[Megathread] DotA 2

[Finear]

Heh, probably didn't occur to Valve, either

its not bug thats how it should work
although diffusal psi blade trick on illusion was not transferred to dota 2 ;c

[PizzaSHARK]

its not bug thats how it should work
although diffusal psi blade trick on illusion was not transferred to dota 2 ;c

Heh, one shotting three heroes with a single autoattack seems a little excessive :P

[Jangri-]

PizzaSHARK, let's admit, in game two of navi vs quantic, ... Quantic was indeed much better than Na'Vi

[PizzaSHARK]

PizzaSHARK, let's admit, in game two of navi vs quantic, ... Quantic was indeed much better than Na'Vi

Absolutely. Quantic won because they played better. That doesn't mean that TA isn't stupidly fucking overpowered right now, and rumblings on the dev forums indicate that they might think TA's burst is a little much, too.

Granted, I'm not keen on some heroes being so brokenly overpowered they're banned in nine games out of ten - Lycan, Dark Seer, maybe Furion, etc. If a hero's that powerful, that he or she is almost always banned, then they probably need to be taken out of CM for retuning. Bans should be elective based on preventing the enemy team from running a certain combo or certain team style (push heavy, gank heavy, teamfight heavy, etc), not "ban this hero or you lose no matter who you're against or what they're doing."

[Alraml]

Yeah my dota appears to have become a bit unstable lately.

I'd imagine Enigma is a good counter to have on your team vs TA since his stun should consume 3 of her refraction charges if it even gets to that stage but then again Enigma is incredibly good anyway

Edit: Holy fuck a 1281 crit with no damage items. It this shit serious?

[Finear]

Edit: Holy fuck a 1281 crit with no damage items. It this shit serious?

its was not crit
meld gives 200 bonus damage refraction 80 and psi blade split dmg behind main target in this case illusion which takes 400% dmg

[Hermanni]

No, my logic is that heroes shouldn't be given free excuse to be brokenly overpowered because they have "counter heroes." You can't ban or pick every fucking hero in the game, you should have to balance your fucking game, not just go "oh well they could only ban five of the seven heroes they had to ban, guess they lose automatically."

What heroes exactly are brokenly overpowered? You seriously keep insisting this yet you haven't made one compelling argument to what exactly makes TA or PA overpowered on any skill level or what makes the game not balanced. It's been said that every hero is overpowered which balances out the game, but the thing is the -CM draft is rather fair (one team gets the first pick, the other one gets last pick) and assuming completely ludicrously batshit insanely or however you would put it broken heroes existed, both teams would be guaranteed to get somewhat equal amounts of them. How would that be not balanced?

You apparently didn't come up with anything to defend PA, so let's look at TA. TA has high burst damage mid-game and is a able to destroy weak heroes with a level advantage and no items than Blink Dagger and potentially carry if she snowballs very hard, but falls down in power late-game if she doesn't. Tiny (and many others) does that exact same thing but even better earlier on. You could even go and find a few replays of Korok or someone shitstomping some games with Tiny, but that alone doesn't make Tiny OP and he is a rare pick these days.

Much like anytime a team picks an unusual or a new hero (consider that even in pro teams there are players that haven't played original DotA in years) the games slightly more often than usual turn into one-sided games: Either the team resorting to "normal" strategy are thrown off balance early-game and cannot adjust and recover or the "unusual" team get early disadvantage and cannot quite pull off their plans. Heroes like Sniper, Pudge, Axe and Tiny have high winrates in pro games, yet most players don't consider them particularly good and they're very rare picks.

TA is a hero that was fairly new in DotA and back when I played players who were good with her were a rare breed. A lot of pubs can't handle her and aren't fully familiar with her skills (sort of making her the new Ursa/Bloodseeker) and a lot of pro teams haven't found time to adjust either. You'll need to account for her in the draft, and like Lysah pointed out, drop the style of playing support that involves no farm and no items 10-20 minutes into game or invest more heavily into mapcontrol and positioning for those heroes.

Also saying that balancing the game on counters is stupid is, well, stupid, considering reacting to what your enemy is doing is the heart and soul of competitive dota, both in terms of drafting and the game itself. Would Anti-Mage, the champion of The International, be too powerful if Beastmaster, Lich, Shadow Demon, Windrunner, Riki, Scythe of Vyse, etc didn't exist? Yes. Is he too powerful? Considering he is down from permanent Ban/Pick to situational pick, probably not. Now, consider that heroes and items like Venomancer, Dark Seer, Lone Druid, Brewmaster, Death Prophet, Broodmother, Sand King, Leshrac, Radiance, Orb of Venom, Dust of Appearance. Note that I only listed fairly popular ones. Have one those in your team and TA will have much harder time, and if you're not planning of having any such hero, you can actually go and >waste a second wave ban on TA if you team doesn't have last pick.

A few years back Shadow Fiend was considered extremely powerful and one of the best solo mid laners. Then Smoke of Deceit was added and people started dual laning mid and ganking more. Now SF is considered fairly weak (even he's been buffed) although he still wins games every once in a while when played as safe-laner or dual mid. No direct nerfs were ever put into place, although you could argue SoD was one. Everything else was adjusting and strategy counters from players themselves. In conclusion, you really should stop talking shit and hyperboles or start thinking before you post and try to come up with real discussion instead of HOW CAN SHE ONESHOT GAME SO BROKEN.

[Alraml]

its was not crit
meld gives 200 bonus damage refraction 80 and psi blade split dmg behind main target in this case illusion which takes 400% dmg

Ah I see. I've never really touched TA

[Lysah]

SF isn't picked because people REFUSE to buy lothar's. Let's compare:

Lothar's - Damage, invisibility, movespeed buff that makes phase boots a joke.
Blink - Nothing. Literally nothing.

Lothar's - Allows you to pop your ult directly on top of someone without them knowing you're there until AFTER the ult has gone off.
Blink - They will not only see you coming, they will have the full cast time when you blink next to them to walk away. They will take maybe half the damage if you're lucky, and the rest of the team you weren't aiming for will be relatively untouched.

Lothar's - Forces people to buy true sight just to have a chance at pushing/ganking/surviving your ult.
Blink - Not a serious threat at all.

Lothar's - 3300g in three fairly cheap pieces.
Blink - 2150g all at once, actually a pretty hefty sum of money for a no-stats rushed item, you would laugh at anyone who spends his first 2k on demon edge as well.


People give lothar's trash ALL the time when it is extremely superior to blink. SF isn't picked because lothar's has huge negative esteem in the community. I don't know why. SF is listed as my best hero, I don't perform poorly with a lothar's on him. It's not even possible. Even if you force them to gem - guess what - you just forced them to gem. That's still an advantage, NOT a disadvantage. The only heroes I would pick blink over lothar's on are heroes like ES or Enigma who have instant cast abilities that they need to use NOW.

tl;dr
SF is extremely good, blink is a stupid item on him. Unless you're absurdly good with blink>shadowrazing people, which is like 10 people in the world total, it's a wasted item. Also, blink is so stupid easy to counter with a carry like Merc that even if the almighty dota-god Dendi gets an SF pick you know exactly what to do to shut him down already. I just haven't been scared of blink/BKB SF in years.



Rant aside, common bans are reflective of current popular meta, not necessarily hero strength. Chen is not a great hero, by all means. Go watch what happens at 45 minutes when he loses his creep army in a team fight to one swing of Sven's sword. However, he got banned a lot because the heroes necessary to stop early game roam and push teams weren't in the game. They still aren't really. Plenty of current bans are bans I never saw in DotA1, and they will change as heroes are added and the competitive scene adapts, I'm sure. Interestingly, the competitive community's way of playing isn't even necessarily the "best," it's just what people revolve around - one of the reasons I have a good laugh every time a low MMR sheep tries to trash talk a build because the X hero he saw someone ELSE playing on internet TV last night got different items. As a recent example, before dreamhack (or whatever it was we were arguing about recently I don't actually keep track) I got trash talked for going scepter on NS almost every single game. Lately I've been doing it but surprise surprise, no one has said a word. Interestingly enough, there was an NS going scepter in the tournament. Coincidence? Maybe.


If I had to give my opinion of everything as concisely as possible it would be this: Don't base your entire opinion of the game on simply "what the pros do." Yes, they're good. That doesn't make them infallible. If you use your head for two seconds you'll realize that they do what WORKS, not necessarily what is optimal. DotA isn't about being the best, it's being better than that guy for about 40 minutes on average. It might be blink SF one day, it might be dagon chen the next, they will do what they know works. Because of this, they're actually surprisingly slow to come up with innovative ideas and gameplay, which is the reason I don't follow esports - the majority of the time it's the same old sh**. Go look at recent picks for these tournaments, last time someone linked them to me I saw a pool of about 15 heroes getting picked every single game. And from what I hear, bans are almost always consistent as well. Remember that this isn't a list of best to worst heroes and they're just going down it from bans to picks, they're simply following a recipe for what they know can win a game.

Eventually, an orangemarmelade will happen and the competitive scene will change to adapt. Don't count on them to do your thinking for you, tough, in the meantime. That is all.

[Ichy]

SNIP. To damn long to fully quote

I agree with a lot of what you said. As for innovation- I figure my self a to be a decent, not great not best, Omniknight player because of how I choose to play him. Though this Catches me a lot of Flack, especially when the team I'm on looses. the meta for him is to play as Support because of his Heal and Repeal abilities. Depending on who I'm lanning with, He can be a very good early game "bruiser" type, and a great initiator late game.

[Hermanni]

SF isn't picked because people REFUSE to buy lothar's.

I'll disagree with that. Every time someone buys a Shadowblade against me, unless they buy it in one 3300 go there's pretty high chance I have dust in my inventory before they complete it. And playing against Shadowblade SF is just a matter of dropping a sentry whenever you think there might be a fight coming up - sure it takes some money, but either getting free kills on SF or making them afraid of actually using their SB offensively is worth anything. Even if you get an ulti off stealth, if the enemy moved around a bit randomly your damage goes down a lot, and if they're stacking without truesight they're just being fairly bad. In HoN I used to almost fanatically go Necro III every time when playing against a stealth hero, partially because HoN some fairly annoying ones.

Shadow Blade is the one item I almost never build on anyone but Kunkka and the reason is every time I see enemies going for SB I feel like I might be getting an easy win.

Rant aside, common bans are reflective of current popular meta, not necessarily hero strength.

Yes, but even if you consider that a push/gank meta doesn't really need 5 pusher/ganker heroes in a team to work I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that any hero that were just way too powerful in every sense wouldn't ever get past the first ban stage. Of course there's plenty of good heroes that see little play just because they kick in too late, don't fit in lanes or don't deal enough damage to towers and many such heroes do get picked, but none seem to be worthy of permanent ban.

If I had to give my opinion of everything as concisely as possible it would be this: Don't base your entire opinion of the game on simply "what the pros do."

I don't do this, but would you just consider this: I've played over many years, and as I've at some point gotten better I kind of noticed the games I played gradually started looking a bit more like the games played by top players. I was fairly rusty when I picked up HoN after ~2 year break from the genre (military etc) and picked up things like warding and especially counter-warding a lot before I started to follow the scene, and people in games would occassionally call me whatever the hell HoN's equivalent for tryhard was. So the question is, do games that increase in skill level start looking more like highest level games only because people who invest time into learning the game simply mimic their favorite pros in everything, or is just because people gradually get an idea on what often works and what only sometimes works, and what's the distinction between those two.

I disagreed with building a Shadow Blade because I learned the hard way how to play against one a long time ago, I don't need to look for validation anywhere for my own experience. As long as I'm confident about winning a game, I'm confident enough to play against a SB to the point where I usually laugh when people build one (not flaming in-game, but still.) I don't question your experience though, it may just be different from mine or maybe you're just hating on labeled players for all I know, as I might be just copying my ideas from someone.

I don't expect everyone to enjoy following competitive Dota 2, but I do think you could give a bit more credit to the top players. If someone mocked you for only building Aghanim's on NS, shame on them, but it's impossible to judge without seeing the game. Sure it's a good item, and it can work as a rushed item, but it's not always the best choice. Again, I'm not assuming it wasn't as I can't know. The last few times I recall seeing NS in a tourney game, the builds have varied a lot, items being a random selection of Vanguard/BKB/Urn/Bottle/Basher/Aghs. I'd say they vary quite a lot, even for a hero who is as straightforward as NS. Synderen even used to build early Eul's on him and did pretty well with it.

Personally I do enjoy watching games whenever I have time though, and although the pool of common picks/bans is quite thin (a shade wider than 15 heroes, though), I do see upset picks in at least half of games these days and some fairly interesting strategies. I've barely watched a game this week, but I recall last week Zenith played some amusing games where they proceeded to not ban anything at all (or anything useful.)

Meanwhile, at least they're adding KotL this week so we get to see what happens to Chen.

[Finear]

- Added Nyx Assassin, Keeper of the Light, and Visage and enabled in Captain's Mode!

http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=48273
3 !

[hailey]

I would rather buy force staff before lothars on just about any hero but kunkka. Way too easily countered for a 3.3k item

[cudomix]

You're not supposed to use requiem of souls before your initiator (tiny, ES, slardar, centaur, tidehunter etc) gets a stun off, blink is superior to lothar because it allows near perfect positioning, something that's lot harder with lothar. Now, for pure pub games, lothar is better cause there won't be much detection/coordination, but blink is more reliable against better players.

[Lysah]

I agree with a lot of what you said. As for innovation- I figure my self a to be a decent, not great not best, Omniknight player because of how I choose to play him. Though this Catches me a lot of Flack, especially when the team I'm on looses. the meta for him is to play as Support because of his Heal and Repeal abilities. Depending on who I'm lanning with, He can be a very good early game "bruiser" type, and a great initiator late game.

He used to get picked a lot for a semi carry role, I used to see radiance omni everywhere. DotA2 is a different world, though. People also love to forget that the .0001% of players that play pro games are NOT the 99.9999% of players who do not.

I'll relate my logic to WoW. People used to say BM was garbage and could not be used in raids, period (wotlk). People would come on the forum and say "what spec should I pick for my guild?" Everyone says "not BM" instantly. But let's remember this rando is in a casual 10 man guild that isn't pushing hard modes and does not actually need him to be "optimal." BM was still a fine spec, I mean, it wasn't frost, it was even competitive on a few fights by good players. So why not let him play the way he wants? It will still work, they will still down bosses. You only need that extra 1% if that extra 1% matters, which is only among the superelite. We all love to forget that there are a LOT of bad players in the world and that we are the extreme minority. We aren't even the 1%, it's much, much smaller than that.

So yes, the typical person can play omni however he wants. Just because omni isn't played as a fighter in tournaments doesn't make fighter omni a bad build. Would it be bad *in tournaments?* Possibly, but to my knowledge no one in this thread is playing in these types of games so we don't really have to worry about it.

@Hermanni
Read the above. Also, dust does not counter lothar's. You will still get hit unless you randomly cast it for shits and get absurdly lucky with the timing. It only helps you catch people running away. Oh wait! You don't even have to worry about that with blink. Again, the fact that you just spent 180g to stop someone from getting away is an advantage lothar's has over blink.

I don't really disagree with the rest. I've been playing DotA since 1.2, the original set of heroes, so damn long that I really don't even remember what patch is what anymore. Before that I was playing other random hero arenas including some of DotA's predecessors, though I don't really count that since it wasn't serious. As far as *experience* goes, there are very, very few people in the world with more than me. I realize this doesn't make me any good, any random idiot could have played for ten years and not be any good, but you used the word experience, so =p

I'm not trying to say professional level play isn't damn good. Of course everyone will start to look more and more like them as they get better. However, it's also predictable because it's such a recipe for success. Because of this, *I* always have a good laugh when I see people blatantly coping professional lineups/play. Most of the time, they aren't skilled enough to pull off some of the stuff these guys do. And if they are, it's still pretty predictable and counterable because *gasp* you already saw it happen in the past. So, in short, yes, copying the pros will make you 90% good, but it won't be perfect. They aren't perfect, they're just damn good. That's my point ->

@cudomix
Just because SnY tiny isn't something the pros do doesn't mean you should knock on it immediately. See the above. Realize you're not playing in a tournament and neither am I. Realize we're both random pubs in random pub games. You can sit here all day and say that lothar's is only a good item for stomping pubs, well guess what, that's apparently all I do. I'm willing to bet money that that's all you do as well. Like I said, very, very, very, VERY few players in the world play in games of such high skill that they have to worry about every 100g they spend, every pick they make, and every spell they cast. So very few that I can almost guarantee none of us are one of them. And I'd like to say I'm one of the best players in the world - but I'm still not one of them, and all I play is pubs. So yes, even if lothar's SF is only good for stomping pubs, guess what, that means it will work in all of the games I play.

And that's good enough for me. Which has been my point the whole time. Lothar's gives you damage, it gives you speed, it forces the enemy to buy true sight. That's wasted gold for them. If you get them to even waste 1000g on dust/sentries, which is probably an understatement in most games, congrats, you just spent less gold than a blink dagger in teamVteam gold matchup. And you got stats out of it, a lot of them. Plus, the second they DON'T dust you you become impossible to kill. They get a gem? You can break it. Once you have manta you can split out of dust and you're impossible to kill.

It's a fantastic item, on any hero. Any hero. Is lothar's Leshrac less powerful than scepter/bloodstone/euls/guinsoos? Well, yes most likely, which is why I don't normally get it on him. That doesn't make it a bad item, it makes other items more applicable. The debate here is blink vs lothar's on SF. The only credible argument for blink is if you have happen to have a very highly skilled initiator who can set up perfect stuns for you to get off your ult - not something likely in pubs. And even if you do, guess what, that's still VERY PREDICTABLE, and any team can simply just not stack up and you're already countered. Lothar's has every other advantage that exists.

I've never had a bad game as lothar's SF. Even when I lose I end up 8-0-10 and it's really not my fault, blink wouldn't have changed anything. Am I playing trash pubs? Well, you can argue that, but so are you if so, so what does it matter? I don't play AT 5v5, and if for some reason I did, I probably wouldn't be the agility carry anyway. What a boring job to farm the safe lane for 40 minutes, get two kills and rax.

As a closing statement, I'd like to say that I hate making long posts. Reading over this my English is so bad in places but I just cba to fix it all.

[Alraml]

Big Post

I remember back in the day where SF always got lothars but then people suddenly started buying Blink Dagger and I never really understood why since he got stat benefits from Lothar's and you don't see him coming. If you have dust you have to make a good guess as to whether he's there or not and even then it's forcing consumable purchases. Plus dagger sucks as an escape for SF since he's slow as fuck so you're pretty much not gonna escape damage long enough to get it off CD

I guess people did it if they had another invis hero on their team and 2 would make dust/wards counter them a little too hard.

I've never really played SF though, just really unappealing to me, largely because I don't think he's very good.

[Lysah]

Lothar's definitely loses appeal when you have other invis heroes on the team, I'll give you that much. I still think SF is absurdly good, if only because shadowraze is so damn strong. You really can't stop him from farming, and his ult is a monster. His free + damage and -enemy armor aura are also very strong passives.

Blink SF got huge because a couple of pros have managed to get recorded making great blink/raze moves for kills. Not really because blink>RoS is all that good. It's also pretty easy to get items on a hero that can nuke an entire creep wave instantly for relatively little mana.

[Hermanni]

@Hermanni
Read the above. Also, dust does not counter lothar's. You will still get hit unless you randomly cast it for shits and get absurdly lucky with the timing. It only helps you catch people running away. Oh wait! You don't even have to worry about that with blink. Again, the fact that you just spent 180g to stop someone from getting away is an advantage lothar's has over blink.

I wasn't very clear in my post. Most people who buy Lothar's on heroes like Drow and Sniper buy it to use it as escape. Then they will often farm more or less carelessly, and ganking them with dust is fairly easy. Even if they don't get suicidal, you'll know they'll be fairly weak for their farm's worth for a while longer. So, you use dust to gank, but dust indeed doesn't help you against initiation our scouting.

That's why when you push against SB SF or Mirana you bring a sentry/gem/necro and suddenly you're safe from any initiation with the added bonus of being able to get an easy kill if they initiate badly. Dust is fairly cost-efficient - Most of the time when you pop it, you're getting a kill, so 90 gold isn't a bad exchange. Necrobook is just a great item, the truevision is almost like a bonus. Wards are more of a cautionary measure and will cost actual gold, but how much you want to disadvantage yourself just to drain enemy gold is a different matter. I don't deny Lothar's has potential, but it's just a bit cheaper than BKB which is what I'd pick if I weren't intent on throwing a game. I'd say Blink is even better for escaping with the ability to react/sense a gank and get going before they get to you.

My end game would be that if you don't have a back-up plan and I can render you unable to escape anything and useless in teamfights, whatever the amount of gold I spent on sentrying half the map I'd spend it again in a heartbeat.

[Lysah]

Hopefully you never have to run in under cover of lothar's alone. I'm not really trying to say this item is mandatory for everyone or even for SF. I will pretty much always get it when I play that hero, others might like other items better. At the end of the day, what works for you works for you, and that's what I'm really arguing here. When the 0-6 spiritbreaker on your team is trash talking your lothar's SF and you're 9-0 it gets a little annoying, especially knowing that he's just being a parrot for what he saw on X team's stream last night. I have definitely started a game as lothar's ES and either got blink as well or simply sold it as a replacement. Bad things happen, being able to adapt to a game by game basis is what separates goods from bads. Simply saying it's a bad item completely is what makes me rant. Even if it gave no stats and was just a windwalk, it would still be worth the same 2150g as blink just because it forces enemies to waste gold.

[Valedus]

Hopefully you never have to run in under cover of lothar's alone. I'm not really trying to say this item is mandatory for everyone or even for SF. I will pretty much always get it when I play that hero, others might like other items better. At the end of the day, what works for you works for you, and that's what I'm really arguing here. When the 0-6 spiritbreaker on your team is trash talking your lothar's SF and you're 9-0 it gets a little annoying, especially knowing that he's just being a parrot for what he saw on X team's stream last night. I have definitely started a game as lothar's ES and either got blink as well or simply sold it as a replacement. Bad things happen, being able to adapt to a game by game basis is what separates goods from bads. Simply saying it's a bad item completely is what makes me rant. Even if it gave no stats and was just a windwalk, it would still be worth the same 2150g as blink just because it forces enemies to waste gold.

I actually still do build SF with a lothar's too, and never really understood blink as a replacement. Lothars gives him stats, and allows him to cast his ult before he is even visible. Blink does not. Blink is good for heroes like Sand King, because he can precast his ult, but you can't precast SF. Also, you can still get great positioning with Lothar's. But I totally agree. Different builds work for different things and different situations, for 90% of heroes.