[Megathread] DotA 2

[PizzaSHARK]

Wouldn't Alchemist be the best carry in the game then? His flash farming makes even a Profit going for the quota look like a noob, to say nothing about Doomy. I've seen high level games where they sit on Alch for 20 minutes and then are forced to leave him alone and within 5 minutes he's got two new core items on him... and they just buffed him again.

Granted he doesn't have Doom, but with his kind of gpm he can easily just farm up an Orchid for the silence in like 3 minutes. I mean, I've seen people saying that 900 gpm on Alchemist is low, and that's where most Profits (previously considered the best farmer by most people AFAIK) begin to reach the quota.

I actually do agree with you to an extent - a fed Slardar is just fucking digusting, and so is Spiritbreaker after his buffs. But Agility heroes don't need as many items before they start walking into teamfights and two-shotting people because of how much damage they get from Agility. It's really noticeable in PL; he's already hitting for 100+ damage at level 8 and he's also hitting fast because that raw damage is from Agility rather than other sources.

I will say that I think a fed Tiny is probably the scariest thing in the game. He cleaves like Sven does during ulti, except it's on all the time. The only hurdle to get through with Tiny is attack speed, and once he finishes scepter he'll farm so fast that he can easily get that attack speed in due time (let alone if he has wisp, BM, or someone else helping him along the way.) Honestly, I think scepter upgrade for Tiny needs a nerf... it's just so much stuff on a single item! Seems like it boosts him far more than any other upgrade does for other heroes.

[Lysah]

Alch is pretty solid, no doubt, but he doesn't have doom. Still, he packs a stun and -armor and still has the movespeed of SE, can be very scary himself. The main difference between them, I think, is that you REALLY can't stop doom from farming. If you pack an aggressive enough lane you can push alch back, even if he spams acid good denying can keep him from getting almost any gold. Doom will just run to any jungle camp you don't ward and eat a boss creep every 30 seconds which will still give him 300gpm if he literally got zero CS otherwise. I actually played a game a week or two ago where the enemy sent doom to solo safe lane. I forget what heroes my friend and I were, but I do remember the lane was 2v0 for the first 5 minutes or so. Then doom came back from AFKing behind his tower and had still farmed as much as we had and was still higher level despite denying. Running to the jungle real fast to eat a creep really is strong. The changes to devour really make him impossible to deny in a way even Alch dreams of I think.

Plus, in my experience, Alch needs more gold than Luci to become effective. Really all Doom needs is level 6 with armlet and lothar's or MoM. As pub as the build sounds, people really do die fast enough for both of the latter items to work. Armlet/MoM is so fast to farm with devour you can easily have it while heroes like dazzle still only have 600-700 health, you're critting for 400 and the enrage makes you hit fast and run at near max movespeed with SE on when everyone else is at 350. Alch could get the same items in the same time frame, except he will have spent points in GG and won't have a good stun, so you can just stunandrun, and without alpha wolf he still won't come close to Doom's damage. And probably the best part, even if the person you're chasing is someone like NS who can run fast enough to not get hit much, you still only need to hit him a few times because full duration doom+SE4 is going to do like 700 damage to someone...

Tiny is terrific, but mostly because he can just three shot a tower if the team fight looks bad. I've had games where I knew we wouldn't win an attack so I ditched my team when they pushed top and just backdoored bot. In the 15 seconds it takes them to wipe my team 4v5 and start coming after me they lost rax already, even with glyph up. Clinkz is probably the only hero who can match or beat Tiny in this regard, and it's mostly because he has a spammable 522 invis. Though with the buff to strafe his damage on buildings probably exceeds Tiny when he has full items...

I really love Tiny for that, and Clinkz for the same reason, and soon Centaur and the other new hard tanks to be added. Heroes that can force you to deal with them, that is. The current meta is so built around supports it's getting annoying. See how good your 400 APM invoker is when BKB tiny just runs up and gibs his base before the magic immunity wears off. Those 5-9 seconds can easily be your rax, maybe next time you'll pick a better lineup than 4 int/AM. Most of the current lineups you see in the professional scene would have been laughed at a few years ago, they are simply ludicrous, the only reason they work is because we are missing hard tanks. A hero like Rigwarl will straight up run circles around the lineups I saw in TI2, laughing all the way to his free rampage every time.

Though I will admit that I am a strength hero fangirl if you didn't notice. Still, Doom basically gets a buriza, radiance, and orchid that goes through all immunities for free just by being a champ. If that isn't absolutely ridiculous I don't know what is...maybe a PA who is having one of THOSE games.

[PizzaSHARK]

Though I will admit that I am a strength hero fangirl if you didn't notice. Still, Doom basically gets a buriza, radiance, and orchid that goes through all immunities for free just by being a champ. If that isn't absolutely ridiculous I don't know what is...maybe a PA who is having one of THOSE games.

Had a game where a level 16 PA got a crit on her next attack after blinking literally every time I was looking. She had a rampage on our entire team because of it, and even the guy playing her was like "wow, that's bullshit man, I'm sorry." Blink, crit, dead. Blink, crit, dead. Blink, crit, dead. Blink, crit, hit, dead. etc. I really fucking hate RNG that makes that huge of a difference and really think the game would be better if that sort of RNG was changed to something more consistent.

Concept I liked in regards to CK's stunbolt was like the duration increases based on the amount of time it's been since you last cast Chaos Bolt, beginning when the cooldown ends. Starts at 2 sec and say it increases by, I dunno, 0.5 sec per second. You have to wait an extra 4 seconds if you want the full 4 sec stun, or you can cast immediately for a shorter stun. It eliminates RNG from the equation and at the same time adds a mechanic that relies on player judgment and ability to read the opposition, which in my opinion is a positive influence on the game. You can have a 2 sec stunbolt with a 10 sec cooldown or a 4 sec stunbolt with an effectively 14 sec cooldown and it's up to you to decide if you can wait those extra 4 sec or not. It'd also mean that CK's first stun of a clash is always maximum duration, and if it was decided that was too much... well, there's your opportunity to tinker with it.

I don't have issues with other examples of crit because they aren't almost five fucking times normal damage, but when you're turning a hit for 200 into a crit for almost 1000, it's fucking stupid because you HAVE to be balanced around those ridiculous crits. This means if you get a dry spell, you're underpowered and if you're critting every swing, you're breaking the game.

I mean granted it's hilarious (in a bad way) to watch someone just run up and detonate supports with a single hit, but I generally like those "holy shit, that guy just completely fucking outplayed me," moments a lot more than "damn, I lost because that guy clicked his Q button." Like, when you see those perfectly timed and positioned Mirana arrows or Pudge hooks or shit like that - they aren't being fired blindly or "well I'll keep mashing the button and one will eventually hit," but the actual ones that are fired from halfway across the map and land because the player's gamesense and timing was just that fucking good. I fucking love shit like that, even when it means I'm getting my shit pushed in.

[Sackman]

It never showed up on either. I guess it's because steam decided to crash during the game...
The two games I've played since show up, but not that one. There's a random 4 hour gap in my game streak.

If someone left or if you were LP might not have shown.

---------- Post added 2012-10-27 at 12:48 PM ----------

Alch is pretty solid, no doubt, but he doesn't have doom. Still, he packs a stun and -armor and still has the movespeed of SE, can be very scary himself. The main difference between them, I think, is that you REALLY can't stop doom from farming. If you pack an aggressive enough lane you can push alch back, even if he spams acid good denying can keep him from getting almost any gold. Doom will just run to any jungle camp you don't ward and eat a boss creep every 30 seconds which will still give him 300gpm if he literally got zero CS otherwise. I actually played a game a week or two ago where the enemy sent doom to solo safe lane. I forget what heroes my friend and I were, but I do remember the lane was 2v0 for the first 5 minutes or so. Then doom came back from AFKing behind his tower and had still farmed as much as we had and was still higher level despite denying. Running to the jungle real fast to eat a creep really is strong. The changes to devour really make him impossible to deny in a way even Alch dreams of I think.

Plus, in my experience, Alch needs more gold than Luci to become effective. Really all Doom needs is level 6 with armlet and lothar's or MoM. As pub as the build sounds, people really do die fast enough for both of the latter items to work. Armlet/MoM is so fast to farm with devour you can easily have it while heroes like dazzle still only have 600-700 health, you're critting for 400 and the enrage makes you hit fast and run at near max movespeed with SE on when everyone else is at 350. Alch could get the same items in the same time frame, except he will have spent points in GG and won't have a good stun, so you can just stunandrun, and without alpha wolf he still won't come close to Doom's damage. And probably the best part, even if the person you're chasing is someone like NS who can run fast enough to not get hit much, you still only need to hit him a few times because full duration doom+SE4 is going to do like 700 damage to someone...

Tiny is terrific, but mostly because he can just three shot a tower if the team fight looks bad. I've had games where I knew we wouldn't win an attack so I ditched my team when they pushed top and just backdoored bot. In the 15 seconds it takes them to wipe my team 4v5 and start coming after me they lost rax already, even with glyph up. Clinkz is probably the only hero who can match or beat Tiny in this regard, and it's mostly because he has a spammable 522 invis. Though with the buff to strafe his damage on buildings probably exceeds Tiny when he has full items...

I really love Tiny for that, and Clinkz for the same reason, and soon Centaur and the other new hard tanks to be added. Heroes that can force you to deal with them, that is. The current meta is so built around supports it's getting annoying. See how good your 400 APM invoker is when BKB tiny just runs up and gibs his base before the magic immunity wears off. Those 5-9 seconds can easily be your rax, maybe next time you'll pick a better lineup than 4 int/AM. Most of the current lineups you see in the professional scene would have been laughed at a few years ago, they are simply ludicrous, the only reason they work is because we are missing hard tanks. A hero like Rigwarl will straight up run circles around the lineups I saw in TI2, laughing all the way to his free rampage every time.

Though I will admit that I am a strength hero fangirl if you didn't notice. Still, Doom basically gets a buriza, radiance, and orchid that goes through all immunities for free just by being a champ. If that isn't absolutely ridiculous I don't know what is...maybe a PA who is having one of THOSE games.

Lysah is right, Doom is menacing in the right hands, really menacing. So many people are bad at doom that when I first played I thought he was really bad lol but seen a few people who know how to play him and now I don't underestimate him

[PizzaSHARK]

Icefrog's been eating out of Blizzard's paint chip bucket. There's zero reason Centaur and Drow should've gone live the way they are right now. I mean, yeah, they aren't in CM so they can't ruin tournaments, but they still make non-CM games completely un-fun, which means there's no point in playing. The only upside is that Icefrog's really good at actually fixing problems when they show up, not waiting three months to push out a "fix" that just makes things worse.

Centaur ulti is like a free haste rune for your entire team with global range, low cooldown, and it also stuns. Drow's new ulti means she basically gets 40 damage, 40 IAS, and ~6 armor the second she hits level 6, which is pretty easily attainable by 6-7 minutes or so. True, she loses half of that if someone's within 325 range of her... but 325 range is basically the size of Omniknight's Degen Aura, and we know how close that requires you to be. Her aura's also now global, so that means she's inherently pushing all lanes just by being alive... it makes a huge difference with siege creeps in particular (there's a screenshot of a siege creep with ~200 damage per attack that allegedly killed towers in less than 4 sec when it was given IAS buffs.)

It doesn't really bother me that something new is overpowered, but that it's overpowered by such a huge margin. I mean, I know Icefrog has to have a group of people that he does internal testing with... right? And they never stopped and thought "whoa, don't you think 120 damage at 06:30 is a little much?"

[Finear]

but they still make non-CM games completely un-fun, which means there's no point in playing.

pick centaur/drow
win game
win=fun

[Sackman]

Icefrog's been eating out of Blizzard's paint chip bucket. There's zero reason Centaur and Drow should've gone live the way they are right now. I mean, yeah, they aren't in CM so they can't ruin tournaments, but they still make non-CM games completely un-fun, which means there's no point in playing. The only upside is that Icefrog's really good at actually fixing problems when they show up, not waiting three months to push out a "fix" that just makes things worse.

Centaur ulti is like a free haste rune for your entire team with global range, low cooldown, and it also stuns. Drow's new ulti means she basically gets 40 damage, 40 IAS, and ~6 armor the second she hits level 6, which is pretty easily attainable by 6-7 minutes or so. True, she loses half of that if someone's within 325 range of her... but 325 range is basically the size of Omniknight's Degen Aura, and we know how close that requires you to be. Her aura's also now global, so that means she's inherently pushing all lanes just by being alive... it makes a huge difference with siege creeps in particular (there's a screenshot of a siege creep with ~200 damage per attack that allegedly killed towers in less than 4 sec when it was given IAS buffs.)

It doesn't really bother me that something new is overpowered, but that it's overpowered by such a huge margin. I mean, I know Icefrog has to have a group of people that he does internal testing with... right? And they never stopped and thought "whoa, don't you think 120 damage at 06:30 is a little much?"

I believe it's been 2 weeks since the last update? I imagine this week where it's not in captains mode is where they tweek for balance.

I could be wrong ofc. with that being said, centaur is pretty strong, played against a centaur/drow team earlier and it was really close, they eventually won though because our bounty was, ahem, an aggressive, abusive russian at 2-15.

That and I randomed CM which isn't the best support to be vs axe/pudge/invoker/drow/centaur <.<

[Kuntantee]

-I AM DROW I HAVE 120 DAMAGE AT MIN 6:30

*Lion approaches
*Stuns
*two right clicks
*ulti
*????
*profit

see?

ps: change lion with almost any intelligence hero.
ps2: drow is a free kill.

[PizzaSHARK]

-I AM DROW I HAVE 120 DAMAGE AT MIN 6:30

*Lion approaches
*Stuns
*two right clicks
*ulti
*hope veins

see?

ps: change lion with almost any intelligence hero.

What're you talking about? Her silence has enough range that she can tag most intel heroes at the same range they cast from, and once she finishes her lothars you won't see her until the first couple of shots are in the air.

[Hermanni]

Icefrog's been eating out of Blizzard's paint chip bucket.

This is literally the 4th time this week alone I see you suggesting Icefrog has been on drugs or other substances while doing his patches. How about you show some respect to a guy who I can guarantee understands the game and how it should be balanced better than you instead of being a wannabe knowledgeable piece of shit every chance you think you have something interesting to say.

80% of your posts are hardcore facepalm material to anyone who understands shit about dota (either by being downright retarded or captain obvious material) yet you keep spreading your stupidity no matter how many times you're proven wrong or worse. Just fuck off until you're 3000 games played in very high mmr instead of repeating your own shitty opinions hoping some other spastic starts parroting your shit. If you want to circlejerk about how the latest map is the worst shit ever just go to playdota forums, you'll fit right in.

[Kuntantee]

What're you talking about? Her silence has enough range that she can tag most intel heroes at the same range they cast from, and once she finishes her lothars you won't see her until the first couple of shots are in the air.

So what? That does not guarantee a silence because of vision and nature of gank and latency and tons of factor that I can't even count. Shadowblade may seem like a good choice in a pug where %99 of players are bunch of retards but if enemy knows what they are doing they stick that shadowblade into drow's ass. If you really think drow is OP, learn to fucking play.

[Lysah]

RNG rant

I agree completely, Void used to be my most hated hero. An immunity blink combined with the fact that he's just plain going to backtrack laguna blade and you know it combined with several times I've seen him use level 1 bash to stun someone for eight seconds straight at level 2 and kill them. He lost this title to Storm unfortunately, but only because SS is so absurdly easy to be good with - 3500 range blink 3 second stun instantly lololol - oh what's that? 4 man gank on me? No problem blink 4000 yards away. They really should allow you to damage storm during BL, if he can just get that .5 second cast off even 1 health is way more than enough to live.

Speaking of calculated blind hooks, I've got one of those!


Definitely more happy about those moments than anything I've done with RNG heroes.

I haven't seen Drow since her aura changed, but it looks like she gets 80 agility from her ultimate now if you can't get next to her? Certainly sounds extreme. I really think Centaur is going to get nerfs, probably to his stun and double edge. They baked his ultimate directly into passive strength gain and gave him a new ultimate - basically they gave him a second ultimate to what he already had. If that isn't an excessive buff I don't know what is, Cent was already one of the scariest laners paired with any stunner to set up his combo, now at level 6 he's got free kills on just about anybody. With 1200 health naked he can easily tower dive for it, too.

[cudomix]

Don't forget that while he has absurd str growth, he used to get large "bumps" in hp and damage with levels of his ulti, he no longer has large lvl 6 advantage over anyone else, hp gain is lot smoother now. I predict that his str growth will be nerfed to 3.2-3.4 as soon as Frog wakes up and realizes what has he done^^

And getting blind hook is closest you can get to an orgasm in dota, i'm cheerful for entire week after

[Lysah]

And getting blind hook is closest you can get to an orgasm in dota, i'm cheerful for entire week after

No doubt =p

Personally I expect them to reduce his stun to 2ish seconds and reduce double edge to 350 damage at rank 4 to push him away from being a carrying nuker to a tanky support. I called stampede being stupid before I even saw it in game...he really didn't need another stun/nuke, especially not when he gives it to his entire team. Before he needed blink dagger to be very good, now he can skip it entirely and spend that 2k on hood or vanguard and be even more immortal mid game. Who's going to stop the 2400 health level 11 centaur who can do 900 damage to you before you can move. Best part is, people don't even have to move to proc the stun, so if your ally gets caught in black hole just right, you can cancel it by being on the other side of the map and pressing R.

[PizzaSHARK]

So what? That does not guarantee a silence because of vision and nature of gank and latency and tons of factor that I can't even count. Shadowblade may seem like a good choice in a pug where %99 of players are bunch of retards but if enemy knows what they are doing they stick that shadowblade into drow's ass. If you really think drow is OP, learn to fucking play.

Quick question: You're aware Drow received two enormous buffs in 6.76, right? And you're still gonna go e-thug on us?

Her ultimate was significantly improved. It's now +40/+60/+80 AGI as long as no enemy heroes are within 375 range, which is a little more than half her attack range and a little bit larger than Omniknight's Degen Aura (for easy comparison.) Remember that as an AGI hero, that means that's +40 damage, attack speed, and about 6 armor (36% effective HP) as soon as she hits level 6; this means once Drow hits level 6, very few heroes can successfully continue to lane against her. Her high attack damage combined with orb allows her to orbwalk very effectively and the large damage boost gives her a very large advantage in creepscore potential.

The second major change and arguably the more important over the course of the entire game, is that her aura is now global rather than 900 range. This means all ranged creeps and siege creeps are doing up to 26% more damage the entire game. There were some people testing earlier and they were able to get a siege creep up to about 200 base damage; they stacked it up with VS aura and a bunch of IAS skills like Bloodlust for shits and giggles and it was able to take down towers in about four seconds... by itself. Obviously that's not practical in a normal game, but it still means that Drow's team will push significantly harder than the other team because ranged creeps and siege creeps are the high-DPS creeps... and this happens without Drow doing anything besides being alive.

It means that Drow can farm one lane, and her aura means her team's other lanes are pushing automatically. The aura being global also gives her team a damage advantage over the other team, especially since aura is typically maxed first, before silence.

Seriously, man. If you haven't played with and against the new Drow yet, you probably shouldn't say anything. If you've played with and against her new iteration... well, I guess that's just your opinion.

But I don't think taking Drow out of CM was just some random decision. I think Icefrog knew the changes he was putting in were potentially gamebreaking; I'm just surprised him and his team of testers (I'm assuming he has a bunch of people he does internal testing with) thought that the current iteration was close enough to balanced to put out onto live servers.

Oh and in regards to lothars: it's better than you're giving it credit for. The 150 damage backstab is pretty significant considering how early she can get it, and it doesn't reveal her until after her attack's in the air, meaning by time she's visible and you can react you're probably going to have taken two shots already. When those shots are probably amounting to 500-600 damage when your average support has maybe 800 health, that's a lot of burst, and it means their team now has to make sure they're carrying dust and/or buying sentry wards.

---------- Post added 2012-10-27 at 06:36 PM ----------

No doubt =p

Personally I expect them to reduce his stun to 2ish seconds and reduce double edge to 350 damage at rank 4 to push him away from being a carrying nuker to a tanky support. I called stampede being stupid before I even saw it in game...he really didn't need another stun/nuke, especially not when he gives it to his entire team. Before he needed blink dagger to be very good, now he can skip it entirely and spend that 2k on hood or vanguard and be even more immortal mid game. Who's going to stop the 2400 health level 11 centaur who can do 900 damage to you before you can move. Best part is, people don't even have to move to proc the stun, so if your ally gets caught in black hole just right, you can cancel it by being on the other side of the map and pressing R.

Yeah, I was mentioning that earlier when talking about Cent's new ulti. Guy was saying that his new STR gain doesn't quite measure up to what his old ulti gave him (saying that meant he didn't basically have two ults now); I pointed out that since his new ulti hugely reduces his reliance on blink dagger, it meant he could just buy a fast reaver with that gold he isn't spending (or platemail, or hood, etc.)

I love the concept of his ulti, but I think it either needs to be local area, or only Centy himself should proc a stun. It'd still be an amazingly versatile and powerful ulti if it was just a glorified global Drums active with such a short cooldown.

[Lysah]

Dust doesn't counter shadow blade and never will. Sentries only counter it if you already have them placed and your team huddles up in the middle of a lane so Drow can't fire over trees/etc. Since you can't put sentries EVERYWHERE your choices are either to start team pushing when Drow finishes lothar's or to give her free kills as she runs around gibbing people.

People only underestimate Lothar's because they only see low skill pubs who just try to use it to escape, not someone who is aggressive with it. Giving a spammable vendetta to any hero should sound ridiculous, but people judge everything on past experiences, same reason people still hate rogues in WoW.

[Finear]

Stampede cooldown increased from 65 to 120/90/60
* Stampede duration rescaled from 3/4/5 to 3.75
* Stampede damage slightly reworked from 100/150/200 + 2x str to 0 + 1/2/3x str (no base damage)
* Stampede mancost increased from 50 to 80
* Stampede AoE reduced from 120 to 105
* Drow's base armor decreased by 2
* Marksmanship focus AoE increased from 375 to 400
* Last Word manacost from 100 to 115
* Living Armor cooldown and duration decreased from from 20 to 15
* Living Armor manacost decreased 30/35/40/45 to 25

already nerfed

[Lysah]

Tree buffs are nice at least.

[Thallidomaniac]

(Bear in mind that I'm still new to the game, only have 3 matchmaking games in so far)

Is it normal to feel like that you aren't doing much in the game? While Viper, Lion, and Drow got fed, I didn't seem to much except to put wards for my team.

[Deleted]

Is it normal to feel like that you aren't doing much in the game? While Viper, Lion, and Drow got fed, I didn't seem to much except to put wards for my team.

Most people can at least contribute something. In an absolutely major stomp like this, the power is obviously distributed onto the fed people. Axe being a hero that can't really get into range before your fed carry instagibs something either doesn't help.