[Megathread] DotA 2

[StrawberryZebra]

What the fuck is a hero like this doing in DotA? DotA's allegedly a skill-focused game? So why does a hero exist that seems to run completely counter to this idea?

I feel like we've been here before. Have we been here before?

Out of interest, how many people expect PA not to crit during a fight? I just factor in that out of five hits she's probably going to crit once, and go from there to have a rough idea how a fight with her is going to play out. If its a calculable estimation from both players then it takes some form of skill to tweak the odds in your favour to get the outcome you want. One of my friends gets worked up about this a lot when he plays Hearthstone, he never thinks through what other players could have in their hand and makes all kind of avoidable mistakes because of it then blames it on RNG and getting lucky and so on. Thats not to say that RNG doesn't occasionally screw you over, but as long as you have some form of none-RNG player interaction, you can take steps to minimise the impact RNG is going to have on your performance. I would consider it to be an expression of player skill to account for more variables in their play. Your millage may vary.

Should RNG be there in the first place is a discussion that could take a very long time to go over, but I would lean towards saying no if, and only if, a more suitable alternative can be introduced that puts all of the control in the players hands, rather than just some of it. It doesn't matter if its Axe spins, Dodges or Chaos Knight, if the player is in total control of when and how they happen its going to push the outcomes of most fights to be entirely skill based rather than partly skill based, but with a small luck element.

[Kralljin]

Even Ogre Magi is less luck-based than PA. Not by much, but at least his defensive capabilities aren't also purely RNG-based.

I don't think her 50% dodge is the issue, it is fairly high so it's pretty much expected that a lot of hits are going to miss.

The crits are the problem here, because it creates those special rare cases with crit streaks that level the entire team.

Ogre Magi is in theory similiar, however given the fact that he's not a carry but a support obviously limits the impact and the frequency of his rolls on said RNG are much lower.

[PizzaSHARK]

IDK, I find PA strong even given my typical level of RNG. I've actually considered playing games without skilling her ultimate just to prove she doesn't need it to carry. Sadly, the addition of break blade probably made this impossible. Also, the second any enemy carry gets MKB it's game over for you.

They do probably need to remove dagger crits. Nothing like going to lane against a level 7 PA and she just casually sends three daggers your way and hits you for 60% of your health without even coming within a screen's range which forces you back to fountain already because now she can't duel you with ease.

Yeah, dagger crits were why she was able to pull that off. She'd melee crit for like 250, melee crit again for another 250, then flip a dagger into them for 305 and they'd just fall over. I personally died to a dagger crit from seemingly halfway across the map. I was dumb and actually got within 1200 distance of PA and she flipped a dagger at me and crit me. I was already running away when the first dagger was in the air, but since a 1200 range slow with 4 sec duration on 6 sec is totally balanced, she got another one off before my teammates blinked onto her (and, of course, she just casually walks away from overextending like that because evasion + 1000 range blink) and it happened to crit.

Almost no player interaction on PA's part - throw dagger, chase a bit and throw another dagger, then walk home. Really dumb.

I feel like we've been here before. Have we been here before?

Probably. She's been OP for three or four patches now.

The issue isn't whether PA will crit, but when she will crit. If she crits on the 5th attack, you've had at least a few seconds to react to her jumping on you. If she crits on the 1st attack, you may very well die instantly before you can react.

The thing is, she's not OP because of her crits, and frankly that should be the last place they look to nerf her. Her crits are bullshit... but not OP. What makes her OP is the fucking ridiculous combination of range, uptime, and availability on her blink and dagger. They combine to make her an ultra-safe laner, no matter what lane she goes to, against whatever combination of enemies. PA mid absolutely shouldn't work - dagger is a very low damage nuke that only hits a single target, she has no rune control, no lane control... she should be laughed out of lane - but it does work because she's virtually impossible to gank and even if you went whole ham and sat a duo mid on her, you'd still be completely unable to deny her farm because she can just sit by the tower and flip daggers at creeps from complete safety. Same applies to offlane PA (1200 range means she can reach natural creep line from under her tower, or nearly to enemy tower from the edge of the river.)

Nerf her laning and she'll be balanced. Still bullshit, but at least balanced.

Should RNG be there in the first place is a discussion that could take a very long time to go over, but I would lean towards saying no if, and only if, a more suitable alternative can be introduced that puts all of the control in the players hands, rather than just some of it. It doesn't matter if its Axe spins, Dodges or Chaos Knight, if the player is in total control of when and how they happen its going to push the outcomes of most fights to be entirely skill based rather than partly skill based, but with a small luck element.

All current RNG mechanics should behave like Jinada and Drunken Brawler. That would require an enormous amount of effort and rebalancing, so it'll never happen (a guaranteed 4.5x damage crit every X seconds would be very OP), but that's a way of letting people have their big red flashy numbers while also removing luck as a significant factor in games.

I personally think Jinada is one of the more interesting skills in DotA despite being a passive. Because it's consistent, it allows Gondar to plan his method of attack and how he wants to approach any given scenario. How many Jinada hits will it take? What do you do to buy time for the cooldown so you can get the next Jinada in? A Jinada build (which Valve seems to hate, given the constant buffs and changes to make Shuriken Toss more and more dominant over Jinada builds) has a very interesting style of play for the first 15-20 mins of the game, which wouldn't happen if Jinada was a typical RNG crit.

Hell, Coup de Grace doesn't even make sense, because a coup de grace isn't some random occurrence, it's explicitly a mercy kill. It would make a lot more sense for it to be a substantial damage bonus against disabled targets or targets low on health. Like +X% damage on targets below 25% HP and/or disabled targets (silence, stun, root, not slow, should be an effect PA herself can't apply), activate it to cause your next hit to crit for huge damage and disabling the passive damage boost while the skill is on cooldown. Sort of like Tusk's Walrus Punch in some ways, except it has a passive component.

[Longview]

there are tons of rng factors outside of abilities, i think dota would be boring to play if there was no rng

[PizzaSHARK]

there are tons of rng factors outside of abilities, i think dota would be boring to play if there was no rng

How would it be boring to play? Because suddenly player skill would invariably be the deciding factor, rather than blind luck?

[Lysah]

I would like them to remove crits from dagger but give it its vision back. PA used to be my go to pick for countering antimage, because you can dagger him in the woods and then blink after him when he tries to run and kill him, now he just blinks away and you lose sight game over. Being able to two shot supports 15% of the time isn't enough of a trade for me.

[Kanadei]

How would it be boring to play? Because suddenly player skill would invariably be the deciding factor, rather than blind luck?

A favourite line of mine is "the more I practice the luckier I get".

While I can agree you have some points regarding RNG being particularly excessive in some situations, the simple reality is that RNG is fun for the player. Skills like Jinada are probably more balanced yes, but there is a certain breathless excitement to hoping that the stars align and people just explode when you touch them.

That's why items like Daedalus are so popular among new players when compared with things like MKB (although thats a poor comparison since its mini-bash is still an RNG aspect), its fun rolling the dice and hoping things go well. It's equally frustrating when the opposite happens, and your opponent pulls off a string of dodges/crits/stuns that seem mathematically impossible - and yet those are the stories you share and the moments you remember.

A game without RNG would be more skill based, yes, but also a lot more bland.

[Jester Joe]

It's also why Ogre Magi has the best lines
"Pure skill"

[Charge me Doctor]

Even Ogre Magi is less luck-based than PA. Not by much, but at least his defensive capabilities aren't also purely RNG-based.

i literally won one game by pure skull as ogre magi: x4 fireblast phat carry, x3 unref fireblast, x4 fireblast phat carry drop dead, buy backs, x3 fireblast, x3 unref fireblast, x4 fireblast, phat carry drops dead again we win. I think he surpassed you at raging at rng in this game

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I completly agree on the PA bandwagon, no idea why it has been almost skipped by picks. That hero was a sniper nightmare and troll early game. Only issue its definatly slower farmer than troll that farms from early game a decent chunk time faster.

She is very weak after addition of break item, and previously she was countered by hexes, so blink lion>PA, i just can't emphasise enough that she is extremely squishy for melee character, she gets blown off by any decent AoE, and god damn you if enemy team has dark seer.

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I feel like we've been here before. Have we been here before?

Out of interest, how many people expect PA not to crit during a fight? I just factor in that out of five hits she's probably going to crit once

I've seen poor PA trying to kill Enchantress. It was too hilarious

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One of my friends gets worked up about this a lot when he plays Hearthstone, he never thinks through what other players could have in their hand and makes all kind of avoidable mistakes because of it then blames it on RNG and getting lucky and so on.

>drops deathwing
>gets polymorphed
>blames RNG

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Yeah, dagger crits were why she was able to pull that off. She'd melee crit for like 250, melee crit again for another 250, then flip a dagger into them for 305 and they'd just fall over. I personally died to a dagger crit from seemingly halfway across the map. I was dumb and actually got within 1200 distance of PA and she flipped a dagger at me and crit me.

If you had a blink dagger you had no excuse. Just disjoin it

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How would it be boring to play? Because suddenly player skill would invariably be the deciding factor, rather than blind luck?

Playing around rng >>> skill than no rng.

And just a tip for your further enragement about people getting away after overxtending - use CC. I won't believe that PA was retreating AND throwing daggers at you (because it's stupid, it's not LoL or HotS, in dota we have things like turn time) Batrider for example can punish her for doing so even more because of sticky napalm, or CM who has fucking stupid ability to freeze enemy in place and stop her from attacking on just 6 seconds cooldown.

I can't and won't believe that PA is any problem in this game, yes, she is strong when fed, but it's easy to shutdown her, and even more easy to do so now with addition of break item (reminder for those who live under the rock, it blocks passives)

[Lysah]

PA is strong early, she doesn't really get shut down. Being outcarried is her problem. The only PA you can shut down is the kind of brain dead idiot that goes bfury.

[Charge me Doctor]

She still have to get important items like helm of dominance and/or phase boots, and eventually BKB, delaying BKB and her farm stales her game to the point where Lion support can finger her to death. Well, at least that's my experience playing vs her.

I have to admit that it's very hard to get away from her when you got caught solo while, say, stacking. But that's why you have second support to peel/delay and murder her.

[Lysah]

Luckily PA also has supports ready to peel/delay and murder.

[Charge me Doctor]

It really depends on what the team does. She will have to bring someone with her to enemy woods to kill supports, because alone she won't do much, and there TPs comes in and there is little to nowhere for her to blink to. It's completely different picture if she farms safely on short lane, she have access to supports to peel from her, but there is barely anyone to capitalize her early game advantage. If she takes middle - she (i think) autolose to current meta mid picks.

Yes, it's annoying to get 300 dagger crits and i do not think that is balanced well, i would too prefer dagger to give vision on target because it suits her kit more (but again, dagger crits give her at least some means to do damage when behind, and vision dagger would give her 100% stickiness even for those who have blinks/leaps so there is literally no way to get away from her). There is just so many means to deal with her that i do not see her being OPed at all.

Also, iirc, SD gets break ability on his Purge with aghs, could be very devastating counterpick for PA especially when you remember that it has 3 charges.


So, how many teams did you guessed, guys, for your compendiums?

[Longview]

I'm not at home so I can't check, but I think I had Rave instead of VP, got the rest of them. Makes sense not to invite both Team Malaysia and Rave.

[Charge me Doctor]

I can't check either, but i do remember picking team Malaysia because of their fancy icon and i couldn't make my mind who to pick 9th. Also i think i removed Newbee in favor of someone i can't remember now but who didn't make it.

Wonder if someone got 10/10

[Sorcereria]

Not inviting Rave is spit in the face imo, and I am not alone on this.
Question, rave in favor of malayas or VP.P. Tough question.

[Longview]

I think Rave has had the overall better performance since TI4, but Malaysia has been playing better since DAC. Really strange to see a team like TnC get a qualifier spot over Invasion.

I wish they would have invited NiP over VP because I don't think they can win the stacked EU qualifier.

[Sorcereria]

Someone made a nifty PING checker on all dota servers that you can access with simple click on desktop.
Simple put the code into notepad and change from txt to .BAT extension on save as.


@ECHO off
REM Dota 2 Ping Tester edited by FranzMeister (original code from PlanetSide 2 Ping Tester by Sh4rkill3rSG)
REM DOTA 2 PING TESTER by FranzMeister 0.1 December 2013

Echo DOTA 2 Ping Tester - Updated By Bridge (May 4 2015)
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. Africa
CALL:dota2 cpt-1.valve.net
ECHO - (RSA) Cape Town 1: %ms%
CALL:dota2 197.80.200.1
ECHO - (RSA) Cape Town 2: %ms%
CALL:dota2 196.38.180.1
ECHO - (RSA) Johannesburg: %ms%
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. Asia
CALL:dota2 gw.hkg.valve.net
ECHO - (SEA) China: %ms%
CALL:dota2 dxb.valve.net
ECHO - (UAE) Dubai: %ms%
CALL:dota2 sgp-1.valve.net
ECHO - (SEA) Singapore 1: %ms%
CALL:dota2 sgp-2.valve.net
ECHO - (SEA) Singapore 2: %ms%
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. Australia
CALL:dota2 syd.valve.net
ECHO - (AUS) Sydney: %ms%
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. Europe
CALL:dota2 lux.valve.net
ECHO - (EUW) Luxembourg 1: %ms%
CALL:dota2 146.66.158.1
ECHO - (EUW) Luxembourg 2: %ms%
CALL:dota2 sto.valve.net
ECHO - (RUS) Stockholm 1: %ms%
CALL:dota2 185.25.180.1
ECHO - (RUS) Stockholm 2: %ms%
CALL:dota2 vie.valve.net
ECHO - (EUE) Vienna: %ms%
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. North America
CALL:dota2 eat.valve.net
ECHO - (USW) Seattle: %ms%
CALL:dota2 208.78.164.1
ECHO - (USE) Sterling: %ms%
ECHO ====================================== && ECHO. South America
CALL:dota2 gru.valve.net
ECHO - (RBR) Sao Paulo 1: %ms%
CALL:dota2 209.197.29.1
ECHO - (RBR) Sao Paulo 2: %ms%
CALL:dota2 209.197.25.1
ECHO - (RBR) Sao Paulo 3: %ms%
ECHO ======================================

ECHO.&PAUSE&GOTO:EOF

:dota2
SET ms=Error
FOR /F "tokens=4 delims==" %%i IN ('ping.exe -n 1 %1 ^| FIND "ms"') DO SET ms=%%i
GOTO:EOF

[Charge me Doctor]

So it basically pings all the servers?
Ewww, 'goto's

[Lysah]

I didn't guess VP, I feel like them being invited is just fan service because Russians are the largest player base. Not sure what the point is in inviting a team that is guaranteed to lose round 1, though I pretty much feel the same about inviting a SEA team just to say you invited a SEA team. I think that VP invite ruined a lot of people's 10/10