[Megathread] DotA 2

[Deleted]

Do we really need to discuss the fact that some "pros" legitimately only know 2 or 3 heroes and their team loses every single game in which those heroes get banned? I figured this was pretty common knowledge by now, I don't even follow this scene and I've seen this said about two dozen players.

And of course I know how to play a hero better than a pro does it because it works for me in pubs. Pubs are all that matter. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this. You keep trying to discuss pro strategy because you forget two fundamental rules of this thread. 1) None of us are pro players, 2) None of us play in pro games. Therefore, what the pros do and what works for them is 100% irrelevant to our lives. I've had to argue this for a decade, sadly, because people are always stuck on what the professional gamers are doing because, surely, if they say something is the best it must be true for everyone! But, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that at 1500 MMR if you get 0 CS and try to support the feeder Antimage in your lane and buy wards and sentries for the wards the enemy isn't placing and pick a godawful hero like CM you will win far less often than if you just picked SA, stole all the last hits, and steamrolled the awfuls.

If I told a 1k MMR player to just pick SA or Ursa and right click to win you would come in here and argue that it's a terrible idea and you would go quote our Lord and Savior Arteezy when he said AM/Ursa lane was a stupid idea last week because it didn't work against Alliance. You ask if the reason I think it works is because it works for me in pubs, and to that I say:
YES OF COURSE
That's the entire point. If you missed it in my previous posts I'll repeat: I don't really care what the pros do. Why even talk about it? We can't change it and it doesn't affect us in any way. Talking about how WE play the game might actually improve someone's game, right here, right now, that's a lot more interesting to me. What works for them won't work for us, and vice versa. They're different games and you have to adapt to the game you are currently playing. Most people can't, won't, and get stuck in a trench as a result. They're 3500 rating and trying to copy 7500 rating players and it won't work.

Do you really think that because they can't play more than 2-3 heroes against players that are equal level to them that they can't do as well as you in pubs? Everything points against that fact.

I never said BF is good in pubs or argued the fact that BF can't be good in pubs. You say that what pros do is irrelevant for your pub games. Sure, that might be true. But if that is the case then what you do is irrelevant for pros. But still you and PizzaSHARK love to bring up pros and how they're doing it wrong in their games.

I also don't see how you play a hero better because it works in pubs for you. Do you really think pros don't win pubs with more than 2-3 heroes? I didn't ask you if you think a hero works because it works in pubs. I asked you if you thought you think you can play a hero better than a pro because it works in your pub games. You are implying that pros can't make those heroes work in pubs? How is "it worked for me in pubs so therefore I know more about the hero than a pro because he couldn't' make it work in competitive games where there are actual good players" an argument?

If you want to win more pubs of course you copy better players. I can't believe you are arguing against that. If you just copy their item builds but not how they play of course you won't win more. But you won't win more with any other item either if you don't play to its strengths.

[Deleted]

I've noticed alot of people saying Ogre is OP recently, did you guys never notice that he has been the best support in the game for over a year now ?


So for everyone that wants to win every game as Ogre do this : Go aggro lane top or mid - rush force staff - get aghs - win game. Easy 5k rating.

[Crackleslap]

I've noticed alot of people saying Ogre is OP recently, did you guys never notice that he has been the best support in the game for over a year now ?


So for everyone that wants to win every game as Ogre do this : Go aggro lane top or mid - rush force staff - get aghs - win game. Easy 5k rating.

it's the 3.0 regen i think? and the 60% chance at level 6 that got him picked constantly from the last patch.

[Deleted]

it's the 3.0 regen i think? and the 60% chance at level 6 that got him picked constantly from the last patch.

Even still the hero was crazy good but ignored for ages, i realise the regen means he doesn't have to run back as much but he was still better than most supports that were being picked.

[Deleted]

There are only two justifiable reasons to get a Bfury on PA: either you can guarantee multi-hero cleaves (like you have Black Hole or Reverse Polarity or something... maybe Vacuum?), or because it amplifies your farm.

Thing is, the former is pretty niche, and Bfury would have an appropriately niche build rate if that was why they got it. The other reason... PA isn't fucking Anti-Mage. She's OP as fuck because she can basically automatically win the game by 30 minutes at the latest if she's played intelligently and built properly, but she WILL lose to a lot of other carries in the late game if she actually lets them catch up with her.

You don't need a Bfury to farm up your BKB, you can farm it plenty fast by building not-shit items and taking early fights and towers and using that momentum to get your BKB. Lysah already said it above: people building Bfury on PA displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play that hero. It would be like a straight Bloodstone rush on Storm Spirit; sure, it handles your mana problems, but you're completely skipping the ridiculous kill potential spending that gold on Orchid Malevolence instead would give you.

That's why EG won TI4, a tournament that was largely based around very early aggression and pushing the second important heroes got their ultimates, right?

Which is why Arteezy and EE apparently don't know a fucking thing about how to play her. She's a fucking garbage tier mid, but she's sent there anyway because enemy teams never fucking punish it. Until they did, and instead of realizing that PA is best given safelane farm, they just stop playing her altogether, deciding she's a "bad" hero.

Cool, you're immune to PA (except daggers, which can crit for significant damage) for 4 seconds, but now you're taking 40% more damage from the rest of PA's team. Ogre Magi would fucking love for you to pop that Ghost Scepter. And rushing Ghost Scepter means those heroes aren't getting early blinkers, Mekansm, Force Staff, Eul's, etc. And it's not like you can escape PA during this; she can still reduce you to a crawl by flipping a dagger at you, and Ghost Scepter is dispelled if you try to TP out.

So they're just idiots, then? I'm sure there are some games where PA was picked with a Magnus or Enigma on the team, but I know I've seen bits and pieces of several where it was just a random assortment of heroes with the PA, meaning they're wasting gold on an extremely inefficient item, especially since they're already wasting 700 gold on a bottle (which means you aren't even really benefiting from bfury's regen bonuses either.)

This is the last reply I'll ever give to you because you're just fucking stupid.

Of course those are the only two justifable reasons for why you'd get BF. But why do you want either of those and how would you use it? You're giving me the shallow reason. The same way someone would say "He gets Orchid because he wants to Silence someone". Congrats, you figured that out but why do you want those stats and in what way is the silence good?

How is early aggression which is based on just hitting towers and 5 manning the same style of Dota as early aggression that relies on skirmishes or ganks?. Are you stupid? That's why Na'Vi won TI4? Have you watched what EG has played in the last couple of months? They have adopted the way TI4 was played and they are winning but with some minor tweaks.

Yes, they're don't know how to play her yet they win with the heroes and others don't. They'd struggle even more to win in your 2k MMR games. Just shut the fuck up.

[M1r4g3]

who are these pro players that can only play 2-3 heroes? ;o
also why are people arguing over pub builds when literally everything works? especially glass canon builds

[Deleted]

who are these pro players that can only play 2-3 heroes? ;o
also why are people arguing over pub builds when literally everything works? especially glass canon builds

Well pros general specialise in a small pool of heroes, for example Admiralbulldog : Bat rider, Bountry Hunter, Lone Druid and Furion were basically his picks when i was watching pro dota games. Still better than everyone else here at pretty much every other hero as well tho.

[M1r4g3]

Well pros general specialise in a small pool of heroes, for example Admiralbulldog : Bat rider, Bountry Hunter, Lone Druid and Furion were basically his picks when i was watching pro dota games. Still better than everyone else here at pretty much every other hero as well tho.

That has more to do with the lane though, you cant just send any random hero to the offlane. Also his hero pool isnt that small, yea hes best known for his np and lone druid but he does play quite a lot of heroes (tide,clock,ds,slark,void aswell)

[Deleted]

That has more to do with the lane though, you cant just send any random hero to the offlane. Also his hero pool isnt that small, yea hes best known for his np and lone druid but he does play quite a lot of heroes (tide,clock,ds,slark,void aswell)

No i agree i'm just saying that pros generally have a "small" selection of heroes they are known for.

[M1r4g3]

No i agree i'm just saying that pros generally have a "small" selection of heroes they are known for.

True that, its a pretty complex game though dont think any player is known for more than 5 heroes

[Deleted]

True that, its a pretty complex game though dont think any player is known for more than 5 heroes

The only time i can recall a player being really good at multile roles was Korok in HoN. Could basically mid to a very high level as 10 + heroes.

[Deleted]

Rush Ghost Scepter so PA doesn't crit your Crystal Maiden for 350 damage at 14 minutes, CM gets hit for 600 damage by Ogre Magi multicast instead. Or takes 400 damage from Ravage. Or takes 420 damage from any number of extremely common nukes. CM avoids death by PA, finds death by PA's team. Great use of 1700 gold.

So basically, ghost scepter is useless unless you play against some spectre/ursa/pa/sniper/drow 5 carry matchup?

Ghost scepter is actually great item against this because, in reality, it doesn't work like you make it out to - ogre mage doesn't wait for CM to blow her ghost scepter, tide doesn't wait with ravage for CM to blow her ghost scepter, CM doesn't stand in the middle of the fight and doesn't blow her ghost scepter so early and CM is not fucking alone in the fight.
CM stands on the edge of the fight, casting from the range because that's how you play any fragile support hero - positioning is everything. There are other people caught in the ravage, the carry for example and probably other more dangerous heroes than CM which is all the way back. PA jumps her because of the blink strike range, she blows ghost scepter and because PA gets nervous, she switches targets instead (this happens almost always btw, very few players stay on the ghost sceptered target when there are others to go for). There is no ogre mage in range, nor does he have cooldowns because he keeps the carry in CC, not fucking CM. If your team saves all spells for CM with ghost scepter, you are doing it wrong.

Blade mail is also not worthless. Yes, you need health pool, but even if you don't have the 4k HP it is still useful, not in late game, but in midgame when you get it. Because, again, there are more situations to talk about than 5 heroes beating down solo pudge with blade mail on. There are many people going for the glass cannon builds in pubs and skip BKB until later on and heroes like clock or recently furion with blade mails are very annoying. And even if you have your BKB rather early, you still must decide whether it's good value to blow BKB just for killing that one hero.

[PizzaSHARK]

I never said BF is good in pubs or argued the fact that BF can't be good in pubs. You say that what pros do is irrelevant for your pub games. Sure, that might be true. But if that is the case then what you do is irrelevant for pros. But still you and PizzaSHARK love to bring up pros and how they're doing it wrong in their games.

Because you and others always bring up the pros when you're trying to make a counter-argument. If I say something is too strong or too weak, eventually you or someone else will point out that the pros do or don't do that, so clearly I'm wrong.

I've noticed alot of people saying Ogre is OP recently, did you guys never notice that he has been the best support in the game for over a year now ?

Ogre was merely good last patch, this patch made a huge buff to Multicast and even more completely unwarranted buffs to shit like armor and HP regen, so now he's authentically overpowered. Welcome to Dota 2 balancing.

Of course those are the only two justifable reasons for why you'd get BF. But why do you want either of those and how would you use it? You're giving me the shallow reason. The same way someone would say "He gets Orchid because he wants to Silence someone". Congrats, you figured that out but why do you want those stats and in what way is the silence good?

Let's break it down then. 4300 gold for +65 damage, 35% cleave, and some HP/MP regen.

If you aren't using the cleave extensively (not getting multi-hero cleaves), you can get more total damage for less gold from a wide variety of items. Hell, a Sacred Relic by itself gives +60 damage and costs 700 gold less.

So we agree the cleave isn't useful, and we know that the +65 damage is decent, but is inefficient for the gold cost.

That leaves the regen bonuses? A lot of players run a bottle on PA, which covers her mana regen needs completely. They also tend to run lifesteal on her, which covers her life regen needs, particularly while farming. So those regen bonuses aren't much good, either.

So, then; if you aren't getting much out of the cleave, we know we can get more bonus damage for less gold from other items, and we know we aren't getting a lot out of the HP/MP regen bonuses... why are you buying Battle Fury, then?

Yes, they're don't know how to play her yet they win with the heroes and others don't. They'd struggle even more to win in your 2k MMR games. Just shut the fuck up.

You can win with any hero if the enemy doesn't do anything about it.

So basically, ghost scepter is useless unless you play against some spectre/ursa/pa/sniper/drow 5 carry matchup?

Ghost scepter is actually great item against this because, in reality, it doesn't work like you make it out to - ogre mage doesn't wait for CM to blow her ghost scepter, tide doesn't wait with ravage for CM to blow her ghost scepter, CM doesn't stand in the middle of the fight and doesn't blow her ghost scepter so early and CM is not fucking alone in the fight.
CM stands on the edge of the fight, casting from the range because that's how you play any fragile support hero - positioning is everything. There are other people caught in the ravage, the carry for example and probably other more dangerous heroes than CM which is all the way back. PA jumps her because of the blink strike range, she blows ghost scepter and because PA gets nervous, she switches targets instead (this happens almost always btw, very few players stay on the ghost sceptered target when there are others to go for). There is no ogre mage in range, nor does he have cooldowns because he keeps the carry in CC, not fucking CM. If your team saves all spells for CM with ghost scepter, you are doing it wrong.

PA will go for whatever target is highest value. Same for her teammates. In the first 20-30 minutes of the game, this is usually supports, since most carries aren't as dangerous as supports are right then. Supports also die much faster than carries at any point of the game, and making it a quick 4v5 is usually gonna work in your team's favor.

Blade mail is also not worthless. Yes, you need health pool, but even if you don't have the 4k HP it is still useful, not in late game, but in midgame when you get it. Because, again, there are more situations to talk about than 5 heroes beating down solo pudge with blade mail on. There are many people going for the glass cannon builds in pubs and skip BKB until later on and heroes like clock or recently furion with blade mails are very annoying. And even if you have your BKB rather early, you still must decide whether it's good value to blow BKB just for killing that one hero.

Blademail is legit worst item in the game. PA has 15% lifesteal, the person she's attacking is going to need a ton of HP to threaten her with death from blademail damage, and most heroes don't have that, especially if PA has also bought some HP somewhere. I saw a Profit rushing early Blademail like that in one game recently, I laughed my ass off and wondered why he kept feeding us. Profit with nothing but Blademail and like a bracer or something, whopping 750 HP. Scarrrrryyyyyy!

Clockwerk has good STR so he's more justified in getting a blademail, but it's the same thing... if he's all spiky and shit, why are you gonna swing at him when you're stuck in cogs? Just ignore him until cogs end or he's not spiky anymore.

[Lysah]

Do you really think that because they can't play more than 2-3 heroes against players that are equal level to them that they can't do as well as you in pubs?

Yes, I do. Most of them aren't actually all that great at the game, they just have a few star heroes and work well in a team setting. Team being the keyword here, what separates pro players and pub players is generally teamwork, not skill. If you want to say "everything points against that fact" you should try actually giving concrete evidence otherwise you're bullshitting just as much as I am.

And obviously pros are playing the hero wrong. There are no bad heroes in DotA (except CM), only bad players. If it isn't working for them they are doing it wrong. Pretty simple logic. If you disagree, you must be accepting the fact that Icefrog can't balance the game at all, some heroes ARE just bad, and competitive is just about picking the most OP heroes. You can't have one argument without the other.

If the game is reasonably balanced, anyone who can't win with the right lineup and play is bad at those heroes. If the game is not balanced, competitive is as simple as stacking broken heroes and skill no longer matters. You only seem to post in this thread to call out people who say this or that hero is OP, and try to explain that it isn't, so you seem to believe the game is balanced. But if the heroes are balanced, how are these pros not awful at the balanced, fair heroes they cannot find a way to win with?



Also, blademail is an awful item. What does it do that ghost scepter does not do for less gold? No one above 3k MMR is dumb enough to keep attacking someone when the extremely obvious animation goes off. So, it essentially makes people stop attacking you for a few seconds - exactly what ghost scepter does. Except blademail is countered by the BKB that pretty much every carry will eventually get, and ghost is not. Ghost also turns into eth blade and lets you stop that carry from attacking ANYBODY if their BKB is down, if you ever get that gold, while blademail is a dead end item. The only advantage blademail has is discouraging casters from attacking you during, but again, since the damage can and will be split it's not that much of a disadvantage, especially on a support that has low health, as Pizza explained. Add in the fact that lifesteal based carrys with double your health probably won't actually care and will just one shot you through it regardless...

[Deleted]

Yes, I do. Most of them aren't actually all that great at the game, they just have a few star heroes and work well in a team setting. Team being the keyword here, what separates pro players and pub players is generally teamwork, not skill. If you want to say "everything points against that fact" you should try actually giving concrete evidence otherwise you're bullshitting just as much as I am.

If the game is reasonably balanced, anyone who can't win with the right lineup and play is bad at those heroes.

How about ppd or zai randoming up to 6k MMR? How about there being no pro player lower than 5.5k MMR even though pubs for them is not the highest level of games they play? High MMR means you win. You think they win their solo ranked games because of their teamwork?

Assume the game is reasonably balanced. Just because I lose to a guy that is equal skill as me it means I'm bad? Oh, lord. What an argument. So Jaedong is bad at Zerg because he loses to Flash as Terran assuming both races are reasonably balanced? So Jaedong is worse than your average Diamond Zerg who beat Diamond league Terrans because "it works" for that Diamond Zerg player?

[Jester Joe]

Blademail is the worst item in the entire game. It's useless on absolutely everyone that isn't Centaur or Pudge, and it's useless on those two until 30+ minutes when they have enough raw HP to make it worth having.

Pizza, I'm not gonna rage on you or anything for this, but I'd really appreciate it if you read my last response rather than just that one.

I revised my statement to "Of course Ghost Scepter is better on a support", no matter what, because while Blade Mail does basically nothing except reflect damage and give a bit of intellect, Ghost Scepter gives the immunity to physical and +7 to all attributes.

[Deleted]

PA will go for whatever target is highest value. Same for her teammates. In the first 20-30 minutes of the game, this is usually supports, since most carries aren't as dangerous as supports are right then. Supports also die much faster than carries at any point of the game, and making it a quick 4v5 is usually gonna work in your team's favor.

Blademail is legit worst item in the game. PA has 15% lifesteal, the person she's attacking is going to need a ton of HP to threaten her with death from blademail damage, and most heroes don't have that, especially if PA has also bought some HP somewhere. I saw a Profit rushing early Blademail like that in one game recently, I laughed my ass off and wondered why he kept feeding us. Profit with nothing but Blademail and like a bracer or something, whopping 750 HP. Scarrrrryyyyyy!

Clockwerk has good STR so he's more justified in getting a blademail, but it's the same thing... if he's all spiky and shit, why are you gonna swing at him when you're stuck in cogs? Just ignore him until cogs end or he's not spiky anymore.

We can speculate whether your team is so useless 20 min in that your target number 1 is CM, but let's leave it at that. Blowing all your spells on CM with nothing but ghost scepter might and might not work in your teams favor and your team might and might not be in range and have cooldowns to punish the ethereal state, I'm just saying that ghost scepter is not bad against PA, it's actually very good and if magic immune PA wastes 4 seconds by staying near the CM and waiting for it to fall off then that's pretty good value for 1700 gold for me.

Yes, worst item in the game because it doesn't really counter PA -> it's bad. I saw a NP going for blade mail as well, quite often recently, going for PTs, 2 or 3 null talismans and blade mail and I thought it would be bad as well, but it was actually pretty decent. He had over 100 damage and around 1100 health, so not really that squishy quite early in the game.

Yeah sure, everyone above 3k MMR won't be dumb enough to attack into the spikes, so he will just take the 4.5 seconds of free beating. Of course you don't get it on squishy supports on which you would get ghost scepter, the items are fundamentally different. Why do you assume people get blade mail on weak support heroes as a defensive item?

[Deleted]

Blade Mail is more of a counter than Ghost Scepter. Ghost Scepter is just a hindrance to her, not a counter.

Also I'm not saying "They have this, we should quit now", I was just pointing out how you said she's a late game hero, yet Lysah's games point to the opposite.

She's late game.

She is only dangerous early on if you play bad and then let her get easy farm. if PA is dominating at 20mins, you have fucked up badly for those entire 20mins.

[Noorri]

For the majority of players Phantom Assassin is pretty much the hardest carry in the game because they don't get MKB against her and she becomes basically invulnerable in the lategame with Satanic, BKB and maybe an Assault Cuirass. This is also why I will always recommend to get Battlefury on Phantom Assassin to anyone who is asking. If you are asking you do not know, and if you do not know the chances are pretty good that you are playing at the level where Phantom Assassin is the hardest carry in the game and you will want the farming capabilities of Battlefury to take you to that lategame.

[Jester Joe]

She's late game.

She is only dangerous early on if you play bad and then let her get easy farm. if PA is dominating at 20mins, you have fucked up badly for those entire 20mins.

I would argue that's her strength, which I think is what Lysah was getting at. She can punish a support hard for daring to duck slightly out of tower range if she gets the RNG. She's not like Faceless, where the only chance you have to kill someone early game is through your ult and even then it doesn't always work out well. She's also not like how other hard carries are...for example, the first one that pops into my mind is Medusa. She has no real good right click until she starts getting items. PA doesn't need those items really early game, her ult gives her that damage. She's a quick ganker that causes her to snowball fast compared to other hard carries.