Dota 2 : Dota Harder

[NieXS]

I'm curious about what the item will be, since we've already got a courier. Maybe a ward?

There are a lot of possibilities - either something existant, like a ward skin, HUD, or announcer; or something entirely new. Tree skins? Water color? Consumables animations? Taunts? Creep skins?

By the way, unlike in Dota 1, auras don't see to show for me, does anyone have the same problem?

The current rumor is that it'll be an Invoker item, I think.

Also, the thread should probably be renamed to just "Dota 2" since the game is now out of beta (finally).

[Menacing Spike]

By the way, it seems new players that want to watch the tournament through the client will have to
1) Get past the queue
2) Finish the tutorial
Which could be really annoying and put off a lot of people.

Also, for those who missed it there is some talk about dota2 in the starcraft thread.

[OklahomaJoe]

I'm curious about what the item will be, since we've already got a courier. Maybe a ward?

There are a lot of possibilities - either something existant, like a ward skin, HUD, or announcer; or something entirely new. Tree skins? Water color? Consumables animations? Taunts? Creep skins?

By the way, unlike in Dota 1, auras don't see to show for me, does anyone have the same problem?

What do you mean, auras don't show? You're not seeing the buff icons?

[Gopher of Pern]

By the way, it seems new players that want to watch the tournament through the client will have to
1) Get past the queue
2) Finish the tutorial
Which could be really annoying and put off a lot of people.

Also, for those who missed it there is some talk about dota2 in the starcraft thread.

Apparently, they are going to re-release the spectator client, so people can just download that to watch games, without queuing or doing the tutorial. It is also watchable on Twitch and Youtube live.

I dont think aura's have visual effects on the heroes, just the buff icons.

[OklahomaJoe]

Apparently, they are going to re-release the spectator client, so people can just download that to watch games, without queuing or doing the tutorial. It is also watchable on Twitch and Youtube live.

I dont think aura's have visual effects on the heroes, just the buff icons.

Yeah, that's the rumor going around. Twitch probably won't be reliable unless they've made some dramatic improvements to their server capacity; remember that SC2 doesn't have a spectator client or anything like that, so Twitch is going to be pretty much the only way to watch the SC2 championship.

Poor Twitch... I wonder how much they hate Blizzard right now.

[Jesse]

Yeah, I'm sure they hate how Blizzard are driving viewers to their business...

[Adacore]

Yeah, I'm sure they hate how Blizzard are driving viewers to their business...

Well, they'd probably prefer if Blizzard had split the regional finals over 3 weekends, because that would probably give them more viewer hours in total, with less demand on the servers. But I can't see them complaining too much, no.

[OklahomaJoe]

Yeah, I'm sure they hate how Blizzard are driving viewers to their business...

Thing is, they've been getting a lot of flak lately for not being able to handle demand; now they're going to have the biggest tournament in Dota and a major tournament in SC2 going on at the same time? How much money do they make when people aren't able to watch the games due to the servers not being able to handle the strain?

[Jack21222]

I played through the tutorial, and I just can't get into DotA2 as much as I'm into LoL. After playing LoL for 2 years, DotA2 just seems clunky. The movements and animations are just a lot slower. I had a DotA2 player tell me that it takes more skill to deal with the slower animations. This may or may not be true, but I can tell you that it makes for a less enjoyable game.

[NieXS]

I think cast animations, turn rates and different attack animations for each hero add quite a lot of depth to the game. I do not think it makes the game any less enjoyable, though.

Also, can we not get into the "which game takes the most skill" debate? It always ends in tears and rage...

[Zcorp]

I played through the tutorial, and I just can't get into DotA2 as much as I'm into LoL. After playing LoL for 2 years, DotA2 just seems clunky. The movements and animations are just a lot slower. I had a DotA2 player tell me that it takes more skill to deal with the slower animations. This may or may not be true, but I can tell you that it makes for a less enjoyable game.

There are significant differences between the two games. The cast times and turn rates are just the beginning. If you decide to get in to it more you will also soon notice the resource management dota requires in comparison. LoL allows for pretty consistent skill spam, fast regen of resources -even when the champion's resource is mana- and generally less powerful effects. When/if you choose to play against people the animation and turn rate time really have a positive impact when you consider the relative power difference of dota abilities to LoL ones.

Pretty much dota puts far more weight on each decision you make than LoL does.

The other significant factor you will have to quickly account for are active items, the number of active items in dota and the significance of those actives is much greater than in LoL. The depth this adds to strategy and such is huge, which can be very intimidating to LoL players.

[OklahomaJoe]

I played through the tutorial, and I just can't get into DotA2 as much as I'm into LoL. After playing LoL for 2 years, DotA2 just seems clunky. The movements and animations are just a lot slower. I had a DotA2 player tell me that it takes more skill to deal with the slower animations. This may or may not be true, but I can tell you that it makes for a less enjoyable game.

Probably the most-voiced complaint by people coming from LoL. Every hero in Dota has turn rates, with some heroes having a longer turn rate than others. Movement speeds are also different from hero to hero, with Luna having the fastest base ms at 330 and Crystal Maiden the slowest at 280. All heroes have different attack animations, with some being very heavy on frontswing instead of backswing; in particular, heroes with built-in attack speed modifiers (such as Clinkz, whose Strafe skill dramatically increases his attack speed for several seconds) often have terrible frontswing animations, being balanced around attack speed boosters dramatically shortening their frontswing.

League of Legends is built like an arcade game, sort of; it's very fast and very fluid, but this comes at the cost of some complexity. Whether or not the loss of that complexity is a problem or not is up to individual players to decide

[Menacing Spike]

Techies is slower than Maiden, and I'm pretty sure several others (death prophet?) are tied with her.

[Phoenix112358]

By the way, it seems new players that want to watch the tournament through the client will have to
1) Get past the queue
2) Finish the tutorial
Which could be really annoying and put off a lot of people.

Also, for those who missed it there is some talk about dota2 in the starcraft thread.

They've just patched that and now new players can view live games without finishing the tutorial.

EDIT: I suppose they still have to get past the queue, though.

[Jack21222]

League of Legends is built like an arcade game, sort of; it's very fast and very fluid, but this comes at the cost of some complexity. Whether or not the loss of that complexity is a problem or not is up to individual players to decide

It adds complexity, but not depth, in my opinion.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episod ... complexity for the difference

[OklahomaJoe]

Techies is slower than Maiden, and I'm pretty sure several others (death prophet?) are tied with her.

I haven't played Techies in years. Krob is 280 to start, but remember she gets +20% ms from Witchcraft; the 280 is just there so she's not zooming around at 400ms with just boots.

It adds complexity, but not depth, in my opinion.

It adds both; there's a lot of depth to the mechanics that League of Legends either removed or simplified. Whether that makes it a better game is just opinion, though I'd say there's more substance to Dota gameplay than League gameplay.

[Ixtellor]

Having played a ton of both games, I prefer Dota as a game. But I like LoL for the ranked play, runes, masteries... the micro-rewards u get for playing.

Dota has a lot more viable builds and strategies.

Blink Dagger and/or Lothars add a huge dimension to the game.

I also like the punishment for decisions in Dota more. If u don't lane well -- u either WALK back to fountain or spend ur cash on recall scrolls instead of items.

LoL just seems like u have to follow the 'correct way of playing' a lot more while Dota has more feedom to build ur champ how u like.

[OklahomaJoe]

Having played a ton of both games, I prefer Dota as a game. But I like LoL for the ranked play, runes, masteries... the micro-rewards u get for playing.

That was actually one of the biggest things that turned me off of LoL - all the crap you have to do outside of the actual game, to be able to play the actual game. Grind to level 30 so you can have a full rune page and masteries and stuff.

Now grind points so you can buy runes to put into your rune page. Now grind MORE points so you can buy more rune pages, since you need different pages for different roles. And while you're grinding points for that stuff, go grind points so you can permanently unlock heroes rather than being stuck with each week's rotating selection. Or, of course, buy cash shop points and skip the grinding if you'd rather spend money.

I didn't really have a problem with that before Dota 2 arrived, but once you take a look at Valve's business model, you have to wonder why anyone would prefer Riot's. With Valve's model, the entire game is immediately, totally free to play. Every hero, every item, every game mode, everything is free to play, and the only things that aren't free are cosmetic items (which you can get through random rewards or by trading), or tournament tickets (which have to be purchased, but support the tournament and its sponsors as well as allow you to watch the games through DotaTV.)

And, for me, the best part of all of it is that the majority of cosmetics you can buy are made by players, and every time someone buys one of their items, they get a portion of the sale. There are even some folks, just like with TF2, who make a comfortable living off of making items for Dota 2, due to Valve's business model. That's pretty damned awesome, if you ask me.

[Diadem]

So I just picked up this game. Seems rather fun so far (though I've only played against bots for now).

I have a question though. Why on earth do they only give gold for getting the last shot on a creep? I just can't wrap my head around that. It introduces a huge amount of chance into the game. Being lucky or unlucky with getting the last shot can easily mean a few hundred gold difference in the first few minutes. That's a lot.

I just don't understand it.

[Ixtellor]

So I just picked up this game. Seems rather fun so far (though I've only played against bots for now).

I have a question though. Why on earth do they only give gold for getting the last shot on a creep? I just can't wrap my head around that. It introduces a huge amount of chance into the game. Being lucky or unlucky with getting the last shot can easily mean a few hundred gold difference in the first few minutes. That's a lot.

I just don't understand it.

Because its NOT luck, its skill. Learning to last hit and deny is what makes u a good player.

[OklahomaJoe]

So I just picked up this game. Seems rather fun so far (though I've only played against bots for now).

I have a question though. Why on earth do they only give gold for getting the last shot on a creep? I just can't wrap my head around that. It introduces a huge amount of chance into the game. Being lucky or unlucky with getting the last shot can easily mean a few hundred gold difference in the first few minutes. That's a lot.

I just don't understand it.

Because it's not luck. Heroes do a consistent amount of damage, and creeps have a consistent amount of health. Getting a gold bounty for landing the killing blow on a creep is a reward for timing your attack properly - think of it like hitting the weak point on an otherwise invulnerable boss in a game like Zelda. If you time it properly, you're rewarded. If your timing is off, you get nothing.

This is expanded on with denying creeps - if you can time it properly, you can ensure the enemy player loses their chance at getting a last hit, which is denying them gold.

And it goes even further with creep line equilibrium. You want your creeps and their creeps to be dying as close to as at identical times as possible, or the creep line will move. You want the line close to your tower, but not in range of the tower (last hitting is substantially harder while in range of a tower, since the tower doesn't care about you trying to make money) - this leaves you with a short retreat to your tower if they want to be aggressive, while still not having to worry about fighting the tower for last hits.

It's a series of relatively simple mechanics that add up to a deep, complex facet of gameplay. At any rate, there's very little, if any luck involved in last hitting or denying - it's purely based on timing and player "skill."

[Menacing Spike]

It's also strategy in addition to skill. If you are playing Crystal Maiden against a Quelling Blade treant, there is NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL you will outlasthit him, even with a vast skill differencial. That means you should either harass him and let your lanemate last hit, mess up his last hits and denies timing by attacking early (so you still get xp and he doesn't get gold), just buy a tp and go roam...

Ah, and if you want practice just go mid against an unfair viper bot. He's rather good at it; slighly less than a pro but pretty close.

[Zcorp]

So I just picked up this game. Seems rather fun so far (though I've only played against bots for now).

I have a question though. Why on earth do they only give gold for getting the last shot on a creep? I just can't wrap my head around that. It introduces a huge amount of chance into the game. Being lucky or unlucky with getting the last shot can easily mean a few hundred gold difference in the first few minutes. That's a lot.

I just don't understand it.

As others mentioned it is one of the basic skills the game requires you to learn to play it well.
I imagine you view it as luck as you are constantly attacking with your hero, often referred to as 'auto-attacking', 'autoing' or sometimes 'pushing the lane.' When someone asks you to stop doing one of those things they are asking you to stop attacking with your hero. If it helps you there is an option to turn off your attack when you are holding position, otherwise you pretty much have to keep moving or can stop your attack with your Stop or Hold position key by spamming it.

as OKJoe said you need to try and time your attacks so you are only attacking to get the last hit on a creep, once you have learned that there are various strategies about controlling the position of the lane and when you want to attack or nuke the creeps or not.

The biggest danger if letting the enemy lane push into your tower in early stages of the game is generally not losing your last hits though, instead it is that it will quickly kill the enemy creeps and thus your wave will push out past the safe space close to your tower. To get last hits under the tower it takes 5 tower attacks early to get a creep low enough for you to last hit it (you have to attack twice to get that last hit if your hero has low damage), it takes 2 tower hits before a ranged creep is low enough (for most heroes but not all you should attack once after the towers first hit on it and once after the second to get the last hit) and for siege units it requires 2 attacks from your hero and 3 from the tower to kill it (so time your second attack after its third). Of course all of these timings can be messed up by your own creeps attacking the unit you want to last hit.

edit:

Ah, and if you want practice just go mid against an unfair viper bot. He's rather good at it; slighly less than a pro but pretty close.

The dragon knight quest requires practice last hitting, which is probably a better place to start. This is a good suggestion once you are confident in your ability to last hit with just your own creeps.

Also important to remember that heroes starting damage and attack animations vary, so after getting used to a hero you are playing switch it up so you don't get one hero imprinted to much on your timing.

[OklahomaJoe]

The general way of practicing last hitting is to pick Shadow Fiend, go mid, and put no points into any skill, and buy no items. He has a fantastic animation and fast projectile, but terrible base damage, so it's excellent practice for precisely timing your attacks.

Anti-Mage with no skills or items is a great way of practicing melee last hitting - again, lousy base damage coupled with a fantastic attack animation.

[Diadem]

So the goal of the game is not to do as much damage as possible, but to do as little damage as possible, but at the right timing? Still sounds suspiciously like poor design to me, but anyway, the game is still fun, so who am I to complain.

Another question: Twice now (out of, ehm, 5 games total? So this seems to be rather common) I've had a bug where upon buying an item, the item got permanently attached to my mouse cursor. This is not only very annoying, it also permanently disables your left mouse button. I suppose that's one way to force yourself to use keyboard shortcuts, but it's still rather annoying, especially when buying composite items. Anyone else who has had this? Any way to stop it, apart from restarting your game?

[Ixtellor]

So the goal of the game is not to do as much damage as possible, but to do as little damage as possible, but at the right timing? Still sounds suspiciously like poor design to me, but anyway, the game is still fun, so who am I to complain.

Its about controlling the battlefield. Pushing deep into enemy lines is dangerous because it allows you to be flanked.

The only hit worth it on a creep is the last hit, so don't autoattack them. U are doing the enemy a favor and putting yourself in danger when u push the lines.

[Menacing Spike]

Anyone else who has had this? Any way to stop it, apart from restarting your game?

Yes. To stop it, drag the item to the "shopping list" area (near the quickbuy thingy that says something like "shift click to register item").

[Diadem]

Anyone else who has had this? Any way to stop it, apart from restarting your game?

Yes. To stop it, drag the item to the "shopping list" area (near the quickbuy thingy that says something like "shift click to register item").

Thanks!

So the goal of the game is not to do as much damage as possible, but to do as little damage as possible, but at the right timing? Still sounds suspiciously like poor design to me, but anyway, the game is still fun, so who am I to complain.

Its about controlling the battlefield. Pushing deep into enemy lines is dangerous because it allows you to be flanked.

I get that now. But you're controlling the battlefield by sacrificing your own troops. That 's a rather counterintuitive strategy. I can see how it makes the game fun, by requiring a lot of skill. But they could have spelled it out clearer in the tutorial I think. O well. Time to practise!

[Menacing Spike]

Yes, the tutorial is pretty terrible. I wish Valve would put more effort in the tutorial and bugfixes and hero ports instead of adding more hats. Bah.

[Zcorp]

So the goal of the game is not to do as much damage as possible, but to do as little damage as possible, but at the right timing? Still sounds suspiciously like poor design to me, but anyway, the game is still fun, so who am I to complain.

The goal is to do as much damage as possible at the right time. With timing often having greater weight than amount of damage done. This would even be an apt description of the general play of all of dota.

I get that now. But you're controlling the battlefield by sacrificing your own troops. That 's a rather counterintuitive strategy. I can see how it makes the game fun, by requiring a lot of skill. But they could have spelled it out clearer in the tutorial I think. O well. Time to practise!

Yeah the tutorial doesn't cover lane control at all, they haven't built that part yet, assuming they are going to.

[OklahomaJoe]

So the goal of the game is not to do as much damage as possible, but to do as little damage as possible, but at the right timing? Still sounds suspiciously like poor design to me, but anyway, the game is still fun, so who am I to complain.

Another question: Twice now (out of, ehm, 5 games total? So this seems to be rather common) I've had a bug where upon buying an item, the item got permanently attached to my mouse cursor. This is not only very annoying, it also permanently disables your left mouse button. I suppose that's one way to force yourself to use keyboard shortcuts, but it's still rather annoying, especially when buying composite items. Anyone else who has had this? Any way to stop it, apart from restarting your game?

Timing is everything. It doesn't matter how much or how little damage you can bring to bear; if your timing is wrong, it's not going to matter.

If there's any design flaws present in Dota, it's probably that stuns (and specifically stuns) tend to be super, super good - they do a lot of damage (in many cases more than a "pure nuke"), they take the target out of the fight for a couple of seconds, and usually have only moderate cooldowns. At all levels of the game, stuns tend to be the great equalizer - even pro games often boil down to who has the most stuns wins.

Of course, there's a lot more to high-level Dota than that, and just picking 5 heroes with stuns doesn't mean you'll win... but if you break down all the games since the end of The International 2012, you'll notice that the more stuns a team has, the more likely they are to win.

But even so, timing is still the most relevant factor in winning or losing. There really are combos in the game that are more or less unbeatable, but which require flawless timing and positioning to pull off - being just a little off on either can result in the entire house of cards falling apart, and most of the cards ain't gonna land in your hat. Hell, even just spamming stuns still requires good timing, though less so than what're typically referred to as "wombo combo" team setups.

[Zcorp]

At all levels of the game, stuns tend to be the great equalizer - even pro games often boil down to who has the most stuns wins.

Of course, there's a lot more to high-level Dota than that, and just picking 5 heroes with stuns doesn't mean you'll win... but if you break down all the games since the end of The International 2012, you'll notice that the more stuns a team has, the more likely they are to win.

This is pretty much entirely untrue, if it was we would see 10 heroes every game that have a stun. It is also incredibly shallow, as you admit, but not all stuns are equal, there are disables that are often better than stuns and often stuns won't do much for you. Especially against a team that can turtle sufficiently to get bkb's or on a team with lots of stuns that can't push.

My criticism if this is shallow as well, but I wouldn't even agree with this as even a quite abstract generalization of likeliness to win. I would put 'number of stuns' on a team as one of the least accurate indicators of victory.

[Menacing Spike]

Yeah, consider dark seer: zero stuns, but he's probably the scariest late-game teamfight hero.

[OklahomaJoe]

Yeah, consider dark seer: zero stuns, but he's probably the scariest late-game teamfight hero.

There are exceptions, obviously Dark Seer is such a strong pick because can lane anywhere, will dominate many heroes in both mid or solo offlane, and Vacuum is quite frankly one of the most overpowered skills in the game - that kind of instant repositioning is immensely strong and there's not a lot you can do about it other than spread out (but Vac has a huge AOE) or BKB early.

That said, stuns are still a big deal. Light Strike Array, Split Earth, and even Storm Hammer are incredibly strong, dealing lots of damage while also (in the case of stormbolt-based stuns, anyway) being unerringly accurate.

Also: support Morphling. I'm wondering how long people are gonna figure it out. Waveform is a great AOE nuke combined with a blink, Adaptive Strike shoves target 400 units and can stun for up to 3 seconds. Waveform in behind them, Adaptive Strike them forward, then Force Staff them; you just shoved a stunned enemy into the middle of your team, and Morphling is still as hard to kill as ever. Kind of like a tankier Vengeful Spirit, though it requires much tighter timing.

Also, Replicate is severely underestimated; they only do 50% damage, but they gain all the orbs and passives of the cloned hero, and don't take additional damage like other illusions do. Cloning a late-game PL or Anti-Mage is horrifying.

I'm just waiting for the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade that gives the Replicate 100% of the target's damage instead of 50%

[Ixtellor]

Yeah, consider dark seer: zero stuns, but he's probably the scariest late-game teamfight hero.

In the old days Void Walker was the scariest late game hero... is he still around?

[Zcorp]

That said, stuns are still a big deal. Light Strike Array, Split Earth, and even Storm Hammer are incredibly strong, dealing lots of damage while also (in the case of stormbolt-based stuns, anyway) being unerringly accurate.

I'd hardly call LSA and Split EArth unerringly accurate, people error with them all the time .

Also: support Morphling. I'm wondering how long people are gonna figure it out. Waveform is a great AOE nuke combined with a blink, Adaptive Strike shoves target 400 units and can stun for up to 3 seconds. Waveform in behind them, Adaptive Strike them forward, then Force Staff them; you just shoved a stunned enemy into the middle of your team, and Morphling is still as hard to kill as ever. Kind of like a tankier Vengeful Spirit, though it requires much tighter timing.

He requires a bit of farm to even do that, and his survivability relates largely to his farm. Adaptive strike pushes 100-300, I believe this is based on relative Str but can't remember, can't harass easily in lane, only gets 1 spell early before being pretty much spent on mana. VS is far more useful during mid an early game, if you are behind or even late game unless the morph gets decent farm.

Support Mirana though, with the recent damage buff...have to take great advantage of her ult to be more useful than Lina though.

Also, Replicate is severely underestimated; they only do 50% damage, but they gain all the orbs and passives of the cloned hero, and don't take additional damage like other illusions do. Cloning a late-game PL or Anti-Mage is horrifying.

Yeah, a pretty strong counter to both of them, although there was a bug with replicating PL for a while, not sure if it is still there.

[OklahomaJoe]

That said, stuns are still a big deal. Light Strike Array, Split Earth, and even Storm Hammer are incredibly strong, dealing lots of damage while also (in the case of stormbolt-based stuns, anyway) being unerringly accurate.

I'd hardly call LSA and Split EArth unerringly accurate, people error with them all the time .

It was more directed at stormbolt clones, like sven or leoric. Sven's stun is so stupidly good... 325 damage in an AOE that large for something that doesn't require aim seems mighty unfair. Supposedly it's balanced around mana cost relative to his mana pool, but with items like soul ring and arcane boots in the game, I don't feel mana cost is a justifiable "balance knob" to use at all.

[Zcorp]

That said, stuns are still a big deal. Light Strike Array, Split Earth, and even Storm Hammer are incredibly strong, dealing lots of damage while also (in the case of stormbolt-based stuns, anyway) being unerringly accurate.

I'd hardly call LSA and Split EArth unerringly accurate, people error with them all the time .

It was more directed at stormbolt clones, like sven or leoric. Sven's stun is so stupidly good... 325 damage in an AOE that large for something that doesn't require aim seems mighty unfair. Supposedly it's balanced around mana cost relative to his mana pool, but with items like soul ring and arcane boots in the game, I don't feel mana cost is a justifiable "balance knob" to use at all.

It is also balanced by a 15 CD which is incredibly high (HFB is 8), pretty much regulating it to once per fight for most of the game. It is also his only ability that increases his damage output to his target besides hits Ult which is fairly restrictive due to needing to be able to attack the target.

But yes it is a powerful ability but multiple factors balance it making it better or worse depending on the situation than Hellfire Blast.

[Will]

but with items like soul ring and arcane boots in the game, I don't feel mana cost is a justifiable "balance knob" to use at all.

Depends on what part of the game you're in. Early to mid game, when you're laning, a well-timed stun can get you a gank. By the time you get boots or soul ring, you've generally transitioned to the teamfighting stage of the game, where you have a lot more options for dealing with the ability. That makes it a lot more situational.

(Though, grain of salt: I've played Sven like three times, and did MISERABLY every time.)

[Menacing Spike]

(Though, grain of salt: I've played Sven like three times, and did MISERABLY every time.)

I have like 85% win rate with the guy.

The stun is not the only factor in his usefulness at ganking, the level 1 cry gives godly MS and allows you and your friend to chase or run effectively.