[Megathread] DotA 2

[Fencers]

The game looks fantastic too. The attention to detail is just superb. Though I feel there can a bit more polish and truncation in some aspects, the primary focus on gameplay is apparent. Game feels tight when a match begins.

Pretty much having a great time learning/dying.

[Finear]

awesome
just lost 3 windrunner games in row

one team forced me to go mid on my 1st WR game ever ;_; and im support player, geez i love pub 4x carry picks

[Seani]

No not kidding, in the HON's and DOTA's you have very little control over stats, no runes or masteries. You dont activate abilities as much because there is no cooldown reduction, and most champs have 1 passive ability giving them 3 active abilities in most cases. You have items that you activate, but so does LOL, I dont really see the challenge there. LOL is not as "underground" as HON or DOTA so that might be where the distinction between the two gets confusing.

[Lysah]

The game looks fantastic too. The attention to detail is just superb. Though I feel there can a bit more polish and truncation in some aspects, the primary focus on gameplay is apparent. Game feels tight when a match begins.

Pretty much having a great time learning/dying.

The game is still VEEERRRRYYYY beta right now, half the tooltips are wrong, most of them are extremely basic "does area damage!" and don't actually tell you much. The game right now is basically created for DotA1 pros, which is why if you do their survey for a key and tell them you've been playing for 10 years you get a key in a few days, otherwise you're waiting a while. They're obviously putting all of their weight into catching up to DotA1 before they go through the finer details, which is probably the best move.

Jugg is easily one of my favorites, one of the most powerful ultimates in the game if built properly, and his healing ward is absurdly overpowered. If you can hide it under a fat hero like pudge or in the middle of a creep wave so they can't click on it you can single handedly win team fights with one ability. He's also fairly impossible to gank with bladestorm/tp scroll combo and has crazy early game killing potential.

Puck is really the opposite, in my opinion. Extremely weak early game, low damage spells, does not shine unless he's starting a team fight. Of course, his AoE is very awesome, but I can't play him because of how boring the first 20 minutes of the game are for him.

[Deleted]

No not kidding, in the HON's and DOTA's you have very little control over stats, no runes or masteries. You dont activate abilities as much because there is no cooldown reduction, and most champs have 1 passive ability giving them 3 active abilities in most cases. You have items that you activate, but so does LOL, I dont really see the challenge there. LOL is not as "underground" as HON or DOTA so that might be where the distinction between the two gets confusing.

Firstly, you use your abilities less in Dota because mana is more limited, not necessarily because there is no cooldown reduction. This means you have to be careful with your spells and know the best situations to use them in.

Secondly, while there might be more heroes with passives in Dota, there are also a) heroes that require additional unit control or ability micro and b) more complicated heroes in general. It's a lot more difficult to control two units at once (especially if those units have abilities, a good example of this is Chen, he has four active abilities as well as 3 additional units that also have their own abilities) than it is to use to use 1 additional active ability. In terms of more complicated heroes, Dota has heroes such as Invoker who has, technically, 14 active abilities, 10 if which are your traditional active spells.

Thirdly, while both LoL and Dota have active items, countering items, in my opinion, is much more important in Dota. Item choices are very much based on both your team's line-up and your enemy team's line-up as well as their individual item choices.

Dota has many additional nuances that add to the learning curve such as dodging projectiles, stacking creeps, creep pulling, choke point jungling, denying towers, creeps and heroes, commiting suicide, juking (this is possible in LoL although not to the same extent), orb walking/animation cancelling, dropping tower aggro, courier scouting and finally teleports. I'm sure there are some that i've missed.

Lastly, Dota has a larger hero pool (correct me if i'm wrong). This creates a steeper learning curve for new players, especially when you have complicated heroes again, such as Invoker or Chen.

But hey, if you really think that having runes and masteries, of which there will always be cookie cutter builds, makes up for all of that then that's your opinion.

[Lysah]

The active items in LoL are a joke. There are a total of like 6? And how many of them are actually used on a game to game basis. For that matter, most (all?) of them (shurelia's, randuin's, youmuu's, zhonya's, etc) are a one click and done matter. Almost every major item in DotA has a use ability, I frequently get 3-4 items a game on any given hero that have uses. If we're talking about basic unit control, DotA is vastly more in depth, you're seriously trolling if you want to say LoL has more layers.

Trying to compare the two games in areas where they are radically different is a pretty bad way of going about it. At the end of the day, LoL is more team oriented with very close range group fights, DotA is more global with emphasis on individual plays. Who cares about the rest of the differences.

[Fencers]

Ugh. Guys. Keep the game v game stuff in another thread. So tiresome.

The game is still VEEERRRRYYYY beta right now, half the tooltips are wrong, most of them are extremely basic "does area damage!" and don't actually tell you much. The game right now is basically created for DotA1 pros, which is why if you do their survey for a key and tell them you've been playing for 10 years you get a key in a few days, otherwise you're waiting a while. They're obviously putting all of their weight into catching up to DotA1 before they go through the finer details, which is probably the best move.

A few things need touching up. I crashed a few times as well when creating a custom game but it's relatively quick & easy to get back to that game in progress.

The gameplay is rather good so far. I appreciate that as a primary focus above say, verbose tooltips.

Jugg is easily one of my favorites, one of the most powerful ultimates in the game if built properly, and his healing ward is absurdly overpowered. If you can hide it under a fat hero like pudge or in the middle of a creep wave so they can't click on it you can single handedly win team fights with one ability. He's also fairly impossible to gank with bladestorm/tp scroll combo and has crazy early game killing potential.

Yea, quite fun. Will try this champion a little more later on. Still working my way through them all.

Puck is really the opposite, in my opinion. Extremely weak early game, low damage spells, does not shine unless he's starting a team fight. Of course, his AoE is very awesome, but I can't play him because of how boring the first 20 minutes of the game are for him.

Haven't tried him more than once. First game was so-so and I quit halfway to get food. ;p

Tried Windrunner. Interesting. I think I got the basic idea of her kit fairly quickly. But as it was a practice match there wasn't really anything to practice. I found her animations somewhat difficult to grasp or rather, read. Similar to Mirana and the Volibear (sorry don't know his name) champion. Just something a little odd that caused me to over step or understep. Had a lot of trouble last hitting as Windrunner just do to misreading her animation.

A few other champions are like this for me. It might be conditioning or just needs a little more refinement.

Bounty Hunter however, was a great recommendation!

[Cutuljo]

I find Huskar a pretty good hero to start playing DOTA2. I've been playing LoL for 1 year now and got my DOTA2 key 3 days ago, I've tried Earthshaker, Clinkz, Omnikight and got raped, now Im playing Huskar and Im doing very good. He's a beast 1vs1, and once you get Hearth of Tarrasque you can go all day killing

[Lysah]

PotM and WR have near instant animations, so that's just something you have to get used to. It's pretty necessary too, it's the only thing that makes up for their absurd lack of power.

[Fencers]

Not sure what the acronyms mean...

[Lysah]

Mirana "Priestess of the Moon"
Alleria "WindRunner"

Although they probably renamed WR in DotA2 since I'm sure they could get in trouble with Blizz naming someone Alleria. Haven't checked lore since every hero just has one name now instead of name (title).

[Silent]

Mirana "Priestess of the Moon"
Alleria "WindRunner"

Although they probably renamed WR in DotA2 since I'm sure they could get in trouble with Blizz naming someone Alleria. Haven't checked lore since every hero just has one name now instead of name (title).

Potm is also sometimes called pot noodles

[Jangri-]

PotM and WR have near instant animations, so that's just something you have to get used to. It's pretty necessary too, it's the only thing that makes up for their absurd lack of power.

Wait what? Did you just call potm and wr weak heroes?

[Finear]

PotM and WR have near instant animations, so that's just something you have to get used to. It's pretty necessary too, it's the only thing that makes up for their absurd lack of power.

umm WR animation is shity and shes AMAZING hero shackle shot is one of the best non ultimate spell in the game

[Fencers]

It seemed her tree shackle thingy was a more conditional Vayne's Condemn. Obvious in use but I was kinda not awesome actually using it properly.

I'm so bad. -__-

[Kurdiern]

It seemed her tree shackle thingy was a more conditional Vayne's Condemn. Obvious in use but I was kinda not awesome actually using it properly.

I'm so bad. -__-

100% time better than Condemn. It can win games. Stunning two heroes for 4.75 seconds is so fucking crucial. It just takes getting used to, when I first played her I would only shackle the hero. After 1 or 2 games I started learning to shackle a minion or something else to get the angle I need NOW instead of waiting for them to get into position. She's an incredibly good pick; Too good to pass up, Not strong enough to ban, so she's seen in nearly every pro game. She just has so much utility and flexibility. Her last hitting gets super easy after picking up Phase boots.

Mirana is a bit more farm-dependent, a semi-carry. Grabbing a Drums of Endurance after treads helps give you enough damage until you can grab a Manta Style (or Diffusal depending on match-up).

I would say both their attack animations are pretty good. Try them compared to someone like Lina. Ugh.

[zaoly]

Good shackle shot is not easy to land without practice, even pros miss shackle very often.

[Freezymcgee]

Good shackle shot is not easy to land without practice, even pros miss shackle very often.

Which is one of the great things about Dota, skills that require precise aim that have a chance of missing usually reap great rewards when landed.
See... Potm arrow, WR shackle, Pudge Hook, WD Maledict, TS Split Earth

[Lysah]

Wait what? Did you just call potm and wr weak heroes?

Yes, because they are. Extremely low basic attack damage with terrible stat progression. It is very, very, very easy to stomp on both of these heroes if you're not in a public game. They're mostly favored for their ability to solo the long lane and open up the 3 way short lane or roamer, but this is because of leap and windrunner, not because the heroes themselves are particularly good at soloing. In fact, almost every game I play, potm/WR loses their solo long lane. The difference is, losing for them means going 0-0 and not farming all that great. Losing for a hero like SB would mean 0-4 and four levels behind. Furthermore, neither hero really needs farm to do their job, making them another good choice for long solo.

Compare the early game basic damage of these heroes to pretty much any STR hero or nearly any other agility hero for a while and see what you start to notice.

[Finear]

yeah shes picked in almost every pro game because shes a redhead