[Megathread] DotA 2

[Scummer]

I want that arcana .
The animations look awesome and it includes so many neat things in it.

[Jester Joe]

PA arcana looks kinda lame, if you ask me. Like a glowy green version of LC arcana, honestly.

A glowy green version of the best Arcana? Count me in!

[Scummer]

Saying its like the LC arcana is incredibly reductionist.

[EqualWin]

the only thing i like of lc arcana is that it changes to dual wield, pa as well is dual wield right? hope so.

[PizzaSHARK]

Saying its like the LC arcana is incredibly reductionist.

It's a girl hero that went from using a two-handed weapon to using two one-handed weapons, which happen to be swords. One girl is on fire, the other is... glowing green or something.

[veiledy0]

Secret vs Next.kz final odds 99-1. Guess who won

[PizzaSHARK]

Its also worth mentioning that Supernova also deals as much as 600 damage over its duration, and has a very large radius too. It will deal some pretty heavy damage if you can channel it fully. You can safely channel it out of line of sight or in a position that forces enemies to either retreat or to eat a lot of extra damage from your team if they commit to killing you. Its not a brilliant ult by any stretch of the imagination, but its certainly useful.

Sunray too can deal some very impressive damage over the full duration, especially if you manage to get multiple enemy heroes caught in it. Its pure damage and based on the enemies maximum health, allowing you to deal some serious damage to tanky heroes, especially the ones who are likely to buy some extra magic resistance like Pudge or Centaur. The healing effect is pretty weak, but the best case scenario, IE hitting all of the other 9 Heroes in the game, for Sunray is disgustingly good.

Phoenix's biggest problem is that he needs someone else to help him set up his damage for the largest possible effect. He (She? It? Whatever) is not alone in having this issue. Given the choice even guys like Earthshaker or Sand King would want another Hero helping set them up for maximum potential damage, not to mention people like Lich and Venomancer love having setups too. Unlike the above though, Phoenix is of limited effectiveness without allies to help him out, teams tend to get out of his AoE fast if they're not forced to stay there, and the absolute worst thing that can happen for Phoenix is when teams spread out to avoid his Ray. Thats not to say he's going to be totally useless, but he's far more dependent on having the right sort of team setup than other more versatile heroes are.

Yes.

Sunray is an ability that looks and sounds OP as shit on paper, but tends to be pretty awful in practice. I guess if you had a black hole or RP to setup a giant cleave with, but if I wanted to do that, I'd just draft around a Sven or Bfury PA instead. I mean, it's basically saying "hey please hold still for 6 seconds so I can hurt/heal you", in a game with as much mobility as DotA has... especially in the era of overpowered blink daggers.

I don't think Phoenix needs a rework or anything that drastic, but Icarus Dive and Sunray need some major work done on them to make them more attractive than +2 stats. Supernova is probably fine, but I feel it's a kind of awkward ability that I usually just use as a free health/mana battery more than anything else.

I'm not sure what to do about his Agh's, but his Agh's kinda sucks.

[Omertocracy]

Secret vs Next.kz final odds 99-1. Guess who won

Not having watched the game, I'm gonna guess Elder Titan and/or Tidehunter did.

[PizzaSHARK]

Zeus and Legion Commander are going to become popular soon. LC's always been good and was added to CM fairly recently, Zeus has received a trainload of direct and indirect buffs across the past few patches, and has performed very well in a handful of somewhat recent games (XMG especially.)

I think people will need to stop focusing so exclusively on Duel before LC really explodes. Duel is great, but that's not really why you'd pick her; you'd pick her because Overwhelming Odds can damned near rival Echo Slam in damage potential if the enemy team bunches up for a second and guarantees she'll have a good lane, and Press the Attack is like an Aphotic Shield that's been taking its vitamins. +120 IAS and it's a strong dispel? Yes pls. Duel is just gravy; her other two skills give her a ton of presence in all sorts of fighting and guarantee her a good laning phase. I probably wouldn't even bother with blinker in a coordinated game, OO's speed bonus will be plenty to allow you to get into Duel range to grab someone that's about to die anyway for the free damage bonus. Get Axe instead if you want to use Duel as BKB-piercing blink initiation.

OO damage comparison, assuming 3 heroes and 5 creeps (not unreasonable for tier 3 pushes or teams which include heroes with necrobook/summons, like a Profit): Echo Slam will do 500 damage to heroes (375 damage plus 125 from Aftershock proc), assuming lvl 2 Echo Slam; 665 damage with Agh's. OO will hit for 445. Smaller radius (330 vs 575) makes it a lot less likely to hit large numbers of units, but it's also on a much shorter cooldown and has 1k cast range. It'll never outdamage Echo Slam in a practical sense, but the damage potential for it is considerable, especially since people never seem to talk about it much (and some idiots even skip the damn skill until late game!)


Zeus is going to be strong because of his overwhelming burst damage potential, and the fact that Lightning Bolt guarantees his team an advantage on map vision and a small economic advantage. His team won't need to spend as much on dusts for invis heroes, and will definitely save gold on sentry wards. Static Field ensures he scales into late game, and he can just focus on obliterating supports when carries get BKBs. Once BKBs are down to 5 sec, he'll come back online and be able to zap carries into the dirt just fine. Zeus ult giving true sight over all heroes on a fairly brief cooldown is amazingly strong. Very hard to execute a good smoke gank or sneak a Roshan against an attentive Zeus unless you can bait the Thundergod's Wrath somehow. Zeus ulti can be used before initiation to get around a possible Pipe of Insight, as well as soften up enemy supports and give your team vision so they can position themselves perfectly.

Zeus and Spectre make a natural team combo. Haunt and Zeus ult give the team enormous map presence and massive vision advantage over the enemy team, Spectre will begin to come online right around the same time the 10 sec BKBs that give Zeus a headache start popping up, and Zeus ult+Haunt will translate to free, unavoidable kills on enemy supports for most of the game.

Profit probably also gets an honorable mention; Thundergod's Wrath will provide vision to ensure Nature's Wrath hits as many targets as possible. Profit with a Necrobook and a Zeus would basically mean the enemy team never gets to have any observer wards on the field except ones that are very deep in their territory.

[StrawberryZebra]

Zeus and Spectre make a natural team combo. Haunt and Zeus ult give the team enormous map presence and massive vision advantage over the enemy team, Spectre will begin to come online right around the same time the 10 sec BKBs that give Zeus a headache start popping up, and Zeus ult+Haunt will translate to free, unavoidable kills on enemy supports for most of the game.

Profit probably also gets an honorable mention; Thundergod's Wrath will provide vision to ensure Nature's Wrath hits as many targets as possible. Profit with a Necrobook and a Zeus would basically mean the enemy team never gets to have any observer wards on the field except ones that are very deep in their territory.

Why not just go all out and do something like this?

Jokes aside, I think Spectre is much better off on a team that will force the enemy team to spread out. Split pushers can help with that, certainly, but most often they'll be trying to avoid a fight while people deal with Prophet and Spectre won't want to ult before a fight breaks out and risk wasting it. Almost all of her map pressure is her ult, and the cooldown is far too long to be wasteful with it. While Zeus' ult has a shorter cooldown, using it at random on the off chance you can set up Spectre or Prophet for a global range pick is still extremely wasteful and removes Zeus as a global threat temporarily.

Given that its very rare to use their ults for vision alone, I think both of them would be better teamed up with Bloodseeker, he can give them the information they need to decide when best to use their ults. He's also fantastic at getting teams to spread out when they move off his Blood Rite, which gives Spectre a very clear window to use her ult for maximum effect. Rupture is great at halting people who would want to dive at someone squishy like Zeus, giving him a little extra safety from BKBed carries.

[veiledy0]

thegameawards.com/nominees vote for fy boys

[EqualWin]

free arcanas boys

[PizzaSHARK]

Why not just go all out and do something like this?

Jokes aside, I think Spectre is much better off on a team that will force the enemy team to spread out. Split pushers can help with that, certainly, but most often they'll be trying to avoid a fight while people deal with Prophet and Spectre won't want to ult before a fight breaks out and risk wasting it. Almost all of her map pressure is her ult, and the cooldown is far too long to be wasteful with it. While Zeus' ult has a shorter cooldown, using it at random on the off chance you can set up Spectre or Prophet for a global range pick is still extremely wasteful and removes Zeus as a global threat temporarily.

Given that its very rare to use their ults for vision alone, I think both of them would be better teamed up with Bloodseeker, he can give them the information they need to decide when best to use their ults. He's also fantastic at getting teams to spread out when they move off his Blood Rite, which gives Spectre a very clear window to use her ult for maximum effect. Rupture is great at halting people who would want to dive at someone squishy like Zeus, giving him a little extra safety from BKBed carries.

Yeah, but Bloodseeker isn't in captains mode right now. He'll probably become a common sight if he makes it in without any changes because of how godly his skillset is now (Bloodrage is ridiculously good), but right now he's allpick only :P

[Clrg]

the fuck is going on with all these arcanas.

[Sorcereria]

Any tips and tricks for the event?

[EqualWin]

oracle offlane is so good (x2 RoP lmao) and you can trade with any support and harras the carry so hard, phase into drums force/meka/eul/orchid etc is so fun

[StrawberryZebra]

Yeah, but Bloodseeker isn't in captains mode right now. He'll probably become a common sight if he makes it in without any changes because of how godly his skillset is now (Bloodrage is ridiculously good), but right now he's allpick only :P

I totally forgot about that. I never really play Captains; Random and Single Draft modes are much more interesting in my opinion. Obviously they wouldn't work out at Pro level, but they're a happy medium between All Random and Captains for anyone who doesn't really care about getting perfect team comps. They're great for pushing people out of their comfort zones and you get much more diverse picks than other modes. The downside is the queue times tend to be longer than All Pick, but that's a worthwhile trade off for higher game quality.

[Omertocracy]

ARDM best mode.

[EqualWin]

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/commen..._shieldpms_an/

real talk about how bad x2 RoP is, lamo

[PizzaSHARK]

I totally forgot about that. I never really play Captains; Random and Single Draft modes are much more interesting in my opinion. Obviously they wouldn't work out at Pro level, but they're a happy medium between All Random and Captains for anyone who doesn't really care about getting perfect team comps. They're great for pushing people out of their comfort zones and you get much more diverse picks than other modes. The downside is the queue times tend to be longer than All Pick, but that's a worthwhile trade off for higher game quality.

I just play ranked, and only AP is viable there. Too many games where we get a Peruvian that makes weird picks and doesn't speak English when I've queued CM :-/

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/commen..._shieldpms_an/

real talk about how bad x2 RoP is, lamo

tl;dr: 2x RoP is only useful if you're getting tranquils and basilius with them. Spend the gold elsewhere otherwise.