[Megathread] DotA 2

[Lysah]

Too much to learn, having tried to teach new players I'm starting to wonder if the learning curve is simply too much.

[Hermanni]

Too much to learn, having tried to teach new players I'm starting to wonder if the learning curve is simply too much.

Maybe not too much, but the tutorials and whatnot are long overdue. If you're playing with someone new, in my experience it's best to not overload them with too much information or queue in MM with normal account. A lot depends on the mentality of whoever you're trying to teach. I did teach a guy with almost no prior experience with the genre by playing few games with him every day for a 1-2 months and after that he was in Very High and did well when queuing solo, but his motivation and ability to learn and accept his own mistakes was great.

[Lysah]

Sounds too good to be true =p

[PizzaSHARK]

I've never played any Dota game before, but I love Valve and I'm thinking about buying this game. Looking at the heroes, most of them seem pretty dull, but the Ogre Magi catched my eye, as a mage/blood DK on WoW this is a wet dream with a spellcasting semi-tank. So does anyone know how balanced the Ogre Magi is, is he OP, UP or is he balanced? And is he really all that fun to play, for those that have played him?

If you want to get into Dota, you're going to need to do a lot of reading and learning. The game isn't particularly complex, but there is a LOT, and I mean a lot, of information you need to have memorized or at least banging around in your head. To perform at an average skill level, you need to know every single hero - and there's over a hundred of them. Every skill they have, what those skills do, how to deal with those skills, and on and on. That said, because the gameplay is pretty simple, it's not hard to learn all that information, though it'll take you probably fifty or sixty games before you really know it and hundreds of games before you have it truly memorized.

Here's some resources you'll want to be able look at:

Welcome to Dota, you suck All-inclusive noob's guide to Dota 2; it'll teach you everything you need to know about basic gameplay and get you started on the kinds of things you'll need to know.

Dota 2 Wiki The "official" Dota 2 wiki. It's important for learning the nitty-gritty about hero skills, particularly in the sense of how those skills interact with Magic Immunity and many other little things that end up being critically important as you learn the game.

Dota 2 Alt-Tab The source for 30-second guides on heroes. Like the name suggests, it's meant to be quickly looked at after you've picked a hero, but before the game starts. Skill builds, item builds, and very bare-bones gameplay guides for every hero. These guides are not meant to be the only way to play a hero, or even the best, but they won't steer you wrong, especially not at average-level gameplay.

If you're seeing all this text and going "oh wow that's too much effort," I'm gonna be blunt and say Dota ain't the game for you. If you ever want to claw your way out of the rancid morass that is low-level gameplay in Dota, you've got some reading to do.

As for heroes to start with... hmm. Skeleton King and Viper are some of the simplest heroes in the game, with each hero having only a single active ability and everything else being passive (newbies can just leave Viper's Poison Attack on autocast and be fine.) Ursa is another good choice, again really having only one really active skill and everything else basically being passive - and since he can jungle, he's a great introduction to jungling.

Ogre Magi is a great choice if you want to learn how spellcasters tend to work in Dota, all of his skills are very simple and easy to understand and his enormous Strength stat means he's pretty tanky even without items.

[Hermanni]

Sounds too good to be true =p

Almost but not quite. https://dotabuff.com/players/10805826 is his account. He did later admit he kind of resented me in the beginning for taking him into too hard MM games, and like I've mentioned before, some other people have refused to play with me for the same reason. Not much to learn when you die whenever you show up in the enemy minimap and your random teammates flame you nonstop.

^to the wall of text above, that's the kind of information overload I was talking about. There's no use reading guides until you're actually tried the game, you'll either not understand what you read or forget 80% of it before your first game. Just go to a game, pick a hero in the "beginner friendly heroes" filter, buy recommended items and play the game. When you feel like you need advice or more information about something, then open the guides.

[Lysah]

Dat support heroes.

Anyway, I'm no stranger to the zero friends because MMR too high feeling. Did I ever mention how much I wish they'd add a bloody unranked mode already?

[PizzaSHARK]

So my buddy and I were dicking around in a game of Diretide. Enemy team was full of twats so we just sat around poking their basket while they spent 10 minutes dying to Roshan... and we both got 2 items. Is it normal, or is the "win" counted only after Rosh dies?

[Finear]

So my buddy and I were dicking around in a game of Diretide. Enemy team was full of twats so we just sat around poking their basket while they spent 10 minutes dying to Roshan... and we both got 2 items. Is it normal, or is the "win" counted only after Rosh dies?

same happend to me a few times
im not sure how it works
now if my team lose im always going for basket

pro tip: pick axe agha> kill retards in p3

[Lysah]

Just tried it, one item.

[PizzaSHARK]

Just tried it, one item.

Just a fluke, then. Too bad, liked the idea that we were apparently stuffing it to those little asshats.

Clockwerk's really fun in diretide. His ulti can damned near get him from bucket to bucket and cogs are just flat out amazing at stalling raids or buying time for teammates to get away with candy. 8 freaking seconds on something that blocks off an entire ramp... mmm.

[Kuntantee]

Gotta love people laning in Diretide...

---------- Post added 2012-11-03 at 10:13 AM ----------

8 freaking seconds on something that blocks off an entire ramp... mmm.

they can be killed but i'm not sure if they keep pushing you back after you kill one or two

[PizzaSHARK]

Gotta love people laning in Diretide...

---------- Post added 2012-11-03 at 10:13 AM ----------



they can be killed but i'm not sure if they keep pushing you back after you kill one or two

Well, you'll get shoved back by the first one and possibly the second or third depending on positioning, plus three attacks to kill them. You can probably guarantee 5 sec of blocking.

The changes to candy denying makes laning a little bit better but mostly I usually see 2-3 people at mid/hanging near the bucket and maybe a couple people soloing lanes for a minute or two to get some fast XP.

[Lysah]

Respawn times need to be reduced at high level, imo. I've lost so many games where we were ahead for the entire game, are 90-50 at around 3 minutes left, but they went a full team of hard carries and with their super gold generation just rampage through our team. When we're all dead for 70 seconds they can easily swing the game and win by 20 in those two minutes.

So basically, don't worry about playing the actual game. Just farm up on carries and do the whole 20 minutes in one two minute bucket smashing spree.

[PizzaSHARK]

Respawn times need to be reduced at high level, imo. I've lost so many games where we were ahead for the entire game, are 90-50 at around 3 minutes left, but they went a full team of hard carries and with their super gold generation just rampage through our team. When we're all dead for 70 seconds they can easily swing the game and win by 20 in those two minutes.

So basically, don't worry about playing the actual game. Just farm up on carries and do the whole 20 minutes in one two minute bucket smashing spree.

Personally I've never liked how carries go from rather weak to nearly unstoppable while doing not much besides right-clicking, but it's just part of Dota/MOBA games.

Honestly, Diretide is relatively well-balanced for something that probably took them like a week to throw together and probably wasn't even looked at by a "balance team." The only things I don't like about it is that it tends to discourage teamwork and MMR seems to be at least loosened. I don't think I've ever seen a balanced, even Diretide game - it's always one team curbstomping the other.

[Kuntantee]

@lysah

If you can't finish a game under 30 min or so where enemy team is full with hard carries, then you deserve to lose. That happened to me as well. That's the curse of pubs where they can not understand what their hero set up is capable of in certain spans during game. Also respawn times are okay. If you make a mistake at after min 40 or so, the results should be brutal.

@pizzashark
Diretide us a fun-map its not competitive. I don't think balancing is occupied their minds even for 1 sec when they were designing. The games like dota are almost impossible to balance(literally). I think there is a certain mathematical method where it gives you the percentage of balance and in theory a balanced game assumes the effective difference between sides(two teams in this case) is ~ %1. What I'm trying to say its pretty hard to achieve and DotA is balance enough because people are working on it like 10 years or whatever yet balancing a new mode(it's not even a persistent mode) is far from happening.

I hope they make new fun modes but only care 5vs5 when it comes to balancing. If people want balanced games they can go play good old 5vs5.

[PizzaSHARK]

@lysah

If you can't finish a game under 30 min or so where enemy team is full with hard carries, then you deserve to lose. That happened to me as well. That's the curse of pubs where they can not understand what their hero set up is capable of in certain spans during game. Also respawn times are okay. If you make a mistake at after min 40 or so, the results should be brutal.

He's talking about Diretide, bud.

[Lysah]

He's talking about Diretide, bud.

Yeah, it's like -em on steroids. Still, my biggest issue is with the respawn timers. For a game mode that is supposed to be fun and exciting, waiting 80 seconds to respawn and watching your 40 candy lead turn into a 30 candy deficit before you can move is not at all entertaining.

[Sackman]

Getting really tired of pub players lol, the selfish mentality gets to me, nobody wants to win, merely be top of the scoreboard.

In fact, would rather they remove individual kills altogether until the end for viewing, and just have team kills, to perhaps give some incentive to them not to just go for individual kills.

Anyone know any good communities to get into to find some good people and good teams?

[Faldric]

Getting really tired of pub players lol, the selfish mentality gets to me, nobody wants to win, merely be top of the scoreboard.

I know what you mean. Just a few days ago I had a game where 3 of the enemy team left. The remaining 2 were a skelleton king and riki. Riki got fed before the 3 left, but wasnt that bad. At the end we nearly lost against 2 because people couldnt just stay together and push one lane. Nobody warded, Nobody bought a gem. As soon as i went to a lane with the other support one of our great "carries" just went to the jungle and told us to piss off he needs farm. At the end they constantly provided easy ganks for riki and made a game where 3 people left at the 10 minute mark, 45 minutes long.

[PizzaSHARK]

Getting really tired of pub players lol, the selfish mentality gets to me, nobody wants to win, merely be top of the scoreboard.

In fact, would rather they remove individual kills altogether until the end for viewing, and just have team kills, to perhaps give some incentive to them not to just go for individual kills.

Anyone know any good communities to get into to find some good people and good teams?

TL used to have an in-house group but last I heard it was shut down. You might find some people in the various Dota 2 subreddits, but I've heard that's a crap shoot, too.

Removing individual scoring until the end of the game might actually be a really good idea for pubs.