[Megathread] DotA 2

[Lysah]

Well the people copying the pros are a part of the problem.

If your goal is to win first and foremost, why wouldn't you use the best heroes in the game? DotA will never be perfectly balanced, no game will, and the pros are going to be the best source of information more often than not. I don't really blame them, they're just trying to play their best, even if it makes the game boring for everybody. I blame Valve for not releasing balance patches often enough. They should be nerfing push strats already before they ruin the Shanghai major, and more consistent balance patches would throw public players out of the loop often enough - by the time they had a chance to copy the strategies the pros were using they'd be nerfed.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't think the patch is at fault. Sure the patch buffing most of the Alliance core heroes helped them and is the reason they're here, but realistically its not the only reason they won. Sumail is underperforming badly, losing almost all mid matchups. Fear's playstyle as a 4 support doesn't always fit the match, but it often gets saved by Universe or PPD overperforming. Arteezy gets sacrificed way too often. I think by the time the major comes, all of this will be forgotten...

The biggest reason it's so push-centric is buffs to Chen (almost all neutral creeps gained 10% more dmg vs buildings) and buffs to Sylla ("free" Synergy, allowing Rabid 2nd skill, which means more IAS for bear earlier in the game... Battle Cry was also given an insane buff, +90/120/150 dmg), coupled with the map changes. Primary jungle hasn't changed much but for heroes that can utilize it, the addition of the hard camp on offlane is almost impossible to overstate. It's a HUGE buff to a lot of offlaners... which includes Syllabear.

Syllabear in particular was already pretty well balanced before 6.86, and received buffs he didn't need. He's not as broken as Death Prophet, but he's definitely overpowered right now, assuming the person playing him is reasonably competent (and Bulldog is the best.)

[EqualWin]

hows sumail underperformed? he has been good this tournament maybe in the finals but, its hard to win mid when you're 1v2-3 most of the time. that's how alliance play pressure mid a lot making space for bulldog


this is alliance patch perfect for their playstyle of 2 cores and utility mid, they've so many good heroes that you can't ban them all.

[PizzaSHARK]

Why the fuck isn't Peru region locked? I have literally never, ever met a nice person that says they're from that place. Even the ones that speak English and aren't terrible at the game are all a bunch of assholes.

Like, I don't care if they're on our servers. Peru server isn't even in goddamn Peru so they get lower latency to US servers thousands of miles away. But, christ, we already have enough toxic jackasses domestically, we don't need to be fucking importing them from South America too. Four games in a row lost because of those pricks. Very frustrating when three players on your team are doing well but can't compensate for two human sandbags dragging everything down.

[Lysah]

The biggest reason it's so push-centric is buffs to Chen (almost all neutral creeps gained 10% more dmg vs buildings) and buffs to Sylla ("free" Synergy, allowing Rabid 2nd skill, which means more IAS for bear earlier in the game... Battle Cry was also given an insane buff, +90/120/150 dmg), coupled with the map changes. Primary jungle hasn't changed much but for heroes that can utilize it, the addition of the hard camp on offlane is almost impossible to overstate. It's a HUGE buff to a lot of offlaners... which includes Syllabear.

Syllabear in particular was already pretty well balanced before 6.86, and received buffs he didn't need. He's not as broken as Death Prophet, but he's definitely overpowered right now, assuming the person playing him is reasonably competent (and Bulldog is the best.)

Yeah pretty much all of this. Syllabear offlane is so, SO goddamn good right now, there's really nothing you can do about it. Even if you bring a trilane to completely zone it, he can pull creeps with bear, he can pull his creep wave to the camp, even if you try to stop all of this he can delay creeps long enough to force the wave to come to his tower, then once he's farmed it and you've managed to finally reset equilibrium, he just pisses off to the free jungle he has 10 steps away. Any offlane Syllabear can easily farm a 8 minute or so midas no matter how hard you try to stop it if he's diligant in farming his offlane camp.

And, as discussed, his roar is absolutely insane now, he can drop a t1 in like 8 seconds if you stop paying attention for half a second, which means you basically always need a hero in his lane, so he opens up space on the map simply by existing. And, he still absolutely trashcans most melee heroes, so if you pick a carry like, say, Luna, you need two heroes in his lane at all times or he wins. Now you have 3 heroes left to cover the other two lanes and the enemy has 4, which means they can dedicate a support to shutting down your mid, which is exactly what Alliance do.

tl;dr
Syllabear definitely overpowered right, most of the MMR grinders have agreed he is the go to hero for free MMR right now. Chen is definitely overpowered right now, Prophet's buff to treants was also insane, in my opinion, though I don't think he's overpowered. Enchantress dragon lance rush is pretty insane right now, it's a shame we don't see more of it. But, again, these heroes are seldom practiced by the vast majority of the professional scene, so it's no wonder. People keep trying to outplay the push meta with their old team fight comps but it's just not going to work, until the next patch nerfs the living hell out of this stuff, Alliance will win every series until a team mans up and copies their game.

All we can pray for is some nobody team to be the next Newbee, perfecting Alliance's tower defense strategy and beating them with it.

[Sarevokcz]

meh, by the time shanghai hits, LD, chen and krob will be the lycan and darkseer of ti2 with close to 100% ban rate

[Crackleslap]

Why the fuck isn't Peru region locked? I have literally never, ever met a nice person that says they're from that place. Even the ones that speak English and aren't terrible at the game are all a bunch of assholes.

Like, I don't care if they're on our servers. Peru server isn't even in goddamn Peru so they get lower latency to US servers thousands of miles away. But, christ, we already have enough toxic jackasses domestically, we don't need to be fucking importing them from South America too. Four games in a row lost because of those pricks. Very frustrating when three players on your team are doing well but can't compensate for two human sandbags dragging everything down.

Doesn't matter where you go. In Australian servers you get all these SEA players constantly spamming chat "Fuck u pinoy", "fuck u malay" "fuck u indon" etc. It's cancer.

[StrawberryZebra]

If your goal is to win first and foremost, why wouldn't you use the best heroes in the game?

I just wish people would realise that the "best" heroes aren't nessacerally the ones the pros are playing, but the ones ones they can play best. I've seen a few too many Invokers mess things up in spectacular style to agree that just picking the best heroes is always the way to go. I'd much rather people pick something they're comfortable playing than something thats currently FOTM.
Doubly true if you're good at a Hero like Lich, Jakiro or PA who never really seem to be bad choices in just about any meta imaginable, especially at pub level.

Doesn't matter where you go. In Australian servers you get all these SEA players constantly spamming chat "Fuck u pinoy", "fuck u malay" "fuck u indon" etc. It's cancer.

And on EU servers we get the Russian Cyka Blyat crowd. Simple fact of the matter is that no matter where you play you're always going to have to deal with "those foreign guys who don't speak the same language as everyone else". The chat wheel and pings help, but they don't fix bad attitudes in general, no matter whose it is.

[Deleted]

I'm sure the constant thinly-veiled racism isn't helping the whole issue with perpetual acrimony in the DotA community

Complain about retards all you want, by all means - retards are omnipresent in DotA and unbelievably frustrating to have on your team - but complaining about Peruvians or Russians (most of whom aren't even Russians, but belong to one of the very many nationalities that speak the language or a close simile) or Pinoys is no better than the redneck yokel complaining about "Merxicerns terking mer jerbs". It's just puerile.

Edit: Not saying that it's a particular issue in this thread other than a few certain repeat offenders on the matter so much as it's a greater issue in the DotA community. If all you do is separate people into us (Western Europeans and North Americans) and them ("Russians", Peruvians, Pinoy, etc) all you're going to do is incite tribal behaviour. Every time you say "fucking Russians ruining my games" some Russian says "stupid gamburger ruining my games", and it never ends until you start chastising the idiots without trying to make them somehow exemplify their race/nationality.

[Drunkenvalley]

My only complaint as far as language goes is when some random teammate begins bickering in some random fucking language that nobody else in the match knows. What the fuck's he trying to accomplish, the lil' shit.

[PizzaSHARK]

My only complaint as far as language goes is when some random teammate begins bickering in some random fucking language that nobody else in the match knows. What the fuck's he trying to accomplish, the lil' shit.

If they're Peruvian, it's probably some teenage brat in an internet cafe. It's why they're generally just assholes - teenagers in general are narcissistic little pricks, and you add the "I don't give a fuck" attitude to the mix and that's what you get.

It's not at all a Peruvian thing, but we already have enough of those types domestically here in the US, Canada, etc. We really don't need to be bringing more in.

[Hotmail]

I'm sure the constant thinly-veiled racism isn't helping the whole issue with perpetual acrimony in the DotA community

Complain about retards all you want, by all means - retards are omnipresent in DotA and unbelievably frustrating to have on your team - but complaining about Peruvians or Russians (most of whom aren't even Russians, but belong to one of the very many nationalities that speak the language or a close simile) or Pinoys is no better than the redneck yokel complaining about "Merxicerns terking mer jerbs". It's just puerile.

Edit: Not saying that it's a particular issue in this thread other than a few certain repeat offenders on the matter so much as it's a greater issue in the DotA community. If all you do is separate people into us (Western Europeans and North Americans) and them ("Russians", Peruvians, Pinoy, etc) all you're going to do is incite tribal behaviour. Every time you say "fucking Russians ruining my games" some Russian says "stupid gamburger ruining my games", and it never ends until you start chastising the idiots without trying to make them somehow exemplify their race/nationality.

Indeed. The best way to be part of the solution is to think in terms of "well, a rude/irresponsible player is a rude/irresponsible player regardless of their nationality, political affiliation, race, etc.". It might seem a bit counter-intuitive at first but eventually it turns into an important cognitive skill to have.

Also, I would say that it is somewhat conceited to think that a language barrier problem is not a two-sided issue.

If your goal is to win first and foremost, why wouldn't you use the best heroes in the game? DotA will never be perfectly balanced, no game will, and the pros are going to be the best source of information more often than not. I don't really blame them, they're just trying to play their best, even if it makes the game boring for everybody. I blame Valve for not releasing balance patches often enough. They should be nerfing push strats already before they ruin the Shanghai major, and more consistent balance patches would throw public players out of the loop often enough - by the time they had a chance to copy the strategies the pros were using they'd be nerfed.

Salient metagames *make* big tournaments. It's either Sylla/Chen push or Anti-Mage VS Phantom Lancer ricing while Lina and Lesh duke it out middle, pick your poison. And since nerfing a meta has to result in a new one, sometimes Valve will probably want to wait until more than just the top 10% of the playerbase is taking advantage of the meta.

[Drunkenvalley]

If they're Peruvian, it's probably some teenage brat in an internet cafe. It's why they're generally just assholes - teenagers in general are narcissistic little pricks, and you add the "I don't give a fuck" attitude to the mix and that's what you get.

It's not at all a Peruvian thing, but we already have enough of those types domestically here in the US, Canada, etc. We really don't need to be bringing more in.

A reminder that Norway is far away from America, so Peruvian shits isn't exactly our problem.

On the contrary, there are a lot of languages in Europe, and we have Russians.

[Lysah]

Salient metagames *make* big tournaments. It's either Sylla/Chen push or Anti-Mage VS Phantom Lancer ricing while Lina and Lesh duke it out middle, pick your poison. And since nerfing a meta has to result in a new one, sometimes Valve will probably want to wait until more than just the top 10% of the playerbase is taking advantage of the meta.

I prefer a metagame that emphasizes team fights and pickoffs, personally, not one that emphasizes sending zero risk summoned units to break buildings. After these heroes ruin the major I am sure people will start to agree with me, those that do not already. We were all bored of the same old picks and bans of ti5, but the actual GAMEPLAY was very good, and the tournament was full of epic games and the hype was enormous. The only boring part of ti5 was the draft phase, because you could pretty much 100% predict every ban and pick on both sides before it happened, but the games were still fun to watch. In the current meta, all you watch is treants and jungle creeps and bears and ghosts destroying towers for 15 minutes and then GG is called.

[Mellomania]

I prefer a metagame that emphasizes team fights and pickoffs, personally, not one that emphasizes sending zero risk summoned units to break buildings. After these heroes ruin the major I am sure people will start to agree with me, those that do not already. We were all bored of the same old picks and bans of ti5, but the actual GAMEPLAY was very good, and the tournament was full of epic games and the hype was enormous. The only boring part of ti5 was the draft phase, because you could pretty much 100% predict every ban and pick on both sides before it happened, but the games were still fun to watch. In the current meta, all you watch is treants and jungle creeps and bears and ghosts destroying towers for 15 minutes and then GG is called.

Doesn't what heroes are good decide what meta game it is though? The ones good now are pushers, while then at TI5 it was fighters?

[StrawberryZebra]

Complain about retards all you want, by all means - retards are omnipresent in DotA and unbelievably frustrating to have on your team - but complaining about Peruvians or Russians (most of whom aren't even Russians, but belong to one of the very many nationalities that speak the language or a close simile) or Pinoys is no better than the redneck yokel complaining about "Merxicerns terking mer jerbs". It's just puerile.

But by far the most frustrating retard to have on your team is the one who speaks a language no one else can understand. You can at least communicate with the ones who share a common language, and while not all of that communication may be positive, it at least gives you the opportunity to salvage the situation. When your communication options are limited to whatever is on your chat wheel, map pings and doodles its extremely difficult to try get something worthwhile out of it.

On the other side of it, its also incrediably frustrating being that guy stuck in a match where everyone but you is speaking Russian or Itallian or English or whatever. It can be hard work getting them to understand that you're pinging them to let them know Pudge is on his way top to gank them. And of course you have no idea what they're saying to you, or about you. Naturally the only reason they lost was because they had "that retard who didn't speak <Insert Language Here> like everyone else" on their team. Only this time the shoe is on the other foot and retard they're blaming is you. Its not a fun experience for anyone involved.

Whenever its happened to me, I've just muted everyone else on the team and got one with things as best I can. I don't blame anyone else who does the same, feeling alienated in a game is extremely unpleasant. Lashing out and trying to ruin the game is completely out of line, but I can see how it might hold a certain appeal to some people in these situations.

Rather than region locking and every country having its own server and so on, a much better solution would be to simply have better in game tools to communicate important information. A warning ping that was triangular, red and with an exclamation mark in the center for example would cross most cultural and language barriers well. One or more of those things mean danger in most parts of the world. It won't tell people what they're in danger from, but it does tell them to take appropriate action at least. Its not going to magically make things better, but being able to pass on understandable info with minimal context required is a good first step.

[Hotmail]

In the current meta, all you watch is treants and jungle creeps and bears and ghosts destroying towers for 15 minutes and then GG is called.

I think that summoned unit micro can be interesting to watch but I would agree that the stakes are significantly lower when the players (heroes) themselves aren't at much risk. That goes double when those summoned units/illusions are virtually unkillable.

Rather than region locking and every country having its own server and so on, a much better solution would be to simply have better in game tools to communicate important information. A warning ping that was triangular, red and with an exclamation mark in the center for example would cross most cultural and language barriers well. One or more of those things mean danger in most parts of the world. It won't tell people what they're in danger from, but it does tell them to take appropriate action at least. Its not going to magically make things better, but being able to pass on understandable info with minimal context required is a good first step.

The chat wheel is all of that, and more. It's not laser-precise and requires some setting-up but it gets the essential through; I've seen muted players do it quite successfully, so there is no reason it can't be done because of the language barrier.

[Lysah]

Doesn't what heroes are good decide what meta game it is though? The ones good now are pushers, while then at TI5 it was fighters?

Yeah, the blink dagger game is still strong, but because of the overbuffing of all things push those heroes don't have time to farm their items anymore. Offlane Slardar used to be able to sit around for 5 minutes getting no farm and then still eek out a force staff or blink around 15-20 from team fighting and split pushing where he can. Now if you pick Slardar you will just be watching your rax die at 9 minutes from the comfort of your fountain. It's one thing when you can just straight up ban whatever hero currently breaks the game, but right now pretty much every hero that interacts with summoned units in some way does this, you can't ban them all.

I think that summoned unit micro can be interesting to watch but I would agree that the stakes are significantly lower when the players (heroes) themselves aren't at much risk. That goes double when those summoned units/illusions are virtually unkillable.

Agreed, illusion heroes aren't much better. At least Naga has an interesting ult, PL and TB are generally a snorefest to watch.

[PizzaSHARK]

Also, I would say that it is somewhat conceited to think that a language barrier problem is not a two-sided issue.

Then why are they ticking English in the little "select languages you speak" option box if they don't speak English? I have NEVER heard a Mexican Spanish accent in Dota 2, nor have I seen slang that's common with Mexican Spanish. This means that either Mexican players don't exist (highly unlikely), or that they generally select Spanish and don't select English unless they understand it.

Peruvian teenagers tick everything they can, and particularly English, because they're queuing US servers (because of the fucked up nature of the Peru server not actually being in Peru) and don't want longer queue times. And they don't give a shit about potentially making the experience worse for other players, because they're teenagers and teenagers tend to be like that.

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A reminder that Norway is far away from America, so Peruvian shits isn't exactly our problem.

On the contrary, there are a lot of languages in Europe, and we have Russians.

Sure, but most EU countries also teach English, giving you all a common language to work with. I'm sure the French, German, Italian, etc players who either can't speak English well, or don't feel like worrying about it, don't select English when they queue.

Funnily enough, even when I queue EU West, the occasional Russian players are generally much friendlier or at least more amusing than Peruvians. Maybe it's because it's a small sample size. I do know that the Russians have everyone beat when it comes to interesting and hilarious ways of telling someone to get bent.

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Doesn't what heroes are good decide what meta game it is though? The ones good now are pushers, while then at TI5 it was fighters?

Sort of, but it's usually the map changes, economy changes, etc that actually define the meta, once they're understood. Alliance happens to benefit from a variety of changes that make early pushing stronger than before - jungle creeps hit towers harder, addition of hard camp to offlane gives heroes like Syllabear (and Bambi, and Doombringer, and some others... basically anyone able to safely and effectively stack/farm it) ez XP and gold no matter how hard they're shutting you out of lane. Syllabear also got some huge buffs (free Synergy means Rabid is 2nd skill, means bear has bonus IAS earlier than he normally would have; Battle Cry also received a fucking huge buff, +90 dmg and +10 armor at lvl 1.) Chen got buffs that were less crazy but he didn't really need any changes, just a shift in meta to bring him back into the spotlight.

6.83 is often remembered as the HOHOHAHA patch because Shrapnel was retooled into a charge-based skill without removing Sniper from CM and that was pretty insane... but the real reason Sniper and other heroes like him became so popular was because of the comeback gold mechanics. Sniper has ALWAYS been a top-tier hero for defending high ground as well as safely sieging high ground. This just meant that you wait for the enemy to push into your Sniper, they get wrecked because HOHOHAHA on top of Sniper already having been excellent for hg defense, you get like 10k gold from wiping them, and then you push and win.

Hero changes have an effect on the meta, but the major deciding factors are pretty much always independent of the heroes themselves and instead based on changes to map and economy.

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The chat wheel is all of that, and more. It's not laser-precise and requires some setting-up but it gets the essential through; I've seen muted players do it quite successfully, so there is no reason it can't be done because of the language barrier.

The chat wheel is garbage. Players abuse it and use it incorrectly to the point that if you used >Well played! people actually think you're mocking them or insulting them, not actually congratulating them on a good play. It's also extremely limited, because you only have one wheel with a small number of choices (8?) out of a large list. You can bind things to individual keys, but now you need like 20 or 30 keybinds just to communicate with teammates that told the game they spoke a language they don't actually speak.

And yes, the ping system is very ineffective. League has an excellent ping system that Valve should really just copy.

But improving pubs and taking steps to ensure the gameplay experience is more fun and less toxic for everyone doesn't sell more hats/compendiums, so it's a back burner sort of thing for them. They're too busy finishing that last 1.3% of Pit Lord that they've been working on for the past two fucking years.

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Yeah, the blink dagger game is still strong, but because of the overbuffing of all things push those heroes don't have time to farm their items anymore. Offlane Slardar used to be able to sit around for 5 minutes getting no farm and then still eek out a force staff or blink around 15-20 from team fighting and split pushing where he can. Now if you pick Slardar you will just be watching your rax die at 9 minutes from the comfort of your fountain. It's one thing when you can just straight up ban whatever hero currently breaks the game, but right now pretty much every hero that interacts with summoned units in some way does this, you can't ban them all.


Agreed, illusion heroes aren't much better. At least Naga has an interesting ult, PL and TB are generally a snorefest to watch.

Naga ult is boring as hell because in practice it's just used for an unstoppable automatic escape button for her with effectively no cooldown. Pop song when tp's start coming in and tp out. If they BKB to stop your tp, just root them and saunter off and laugh at them for burning a BKB charge for nothing. Works early in the game, too. With a little gamesense it's pretty easy to see when they're about to begin diving you, so you can just pop song right as they go in and either walk away or tp out.

Illusions, like all scaling mechanics in DotA, are a tricky thing to balance. They're kind of weak and useless when the hero has little farm and become ridiculously overpowered when they do have farm. I do think illusions getting full benefit from Diffusal Blade/Mana Break is a little ridiculous and should be nerfed. The sheer jump in effective power PL/AM get from that single item (DB/Manta, respectively) is absurd. AM in particular probably needs some small nerfs to compensate for the absolutely insane buffs Mana Void has received across the past four or five patches. 70 sec cd ulti that ministuns through BKB, does up to 1.1 dmg/MP and hits all units in a 500 AOE? Why does he need that when he's arguably the best, most effective farming hero in the game?

[Lysah]

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2086636745
Speaking of Sniper being a great hero.


But yeah, Alliance's strategy is extremely obvious. They give bulldog a solo offlaner that can jungle and push lanes, so that he can fall back on the free hard camp gold in that lane now and pressure safe lane tower if you ever try to rotate. They take the free space that provides and dual lane mid to make sure s4 has a good game, then when they have their first item they push down all towers and use the ridiculous gold advantage that brings to end the game. To be honest, I'd love to see what they do if someone just wards the offlane camp so Bulldog can't farm.

@Naga ult
It's interesting because of its ability to start fights, or interrupt them at key moments to turn 5 deaths into multiple kills instead. There's a lot of room for skill with song, which is what makes it a good ability. Like Chrono or Swap, you can easily screw your own team over HARD if you misuse it. There's no way to "misuse" furion or LD, other than blindly feeding I guess.