn't everyone be up in arms about it and expect the developer to deal with these players, not tolerate them?

[Kaynot]

Totally, 100% agree with everything you've said.

I love watching Dota 2 games.
I love playing a good, competitive game.
A competitive game full of noobs beats a pro v pro pustomp every time.
Games with new players are 9/10 awesome because they're willing to listen to advice, play as a team and help out their allies. They're trying to improve and have fun, and that is fun for me to contribute to.

It wasn't that bad a few months ago because almost nobody left games. The breakdown these days for me during (Aussie) prime time is thus:
30% of games have 1 leaver inside of 5 minutes.
10% of games have 2 leavers inside of 5 minutes (so 40% of all games have 1 or 2 leavers before laning phase ends).
of the remaining 60% of games:
80% of them are decided by noob feeders doing obscenely stupid things on either my team or the enemy team.
20% of actual good games that go 40+ minutes and are decided by builds/teamfights/pushingpower/rosh/skilledplay/teamwork.

That's 40% of all my games being a waste of time 3v5's or 4v5's with the underpopulated team running around wasting time because they've already given up and only 12% of all my games actually being competitive and fun to play.

That's not even considering the games that involve picks that need to be specifically countered with teamwork or counter-picked like Lycan. Those games are just as fucking boring and stupid.

I play less and less simply because I'm not willing to play 10-15 games of bullshit asshat-filled one-sided curb stomps in order to RNG one decent game.

It's as simple as that. The game is amazing^c but its matchmaking system is fucked up beyond belief.

As opposite to what you said, i lost 7 out of 25 last matches(all solo queues).I have now 1000+ played Dota 2 matches and from my experience its better to stop playing when you notice that you lost 2-3 matches in a row and then come back after couple hours.
Also if bad teammates bother you that much just play CM only matches, that way you run lower risk to encounter unconfident players.
Another good advice to get out of the bracket you are currently in is to wait out with picks and not to pick "fun" heroes if it doesnt make sense.Like picking Silencer/OD vs Nyx/AM.

[PizzaSHARK]

As opposite to what you said, i lost 7 out of 25 last matches(all solo queues).I have now 1000+ played Dota 2 matches and from my experience its better to stop playing when you notice that you lost 2-3 matches in a row and then come back after couple hours.
Also if bad teammates bother you that much just play CM only matches, that way you run lower risk to encounter unconfident players.
Another good advice to get out of the bracket you are currently in is to wait out with picks and not to pick "fun" heroes if it doesnt make sense.Like picking Silencer/OD vs Nyx/AM.

Doesn't make much difference if your team's full of idiots. I always pick to counter (pick CM to chase enemy out of their jungle, pick Rubick to laugh at Lion/Lina, pick Omniknight to make Ursa useless, etc) and it generally makes no difference because a lvl 6 Dazzle isn't gonna do shit vs a lvl 15 Pudge that's 15/0/12 at 23 minutes because your teammates can't fucking grasp the concept of not facechecking jungle when Pudge is missing.

[Kuntantee]

My win rate is above %50 for a long time. Are you sure matchmaking is trying to keep you at %50 but note that most of the time I'm making the difference in my team but I'm still in not the bracket I should be in(if that %50 thingy is true).

[Ultraviolet Harmonies]

My win rate is above %50 for a long time. Are you sure matchmaking is trying to keep you at %50 but note that most of the time I'm making the difference in my team but I'm still in not the bracket I should be in(if that %50 thingy is true).

It's easy to fall into the "I'm better than these people"-trap. I'm sitting at slightly above 54% win rate and I keep on winning more than losing. I doubt I'm noticeably better than the people I'm facing though.

[Kuntantee]

It's easy to fall into the "I'm better than these people"-trap. I'm sitting at slightly above 54% win rate and I keep on winning more than losing. I doubt I'm noticeably better than the people I'm facing though.

I'm not the best player in the world but I do play very good and the current bracket I play is not appropriate for my skill level. I tend to play better if people in my team think as fast as I do. I dare to say I hardly ever see people play as good as I do in my games so it's not a trap. I have 6, 7 years of DotA experience with few huge breaks.

[Alraml]

It's easy to fall into the "I'm better than these people"-trap. I'm sitting at slightly above 54% win rate and I keep on winning more than losing. I doubt I'm noticeably better than the people I'm facing though.

I don't think that. I just constantly seem to get idiots that run in alone and get themselves killed or lose their lane horrifically hard.

It's not that i'm good it's more that they're really bad

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't think that. I just constantly seem to get idiots that run in alone and get themselves killed or lose their lane horrifically hard.

It's not that i'm good it's more that they're really bad

This. Fucking this. I'd call myself above average, but I think that's being dishonest because the average player is generally just shit at the game (this applies to virtually any game these days.)

There's only been one game in the past 10-15 games where I'd say the majority of the enemy team was a bunch of goobers. Most of the time, there's probably one guy on their team off eating paint chips and licking the windows, but the rest play reasonably well, and it's the opposite for my teammates - most of the time it's me and probably one other sane and/or English-speaking guy teamed up with a bunch of idiots or people who may be decent at the game, but can't speak English (meaning there's no way to coordinate, which is the same as if all of us were just shit awful at the game.) I've also noticed that, compared to a few weeks ago, the search bar is much wider before it finds a game, but I don't know which way that's significant or if it's related or not. I play at all hours of night and day so I don't think it's restricted to just one time slot, either.