DotA 2 - Valve's up and coming hat simulator

[Inhuman Bot]

http://imgur.com/x6Sco.png
DotA2 Official Website (www.dota2.com)

What is DotA/2?
DotA, or Defense of the Ancients, is a Warcraft III mod that involves two teams of five players competing against each other to take down their opponents' bases. While the base engine of DotA may have been an RTS, the game plays more like a hourlong RPG; each team's army units (known as "creeps") simply attack move to the enemy base in three lanes (bottom, middle, and top) and each player in DotA controls one of 100+ heroes, and gains gold and experience to buy items that can drastically boost their powers. As a single game takes around 40-60 minutes and every individual member is integral in the team's success, the game is highly competitive and has lead to a rabid community and fanbase that takes some skin-hardening to get used to.

DotA2, with Icefrog, the developer of DotA AllStars, the most popular and current iteration of DotA, will be a direct port of DotA on Steam and with Valve's full support

Who plays DotA?
Today, almost a decade after its inception, DotA has an estimated 10 million players on battle.net, Garena, and other international servers. A patch can get up to six million downloads in a day.

The competitive scene is ridiculously large and alive as well; from the Chinese dynasties CCM and LGD frought with succession drama to the old-school European dominators like MYM, OK, and Na'Vi, competitors are drawn from all over the world. This large playerbase contributes to a diversity of playstyles and strategies, and the large hero pool and monthly patches ensure that the game never gets stale.

Gosugamers (http://gosugamers.net/dota) has all the competitive news and streams you could want.

Valve is also sponsoring a one million dollar preview tournament at Gamescon (http://www.dota2.com/), with free broadcasts in 5 languages. Yes, you read that correctly. $1,000,000.

This sounds awfully similar to...
Yes, all those games that seem familiar (LoL, HoN, Demigod, Bloodline Champions, Realm of the Titans) are all DotA-likes (or Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas if you wish to stay neutral). Make no mistake though, this is not just the successor to the original, it is the direct reincarnation of DotA.

Sounds good, how do I play?

It's not out yet! Rumors are that it'll be playable by the public sometime in the fall, but as of now we don't really have any information. More information will probably come out during Gamescon (August 17-21), where the big tournament will be held.

What do we know so far?

"DotA2 is DotA Allstars with new technology. The entire roster of 100+ heroes is being brought over in its entirety. The single map games take place on is functionally identical to the one that you can download for free today in the Warcraft III mod. Items, skills, and upgrade paths are unchanged. Some hero skills work slightly better due to being freed from the now-ancient Warcraft III engine, but Dota 2 will be instantly familiar to any DotA player."
DotA2 uses Valve's Source engine: global lighting, cloth simulation, and integrated voice chat will be part of the game.
AI bots will take over for disconnected players, and will be available to play against in unranked training matches as well.
The game will also feature a ton of custom voice work. For a preview, check out this podcast (http://www.impetuouswindmills.com/2011/07/18/podcast-episode-41/) done by John Patrick Lowrie (the Sniper from TF2).
Valve is upgrading Steamworks (the company's backend technologies for matchmaking and other gameplay and community-related things) for DotA2, and apparently is developing some new mechanism to reward players in-game for participating in the Dota 2 community.
This will involve:
Skill-based matchmaking for both individuals and teams.
Interactive guides - highlighting suggested item purchases or displaying useful information during a match have been mentioned.
A coaching system where veteran players can help out new players. "The coach sees the pupil's screen, and gets private voice and chat channels to communicate with them. The coach probably won't be able to take control of anything directly (once again, the details are currently under discussion)."


Links
Valve's DotA2 Page (http://www.dota2.com/)
The DotA2 Devblog (http://blog.dota2.com/)
Playdota, DotA's Official Site (http://www.playdota.com/)
Icefrog's Devblog for DotA (http://www.playdota.com/forums/blogs/icefrog/)
Gosugamers for the Competitive Scene (http://gosugamers.net/dota)

In-game
To be added.

Citations
http://blog.dota2.com/
http://www.dota2.com/
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/10/13/dota-2-announced-details.aspx

[Inhuman Bot]

http://i.imgur.com/ktolY.jpg

[James Lu]

The graphics have improved and it's true that being freed from the Warcraft III engine allows for more flexibility for the developers. I'm interested to see how the game pans out when it's released.

[Smight]

One million dolars
http://reason.com/assets/mc/tcavanaugh/drevil.jpg

One thing I'm interested here is, will the community be any better than LoL or HoN , I uninstalled both games because smurfing and BS level were off the chart in both games, apperently you are not alowed to even try playing if you are nor "pro" or whatnot:smallfurious:

[James Lu]

In every game there will always be a couple of "rotten eggs" and chances are those "pro-seekers" are noobs themselves.

[Winterwind]

That thing about it being "not a successor but a reincarnation" is actually a massive argument against it in my eyes. DotA has some major flaws in my eyes, first and foremost it being rife with utterly unimaginative heroes (I counted once how often an ability that was basically a clone of the default WC3 Storm Bolt - click on something, hits automatically, deals damage and stuns it for some duration - there were amongst all the heroes, and the number was something like 15 or 20. That's right, about a fifth of the heroes share the same boring spell, only with slightly varying numbers! Same with a lot of other extremely generic and boring to use spells. Other games of that type tend to, at least, focus more on spells that require positioning and targeting to work properly, making their usage more interesting - not DotA. And worst of all, quite frequently the spells of a hero don't even have all that much synergy - rather than forming a cohesive concept that lends itself for a unique and interesting play-style, quite frequently a hero is just a collection of utterly unrelated, random abilities. It's much better with the heroes they included later on, but even so.).

It also has some mechanics I consider just plainly poorly thought out - denying is just stupid, for starters, and shifts the focus from stuff that makes sense - trying to harrass the opponent, wound them, and prevent them from farming by forcing them to back off - to stuff that makes no sense at all, namely killing one's own allies to prevent the enemy from killing them. I don't buy that nonsense that it increases the skill required - it only means that one is forced to waste a part of the time one would be spending on better positioning, better harassment etc. on denying instead. Extreme amounts of stuns and crowd control are bad, too, because they are no fun to play against - dying because one gives one's best and it's just not enough because one gets outplayed is one thing, dying without being able to do anything about it because one cannot act for 10 seconds is moronic game design.

Add in that it lacks in layers of complexity added by its spiritual successors, like LoL - no brush that makes people inside invisible, no jungle holding truly important buffs and making it a major part of the game, no scaling on the mages (allowing only physical damage dealers to carry), no different damage types with a well integrated system of building defences against them (no, having just two or three items that give magic resistance doesn't count), and... yeah, I just see no reason why I would ever play DotA when I could be playing LoL. If they improved upon their concept - like all the games that spawned from DotA did - then yeah, I might be tentatively interested (unlikely though. I'm satisfied enough as is with LoL, I have all my friends playing that, I see no reason at all to switch. DotA2 would have to come up with some massive improvements over LoL, which itself is infinitely superior to DotA in order to win me over). But considering DotA players tend to consider their nonsense mechanics (like that denying thing) to be advantages to the system, I seriously doubt they would be able to improve it anyway.

I used to like DotA back in the day, but it has some really, really bad design decisions, and now that there are games available that have done away with those bad design decisions and introduced all sorts of their own, major improvements, it's just, plain and simply, a bad game. Trying to recreate it without trying to fix its issues strikes me as insane.


One thing I'm interested here is, will the community be any better than LoL or HoN , I uninstalled both games because smurfing and BS level were off the chart in both games, apperently you are not alowed to even try playing if you are nor "pro" or whatnot:smallfurious:Considering the community of the original DotA is infinitely worse than that of LoL, I'm willing to bet the same will be the case here.

[Tono]

Reposting but briefed up because I didn't see this thread until just now, I see no problem with any of the points you mentioned. I have yet to meet a Furion/SS/DS whose whole purpose wasn't the deeps, and I find it more balanced as far as characters go then LoL. Hell, do you know how long Balanar went before he was discovered as a decent carry? Fact is there are over a hudred characters, and IF's goal was to make them all tournament worthy, while producing new ones, and guess what? For the most part, it worked. Yes there were some that were more popular then others, but there always is.
And even mentioning that a lack of Brushes and jungle buffs kills complexity, well, thats kinda just insulting. I find knowing how to use LoS advantages and having to control two buffs that are dead smack in the middle of the map a lot more complex then 'sit in bush. Be invisible.' and a control point thats equivalent to the secret shop or just another jungle mob.

And may I point out that coming into a DotA thread and calling the mechanics that people use, and like as 'nonsense,' that they are so badly designed that the people playing and incharge would never even have to ability to improve on them, and then claiming that no matter what the community that plays it is going to be infinitely worse then that of lol, is very rude considering, y'know, that most of us in the thread are members of that community. And also just slightly ironic considering there is a lot of crossover between the two.

Edit: May want to resize that image thar.

[Keld Denar]

Oh...wow. I'm on this like a hobo on a ham sammich! <3 me some DotA!

[Winterwind]

Responding to your post in the LoL thread first:

Not wanting to get into specifics because I don't want to provoke anything and this -really- isn't the place to discuss the games comparatively because believe it or not most people in a LoL thread are going to be LoL players, but just throwing out the fact that DotA is 'flawed' because of LoS instead of bushes and the ability to deny, really does it no justice and is not a universal truth.I never, ever mentioned LoS anywhere in my post, so I have no idea where you are getting that from. :smallconfused:
As for the rest, see further below.


Some of us loved doing all of that, and some people, not myself, saw people unwilling to learn it as stubbornness and lack of skill of the person in question. Some of us learned to Harass while deny'n, how to juke in the forest with a bite of a tree, or farm the forest using BM, Troll warlord, and Enigma for those early benefits. How to carry or off-carry with Stormspirit, Dark Seer, Centaur warlord or any number of non-carries. Some of us noted that using the War3 engine to play limited the abilities of the game, but we accepted that as how it had to be, and learned to use them, as part of the game, but acknowledged that they were in fact War3 limitations. That it is possible to overcome the limitations of heroes with sufficiently superior skill to the opponent is not a merit of said heroes or the game's design, it's just an obvious consequence of superior skill. I'd argue that being more effective early on but condemned to becoming increasingly less worth for one's team as time goes on, equal skill assumed, is decidedly worse design than making sure everyone gets to contribute for the entire game. Which, incidentally, also makes the design philosophies of having carries that carry so hard as they do in DotA a really bad one in my eyes.
More on the rest in a moment.


(Quick note, about 2 years ago when I was still reading the DotA forums, only one skill was the vanilla Storm Bolt, all the others were heavily changed and modified.)Sorry, but that's just blatantly false.
List of spells that are in DotA right now that are just "click on the opponent, opponent suffers X damage. There may be a stun applied":
- Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt
- Dragon Knight's Dragon Tail
- Moon Rider's Lucent Beam
- Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile
- Bounty Hunter's Shuriken Toss
- Lord of Olympus' Lightning Bolt
- Slayer's Laguna Blade
- Ogre Magi's Fireblast
- Demon Witch's Finger of Death

Spells that are virtually the same with only minimal modifications thereof:
- Centaur Warchief's Double Edge (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that it costs life in addition to mana to cast.)
- Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt (only change is that the damage and stun duration are both random, in itself bad design for needlessly introducing chance into a game of strategy and micro skill)
- Skeleton King's Hellfire Blast (only change is that after the stun, there is a brief period of slow in addition)
- Crystal Maiden's Frostbite (only change is that the damage is dealt over the duration of the stun, rather than instantly. Unless it still allows to cast spells when inside this, which as I recall it does not; if it does, remove it from this list.)
- Holy Knight's Test of Faith (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that the damage is random, but of pure-type.)

That's being generous here, otherwise I would have included the vast numbers of other auto-hit single target damage spells that have only minimal additional effects, like the Doom Bringer's LVL?Death or the Dwarven Sniper's Assassinate. I'll grant that those have some modification that changes their functionality at least somewhat, so I'll let those be.

Most of these spells haven't changed in a looong time, so, no idea what you were looking at those two years ago. :smallwink:


I guess I kinda defeated myself in not wanting to get into the mechanics of the game, but I guess my point is this, don't confuse your dislike deny'n and other mechanics of the game as major universal drawbacks of DotA, some of us prefer them.Which I counter with a direct reversal: Don't confuse your liking of specific mechanics, that you have gotten used to and that are a part of a game for you, for them not being bad design. There is such a thing as objectively bad design; it's hallmarks are being counter-intuitive, non-engaging to the player, distracting from more intuitive/fun/engaging stuff to do, and/or frustrating to play with or, most crucially, against.

I'd argue that denying is guilty of the first, third and fourth of these:
Firstly, it is utterly counter-intuitive to be killing one's own allies. When you imagine a battle going on, two armies meeting each other on a battlefield, is the first image that comes to your mind that of some officers standing around, focused primarily on which ones of their soldiers are about to be shot, and then always pulling out their gun and shooting said soldiers first? Can you imagine Aragorn jumping around on the walls of Helm's Deep, not trying to fend off the invading orcs, but slaying any of the Rohirrim who seems to be at a disadvantage in his struggle? And, why does it even make that much of a difference that it was the enemy who assassinated their own warrior, when it was your side that brought them down to the point where they were basically dead? Players going into a game will bring an attitude of trying to do as much damage to the enemy side as possible - suddenly being told that the right thing to do is actually paying just as much attention to doing damage to the own side is as contrary to natural instincts as it gets.

Also, I don't think it actually requires more skill. I view it more in terms of attention - the player has a fixed amount of skill, and "distributes" that skill on various tasks. When there is denying, the player will invest part of their attention on last-hitting, part of it on denying, and part of it on harassing. When there is no denying, the player has freed up attention so they can focus more on last-hitting and harassing, and therefore do that better. They aren't playing either better or worse than before overall - but with less different tasks involved, they are better at these tasks. Since harassing (and avoiding being harassed) are the actually interesting part, where one is up against a player and trying to outsmart and outplay them in a complex dance, where the situation is dynamic and full of action, and since it's actually something one signed up for (fighting glorious enemy champions!) rather than something counter-intuitive (being an executioner for one's own soldiers!), I'd say that any change that shifts the focus more towards that and allows players to pay more attention to it is a good one.

Lastly, it needlessly removes fun for the other side. There they have worked so long to bring that enemy tower down - and then they are denied the reward for that! Games should be about fun, and fun is, to a large part, about rewards - after going through a lot of pain to get that tower down, it's only logical to give them the reward and let them have the tower kill. By allowing to deny it, noone is happy: The side that denied it is down one tower, the others have been screwed out of getting to kill that tower that they have been trying to kill for so long.

Important to note: It is perfectly legit to like and enjoy something that is, objectively speaking, badly designed. For instance: I did enjoy play as Leoric, and if I was forced to play a DotA game, he would (while hardly being my first pick) be definitely up there amongst the options I'd consider. Yet I think he is, objectively, an absolutely atrociously designed hero. Why? Because he is not engaging - no less but three of his abilities, including his ultimate, are basically passives - you don't actively use them, they are just there, and his fourth ability is just a minimally modified copy of a boring WC3 spell that requires no positioning, targeting or other skill to use. The passives are, for the most part, not even something particularly interesting - critical strike is the most boring element in the game anyway, as it might essentially just be "your attacks deal more damage" (and it would actually be better designed if it was, as it would remove random chance), and the other one is just a regular life steal. His spells don't have synergy beyond the very most rudimentary level (turning him more into a melee-killing-machine - if you want to know what I consider synergy, by the way, look at, for example, Abaddon:
Aphotic Shield can make either him or an ally more durable, both befitting his support role. Since Death Coil has a health cost, it can be used to detonate Aphotic Shield, making those two skills work hand in hand. Death Coil also heals, which gives him two support/healing skills, making him a primary target, because the rest of his team will be difficult to kill while he's around - so Borrowed Time is there to make him more difficult to kill.

That's synergy. And there are plenty of DotA heroes who are well designed and have that - alas, there are far, far more who don't. No, that's not me just being adverse to DotA here and making broad, negative estimates, I actually counted.Almost no active spells, boring spells at that, little synergy - that's an abysmally badly designed hero. I still enjoy playing him, because sometimes, I just like taking something as simplistic as could be and bashing heads in with it - but I'm not going to pretend that's anything other than really, really bad design.

By which I mean: Whether you like the DotA mechanics or not is quite irrelevant to whether they are good, well designed mechanics. If you want to argue why you think they actually are good, well designed, logical, intuitive etc., go ahead - I love discussing game design, we surely can have a wonderful discussion about that. But please don't use "I like those mechanics" as an argument for them being good; I'll just shrug and say, "What does one have to do with the other?". :smallwink:


Oh, and while I'm at it, I almost forgot to mention another point where I find DotA really badly designed: Gold loss upon death. The other side is already getting rewarded for killing you (see before: Rewarding people for stuff they accomplished adds to fun, therefore good design). Being extra-punished in this manner makes it only more frustrating if one is on the losing side, makes it needlessly more difficult to turn the game around, makes it so that if any one hero falls behind, they will just snowball into being more useless from there on (rather than making sure anyone can still contribute), and is just plain frustrating. In other words, it's an anti-fun mechanic. If one wants more snowballing for the winning side (which may be absolutely desirable - after all, without snowballing, games would go on forever), one should just give more gold to the killer, not remove gold from the person that died. Positive effects add to fun. Negative ones diminish it. One can set up the game such that even the losing side can have fun, and DotA went out of its way to do the exact opposite.

For the same reason, I find abilities like Pudge's permanent Strength gain for kills to be perfectly fine, while abilities like the Silencer's Last Word, that permanently remove ability points from enemy heroes, to be the very paragon of terrible design.


Reposting but briefed up because I didn't see this thread until just now, I see no problem with any of the points you mentioned. I have yet to meet a Furion/SS/DS whose whole purpose wasn't the deeps, and I find it more balanced as far as characters go then LoL. Hell, do you know how long Balanar went before he was discovered as a decent carry? Fact is there are over a hudred characters, and IF's goal was to make them all tournament worthy, while producing new ones, and guess what? For the most part, it worked. Yes there were some that were more popular then others, but there always is.Considering LoL's champions tend to have win-ratios within the 40-60% window, with the vast majority of them fairly close to 50%, I'd say it's at the very least satisfactorily balanced - whether better or worse than DotA, I couldn't tell, though I hear at higher skill levels there are champions that are just vastly superior than others in DotA. But even if not - why do you bring this up? I didn't say LoL was better balanced than DotA, nor did I ever bring up DotA's balance or lack thereof as a point of criticism against it.

Combining this with your earlier remark about LoS, I'm getting the impression you have participated in (or at least read) some other discussions of some LoL fanboys trashing DotA, remembered what their primary complaints were, and are arguing against them now. Please stop. Don't put their words into my mouth.


And even mentioning that a lack of Brushes and jungle buffs kills complexity, well, thats kinda just insulting.Sorry - my intent was by no means to insult either you, nor anyone else. I don't quite see what you find insulting though - I'd say that anything that is an additional aspect of the game adds to complexity. Removing denying reduces complexity, too, there is no doubt about that - in that case, I'd argue it's complexity the game is better off without, but it is undeniably (no pun intended) an aspect of the game that one has to consider if it's there.


I find knowing how to use LoS advantages and having to control two buffs that are dead smack in the middle of the map a lot more complex then 'sit in bush. Be invisible.'Having vast areas that turn anyone inside invisible? I would say the potential for ganks and ambushes on the one hand, and skillful escapes on the other is greatly enhanced by having those in comparison to, well, not having those.


and a control point thats equivalent to the secret shop or just another jungle mob.Now, this may be my lacking DotA knowledge, but I really don't think controlling the secret shop or some random jungle mob is anything even remotely comparable to having a dedicated player who does nothing but jungle, gank and counterjungle for the entire laning phase, especially with creeps as powerful as the buff monsters and the dragon involved. :smallconfused:


And may I point out that coming into a DotA thread and calling the mechanics that people use, and like as 'nonsense,' that they are so badly designed that the people playing and incharge would never even have to ability to improve on them, and then claiming that no matter what the community that plays it is going to be infinitely worse then that of lol, is very rude considering, y'know, that most of us in the thread are members of that community. And also just slightly ironic considering there is a lot of crossover between the two.Firstly, I'm actually assuming people reading this thread will be people who have some interest in DotA and the AoS-genre in general, maybe people who played DotA at some point before losing interest for one reason or another, and wondering if this might rather catch their interest, and lastly people interested in discussing DotA (which, incidentally, is what I am, and what I am doing right now. I'm pretty sure that thinking something sucks is a valid position to take in a discussion, and hardly rude at all.). Not necessarily only people who are part of the DotA community.

Secondly, I don't see why anybody here would feel I was talking about them specifically, and therefore feel insulted. Of course there is a lot of fine individuals to be found anywhere, including the DotA community. That doesn't change anything about the community as a whole being much, much worse: In LoL, games without any flamers at all are fairly frequent - in fact, I'd say they are well in the majority. In DotA, not only do I not recall ever being in a single game where people were not flaming like crazy, but they were using racial slurs and alike that just don't happen in LoL, because people who would be using them would be instantly banned. No, the LoL community is far from perfect, but compared to what goes on in DotA games? It's like comparing the Giant in the Playground forums with YouTube comments. And while, yes, the above are only my personal impressions, I have yet to meet a person who felt differently, and I've seen quite a lot of various people comment on that independently.
Sidenote: I have only ever played DotA on the BattleNet. If there are better DotA communities to be found on private servers, more power to them; doesn't change how horrid the main DotA community on BNet is though.

[Volatar]

Uhhh, I was about to try to read this thread, but that image in the opening post is so wide I have to scroll horizontally back and forth to read. Could you please make it a reasonable width?

[toasty]

Considering this is a DotA2 thread, I figured I might as well pull this out from the LoL thread and repost it.


NA doesn't have any teams in the DotA2 tournament not because everyone is off playing LoL, but because Americas never really had any supa ultra decent teams like Europe/Asia.

Yeah, I know. But it sure doesn't help that everyone plays lol now. :smalltongue:


Not wanting to get into specifics because I don't want to provoke anything and this -really- isn't the place to discuss the games comparatively because believe it or not most people in a LoL thread are going to be LoL players, but just throwing out the fact that DotA is 'flawed' because of LoS instead of bushes and the ability to deny, really does it no justice and is not a universal truth.

? Those are base design mechanics. They are BOTH glitches that come from WC3 engine, which designed for a very different game. That's why I love to bring them out. Furthermore, they don't encourage new players to learn them in easy and quick fashion. I played DotA for 3 years and never once, ONCE, did I realize that I could abuse LoS mechanics. I didn't even know it was possible until after I stopped playing. I knew about denying, but nobody really bothered.


Some of us loved doing all of that, and some people, not myself, saw people unwilling to learn it as stubbornness and lack of skill of the person in question.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with DotA. Especially in the "good old days" before HoN and LoL came out and there wasn't much else to play.


Some of us noted that using the War3 engine to play limited the abilities of the game, but we accepted that as how it had to be, and learned to use them, as part of the game, but acknowledged that they were in fact War3 limitations. (Quick note, about 2 years ago when I was still reading the DotA forums, only one skill was the vanilla Storm Bolt, all the others were heavily changed and modified.)

Yes, WC3 had limitations that crippled DotA as a game. It was still a really fun game, the best game I played since the release of SCII and LoL (I'd put LoL slightly higher, only because its more fun). That's not what anyone here is arguing. You seem to be using some sort of appeal to emotion here, saying, "we dealt, and it was glorious." I'm saying that I love DotA and realize it has flaws, flaws I don't want to deal with. Flaws that shouldn't be carried over to DotA's "sequel." Or other such games like HoN. But they were? Why? because people had too much emotional attachment to flaws and broken mechanics that developed over time thanks to a limited engine.


tl;dr LoL threads should be about LoL, some of us love the DotA mechanics, and this topic should go back to lol and probably stay there.

Again: Those mechanics are bad. They are poorly desinged or they came about because of flaws in the engine. That's why LoL is the only "good" moba game that I know of. Its the first game that took the MOBA genre and successfully said: Why are these games fun? Why are they NOT FUN? What can we do to fix things? And then went from there. Lo and behold: junglers, double mage, tankyDPS.

In order to be a good game desinger you can't just say "what sells?" You have to understand WHY it sells. Icefrog and the HoN crew knew what sells: DotA sells. They don't know why it sells, or they thought they knew. But the truth is LoL is more popular than DotA in the world were people make money (China is probably still the biggest MOBA market, but good luck trying to make money off of Asians. I lived in Asia for 12 years, they don't like paying for there video games:smalltongue:). That should say something about the game and the design policy of LoL vs. HoN/DotA.

In other news: Is there ANY WAY to counter Caitlyn Soraka bot lane? It seems impossible. :smallsigh:

edit:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=11549751

From what I understand DotA has the worst community of the "big 3" MOBA games. So good luck there.

HOWEVER: I suggest that if you enjoy DotA2 (when its released) or LoL or even HoN, don't solo queue. Find friends and queue with them. I solo queue, but I also enjoy shooting my own foot, if you know what i mean. :smalltongue:

[Winterwind]

This right here:
Yes, WC3 had limitations that crippled DotA as a game. It was still a really fun game, the best game I played since the release of SCII and LoL (I'd put LoL slightly higher, only because its more fun). That's not what anyone here is arguing. You seem to be using some sort of appeal to emotion here, saying, "we dealt, and it was glorious." I'm saying that I love DotA and realize it has flaws, flaws I don't want to deal with. Flaws that shouldn't be carried over to DotA's "sequel." Or other such games like HoN. But they were? Why? because people had too much emotional attachment to flaws and broken mechanics that developed over time thanks to a limited engine.is essentially a perfect summary of what took me this entire monstrous post up there to express. :smallredface:

[Zeful]

You know to be honest, I don't think this game is going to do very well in the long term. It might have a good stable player-base, or competitive scene. But I don't see it as being this monolithic force to end all MOBA games, though at the very least might shake things up for Riot. Dota2 won't become big, at least without one hell of a tutorial. Stuff like denying and Line of Sight abuse aren't immediately obvious to players, and they need to be, otherwise the game isn't as accessible. It's the main reason LoL is so big. It's very accessible, everything you need to know is either immediately apparent, or becomes apparent after playing a couple of games (with the exception of knowing which dashes go through which walls) after that it's all strategy and tactics. The two tutorials introduce you to the basics of the game, and then teach you about the play itself. If Dota2 lacks this, then it's going to be stuck with a smaller community.

[Cynan Machae]

Having played DotA for a long time, and played HoN nowadays, I can't wait enough for DotA2 to come out soon :) With a 1 million tourney, it's pretty much obvious that's its all the marketing Valve will do, the DotA name in itself is helping a lot.

On the subject of "flaws" that have been pointed out, I'm not really gonna argue about the lol vs Dota PoV, imo it's just a matter of opinions whatever game you prefer, and people should just stop pointing out opinions as good or bad. I don't mind people prefering/having more fun with LoL or DotA, it's just I dont agree with people stating it's a better game because something they prefer or dislike is in or not.

Anyway, I'm really excited to see how stuff is going to work out, specificly all the new maps and modes that had been leaked some weeks ago (fortress mode, arena mode, 3 teams maps and stuff). Also, I'm very curious about this new mentoring system for helping new players, supposedly theres going to be an insensitive good enough for people to use it (both ways), really wonder how it's gonna work.

Another point, I really wonder how the new change to int hero is gonna affect them (leak that said that all int hero will have a spell now scaling with their int).

[Tychris1]

.........

You know, I have to ask some people here two questions.

1. Can you please read the title of this thread.

2. Can you please read the title of the LoL thread.

What is there inherent difference? One thread is about DotA 2 and one is about LoL.

What does that mean? It means that if you want to ramble on about how superior your game is to the other then go into your thread and do so. Do not bring it to the other thread or vice versa.

And Winterwind, I think the offensive part was that you came into this thread with the sole purpose of pointing out the "flaws" of DotA, calling it worse then other games out there, and at the ending of your first post saying that the community is infitiley worse when you are in the presence OF SAID community is rather insulting. It's like if you went to a country that's community revolved around eating Pickles and your community ate onions, so you tell them how wrong they are and how worse there civilization is compared to yours. I'm a LoL player and even I wouldn't do that.

[Grif]

Another point, I really wonder how the new change to int hero is gonna affect them (leak that said that all int hero will have a spell now scaling with their int).

leak that said that all int hero will have a spell now scaling with their int

spell now scaling with their int

This just made me squee. Finally I can play Crystal Maiden without feeling utterly useless in the endgame.

[toasty]

.........

You know, I have to ask some people here two questions.

1. Can you please read the title of this thread.

2. Can you please read the title of the LoL thread.

What is there inherent difference? One thread is about DotA 2 and one is about LoL.

Hi. I played DotA for 3 years before moving on to LoL, which I consider a better game. I still LOVE DotA. I'm going to buy Dota 2 on release. I'm excited about DotA2 and I really want to see what Valve can do.

But at the same time, I really think DotA has major design flaws. These are not "differences between games" in the sense that CounterStrike has less crazy jumping and more "normal" guns and TF2 has "crazy" guns and stuff like Rocket Jumps and Double Jumping scouts. These are design flaws in the sense that there are things in DotA that "dont make sense" to average players and certain ways heroes have to be built that make them useless late game (mages not scaling, for instance).


What does that mean? It means that if you want to ramble on about how superior your game is to the other then go into your thread and do so. Do not bring it to the other thread or vice versa.

I'm not rambling about "my game" (since when was LoL "my game"? Since when was dota "not my game?" I don't play DotA cuz I find LoL better... so?), I'm rambling about DotA and the problems that DotA has and will likely still have. I've mentioned LoL as a comparison as how I think companies should turn DotA into "real games," that's all.


And Winterwind, I think the offensive part was that you came into this thread with the sole purpose of pointing out the "flaws" of DotA, calling it worse then other games out there, and at the ending of your first post saying that the community is infitiley worse when you are in the presence OF SAID community is rather insulting.

Its a well known fact that the DotA community is one of the worst communities in video gaming history. Up there with Xbox Live in the "if you are not in the top 1% people will attempt to verbally rape you." LoL isn't much worse, to be honest. Die twice? The chances are, your team will tell you how much **** you suck and that you should uninstall cuz your a feedernoob.

Its not rude to say that the community is rude when the community is rude. I'm glad that you are not rude. But you are the exception to the rule. I think everyone, EVERYONE, at some point rages in DotA/LoL/HoN


It's like if you went to a country that's community revolved around eating Pickles and your community ate onions, so you tell them how wrong they are and how worse there civilization is compared to yours. I'm a LoL player and even I wouldn't do that.

No, its more like telling Americans that they're known for being loud when everyone knows Americans are known for being loud. Or telling Nigerians they have a corrupt government after Transparency International just announced that Nigeria was the most corrupt nation in the world.

Oh and this:

This just made me squee. Finally I can play Crystal Maiden without feeling utterly useless in the endgame.

Wait what? That's amazing. If they do that I'm going to be really excited.:smallbiggrin:

[Winterwind]

On the subject of "flaws" that have been pointed out, I'm not really gonna argue about the lol vs Dota PoV, imo it's just a matter of opinions whatever game you prefer, and people should just stop pointing out opinions as good or bad. I don't mind people prefering/having more fun with LoL or DotA, it's just I dont agree with people stating it's a better game because something they prefer or dislike is in or not.If these were opinions, I'd agree. I don't think they are, though. I really do think DotA is demonstrably, objectively inferior.


.........

You know, I have to ask some people here two questions.

1. Can you please read the title of this thread.

2. Can you please read the title of the LoL thread.

What is there inherent difference? One thread is about DotA 2 and one is about LoL.

What does that mean? It means that if you want to ramble on about how superior your game is to the other then go into your thread and do so. Do not bring it to the other thread or vice versa.Indeed. Which is why I use the thread about DotA to point out what I consider to be flaws in it.
You seem to think I'm trying to make a point why I think LoL is superior. I'm not. I'm trying to make a point why I think keeping DotA2 as similar to DotA as possible, rather than changing it fundamentally, is a very bad idea. This is not about LoL, that's entirely about DotA.


And Winterwind, I think the offensive part was that you came into this thread with the sole purpose of pointing out the "flaws" of DotA, calling it worse then other games out there,...what other thread would you suggest I use for that? Considering this is the thread to discuss DotA, it seems like precisely the place where such a thing belongs. :smallconfused:


and at the ending of your first post saying that the community is infitiley worse when you are in the presence OF SAID community is rather insulting. It's like if you went to a country that's community revolved around eating Pickles and your community ate onions, so you tell them how wrong they are and how worse there civilization is compared to yours. I'm a LoL player and even I wouldn't do that.What? I'm sorry, I just don't begin to understand the logic of that, to the point where this entire paragraph might as well be written in a language I don't speak. There is way more flaming and verbal harassment in DotA games than in LoL games, hence the community is worse, hence I reported that when somebody inquired. It's simple as that. And I sure as heck am not in the presence of said community; at most, I am in the presence of a few individuals, who may or may not participate in said community, but are in no way representative of it (for the simple reason that any post representative of the DotA community would be an instantly bannable offence on the GitP forums).

[The Orange Zergling]

For a number of years I was infamous among the WarCraft 3 crowd on these forums for my vehement dislike of DotA, and I really don't think anyone would appreciate me injecting my particular brand of venom into this discussion, so I'm just going to summarize my feelings thusly; DotA2 represents the best possible opportunity for them to take all of the flaws DotA had (See Winterwind's posts, more or less) and get rid of them, rebuilding the game from the ground-up to be as good as it could possibly be, and they're just ignoring that opportunity by directly porting it. This may very well be one of the biggest wasted-opportunities since Spore.

That being said, Valve is a company full of extremely smart and talented people, so maybe over time they'll take DotA2 in a new, better direction. Until then, though, this is definitely not a game that piques my interest.

[Volatar]

.........

You know, I have to ask some people here two questions.

1. Can you please read the title of this thread.

2. Can you please read the title of the LoL thread.

What is there inherent difference? One thread is about DotA 2 and one is about LoL.

What does that mean? It means that if you want to ramble on about how superior your game is to the other then go into your thread and do so. Do not bring it to the other thread or vice versa.

And Winterwind, I think the offensive part was that you came into this thread with the sole purpose of pointing out the "flaws" of DotA, calling it worse then other games out there, and at the ending of your first post saying that the community is infitiley worse when you are in the presence OF SAID community is rather insulting. It's like if you went to a country that's community revolved around eating Pickles and your community ate onions, so you tell them how wrong they are and how worse there civilization is compared to yours. I'm a LoL player and even I wouldn't do that.

This thread is about DotA2. Since it has been said that DotA2 is a direct port of DotA, the flaws of DotA is an entirely appropriate subject.

Comparing DotA to LoL is not a bad thing. Whenever a new MMO comes out, what is it compared to? WoW. Whenever a new shooter comes out, what is it compared to? Modern Warfare/Battlefield/TF2. Every sandbox RPG is compared to the Elder Scrolls series. Every RPG to Final Fantasy. Every Platformer to Mario. LoL is the biggest competitor out there, and is therefore the standard comparison for this genre.

Humans like to compare things to put things in perspective. We will always do so, no matter the subject. Please don't be offended by it.



Will I be playing DotA2 when it is released? Heck yes.

Do I expect it to replace LoL? No.

Am I ok with being pleasantly surprised? Absolutely.

If DotA2 actually turns out to be funner than LoL, will I completely switch over? Depends on what my friends play. I will play with my friends, wherever they go. Even if I end up liking LoL more, but all my friends switch to DotA2, I will play DotA2.

[Joran]

So interesting intellectual property question for those who love DotA. What gives Valve the right to port over all the heroes, maps, and to trademark the name "DotA"? Since, DotA was originally a completely community-based initiative, I assume hero appearances, art, names should belong to the people who created them.

Unlike previous Valve spin-offs like Team Fortress, Valve only hired IceFrog and not the entire development team. Previous people who worked on DotA like Guinsoo and Pendragon work for rival companies. Also, DotA was not originally developed on a Valve platform like Team Fortress was.

I find it odd that Valve is trying to grab at DotA's popularity.

A link to an interview with Guinsoo (IceFrog's predecessor) and Pendragon.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/17/riot-games-dev-counter-files-dota-trademark/

[Tono]

I actually don't talk much on forums because I hate this part but here it goes.

Responding to your post in the LoL thread first:
I never, ever mentioned LoS anywhere in my post, so I have no idea where you are getting that from. :smallconfused:
As for the rest, see further below.
I took your comment about how a lack of brush takes from the games complexity as a comment on LoS, as they fill the same roll.


Add in that it lacks in layers of complexity added by its spiritual successors, like LoL - no brush that makes people inside invisible




That it is possible to overcome the limitations of heroes with sufficiently superior skill to the opponent is not a merit of said heroes or the game's design, it's just an obvious consequence of superior skill. I'd argue that being more effective early on but condemned to becoming increasingly less worth for one's team as time goes on, equal skill assumed, is decidedly worse design than making sure everyone gets to contribute for the entire game. Which, incidentally, also makes the design philosophies of having carries that carry so hard as they do in DotA a really bad one in my eyes.
More on the rest in a moment.

I... I don't think I am able to understand what you are saying here. But if I understand, its that skill trumping individual character choice doesn't make it a decent game and having characters that are good early, but bad late, and viscersa is a bad game design? I apologize if that wasn't meant, but something just didn't click in my brain reading that, if that is what you meant then well. I disagree.


Sorry, but that's just blatantly false.
List of spells that are in DotA right now that are just "click on the opponent, opponent suffers X damage. There may be a stun applied":
- Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt
- Dragon Knight's Dragon Tail
- Moon Rider's Lucent Beam
- Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile
- Bounty Hunter's Shuriken Toss
- Lord of Olympus' Lightning Bolt
- Slayer's Laguna Blade
- Ogre Magi's Fireblast
- Demon Witch's Finger of Death

Spells that are virtually the same with only minimal modifications thereof:
- Centaur Warchief's Double Edge (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that it costs life in addition to mana to cast.)
- Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt (only change is that the damage and stun duration are both random, in itself bad design for needlessly introducing chance into a game of strategy and micro skill)
- Skeleton King's Hellfire Blast (only change is that after the stun, there is a brief period of slow in addition)
- Crystal Maiden's Frostbite (only change is that the damage is dealt over the duration of the stun, rather than instantly. Unless it still allows to cast spells when inside this, which as I recall it does not; if it does, remove it from this list.)
- Holy Knight's Test of Faith (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that the damage is random, but of pure-type.)

That's being generous here, otherwise I would have included the vast numbers of other auto-hit single target damage spells that have only minimal additional effects, like the Doom Bringer's LVL?Death or the Dwarven Sniper's Assassinate. I'll grant that those have some modification that changes their functionality at least somewhat, so I'll let those be.

Most of these spells haven't changed in a looong time, so, no idea what you were looking at those two years ago. :smallwink:

Yes, some skills are based on others, and most of the skills not based on War3 units uses dummy units liberally, but stating that they are all the same ability is like someone going to LoL and saying that all the skill shots are the same. For example;
Amumu, Morganna, lux, Aniva, Blitzcrank, Caitlyn, Corki, Dr. Mundo, Ezreal, Galio, Janna, Jarvan, Kennen, LeBlanc, Lee Sin, Leona, NIdalee, Nocturne, Olaf, Rumble, and Sivir. All have the same skill. You use skill, the skill goes from the character into a straight line, and it damages the character while maybe applying some sort of CC to it. Not to mention that all shields but Lux's are essentially the same, 'Click unit. Unit no die.'

Anyway, back to DotA I can't pick apart that list because well, its been years since I cared to, but I know at least one of those up there is based on dummy units, and most of them have there own set of visuals. Thats more then enough variations.


Which I counter with a direct reversal: Don't confuse your liking of specific mechanics, that you have gotten used to and that are a part of a game for you, for them not being bad design. There is such a thing as objectively bad design; it's hallmarks are being counter-intuitive, non-engaging to the player, distracting from more intuitive/fun/engaging stuff to do, and/or frustrating to play with or, most crucially, against.

I'd argue that denying is guilty of the first, third and fourth of these:
Firstly, it is utterly counter-intuitive to be killing one's own allies. When you imagine a battle going on, two armies meeting each other on a battlefield, is the first image that comes to your mind that of some officers standing around, focused primarily on which ones of their soldiers are about to be shot, and then always pulling out their gun and shooting said soldiers first? Can you imagine Aragorn jumping around on the walls of Helm's Deep, not trying to fend off the invading orcs, but slaying any of the Rohirrim who seems to be at a disadvantage in his struggle? And, why does it even make that much of a difference that it was the enemy who assassinated their own warrior, when it was your side that brought them down to the point where they were basically dead? Players going into a game will bring an attitude of trying to do as much damage to the enemy side as possible - suddenly being told that the right thing to do is actually paying just as much attention to doing damage to the own side is as contrary to natural instincts as it gets.

Also, I don't think it actually requires more skill. I view it more in terms of attention - the player has a fixed amount of skill, and "distributes" that skill on various tasks. When there is denying, the player will invest part of their attention on last-hitting, part of it on denying, and part of it on harassing. When there is no denying, the player has freed up attention so they can focus more on last-hitting and harassing, and therefore do that better. They aren't playing either better or worse than before overall - but with less different tasks involved, they are better at these tasks. Since harassing (and avoiding being harassed) are the actually interesting part, where one is up against a player and trying to outsmart and outplay them in a complex dance, where the situation is dynamic and full of action, and since it's actually something one signed up for (fighting glorious enemy champions!) rather than something counter-intuitive (being an executioner for one's own soldiers!), I'd say that any change that shifts the focus more towards that and allows players to pay more attention to it is a good one.

Lastly, it needlessly removes fun for the other side. There they have worked so long to bring that enemy tower down - and then they are denied the reward for that! Games should be about fun, and fun is, to a large part, about rewards - after going through a lot of pain to get that tower down, it's only logical to give them the reward and let them have the tower kill. By allowing to deny it, noone is happy: The side that denied it is down one tower, the others have been screwed out of getting to kill that tower that they have been trying to kill for so long.

First of all, you are looking at Deny'n wrong, its main thing is lane control. Thats what it give. You can start deny'n a creep at 50% health. You can pull a wave if you are over extended, you can block a creep wave from base to give you that little edge. Hell, I would say taking away that small measure of control is Anti-fun. If, in LoL, I have some scrub sitting next to me Auto-attacking the creeps, I can't do anything about it but ask nicely in chat to stop.(I always try that and yet...) In DotA? I can pull the next wave to the jungle. I can deny creeps and keep the lane in place. ON the other hand If I am pared with one of my mates who knows how to use range and LoS to duck in and out to last hit and deny, leaving me to harass and help deny a little bit then together we can literally keep the creeps right at a point that we want it to be. I've had games where we literally sent a champ back even fricken minute. Harass isn't impossible, nor never done in DotA, its just not always the number one goal. Setting up for that Sand King to come rolling in is. Saying that never do you think of leaders walking back and forth ready to shoot an ally in the head is totally unrealistic, well. Sending soldiers to their death along pre-made paths even 30 seconds on the dot isn't very realistic either.

And deny'n towers? Me and some of the people I played with loved that, even though most of them would never admit it. Being able to last hit that tower from three enemies and then escape with your life? That is a feeling of accomplishment. I don't know how many times in LoL i've had to say 'Okay, tower is low on health, we are at 75-50% and out numbered by one, with little hard CC. Let it fall.' Thats what I don't find fun, because it takes away something you can do to sabotage the enemy.



Important to note: It is perfectly legit to like and enjoy something that is, objectively speaking, badly designed. For instance: I did enjoy play as Leoric, and if I was forced to play a DotA game, he would (while hardly being my first pick) be definitely up there amongst the options I'd consider. Yet I think he is, objectively, an absolutely atrociously designed hero. Why? Because he is not engaging - no less but three of his abilities, including his ultimate, are basically passives - you don't actively use them, they are just there, and his fourth ability is just a minimally modified copy of a boring WC3 spell that requires no positioning, targeting or other skill to use. The passives are, for the most part, not even something particularly interesting - critical strike is the most boring element in the game anyway, as it might essentially just be "your attacks deal more damage" (and it would actually be better designed if it was, as it would remove random chance), and the other one is just a regular life steal. His spells don't have synergy beyond the very most rudimentary level (turning him more into a melee-killing-machine - if you want to know what I consider synergy, by the way, look at, for example, Abaddon:
Aphotic Shield can make either him or an ally more durable, both befitting his support role. Since Death Coil has a health cost, it can be used to detonate Aphotic Shield, making those two skills work hand in hand. Death Coil also heals, which gives him two support/healing skills, making him a primary target, because the rest of his team will be difficult to kill while he's around - so Borrowed Time is there to make him more difficult to kill.

That's synergy. And there are plenty of DotA heroes who are well designed and have that - alas, there are far, far more who don't. No, that's not me just being adverse to DotA here and making broad, negative estimates, I actually counted.Almost no active spells, boring spells at that, little synergy - that's an abysmally badly designed hero. I still enjoy playing him, because sometimes, I just like taking something as simplistic as could be and bashing heads in with it - but I'm not going to pretend that's anything other than really, really bad design.

Then i think we think of Synergy differently. The ablilties help him to do what he is designed to do, and that is, get to enemy, hit enemy, BE A BALLER. He doesn't need some fancy-pants system where he has to hit his skill wait a few auto-attacks and then hit it again, counting each and every aspect of it, no. He runs in, does what he needs to do, and does it in all caps. Becuase HE IS A BALLER. (Sorry. I still get distracted whenever someone mentions Sk. Just that awesome of a guy.)
The point is, you seem to count a lack of actives as a bad design, which I don't understand. Characters do what they are designed to do, and most of them do it effectively.

Crit chance is another topic, and I don't find it to be a bad mechanic. It adds some randomness to it, but its a logical counterpart to dodge and the 33% mischance you can get b positioning your self on a hill. I vastly prefer that to knowing exactly how much you are going to do per attack. Hell, even in LoL its pretty much required on some champs to make them put out the Big Deeps.


By which I mean: Whether you like the DotA mechanics or not is quite irrelevant to whether they are good, well designed mechanics. If you want to argue why you think they actually are good, well designed, logical, intuitive etc., go ahead - I love discussing game design, we surely can have a wonderful discussion about that. But please don't use "I like those mechanics" as an argument for them being good; I'll just shrug and say, "What does one have to do with the other?". :smallwink:

Because whether or not one likes the mechanics of a game changes how one perceives them as good or bad? In LoL, there are a decent number of shields, because someone at Riot doesn't like heals. Does that make Heals a bad mechanic? Not necessarily. It means one person doesn't like them.



Oh, and while I'm at it, I almost forgot to mention another point where I find DotA really badly designed: Gold loss upon death. The other side is already getting rewarded for killing you (see before: Rewarding people for stuff they accomplished adds to fun, therefore good design). Being extra-punished in this manner makes it only more frustrating if one is on the losing side, makes it needlessly more difficult to turn the game around, makes it so that if any one hero falls behind, they will just snowball into being more useless from there on (rather than making sure anyone can still contribute), and is just plain frustrating. In other words, it's an anti-fun mechanic. If one wants more snowballing for the winning side (which may be absolutely desirable - after all, without snowballing, games would go on forever), one should just give more gold to the killer, not remove gold from the person that died. Positive effects add to fun. Negative ones diminish it. One can set up the game such that even the losing side can have fun, and DotA went out of its way to do the exact opposite.

For the same reason, I find abilities like Pudge's permanent Strength gain for kills to be perfectly fine, while abilities like the Silencer's Last Word, that permanently remove ability points from enemy heroes, to be the very paragon of terrible design.

I personally fail to see how being punished for messing up is terrible design, but apparently Icefrog and others do agree with you, DotA for a while now has had a pool system IIRC, so that you don't lose near the amount that you used to on death, so I will concede this point with that addendum.


Considering LoL's champions tend to have win-ratios within the 40-60% window, with the vast majority of them fairly close to 50%, I'd say it's at the very least satisfactorily balanced - whether better or worse than DotA, I couldn't tell, though I hear at higher skill levels there are champions that are just vastly superior than others in DotA. But even if not - why do you bring this up? I didn't say LoL was better balanced than DotA, nor did I ever bring up DotA's balance or lack thereof as a point of criticism against it.

When I see something like this;


no scaling on the mages (allowing only physical damage dealers to carry)

I see it as a point against character balance. But that may be me just misreading it.



Combining this with your earlier remark about LoS, I'm getting the impression you have participated in (or at least read) some other discussions of some LoL fanboys trashing DotA, remembered what their primary complaints were, and are arguing against them now. Please stop. Don't put their words into my mouth.

I've addressed this where you brought it up. If I put words in your mouth it is purely from misunderstanding your post. I tried to limit it to what you mentioned, but you must remember that (specially in the LoL thread, not so much here) you weren't the only one who posted. In the LoL thread my point was mainly that that thread should go back to LoL. I also beleive this thread should stick back to DotA2, as comparisons between the two games generally kill or distract a thread such as this, but I doubt it will.


Having vast areas that turn anyone inside invisible? I would say the potential for ganks and ambushes on the one hand, and skillful escapes on the other is greatly enhanced by having those in comparison to, well, not having those.

Now, this may be my lacking DotA knowledge, but I really don't think controlling the secret shop or some random jungle mob is anything even remotely comparable to having a dedicated player who does nothing but jungle, gank and counterjungle for the entire laning phase, especially with creeps as powerful as the buff monsters and the dragon involved. :smallconfused:

This was mostly misphraseing on my part. I think my original point was that having two runes in the jungle, in stead of buffs that are at the equivalent location of the secret shop and a random jungle mob, is harder to control. In some ways I think Riot agrees with me, as dragon made an appearance to give that area some importance.
And once again I may be misreading this, but DotA had characters whose whole role was to roam and gank from level one far before LoL came out. (Sand King comes to mind.)


Secondly, I don't see why anybody here would feel I was talking about them specifically, and therefore feel insulted. Of course there is a lot of fine individuals to be found anywhere, including the DotA community. That doesn't change anything about the community as a whole being much, much worse: In LoL, games without any flamers at all are fairly frequent - in fact, I'd say they are well in the majority. In DotA, not only do I not recall ever being in a single game where people were not flaming like crazy, but they were using racial slurs and alike that just don't happen in LoL, because people who would be using them would be instantly banned. No, the LoL community is far from perfect, but compared to what goes on in DotA games? It's like comparing the Giant in the Playground forums with YouTube comments. And while, yes, the above are only my personal impressions, I have yet to meet a person who felt differently, and I've seen quite a lot of various people comment on that independently.
Sidenote: I have only ever played DotA on the BattleNet. If there are better DotA communities to be found on private servers, more power to them; doesn't change how horrid the main DotA community on BNet is though.
Ah, see there may the difference. I can recall very few games that I was actually heavily flamed in while playing DotA. One was my first game, where I picked Stormspirit and stacked Armour, the others were random people who were together, where I was just the pub filling spots. It probably helped that I played not on BNet, and I had friends to play with me for the most part. HoN on the other hand is a different story. Voice chat proved to be more annoying than anything else for the most part. And as a point of contest, in LoL pre-30, I don't think I was in a single game where one person didn't have a lot of negative things to say about someone else. Whether it is me or not. Hell, now I still see a few games where someone will die once and you get some idiot spamming 'omg feeders wtf lrn2p' (exaggerated of course but w/e.)

ha, funny little side thing completely OT, but the worst community I have personally seen was when I played RO(Specially private servers). If you were in a guild, you were best buds with that guild. Rival guild? Well, played it for 4 years. Saw one healthy rival relationship. Everywhere else the flaming and constant bickering was horrible. I think its just online communities in whole though.

[Inhuman Bot]

This just made me squee. Finally I can play Crystal Maiden without feeling utterly useless in the endgame.

I personally think this is nothing but a positive factor on heroes like Lion who are already terrifying.



So interesting intellectual property question for those who love DotA. What gives Valve the right to port over all the heroes, maps, and to trademark the name "DotA"? Since, DotA was originally a completely community-based initiative, I assume hero appearances, art, names should belong to the people who created them.

Well, the names are usually anime references, the hero appearances are Blizzard's. I think Blizzard was actually considering a lawsuit, but dumped it.

[Joran]

Well, the names are usually anime references, the hero appearances are Blizzard's. I think Blizzard was actually considering a lawsuit, but dumped it.

I know Valve is trying to trademark DotA, with Steve Mescon (Pendragon) filing a counter-claim. As a community-based mod, with quite a few people working on it over the years, it seems odd that Valve would just grab one (albeit very important) person and lay claim to the entirety of the mod.

There is value in the name "DotA" that was built up over the years by people who are currently not in the employ of Valve. I'd argue that there would be less interest in DotA 2 if not for the name.

If this was EA or Activision-Blizzard making a grab at DotA, I'd think people would be more alarmed.

[Dogmantra]

Two things will make or break my decision on whether or not to purchase/play this game.

Firstly, immediate access to pretty or cute characters. I don't want to play Glutton for twelve million games before being reuinited with my soulmate Alchemist.

Secondly, camera lock. If you put in a button that centers the camera on your guy, for heaven's sake MAKE IT TOGGLABLE THERE IS LITERALLY NO REASON IT SHOULD NOT BE.

Rararargh I am raeg.

[Mx.Silver]

If this was EA or Activision-Blizzard making a grab at DotA, I'd think people would be more alarmed.
Probably because this is the first significant instance where Valve is being the jerk. The (slightly unnervingly) high regard the gaming community holds them kind of guarantees them softer treatment anyway.

[Inhuman Bot]

Probably because this is the first significant instance where Valve is being the jerk.

What? No. Valve is an incredibly ruthless and cuthroat company.



List of spells that are in DotA right now that are just "click on the opponent, opponent suffers X damage. There may be a stun applied":
- Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt
- Dragon Knight's Dragon Tail
- Moon Rider's Lucent Beam
- Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile
- Bounty Hunter's Shuriken Toss
- Lord of Olympus' Lightning Bolt
- Slayer's Laguna Blade
- Ogre Magi's Fireblast
- Demon Witch's Finger of Death


Spells in LoL with the same catagory:
Taric's Dazzle
Vladimir's Transfusion
Master Yi's Alpha Strike
Veigar's Baleful Strike
Akali's Mark of the Assassin
Annie's Disintegrate
Kassadin's Null Sphere
Malzahar's Malefic Visions
Malzahar's Nether Grasp
Warwick's Hungering Strike
Warwick's Infinite Duress

And so on.


You really can't complain about DotA's heroes being unoriginal when LoL has 3-5 heroes that are pretty similar for every catagory. The genre is going to be rife with abilities like that.

Karthus/Cassiopeia/Orianna: Mages with a low cooldown skillshot, disable and team-assisting ability.

Xin Zhao, Irelia, Renekton, Jarvan IV, debately Leona, Jax: Durable initaitors that have a skill to launch them into the enemy team, a disable, a toolbox skill and an autoattack enhancer

Rumble, Mordekaiser, Karma: Tank-y mages that are lane bullies. They have a shield of some kind, a cone nuke, and another buff of some kind.

[Cynan Machae]

This just made me squee. Finally I can play Crystal Maiden without feeling utterly useless in the endgame.
Nah, I don't think the change will be that gamechanging, the exemple listed was a tweak to Puck's illusinary orb where for each point of int it got reduced mana cost (and mb cooldown?). Too much of a big change could really screw the balance with some heroes. But I don't know yet.

[Inhuman Bot]

Nah, I don't think the change will be that gamechanging, the exemple listed was a tweak to Puck's illusinary orb where for each point of int it got reduced mana cost (and mb cooldown?). Too much of a big change could really screw the balance with some heroes. But I don't know yet.

Techies: Every point of INT increases chance of enemy players ragequitting.

[toasty]

I... I don't think I am able to understand what you are saying here. But if I understand, its that skill trumping individual character choice doesn't make it a decent game and having characters that are good early, but bad late, and viscersa is a bad game design? I apologize if that wasn't meant, but something just didn't click in my brain reading that, if that is what you meant then well. I disagree.

There is a limit, in my opinion, on good early game/bad late game and visa versa. Heroes like Pantheon and LoL rely on getting fed early game, otherwise they fail, hard. On the other hand, heroes like Ashe have a terrible late game but scale so incredibly that they're basically OP. Heroes like Warwick have such amazing lane sustain that they are stupid good in lane and it doesn't really matter that they're late game isn't so strong because they won't lose their lane.


Amumu, Morganna, lux, Aniva, Blitzcrank, Caitlyn, Corki, Dr. Mundo, Ezreal, Galio, Janna, Jarvan, Kennen, LeBlanc, Lee Sin, Leona, NIdalee, Nocturne, Olaf, Rumble, and Sivir. All have the same skill. You use skill, the skill goes from the character into a straight line, and it damages the character while maybe applying some sort of CC to it. Not to mention that all shields but Lux's are essentially the same, 'Click unit. Unit no die.'

To be fair, there is a difference between Corki missiles (straight damage) and amumu bandage toss (more useful for stun). And there are a LOT of "storm bolt" abilities in DotA. A LOT. There are a lot less "stun+nuke" in LoL. In fact, the only two I can think of that are not skill shots are Sion and Taric stun. Everything else is a conditional stun (Annie) or a skill shot (Amumu).


First of all, you are looking at Deny'n wrong, its main thing is lane control. Thats what it give. You can start deny'n a creep at 50% health. You can pull a wave if you are over extended, you can block a creep wave from base to give you that little edge. Hell, I would say taking away that small measure of control is Anti-fun.

Here is my counter proposal to your statement:
In LoL if you have a scrub in lane with you two things have happened A) you are solo queuing. B) you are playing with a scrub despite the fact that he or she is a scrub. In the case of B, two bad. You knew the risks. Maybe thats a bit mean but there is a reason that certain kids are picked last in pickup sports games all over the world. In the case of A, my response is that LoL, despite having lots of solo queue, really shouldn't be about Solo Queue. It is, and that's Riot's fault, but I play a LOT of 4 queues and 5 queues and its 10x better than Solo Queuing, which is a crapshot at every level of play.


And deny'n towers? Me and some of the people I played with loved that, even though most of them would never admit it. Being able to last hit that tower from three enemies and then escape with your life? That is a feeling of accomplishment. I don't know how many times in LoL i've had to say 'Okay, tower is low on health, we are at 75-50% and out numbered by one, with little hard CC. Let it fall.' Thats what I don't find fun, because it takes away something you can do to sabotage the enemy.

Denying towers is something I can't really speak on. I found the mechanic, along with denying in general, to be counter-intuitive and unnecessary to create a dynamic laning and team-fighting system. LoL has both of those without denying. But that's my opinion and I can't really say much else.


The point is, you seem to count a lack of actives as a bad design, which I don't understand. Characters do what they are designed to do, and most of them do it effectively.

It might be synergistic, but its still bad designed. Skeleton King players, in addition to last hitting, blah, blah, have to do one thing: stun people. THATS IT. Its not like, say, Xin Zhao or Udyr in LoL, those guys have to know when to use what abilities. Skeleton King? Just throw your storm bolt and charge the guy till you're about dead, then run away.


Crit chance is another topic, and I don't find it to be a bad mechanic. It adds some randomness to it, but its a logical counterpart to dodge and the 33% mischance you can get b positioning your self on a hill. I vastly prefer that to knowing exactly how much you are going to do per attack. Hell, even in LoL its pretty much required on some champs to make them put out the Big Deeps.

Its my opinion that Crit Chance and Dodge are both bad mechanics that need to be removed from the game. Why? Because Randomness doesn't allow for skill. If I 1v1 a guy and we have equal crit chance/damage and he kills me, that's luck, not skill. (Assuming we are equal skill). Luck should never be a factor in a game like LoL or Dota. Dodge would be easy to remove from LoL, if not for a few champions (JAX!), Crit strike is more promblematic, but still possible to remove. Again: thats an opinion, but still, I think its a good opinion.


Because whether or not one likes the mechanics of a game changes how one perceives them as good or bad? In LoL, there are a decent number of shields, because someone at Riot doesn't like heals. Does that make Heals a bad mechanic? Not necessarily. It means one person doesn't like them.

Its not just one person, I think Shurelia (who is in charge of creating "Support" Champions) isn't a big fan of heals. In all honesty, I like heals, which is one of the reasons that I'm not a fan of Janna as a support. However, I'm not entirely sure that this is a good point. I'd point to something more along these lines: In DotA, mages can't scale. This is a design quirk of the WC3 engine which basically only allows for Crit strike/Attack Speed builds if you want to scale. This is a major problem since all your carries MUST be Physical Damage heroes (or autoattackers, since technically DotA doesn't have Physical/Magic Damage). Heroes like Lich, thus, have to have insane lvl 6 burst so they don't end up being completely useless due to a lack of items late game. This isn't true in LoL because Mages can scale. That's a design FLAW if you ask me. Its a FLAW that HoN and, possibly, DotA2 have/will replicate. Its stupid.


I personally fail to see how being punished for messing up is terrible design, but apparently Icefrog and others do agree with you, DotA for a while now has had a pool system IIRC, so that you don't lose near the amount that you used to on death, so I will concede this point with that addendum.

I'm fighting someone, I make a mistake, I die. I know I made a mistake (if I don't, if I care about getting better I'll do research to find what went wrong). Now, the punishment in this instance is that you died. The punishment of taking damage is you take damage. This gives your opponent an advantage, allowing him to be more aggressive while you are more conservative (this can work in your favor in a long-term engagement, but in a quick battle... its less likely to happen). You shouldn't need to be punished ADDITIONALLY when you've already been killed. The kill is enough. This would be dying in Modern Warfare and then respawning with less health than everyone else because YOU DIED.

When I see something like this;

I see it as a point against character balance. But that may be me just misreading it.


And once again I may be misreading this, but DotA had characters whose whole role was to roam and gank from level one far before LoL came out. (Sand King comes to mind.)

Not exactly sure what you are trying to address here but I can comment on roaming:
No hero in LoL was "meant" to roam, roaming came up in North American Solo queue when Eve and Alistair made there appearance as really strong heroes. Other guys like Taric and even Janna do okay at roaming. However, its a very risky strategy and you're now forced to 2v1 a lane (in DotA, this may be more common, or it might be easier to 2v3 in a trilane than 1v2, I suppose). Roaming never really made it past a FOTM in NA Solo Queue.



It probably helped that I played not on BNet, and I had friends to play with me for the most part.

This. That's like saying, "no one ever flamed me in lol, but I always played with friends." I get flamed all the time when I solo queue. Its part of solo queue.


Two things will make or break my decision on whether or not to purchase/play this game.

Firstly, immediate access to pretty or cute characters. I don't want to play Glutton for twelve million games before being reuinited with my soulmate Alchemist.

Secondly, camera lock. If you put in a button that centers the camera on your guy, for heaven's sake MAKE IT TOGGLABLE THERE IS LITERALLY NO REASON IT SHOULD NOT BE.

Rararargh I am raeg.

Goodluck. Unless you consider heroes like Puck "cute" or heroes like Crystal Maiden "pretty." LoL is the exception to the rule of cartoony and happy graphics against the terrible, dark, brooding world that is DotA/HoN.


Karthus/Cassiopeia/Orianna: Mages with a low cooldown skillshot, disable and team-assisting ability.

Xin Zhao, Irelia, Renekton, Jarvan IV, debately Leona, Jax: Durable initaitors that have a skill to launch them into the enemy team, a disable, a toolbox skill and an autoattack enhancer

Rumble, Mordekaiser, Karma: Tank-y mages that are lane bullies. They have a shield of some kind, a cone nuke, and another buff of some kind.

To be fair: Karthus plays nothing like Orianna, because of how his Q interacts with his passive, and the fact that Orianna's ult is completely different. Actually, Karthus plays basically like an AD carry, while Orianna plays more like Janna, that is, a support champion. The fact that both do massive amounts of Deeps is there only real similiarity.

Jarvan and Renekton are basically the same champion, yes. That's why no one plays Renek, cuz Jarvan is better. Xin Zhao is, I suppose, kinda like the rest, but he's basically a burst mage that builds Armor Pen and attack Damage. Irelia is a super sustain laner... but she really doesn't have the initiation of the other champions.

Rumble and Mordekaiser might be pretty similar, but Morde has his shield and Rumble has heat. Oh, and Morde's ult is 100% different. Both basically build the same though, I'll admit.

[Inhuman Bot]

I'm going to miss S2's new additions to HoN in DotA 2. Myrmidon, Gauntlet, Maliken, Revenant, Amun-Ra, Nomad, Empath, New Keeper of the Forest, Rampage and so on were excellent. I also preferred some of their concepts of DotA heroes over their original designs, too; Pharoah over Clockwork Goblin, Wretched Hag over Queen of Pain, Swiftblade over Juggernaut, and so on. I'm sure Valve will do a good job at that part, though.

Edit: Blood Hunter was cooler then Stywgyr, too.



Goodluck. Unless you consider heroes like Puck "cute" or heroes like Crystal Maiden "pretty." LoL is the exception to the rule of cartoony and happy graphics against the terrible, dark, brooding world that is DotA/HoN.

It's so dark and brooding that they have giant kung-fu pandas screaming about how they bring Pandamonium. Besides, if I recall correctly, heroes such as Chipper came out before any of the similar heroes in LoL.

While you guys are arguing about LoL/HoN/DotA crap, something interesting is going on in China.

A gentleman named Sicong Wang, the son of China's richest billionare who recently purchased the rights for Chinese football (soccer), has purchased CCM, which is a team that plays DotA, SC2 and LoL amongst others and fields the best DotA team on the planet and renamed them to iG.

I can't read Chinese very well so I can't figure out what the link is but LGD, China's perennial #2 DotA team has disbanded and I believe some of their members are being incorpated into iG.

DotA 2's success is more or less assured, it seems, and Western Tournaments are irrelevant. China is setting up DotA to be their Brood Wars.

[Joran]

What? No. Valve is an incredibly ruthless and cuthroat company.


I wouldn't say cutthroat. After all, Valve does things that are nice for gamers.

They gave away Portal for free for a bit of time.
They gave away Alien Swarm.
DLC for PC games is free. They added new content to TF2. They added new campaigns to L4D and L4D2.
Occasionally, they do randomly cool stuff like the ARG for Portal 2.

As far as I know, working for Valve is not working for EA where it's mandatory overtime and then they cut you loose after the game is shipped. Valve seems more like a collaborative environment, similar to Google, and not crazily corporate like Activision or EA. The bottom line is not everything, especially since they're swimming in money from Steam.

Valve will also hire people whose projects they really like. I think it's this small guy made it to the big time that makes Valve well-loved. The original team of Narbacular Drop turned into Portal. Counter-Strike Source. Team Fortress 2.

I'm a huge Valve fanboy; I buy most of my games through Steam. I just have an issue of them grabbing the DotA name when it should belong to the community.

[Tono]

Here is my counter proposal to your statement:
In LoL if you have a scrub in lane with you two things have happened A) you are solo queuing. B) you are playing with a scrub despite the fact that he or she is a scrub. In the case of B, two bad. You knew the risks. Maybe thats a bit mean but there is a reason that certain kids are picked last in pickup sports games all over the world. In the case of A, my response is that LoL, despite having lots of solo queue, really shouldn't be about Solo Queue. It is, and that's Riot's fault, but I play a LOT of 4 queues and 5 queues and its 10x better than Solo Queuing, which is a crapshot at every level of play.

So, if I am with bad players I personally am not allowed to do well or have fun? I shouldn't personally be able to at least affect my lane to a certain extent whether or not my lanemate is competent? I don't see this as a positive thing at all. Not saying with deny you can control a lane no matter what, a bad player is a bad player, but forgoing my ability to do well despite my lanemate is about as anti-fun as it gets.




It might be synergistic, but its still bad designed. Skeleton King players, in addition to last hitting, blah, blah, have to do one thing: stun people. THATS IT. Its not like, say, Xin Zhao or Udyr in LoL, those guys have to know when to use what abilities. Skeleton King? Just throw your storm bolt and charge the guy till you're about dead, then run away.

Skeleton King doesn't run away. Ever. :smallcool:
No, but in all seriousness, thats one Hero. One extremely fun hero, may I add, but one. If this topic was about SK versus LoL, it'd be nice, but lets pick on some of the hundred others. Like Invoker. He has how many abilities? Lets use him as the standard for fun. ... Wait.



Its my opinion that Crit Chance and Dodge are both bad mechanics that need to be removed from the game. Why? Because Randomness doesn't allow for skill. If I 1v1 a guy and we have equal crit chance/damage and he kills me, that's luck, not skill. (Assuming we are equal skill). Luck should never be a factor in a game like LoL or Dota. Dodge would be easy to remove from LoL, if not for a few champions (JAX!), Crit strike is more promblematic, but still possible to remove. Again: thats an opinion, but still, I think its a good opinion.

Luck has always been a part of gaming, from Rolling dice to artificially random numbers. I tend to like it, but thats just me.


I'd point to something more along these lines: In DotA, mages can't scale. This is a design quirk of the WC3 engine which basically only allows for Crit strike/Attack Speed builds if you want to scale. This is a major problem since all your carries MUST be Physical Damage heroes (or autoattackers, since technically DotA doesn't have Physical/Magic Damage). Heroes like Lich, thus, have to have insane lvl 6 burst so they don't end up being completely useless due to a lack of items late game. This isn't true in LoL because Mages can scale. That's a design FLAW if you ask me. Its a FLAW that HoN and, possibly, DotA2 have/will replicate. Its stupid.

DotA does have physical and magic damage, I want to get this out of the way right now. There are three damage types mainly used in DotA IIRC, Physical, Magical, and Chaos(Or pure. w/e it was called.) Mages might not of scaled in pure damage, but mages were also support. Any support player eventually made a sheepstick or silence stick for extra damage, maybe not from themselves, but keeping the carry/enemy support silenced/sheep'd/dagon'd down could easily turn teamfights. Hell, have you seen what a necrocomicon could do with a player that could use it properly? Not to mention it was the supports job to keep up with the chicken and wards to such an extent that one can support a hero, while in another lane. As for the mages that weren't support, Silencer, Obsidian, SS, DS, zues, Reaper, and I'm sure one or two more I am forgetting all have ways to scale into the game to be efficient at higher levels. Whether it is damage based on mana or stats, or % damage to decent later, it all works.
Not to mention, that an... Aghaims(sp?) staff actually does improve a good bit of ultimates. (Did. Might have changed.) A lot of those being, the caster type.
A pure jump in numbers != no improvement what so ever.


I'm fighting someone, I make a mistake, I die. I know I made a mistake (if I don't, if I care about getting better I'll do research to find what went wrong). Now, the punishment in this instance is that you died. The punishment of taking damage is you take damage. This gives your opponent an advantage, allowing him to be more aggressive while you are more conservative (this can work in your favor in a long-term engagement, but in a quick battle... its less likely to happen). You shouldn't need to be punished ADDITIONALLY when you've already been killed. The kill is enough. This would be dying in Modern Warfare and then respawning with less health than everyone else because YOU DIED.

I've already conceded this point, I see nothing wrong with having a punishment to death, specially when you could buy seconds before you die, but IF and others must have seen something wrong with it as they greatly reduced the punishment.





This. That's like saying, "no one ever flamed me in lol, but I always played with friends." I get flamed all the time when I solo queue. Its part of solo queue.

Don't get me wrong, I solo'd quite a bit, but I've never had a major problem with flamers. I guess considering myself Below league level play. but in a decent higher-but-still-average, average level helped.

[Inhuman Bot]

I wouldn't say cutthroat. After all, Valve does things that are nice for gamers.


They stomp every bit of competition into the ground without mercy, though. Examples: Tf2 beta, DotA 2's announcement, what happened with Monday Night Combat, Steam Sales, shutting down indie developers that try to muscle into their territory, and so on. Good buisiness practice, but still pretty brutal.

[Shovah]

First of all, you are looking at Deny'n wrong, its main thing is lane control. Thats what it give. You can start deny'n a creep at 50% health. You can pull a wave if you are over extended, you can block a creep wave from base to give you that little edge. Hell, I would say taking away that small measure of control is Anti-fun.
Here is my counter proposal to your statement:
In LoL if you have a scrub in lane with you two things have happened A) you are solo queuing. B) you are playing with a scrub despite the fact that he or she is a scrub. In the case of B, two bad. You knew the risks. Maybe thats a bit mean but there is a reason that certain kids are picked last in pickup sports games all over the world. In the case of A, my response is that LoL, despite having lots of solo queue, really shouldn't be about Solo Queue. It is, and that's Riot's fault, but I play a LOT of 4 queues and 5 queues and its 10x better than Solo Queuing, which is a crapshot at every level of play.

That.. isn't a counter. There are plenty of ways a lane could go against you beyond the other player being bad. And most people don't constantly queue with 3-4 others, so.. whether you think they should or not, it matters. Or it would in this case, if who you got teamed with was the main decider on what happens in your lane.
Similar to Tono, I enjoy the extra lane control options it gives me.



Denying towers is something I can't really speak on. I found the mechanic, along with denying in general, to be counter-intuitive and unnecessary to create a dynamic laning and team-fighting system. LoL has both of those without denying. But that's my opinion and I can't really say much else.

It may be counter-intuitive, but once a tutorial tells you what it is it doesn't take long to get used to. As for necessary? Of course not, but neither are most things in the game, and as far as I can tell most players of MOBAs with it either enjoy it or are at least indifferent to it.



It might be synergistic, but its still bad designed. Skeleton King players, in addition to last hitting, blah, blah, have to do one thing: stun people. THATS IT. Its not like, say, Xin Zhao or Udyr in LoL, those guys have to know when to use what abilities. Skeleton King? Just throw your storm bolt and charge the guy till you're about dead, then run away.

Just because you only have one active skill doesn't mean you don't have to know when to use it. If anything, it means you need to be even more aware of when, where, and how you use that particular skill.



To be fair: Karthus plays nothing like Orianna, because of how his Q interacts with his passive, and the fact that Orianna's ult is completely different. Actually, Karthus plays basically like an AD carry, while Orianna plays more like Janna, that is, a support champion. The fact that both do massive amounts of Deeps is there only real similiarity.

Jarvan and Renekton are basically the same champion, yes. That's why no one plays Renek, cuz Jarvan is better. Xin Zhao is, I suppose, kinda like the rest, but he's basically a burst mage that builds Armor Pen and attack Damage. Irelia is a super sustain laner... but she really doesn't have the initiation of the other champions.

Rumble and Mordekaiser might be pretty similar, but Morde has his shield and Rumble has heat. Oh, and Morde's ult is 100% different. Both basically build the same though, I'll admit.

But the claim was never that there were no differences in those champions. It was simply- as was claimed (and true) for heroes in DotA - that there are several characters who either are or appear to be on some level similar, including even having very similar spells in some of the cases.


All of this is from a player of LoL and HoN, with some casual DotA experience.

[Suedars]

So interesting intellectual property question for those who love DotA. What gives Valve the right to port over all the heroes, maps, and to trademark the name "DotA"? Since, DotA was originally a completely community-based initiative, I assume hero appearances, art, names should belong to the people who created them.

Unlike previous Valve spin-offs like Team Fortress, Valve only hired IceFrog and not the entire development team. Previous people who worked on DotA like Guinsoo and Pendragon work for rival companies. Also, DotA was not originally developed on a Valve platform like Team Fortress was.

I find it odd that Valve is trying to grab at DotA's popularity.

A link to an interview with Guinsoo (IceFrog's predecessor) and Pendragon.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/17/riot-games-dev-counter-files-dota-trademark/

Guinsoo's claim to the game is laughable.

Originally DotA was actually a number of different maps, each with its own creator updating it. Eul's was the most popular. One modder had the idea of taking a bunch of the more popular heroes from each individual version of DotA and including them in one version, and calling it DotA Allstars. Guinsoo was a beta tester for that developer.

He stole the map from that beta, made a few small changes, called it his own, and removed all credit from the previous developer. The original modder approached Guinsoo a bit later and told him it was fine for him to use the map if Guinsoo would credit him. Guinsoo refused and continued updating it.

He spent about a year updating and expanding the map, until about a month after WoW came out when he decided he'd rather play WoW, and simply disappeared from the community without a word while the map was in beta for a huge new version. IceFrog ended up picking it up, and has been developing it for the last 6.5 years. IceFrog removed the horrible bugs that had plagued Guinsoo's tenure, and made specific heroes either unplayable or game breakingly powerful, and after about a year and a half of IceFrog developing the map it started to see major tournament play for the first time.

tl;dr: Guinsoo stole the map, acted like a child about it, and did very little for the game. IceFrog is the one responsible for modern DotA.

[thegurullamen]

They stomp every bit of competition into the ground without mercy, though. Examples: Tf2 beta, DotA 2's announcement, what happened with Monday Night Combat, Steam Sales, shutting down indie developers that try to muscle into their territory, and so on. Good buisiness practice, but still pretty brutal.

I don't know about this. They're competitive, sure, but anti-indie? They snatch up indie talent where they can find it (DotA2 for example) which translates into sales for them. Hardly philanthropist of them, but it's not "ruthless" either.

As for "stealing" DotA, Blizzard sat on the thing for well over seven years and only towards the end did they even start patching the game so that it would stop inconveniencing the immensely popular mod. Not once did they approach Pendragon, IceFrog or Guinsoo in any professional way besides an occasional nod to the modding community as a selling point of the franchise. They had their chance to approach one of the three for a job or a creative offer of some sort, but they didn't. The opportunity was lost, and it was a big one as the MoBA market now shows.

As for why Valve's being treated differently than if this were done by EA or Activision? My take is corporate culture. Valve supports creativity and so people have enough faith in them/their approach that they do not assume this is a desperate money grab or soulless, cynical outreach to a niche community, which is what ActivEA tend to do, at least in the eyes of the Internet. Giving IceFrog a creative lead position (which seems like more than an empty title for the marketing campaign, also something that reeks of ActivEA shenanigans), which enhances their credibility with the fanbase.

TL;DR: People trust Valve because they at least pay some respect to the original fanbase.

[toasty]

That.. isn't a counter. There are plenty of ways a lane could go against you beyond the other player being bad. And most people don't constantly queue with 3-4 others, so.. whether you think they should or not, it matters. Or it would in this case, if who you got teamed with was the main decider on what happens in your lane.
Similar to Tono, I enjoy the extra lane control options it gives me.

I realize that its not "fun" to have noobs on your team. Believe me, I realize. :smallsigh: I've never done much with the minion AI abuse in DotA (basic "minion blocking" and "minion pulling" thats about it), but I mean, to be fair, it has been my experience in LoL that Solo Queue is a stupid idea and I'd ask to remove it from the game if that was at all realistic. Solo Queue is the equivalent of taking a bunch of "equally skilled" soccer players from a Soccer League and then making them play on random teams, ignoring the fact that half the teams hate the other half and giving no regard to the fact that you just put 3 goalies on the same team. It doesn't really make sense.

Beyond that, yeah, I guess you're right. There is something nice about being able to pull minions around willy nilly.


Just because you only have one active skill doesn't mean you don't have to know when to use it. If anything, it means you need to be even more aware of when, where, and how you use that particular skill.

I don't buy that argument. You have to be careful with that ability, but the hero with 4 abilities needs to be just as careful. 1 mistake in a combo can and often does mean the difference between an insta-gib and a hero escaping.


But the claim was never that there were no differences in those champions. It was simply- as was claimed (and true) for heroes in DotA - that there are several characters who either are or appear to be on some level similar, including even having very similar spells in some of the cases.

Because in a game of 80 champions all 80 will be 100% unique and also totally balanced. :smalltongue:

To be less sarcastic, yeah, that's true I guess. But I think its rather silly to compare xin zhao to Jarvan in terms of team comp and usage. Yes, technically they are both Tanky DPS, just the same as technically Annie and Fiddle are both Burst Mages. But the reality is they play differently and are used for different reasons (though to be honest I'd never pick Xin over Jarvan, just because I think Xin is bad).

One thing I would like to be clear on here is that I'm not really trying to be rude here or anything. I think we both have some interesting points. :smallsmile:

[Shovah]

I don't buy that argument. You have to be careful with that ability, but the hero with 4 abilities needs to be just as careful. 1 mistake in a combo can and often does mean the difference between an insta-gib and a hero escaping.

That's exactly the point I was trying to get across though - just as careful. Having only one active skill doesn't make a character boring or easy to play (if done right, at least). Just different.


Because in a game of 80 champions all 80 will be 100% unique and also totally balanced. :smalltongue:

To be less sarcastic, yeah, that's true I guess. But I think its rather silly to compare xin zhao to Jarvan in terms of team comp and usage. Yes, technically they are both Tanky DPS, just the same as technically Annie and Fiddle are both Burst Mages. But the reality is they play differently and are used for different reasons (though to be honest I'd never pick Xin over Jarvan, just because I think Xin is bad).


I'll need to rephrase your points more-often. You tend to reply to then better than I can :smalleek:.
Again, that's basically what I was saying. The original point had been that so many DotA characters were same-y, with skills such as ones that do damage+a stun.
Having similarities doesn't make characters the same, and even among characters with stuns, their other skills and such make them completely and utterly different. You'll have pushers, gankers, initiators, supporters, and so on - and even within those roles, you'll have variety. Even though many of them may share a similar skill.


One thing I would like to be clear on here is that I'm not really trying to be rude here or anything. I think we both have some interesting points. :smallsmile:

Of course ^_^.
If I didn't find this interesting, I wouldn't be here. I just tend to get involved in whatever I'm discussing and it can come across a little.. harshly.
No rudeness intended.

[Keld Denar]

Lets all stop arguing and pump some Basshunter FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

Vi sitar har i venten, och spilar lita DotA!

:smallbiggrin:

[Inhuman Bot]

To be less sarcastic, yeah, that's true I guess. But I think its rather silly to compare xin zhao to Jarvan in terms of team comp and usage. Yes, technically they are both Tanky DPS, just the same as technically Annie and Fiddle are both Burst Mages. But the reality is they play differently and are used for different reasons (though to be honest I'd never pick Xin over Jarvan, just because I think Xin is bad).

If.. If this is what you think, I'm not sure what anyone can tell you.

[Shovah]

Lets all stop arguing and pump some Basshunter FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

Vi sitar har i venten, och spilar lita DotA!

:smallbiggrin:

I approve of this message. Well played, good sir.

[Grif]

I will be cut if Icefrog didn't implement hats.

Very cut.

(Now imagining Modest Piles of Hat being stacked on a Morphling. Or Balanar for that matter. Awesome.)

[Tono]

Man, I really hope there are steam acheivements for this game. 'Using Techies, kill an enemy that is currently holding an Eye of True Sight.' 'Use blink dagger over 500 times,' etc. I could see it being a lot of fun.

[Spartacus]

If.. If this is what you think, I'm not sure what anyone can tell you.

What exactly are you referring to? Many things were mentioned in that bit you quoted.

[Volatar]

Even if this game ships with a dark and foreboding feel to it, this is Valve we are talking about. It won't stay that way for long. :smalltongue:

[Joran]

Guinsoo's claim to the game is laughable.
...
tl;dr: Guinsoo stole the map, acted like a child about it, and did very little for the game. IceFrog is the one responsible for modern DotA.

Guinsoo only takes credit for DotA All-Stars and in particular claims versions 2.0 to 6.01.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3966/postmortem_defense_of_the_ancients.php?page=5

The key thing is that DotA cannot be claimed by any one person, even someone as key as IceFrog. It was a collaborative project done as a labor of love by people in the community.

[deuxhero]

I assuming that "cloth simulation" means "cape physics" and such? Has this ever been specified?

[Suedars]

Guinsoo only takes credit for DotA All-Stars and in particular claims versions 2.0 to 6.01.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3966/postmortem_defense_of_the_ancients.php?page=5

The key thing is that DotA cannot be claimed by any one person, even someone as key as IceFrog. It was a collaborative project done as a labor of love by people in the community.

And DotA All-stars 2.0 was largely lifted from someone else's beta test, which he refused to acknowledge. Plus a number of the heroes he claims as his in that list (Tiny, PL, Furion), were taken from other people's versions. Guinsoo's entire "DotA was a community project" claim is incredibly disingenuous, and seems to be little more than an attempt to screw over Valve (who now happen to be his competitors). During his time working on the map he showed nothing but contempt for the community that had worked on DotA before him.

Besides, the "community" phase of DotA lasted its first year, before the game had really caught on. IceFrog has been working on it for the last 6.5 years, and it's thrived and become a booming esport during that time. I'd say IceFrog's claim to the map trumps that of the nebulous "community" Guinsoo suddenly cares so much about.

[Inhuman Bot]

Even if this game ships with a dark and foreboding feel to it, this is Valve we are talking about. It won't stay that way for long. :smalltongue:

Ever play Half-Life?

Again, the game has heroes such as Captain CoCo (Better known as Kunkka), Puck! the fairy dragon, Clockwerk Goblin, a panda who's primary ability is rolling around really fast, and so on. Dark and Foreboding isn't exactly the right term.

[Joran]

And DotA All-stars 2.0 was largely lifted from someone else's beta test, which he refused to acknowledge. Plus a number of the heroes he claims as his in that list (Tiny, PL, Furion), were taken from other people's versions. Guinsoo's entire "DotA was a community project" claim is incredibly disingenuous, and seems to be little more than an attempt to screw over Valve (who now happen to be his competitors). During his time working on the map he showed nothing but contempt for the community that had worked on DotA before him.

Besides, the "community" phase of DotA lasted its first year, before the game had really caught on. IceFrog has been working on it for the last 6.5 years, and it's thrived and become a booming esport during that time. I'd say IceFrog's claim to the map trumps that of the nebulous "community" Guinsoo suddenly cares so much about.

Got any citations for that? From the official DotA page, IceFrog (or whoever wrote the FAQ) gives credit to Eul, Meian, Guinsoo, and Neichus.

Eul is acknowledged as the creator and founder of DotA, but I assume it's much changed from when he started it.

[potatocubed]

During his time working on the map he showed nothing but contempt for the community that had worked on DotA before him.

Given my experience with the DotA and LoL 'communities', I'd say that contempt is the right and proper emotion to feel.

Although I'd accept despair or loathing.

[Winterwind]

Well, I was going to reply to all those counter-arguments - concede some, dispute others - but it looks much like the thread has moved on, and most people seem to prefer to let the discussion rest. So I guess I'll be withdrawing from this thread instead.

[Mx.Silver]

What? No. Valve is an incredibly ruthless and cuthroat company.

I know, but this is the first incidence of such that's getting real attention (hence the 'significant' part).

[Inhuman Bot]

I know, but this is the first incidence of such that's getting real attention (hence the 'significant' part).

I think Fortress Forever got a reasonable amount of attention.

Regardless, I hope the release date isn't too far off after the tournament though I doubt it will be. With the death of HoN and LoL's absurd level of boring, passive play, I've managed to find something about the genre I dislike more then the community.

[toasty]

That's exactly the point I was trying to get across though - just as careful. Having only one active skill doesn't make a character boring or easy to play (if done right, at least). Just different.

I'm not sure I understand. A hero like Skeleton has 1 non-skill shot ability. Use that ability and then auto attack. That's all he does. Yes, he must use the ability at the right time, but... so what? Compare that to a hero with a 4 abilities that must be used in the correct order, one or two of which are spell shots. This hero has it a lot harder in terms of when and where to place spells.


If.. If this is what you think, I'm not sure what anyone can tell you.

They can tell me that I'm a smart man and should continue to do theorycrafting for my team of course. Now please, stop harassing me. (Why are you harassing me? Because, like I said, Xin Zhao is 100% different than Jarvan. Ask ANYONE I play with: efdf, arb, yocham, faulty, sirro, zach, arcanoi. All of those guys? Good players. Especially efdf. They'll all agree with me. The fact that Xin Zhao is "tanky dps" means nothing. In lane, in teamfights, in jungle (well maybe not in jungle...) he's completely different than Jarvan)

[Dogmantra]

Ask ANYONE I play with: ... All of those guys? Good players.

I see how it is toasty ;_;

[Inhuman Bot]

Now please, stop harassing me. (Why are you harassing me?

I think you're just paranoid. You keep calling me out.


QUOTE=toasty;11558764]Ask ANYONE I play with: efdf, arb, yocham, faulty, sirro, zach, arcanoi. All of those guys? Good players. Especially efdf. They'll all agree with me. The fact that Xin Zhao is "tanky dps" means nothing. In lane, in teamfights, in jungle (well maybe not in jungle...) he's completely different than Jarvan)[/QUOTE]

I could, or I could ask other good players. Jarvan and Xin are similar. They dive in (Audacious Charge Vs Banner + Dragon Strike) AoE (Aegis or whatever it's called Vs Crescent Sweep) and hit things.

[Volatar]

Ever play Half-Life?

That was before the Hatocalypse :smalltongue:

[toasty]

I see how it is toasty ;_;

I was specifically mentioning them cuz we're all in a clan. You're a good player too.


I could, or I could ask other good players. Jarvan and Xin are similar. They dive in (Audacious Charge Vs Banner + Dragon Strike) AoE (Aegis or whatever it's called Vs Crescent Sweep) and hit things.

... I would continue to argue with you if I felt that it was worth talking about. But this is the DotA2 thread, not the LoL thread. Suffice to say, you've managed to twist things in such a way that it looks like you're right, but you're wrong. That might be what it looks like is gonna happen, but the theorycrafting behind these two heroes is completely different.

[Suedars]

Got any citations for that? From the official DotA page, IceFrog (or whoever wrote the FAQ) gives credit to Eul, Meian, Guinsoo, and Neichus.

Eul is acknowledged as the creator and founder of DotA, but I assume it's much changed from when he started it.

It's rather hard to get citations given that this is stuff that happened 8 years ago, before there were forums for most of this stuff (and Pendragon decided to turn the original dota forums into an ad for LoL to show his support for the DotA community that he and Guinsoo so highly regard).

But anyways, Phantom Lancer and Furion were both in Eul's original DotA. Both were tweaked by Guinsoo, but the hero concepts and even some of their skills were lifted from other people's maps. Tiny was taken from another version of DotA, I forget which.

And of course IceFrog credits people who had worked on the map before. Guinsoo was the one who stole the map and refused to credit others.



They can tell me that I'm a smart man and should continue to do theorycrafting for my team of course. Now please, stop harassing me. (Why are you harassing me? Because, like I said, Xin Zhao is 100% different than Jarvan. Ask ANYONE I play with: efdf, arb, yocham, faulty, sirro, zach, arcanoi. All of those guys? Good players. Especially efdf. They'll all agree with me. The fact that Xin Zhao is "tanky dps" means nothing. In lane, in teamfights, in jungle (well maybe not in jungle...) he's completely different than Jarvan)

I might have missed something in the thread, but I think you're shifting the goalposts of the argument here. The initial claim was that DotA has too many spells that are clones of each other, to which it was pointed out that a lot of LoL heroes also have cloned spells. Claiming that that's ok because the heroes with cloned spells play very differently is an entirely different argument, and can also be applied equally well to DotA.

[Winterwind]

I might have missed something in the thread, but I think you're shifting the goalposts of the argument here. The initial claim was that DotA has too many spells that are clones of each other, to which it was pointed out that a lot of LoL heroes also have cloned spells. Claiming that that's ok because the heroes with cloned spells play very differently is an entirely different argument, and can also be applied equally well to DotA.Incidentally precisely a good example of one argument I'd adamantly oppose and one argument I'd absolutely agree with and concede to.

There may be many skill shots and many auto-hitting spells in LoL, too, but those pretty much all have something other than just numbers and graphics differentiating them - some don't stun, they silence, root to the place, go back and forth with a chance to hit twice, have AoE damage, cause the hero that cast the spell to move to its target, cause the target to move to the hero that cast the spell, etc. The number of spells in LoL that are literally the same mechanically, differentiated only by numbers, visuals and nothing else is very small. The DotA spells I listed in that post are literally just auto-hitting damage spells with an optional stun, differentiated solely by their numbers and visuals.

I agree though that this is not necessarily saying much, because if the same spell works completely differently in conjunction with the rest of the hero's kit, it's perfectly fine to have the same spell again. Now, whether that's actually the case for DotA is another debate entirely, but I don't think there's much point in getting into that.

[Suedars]

Incidentally precisely a good example of one argument I'd adamantly oppose and one argument I'd absolutely agree with and concede to.

There may be many skill shots and many auto-hitting spells in LoL, too, but those pretty much all have something other than just numbers and graphics differentiating them - some don't stun, they silence, root to the place, go back and forth with a chance to hit twice, have AoE damage, cause the hero that cast the spell to move to its target, cause the target to move to the hero that cast the spell, etc. The number of spells in LoL that are literally the same mechanically, differentiated only by numbers, visuals and nothing else is very small. The DotA spells I listed in that post are literally just auto-hitting damage spells with an optional stun, differentiated solely by their numbers and visuals.

I agree though that this is not necessarily saying much, because if the same spell works completely differently in conjunction with the rest of the hero's kit, it's perfectly fine to have the same spell again. Now, whether that's actually the case for DotA is another debate entirely, but I don't think there's much point in getting into that.

A number of the skills you listed in DotA are differentiated though. Storm Bolt is an AE. Dragon Tail is melee range, does minimal damage (it barely qualifies as a nuke) but has a lengthy stun. Lightning Bolt reveals the area around the target. Laguna Blade and Finger of Death both deal huge damage (basically Veigar's ultimate compared to his q) and don't really fall into the same category of "basic nukes".

[Cynan Machae]

There may be many skill shots and many auto-hitting spells in LoL, too, but those pretty much all have something other than just numbers and graphics differentiating them - some don't stun, they silence, root to the place, go back and forth with a chance to hit twice, have AoE damage, cause the hero that cast the spell to move to its target, cause the target to move to the hero that cast the spell, etc. The number of spells in LoL that are literally the same mechanically, differentiated only by numbers, visuals and nothing else is very small. The DotA spells I listed in that post are literally just auto-hitting damage spells with an optional stun, differentiated solely by their numbers and visuals.
That's were your wrong WW, if that it's the basis of your argument, like Suedars said they are as much different then those LoL spells. The only two spell on that list that I would agree are pretty similar would be Lina's ult and Lion Finger of Death. (and they are different from the others spells because they are very high damage/mana cost spells with pretty high cooldowns ultimates)

From your list:


List of spells that are in DotA right now that are just "click on the opponent, opponent suffers X damage. There may be a stun applied":
- Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt (AoE damage and Stun)
- Dragon Knight's Dragon Tail (melee range, low mana almost no damage but long stun)
- Moon Rider's Lucent Beam (synergy with ultimate, ministun to interrupt channeling)
- Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile (single target stun)
- Bounty Hunter's Shuriken Toss (ministun to interrupt channeling)
- Lord of Olympus' Lightning Bolt (reveal invisibility in an AoE)
- Slayer's Laguna Blade (high damage ultimate)
- Ogre Magi's Fireblast (constant stun duration regardless of level, purpose of this spell is getting the multicast, else it's a subpar spell with low everything by itself)
- Demon Witch's Finger of Death (high damage ultimate)

Spells that are virtually the same with only minimal modifications thereof:
- Centaur Warchief's Double Edge (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that it costs life in addition to mana to cast.) (ministun to interrupt channeling and melee range as well)
- Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt (only change is that the damage and stun duration are both random, in itself bad design for needlessly introducing chance into a game of strategy and micro skill) (agreed with that)
- Skeleton King's Hellfire Blast (only change is that after the stun, there is a brief period of slow in addition) (slow and damage)
- Crystal Maiden's Frostbite (only change is that the damage is dealt over the duration of the stun, rather than instantly. Unless it still allows to cast spells when inside this, which as I recall it does not; if it does, remove it from this list.) (it stop movement and attacks, you can still cast spells. also, when used on creep, summons and neutrals, duration is 10 seconds)
- Holy Knight's Test of Faith (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that the damage is random, but of pure-type.) (pure type damage make it impossible to reduce it with magic armor or anything)

My experience on LoL is pretty limited, but from what I've played I'm pretty sure you could draw a very similar list with slows/snares instead of stuns

[Inhuman Bot]

... I would continue to argue with you if I felt that it was worth talking about. But this is the DotA2 thread, not the LoL thread. Suffice to say, you've managed to twist things in such a way that it looks like you're right, but you're wrong. That might be what it looks like is gonna happen, but the theorycrafting behind these two heroes is completely different.

What I'm getting at is no ur wrong!!! ! ! is the worst argument ever.

[toasty]

What I'm getting at is no ur wrong!!! ! ! is the worst argument ever.

Its actually an appeal to authority if you want to be really finicky. The bottom line is I don't care to argue about this, especially in the DotA thread. :smalltongue:

[Rhydeble]

Its actually an appeal to authority if you want to be really finicky. The bottom line is I don't care to argue about this, especially in the DotA thread. :smalltongue:

Saying you are right because you think so isn't an appeal to authority, sorry. And listing people and saying that YOU believe them to be good isn't either.

[Volatar]

You people seem to have stopped arguing over an actual topic and are just bickering with each other now. Stop it.

[toasty]

Saying you are right because you think so isn't an appeal to authority, sorry. And listing people and saying that YOU believe them to be good isn't either.

Objectively, efdf is better than 99% of all players in LoL, to be fair. He's rated 1911 elo. Arb is rated 1500, so is Arcanoi. :smalltongue:

I'm going to end this now.

[Inhuman Bot]

Objectively, efdf is better than 99% of all players in LoL, to be fair. He's rated 1911 elo. Arb is rated 1500, so is Arcanoi. :smalltongue:

I'm going to end this now.

You just had to get the last word in, didn't you.

So, what's up with DotA's voice actors and leaking things?

[Tazar]

I can't wait until DOTA 2. Still can't believe Valve is dropping a million dollars (and that's just for first place!) on this tournament. That's gotta have S2 and Riot pretty nervous.

I'm extremely hyped for gameplay footage at this point; I'm dying to see anything of Alleria and Harby. The fact that Valve, masters of fantastic character interaction, is doing this only has me more excited. Hero banter in-lane should be great.

While Winterwind's point has already been solidly refuted, I'll join my voice to that of those pointing out that nearly every skill he listed as "identical" actually has a differentiating factor.

For example, Crystal Maiden's Frostbite is massively different from Hellfire Blast. It doesn't stun (much to my constant chagrin) and it does DoT. To suggest that they're identical abilities is quite frankly flat-out wrong, and suggests that you may not remember the way some of these abilities function too well.

To anyone saying that INT heroes cannot be threatening in late-game DotA: Destroyer would like a word with you. :smalltongue:

Sure, INTs may drop off in pure killing power, but they're still absolutely vital to teamfights for CC and support abilities. INTs dominate the early game and lose power later on, but they're never rendered irrelevant.

[Inhuman Bot]

I can't wait until DOTA 2. Still can't believe Valve is dropping a million dollars (and that's just for first place!) on this tournament. That's gotta have S2 and Riot pretty nervous.


Sure, INTs may drop off in pure killing power, but they're still absolutely vital to teamfights for CC and support abilities. INTs dominate the early game and lose power later on, but they're never rendered irrelevant.

LoL is a different game entirely. HoN is going to be doomed, though.

There's a number of INT carries in addition to supports. Necrolyte, Tormented Spirit, and Invoker come to mind.

[Cynan Machae]

Dont forget Storm Spirit! Most fun INT carry of all

[Inhuman Bot]

Dont forget Storm Spirit! Most fun INT carry of all

Storm Spirit is more of an abomination then Pudge.

[Suedars]

LoL is a different game entirely. HoN is going to be doomed, though.

There's a number of INT carries in addition to supports. Necrolyte, Tormented Spirit, and Invoker come to mind.

Int carries are really a separate class of hero than regular carries though.

They don't have the absurd lategame potential, but they make up for it by having much faster early game farming, usually being very good pushers, and being an incredible teamfight presence in the midgame. If you're relying on an int carry you want to close the game out before the lategame hits, since Necro is never going to be able to face down a lategame Morphling, no matter how farmed he is.

[Cynan Machae]

Int carries are really a separate class of hero than regular carries though.

They don't have the absurd lategame potential, but they make up for it by having much faster early game farming, usually being very good pushers, and being an incredible teamfight presence in the midgame. If you're relying on an int carry you want to close the game out before the lategame hits, since Necro is never going to be able to face down a lategame Morphling, no matter how farmed he is.

Storm Spirit says otherwise, tho. So does Tinker. And some other can do pretty even with regular agi carries, like Harbinger, Silencer.

[Suedars]

Storm Spirit says otherwise, tho. So does Tinker. And some other can do pretty even with regular agi carries, like Harbinger, Silencer.

Storm Spirit is much more like a traditional carry, but he still gets outclassed late.

And Tinker is just in his own class of hero. There really isn't anyone like him.

OD and Silencer can definitely be lategame powerhouses that wreck even agi carries, but that's because their earlygame is atrocious if you're going for a carry build.

But generally speaking, when people are referring to an int carry, they mean a midgame teamfight and push centric hero like Necro or Pugna.

[thegurullamen]

I'm probably displaying my ignorance here, but how is Necrolyte a carry? He has a good passive but only if you can last hit, a decent-to-good AoE heal/nuke, an okay passive if you can stay in the fight for a long while and one amazing ability with a crazy cooldown. How does all of this add up to a carry?

[Tazar]

I could be wrong, but I believe that it's because with a good item build the amount of mass AoE healing and damage he can put out with Death Pulse alone is rather insane.

He's got pretty good STR and AGI for an INT hero as well, which helps. Necro can become pretty tanky while still putting out a heck of a lot of damage.

[Fera Tian]

I'm probably displaying my ignorance here, but how is Necrolyte a carry? He has a good passive but only if you can last hit, a decent-to-good AoE heal/nuke, an okay passive if you can stay in the fight for a long while and one amazing ability with a crazy cooldown. How does all of this add up to a carry?

I don't know about dota, but in HoN, a tanky soul reaper can devastate teams.

10 seconds = 10% true damage to health, 450 magic damage to enemies and 260 heal to allies/self

[Suedars]

I'm probably displaying my ignorance here, but how is Necrolyte a carry? He has a good passive but only if you can last hit, a decent-to-good AoE heal/nuke, an okay passive if you can stay in the fight for a long while and one amazing ability with a crazy cooldown. How does all of this add up to a carry?

Like I described before, he's not a carry in the "farm all game, then autoattack to victory" sense. Basically he gets some good farming done early-mid, makes a couple key defensive items then basically serves as an unkillable anchor in teamfights that's constantly healing your team and damaging their entire team.

If you dominate teamfights with him in the midgame you can combine that with his powerful pushing to take several very early towers, either ending the game quickly, or putting you in enough of a lead that your lack of a lategame carry doesn't matter too much.

[Rhydeble]

Objectively, efdf is better than 99% of all players in LoL, to be fair. He's rated 1911 elo. Arb is rated 1500, so is Arcanoi. :smalltongue:

I'm going to end this now.

besides the fact that that only takes into account one ladder, out of many, does he also have the authority to say that heroes in DotA are more similair then those in LoL? after all, DotA doesn't have two spells that are the same on every single hero ever.

Anyway, back to the great game that is DotA, what kind of hats do you all expect to see? Or do you think that Valve will do the same as Riot and S2 and make different skins, making it slightly harder to identify heroes with a quick glance?

It would also be nice to finally have tutorials in the game, since a lot of the earlier mentioned problems about denying and juking can be solved by explaining it.

And about denying not making sense, how about every hero carries a combat teleportation device that sends heavily wounded allies directly to the infirmary, And having this device being magically enhanced by carrying lots of weaponry?

[Inhuman Bot]

Anyway, back to the great game that is DotA, what kind of hats do you all expect to see? Or do you think that Valve will do the same as Riot and S2 and make different skins, making it slightly harder to identify heroes with a quick glance?

It would also be nice to finally have tutorials in the game, since a lot of the earlier mentioned problems about denying and juking can be solved by explaining it.

And about denying not making sense, how about every hero carries a combat teleportation device that sends heavily wounded allies directly to the infirmary, And having this device being magically enhanced by carrying lots of weaponry?

Honestly, I expect to see skins. I just hope they don't do things like Mutant Parasite/Moraxus, or Female Pyromancer/Andromeda. (Or Feral Warwick/Malphite), or probably worst of all, Flint Boomstick/Engineer. It's a pain to tell them apart at a slight glance.

If I don't get to play as Gordon Freeman Invoker, firing a different gun for the various spell effects, I will be sad.

I expect to see a tutorial, but also a coach mode as TF2 has.

Denying: Well, HoN claims denying sends them to a retirement home.

Edited out for fakeness.

[Winterwind]

I seriously just want to withdraw from this thread, but I just hate to see my point being completely misrepresented and distorted too much. :smallfrown:


A number of the skills you listed in DotA are differentiated though. Storm Bolt is an AE. Dragon Tail is melee range, does minimal damage (it barely qualifies as a nuke) but has a lengthy stun. Lightning Bolt reveals the area around the target. Laguna Blade and Finger of Death both deal huge damage (basically Veigar's ultimate compared to his q) and don't really fall into the same category of "basic nukes".Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt is an AoE? Okay, I didn't realize that. In that case, remove that one from the list. All the others though? Regardless of whether they have more or less range, more or less stun, more or less damage, every single one of them is just a "single-target auto-hit spell that may deal damage and may stun". I never said they all had the same numbers. But they all share the same mechanic, with no additions or modifications to this.


That's were your wrong WW, if that it's the basis of your argument, like Suedars said they are as much different then those LoL spells. The only two spell on that list that I would agree are pretty similar would be Lina's ult and Lion Finger of Death. (and they are different from the others spells because they are very high damage/mana cost spells with pretty high cooldowns ultimates)
- Rogue Knight's Storm Bolt (AoE damage and Stun) (Okay, didn't know about the AoE. Conceded on this one.)
- Dragon Knight's Dragon Tail (melee range, low mana almost no damage but long stun) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with (very little) damage and stun.)
- Moon Rider's Lucent Beam (synergy with ultimate, ministun to interrupt channeling) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and (very little) stun.)
- Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile (single target stun) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and stun.)
- Bounty Hunter's Shuriken Toss (ministun to interrupt channeling) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and (very little) stun.)
- Lord of Olympus' Lightning Bolt (reveal invisibility in an AoE) (Okay, so this one does have an added functionality. Conceded on this one.)
- Slayer's Laguna Blade (high damage ultimate) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and (no) stun.)
- Ogre Magi's Fireblast (constant stun duration regardless of level, purpose of this spell is getting the multicast, else it's a subpar spell with low everything by itself) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and stun.)
- Demon Witch's Finger of Death (high damage ultimate) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and (no) stun.)

Spells that are virtually the same with only minimal modifications thereof:
- Centaur Warchief's Double Edge (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that it costs life in addition to mana to cast.) (ministun to interrupt channeling and melee range as well) (So, it is a single-target auto-hitting spell with damage and (very little) stun. The only thing special about it is an additional health cost.)
- Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt (only change is that the damage and stun duration are both random, in itself bad design for needlessly introducing chance into a game of strategy and micro skill) (agreed with that)
- Skeleton King's Hellfire Blast (only change is that after the stun, there is a brief period of slow in addition) (slow and damage) (Isn't that what I said? The only thing distinguishing it is an addition of slow. Think that's too much of a modification already? Fair enough, we can remove this one.)
- Crystal Maiden's Frostbite (only change is that the damage is dealt over the duration of the stun, rather than instantly. Unless it still allows to cast spells when inside this, which as I recall it does not; if it does, remove it from this list.) (it stop movement and attacks, you can still cast spells. also, when used on creep, summons and neutrals, duration is 10 seconds) (Hey, I said to ignore this one if it still allowed casting. :smalltongue:)
- Holy Knight's Test of Faith (auto hitting single target damage with no stun. Only change is that the damage is random, but of pure-type.) (pure type damage make it impossible to reduce it with magic armor or anything) (Magic armor doesn't exactly have a very high mechanical focus in DotA. I count only four items that have it (Linken's Sphere, Khadgar's Pipe, Hood of Defiance, Planeswalker's Cloak), which is... not exactly a lot (for reference, in LoL there are 14 items that give Magic Resistance, including one with an aura, and 17 heroes have abilities that give them or their allies permanent or temporary Magic Resistance as well, in addition to a whole number of heroes having natural Magic Resistance growth (while others do not)). How many heroes tend to actually get any of these? If it's not a significant percentage, I'd consider that an utterly negligible bonus. That everyone has 30% default magic resistance in DotA doesn't count - if everyone has it, and it normally doesn't get modified, all this means is that the damage numbers on Test of Faith's damage are actually higher than what the tool tip displays.)So, we can remove Storm Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Frostbite and maybe Hellfire Blast from that list. All the others, you yourself admitted they were precisely what I said they were - reiterations of a single-target auto-hit spell with damage and/or stun, no special additional effects, distinguished solely by their numbers.


My experience on LoL is pretty limited, but from what I've played I'm pretty sure you could draw a very similar list with slows/snares instead of stunsActually, no, you couldn't. Spells in LoL invariably have some additional, distinguishing aspect that goes beyond just different numbers - be it that they refill your mana under certain conditions, that the stun/damage duration varies depending on your positioning, that they move you or your target around, etc. Whether one considers the differences big enough to not still call unoriginality on that is a different matter entirely (and one where I myself am not entirely sure where I'd stand), but literally just copying the same spell and only modifying its numbers (and graphical effect)? No, that's fairly unique to DotA.


While Winterwind's point has already been solidly refuted, I'll join my voice to that of those pointing out that nearly every skill he listed as "identical" actually has a differentiating factor.

For example, Crystal Maiden's Frostbite is massively different from Hellfire Blast. It doesn't stun (much to my constant chagrin) and it does DoT. To suggest that they're identical abilities is quite frankly flat-out wrong, and suggests that you may not remember the way some of these abilities function too well.You're saying that "nearly every skill" I mentioned has a differentiating factor, and then pick as an example, of all the skills on my list, the one where I mentioned right when I brought it up on the list that this one might actually have a differentiating factor I wasn't sure it had? :smallconfused:

I'd actually say my point was solidly affirmed. Nearly every skill on that list does not have a differentiating factor beyond numbers. See Cynan's analysis. I find it rather amusing you would claim my point was solidly refuted, when all that people did was bring up evidence to back it up (apart from 3-4 skills on which I was factually wrong).



I have already conceded that this maybe doesn't mean as much as I attributed it to, as even utterly identical skills can be interestingly different in the context of an otherwise different hero kit. But the point that DotA engages in a massive amount of copy-pasta? That one was most definitely not refuted.

And I haven't even mentioned that this is just for Storm Bolt clones (which are admittedly by far the worst offender). Still, the amount of War Stomp/Thunderclap clones, Wind Walk clones, Critical Strike clones, Bash clones and a few more default WC3 spells is pretty impressive as well.

[Inhuman Bot]

I seriously just want to withdraw from this thread, but I just hate to see my point being completely misrepresented and distorted too much. :smallfrown:

League of Legends is almost identical if you replace stun with slow.

Edit: Especially if you add very vague differentiations like "Gives you a bit of HP" or "Doesn't cost mana if it kills something" that really make the spell the same.

[Tono]

Keep in mind that the usage of all those isn't the same. Some are hard disables meant to disable your opponent, while others are meant to disrupt channels and teleports. A mini-stun and stun are vastly different.

[toasty]

besides the fact that that only takes into account one ladder, out of many, does he also have the authority to say that heroes in DotA are more similair then those in LoL? after all, DotA doesn't have two spells that are the same on every single hero ever.

To be fair, its the only ladder that anyone seems to care about in LoL right now. 5v5 arranged doesn't matter at at High Elo and no one even cares about 3v3. 2ndly, in this instance I wasn't talking about DotA2 but about LoL, which is why I dropped the conversation. :smalltongue:

If this game only costs $30 I'm going be so happy. Not excited about voice chat though. Not at all. :smallannoyed:

[Inhuman Bot]

To be fair, its the only ladder that anyone seems to care about in LoL right now. 5v5 arranged doesn't matter at at High Elo and no one even cares about 3v3. 2ndly, in this instance I wasn't talking about DotA2 but about LoL, which is why I dropped the conversation. :smalltongue:

If this game only costs $30 I'm going be so happy. Not excited about voice chat though. Not at all. :smallannoyed:

If you want to drop it just stop responding to people.

[Keld Denar]

I can't wait until DOTA 2. Still can't believe Valve is dropping a million dollars (and that's just for first place!) on this tournament. That's gotta have S2 and Riot pretty nervous.

I doubt that VALVE is dropping a million dollars on this. Tournaments are usually sponsered. Most of the purse comes from the sponser. They'll probably get someone like Mt Dew with multi-billion dollar advertizing budgets to foot most of the purse. That said, Valve will probably spend multiple million dollars porting DotA to its own platform and making whatever changes they need to make to to incorporate all of the updates.

[Suedars]

And about denying not making sense, how about every hero carries a combat teleportation device that sends heavily wounded allies directly to the infirmary, And having this device being magically enhanced by carrying lots of weaponry?

This is actually a pretty awesome idea that would make denying a lot less awkward for new players. You already have to hit a to force attack a creep you're denying, so you could get away with binding the deny mechanic to a specific key.

The only complication is that you'd need a way to tie it to the hero's specific attack animation so that that remains a critical factor in determining a hero's strength in lane.


So, we can remove Storm Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Frostbite and maybe Hellfire Blast from that list. All the others, you yourself admitted they were precisely what I said they were - reiterations of a single-target auto-hit spell with damage and/or stun, no special additional effects, distinguished solely by their numbers.

Your initial argument here is that too many of DotA's skills are similar, right? If so, saying that Dragon Tail and Laguna Blade are similar skills is about the same as claiming that Cassiopeia's E is the same as Veigar's ultimate because they're both damaging spells. The two spells are completely different, and play nothing alike.

If that wasn't your argument I'd ask what you mean to show with this, since you haven't really shown how this is a bad thing.

[Cynan Machae]

Ffom what you are saying WW, it seems theres pretty much only 4-5 spells from the (around 4x90+) totals spells from dota that are the generic click and do some damage and maybe stun type (let's say we add a few for the other types you named as well). I hardly call it fair to say it's unoriginal, and especially since a lot of hero reworks in the past patches made important changes to a lot of those (when Sven storm bolt went AoE, SK Storm bolt became Hellfire blast, Medusa chain lightning got reworked into the snake she has now, etc etc.). The fact that you thought that Sven's Storm bolt was still a single target spell show how little you know about those changes since it happened something like 2 years ago.

[FireJustice]

as retired map maker from wc3 editor, just throwing my two cents.
There's more spells based on Acid Bomb than Storm Bolt.

Looking up for DotA 2 anyway

[Inhuman Bot]

as retired map maker from wc3 editor, just throwing my two cents.
There's more spells based on Acid Bomb than Storm Bolt.

Looking up for DotA 2 anyway

I can't think of a spell from DotA aside from Acid Bomb that's based off of Acid Bomb, actually.

[Tono]

I can't think of a spell from DotA aside from Acid Bomb that's based off of Acid Bomb, actually.

IIRC, Bristle's Nasal Goo, and Ogre Magi's Fireball are based off of acid bomb. Can't think of any others atm. To google!

[Inhuman Bot]

IIRC, Bristle's Nasal Goo, and Ogre Magi's Fireball are based off of acid bomb. Can't think of any others atm. To google!

Fireball is, but Nasal Goo isn't, I think. It's a speed/armor reduction on a single target that stacks; The base spell really could've been anything.

[Tono]

comment on line ten of Nasal Goo. I don't feel like crawling through the rest to find the individual ones. (http://www.playdota.com/forums/groups/1835361128/271/990-rigwarl,++bristleback/)

[FireJustice]

claryfing a little
Acid Bomb is the only single target-click spell that doesnt stun (even if you set stun duration of storm bolt/fire bolt to zero that just means that the stun is forever, and a duration like 0.0001 seconds still interupting channels), but can deal damage, and can assign a buff/debuff.

This buff/debuff with very short duration (and can be invisible) can be used via triggers to make almost any effect, including other spells.

I'm pretty positive, that even some of the storm bolt "clones" use Acid Bomb as base.

Also, you can use it to lower armor, deal DoT and other quirkly things.

yeah, I know that this is the same as saying that all "Impales" in DotA Allstars doesnt use the vanilla impale as base, again sorry but the mapmaker inside me cry to explain those useless stuff.

[Inhuman Bot]

claryfing a little
Acid Bomb is the only single target-click spell that doesnt stun

Well, Death Coil/Holy Light, if you want to get picky. And it does splash, like Frost Nova which is what I was getting at.

[Tazar]

The fact that you thought that Sven's Storm bolt was still a single target spell show how little you know about those changes since it happened something like 2 years ago.

This.

I'm sorry, Winterwind, but if you don't understand how many of these abilities even work anymore, you can hardly credit yourself as able to effectively assess these abilities in comparison to their LoL counterparts.

You've got to agree that it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in your arguments. :smalltongue:


A mini-stun and stun are vastly different.

Also this.

Mini-stuns are used for interrupting channeling and the like. Stuns are used for CC. Two entirely different purposes.



"single-target auto-hit spell that may deal damage and may stun".


Even this is a completely unfair qualification. A spell that's solely a nuke is manifestly different from a spell that's a stun. Two entirely different uses.

[Dragonus45]

League of Legends is almost identical if you replace stun with slow.

Edit: Especially if you add very vague differentiations like "Gives you a bit of HP" or "Doesn't cost mana if it kills something" that really make the spell the same.

You see, that's not just changing numbers though. That is changing actually mechanics involved. Which is his point.

[Rhydeble]

I just realized something.

This is going to be a Valve game,

There are going to be achievements..... lots of achievements....

I Hope they're going to divide them up between the heroes like in TF2, and I hope there'll be a boatload of them, both sensible (get 5 kills in one match) and crazy (Launching the VoidRocket)

[toasty]

I just realized something.

This is going to be a Valve game,

There are going to be achievements..... lots of achievements....

I Hope they're going to divide them up between the heroes like in TF2, and I hope there'll be a boatload of them, both sensible (get 5 kills in one match) and crazy (Launching the VoidRocket)

Personally i hope that achievements aren't that big of a thing because the last thing I want to see is someone trolling ranked games (or whatever they're called in DotA, and you can bet there will be some sort of Ladder, this being a MOBA game) trying to see if they can get a CS of 500 in a single game. :smallsigh:

[Tazar]

You see, that's not just changing numbers though. That is changing actually mechanics involved. Which is his point.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Inhuman Bot was making the point that there are many LoL abilities which damage/slow that are extremely similar, in which case there's no mechanics change involved.

[Inhuman Bot]

I Hope they're going to divide them up between the heroes like in TF2, and I hope there'll be a boatload of them, both sensible (get 5 kills in one match) and crazy (Launching the VoidRocket)

Someone on the HoN forums made a HoN achievement mod that was pretty good and promoted reasonable play. For example, save a teammate 5 times with Ophelia (Chen)'s ultimate.

However, I want there to be an achievement for trapping 10 people including yourself in Faceless Void's ultimate.

[Suedars]

Personally i hope that achievements aren't that big of a thing because the last thing I want to see is someone trolling ranked games (or whatever they're called in DotA, and you can bet there will be some sort of Ladder, this being a MOBA game) trying to see if they can get a CS of 500 in a single game. :smallsigh:

You mean every -em game ever?

[toasty]

You mean every -em game ever?

Wouldn't know, I never played -em. And I always sucked at farming. :smalltongue: (finally got better in LoL, but I'm still TERRIBLE).

[Inhuman Bot]

Wouldn't know, I never played -em. And I always sucked at farming. :smalltongue: (finally got better in LoL, but I'm still TERRIBLE).

EM is LoL, though, so you sort of have. (No really, it is. No denying, gold loss on death, etc.)

[toasty]

EM is LoL, though, so you sort of have. (No really, it is. No denying, gold loss on death, etc.)

Then it'd still be an accomplishment cuz I've never seen anyone hit 500 CS in a LoL game. :smalltongue:

[Inhuman Bot]

Then it'd still be an accomplishment cuz I've never seen anyone hit 500 CS in a LoL game. :smalltongue:

That's the point, though.

[Suedars]

EM is LoL, though, so you sort of have. (No really, it is. No denying, gold loss on death, etc.)

I'm not the biggest fan of LoL, but I'd give it more credit than that. The -em metagame is one of the most mind-numbingly boring things I've ever seen. It barely ranks above playing through the WC3 campaign with "power overwhelming" (or whatever WC3's version is) in terms of exciting and challenging gameplay.

Though I have to admit, it can be fun to inhouse an -em and run 5 early game pushing heroes mid to abuse the fact that the towers are incredibly weak and most of the terrible -em players pick trash lategame heroes like PA. It's certainly better than ending the night on a losing streak.

[Grif]

I'm not the biggest fan of LoL, but I'd give it more credit than that. The -em metagame is one of the most mind-numbingly boring things I've ever seen. It barely ranks above playing through the WC3 campaign with "power overwhelming" (or whatever WC3's version is) in terms of exciting and challenging gameplay.

Though I have to admit, it can be fun to inhouse an -em and run 5 early game pushing heroes mid to abuse the fact that the towers are incredibly weak and most of the terrible -em players pick trash lategame heroes like PA. It's certainly better than ending the night on a losing streak.

People actually play -em?

...

Okay, maybe it's just the mentality of players here but -em really fell out of fashion by 6.47 or thereabouts around here.

[Suedars]

People actually play -em?

...

Okay, maybe it's just the mentality of players here but -em really fell out of fashion by 6.47 or thereabouts around here.

I stopped playing on battlenet back around 6.57, but IIRC it could be hard to find non-em games at the time. I mostly play on DARER nowadays where -em doesn't really exist, but when I go on b.net with a couple friends to stomp a -em (maybe once every couple months) there seem to be plenty.

[Tazar]

People actually play -em?

...

Okay, maybe it's just the mentality of players here but -em really fell out of fashion by 6.47 or thereabouts around here.

-EM games represent the overwhelming majority of Battle.net pub games in my area (NA East), or at least they did last time I played frequently.

I came in around 6.50, so take that as you will.

[Grif]

I stopped playing on battlenet back around 6.57, but IIRC it could be hard to find non-em games at the time. I mostly play on DARER nowadays where -em doesn't really exist, but when I go on b.net with a couple friends to stomp a -em (maybe once every couple months) there seem to be plenty.


-EM games represent the overwhelming majority of Battle.net pub games in my area (NA East), or at least they did last time I played frequently.

I came in around 6.50, so take that as you will.

Oh right. You guys played B.Net.

I stopped playing DotA on B.Net a long time ago, so that may have coloured my views. (Private servers are a mixed blessings. On one hand, the quality of players are higher. On the other, you get all sort of elitist pricks in return.)

[Tazar]

Oh right. You guys played B.Net.

I stopped playing DotA on B.Net a long time ago, so that may have coloured my views. (Private servers are a mixed blessings. On one hand, the quality of players are higher. On the other, you get all sort of elitist pricks in return.)

Non -em's always been the standard of play at higher levels (i.e. private) as far as I know, so I think you're right about there not being much -EM at those levels. It remains the primary game mode for pubs, though.

[Inhuman Bot]

All Random, Item Drop, Death Match, Only Middle, Super Creeps, Easy Mode is pretty typical I'd say.

[Dragonus45]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Inhuman Bot was making the point that there are many LoL abilities which damage/slow that are extremely similar, in which case there's no mechanics change involved.

I was referencing things like get your mana back or raise this stats base damage or give yourself some hp back. He was adding those into his statement saying if you got vague enough they were still similar.

[Tazar]

I was referencing things like get your mana back or raise this stats base damage or give yourself some hp back. He was adding those into his statement saying if you got vague enough they were still similar.

Winterwind did the same thing with his DotA skill comparisons, however. Turnabout is fair play, after all. :smallwink:

[Suedars]

Winterwind did the same thing with his DotA skill comparisons, however. Turnabout is fair play, after all. :smallwink:

I think it's safe to say that basic nukes with riders are a staple of the genre and there's nothing wrong with games extensively using them.

[Tazar]

I think it's safe to say that basic nukes with riders are a staple of the genre and there's nothing wrong with games extensively using them.

I entirely agree.

[Inhuman Bot]

Apparently some of the Chineese Teams might be breaking up before the 1 million tournament; They can't get visas on time.

[Suedars]

Apparently some of the Chineese Teams might be breaking up before the 1 million tournament; They can't get visas on time.

No, there's no problem with visas. The teams have known about this longer than the community has, and have had time to get visas. The visa thing came up when LGD split up and Virus, a French team, was given their slot instead of a Chinese team because at this point it's too late for a Chinese team to get visas. Of course, now it's looking like LGD might be reforming, so I'm not sure whether they'll be able to reclaim their original spot or not.

[Daverin]

Well, Lol player here, and I have to say I'd at least be interested in looking into DotA! I, for one, actually like looking at mechanics that LoL does not have, such as abilities like Rubick's telekinesis. Whatever I may think looks or sounds weird... eh, I should play it before I form a judgment.

There is one question I have, though, because I really know nothing of how DotA games play out. Now, in LoL, one of the more targetted features by other MOBA players, at least that I have seen, is the very passive farming game that you try to keep up. Obviously, this would be coming from the perspective of a game that does not have this problem. Yet, here is the weird part to me. LoL does not have a carry, at least apparently nobody near as hyper-carryable as in DotA. So, how is it DotA carries need less farm when they eventually do that job more than in LoL, where they need more? :smallconfused:

[toasty]

There is one question I have, though, because I really know nothing of how DotA games play out. Now, in LoL, one of the more targetted features by other MOBA players, at least that I have seen, is the very passive farming game that you try to keep up. Obviously, this would be coming from the perspective of a game that does not have this problem. Yet, here is the weird part to me. LoL does not have a carry, at least apparently nobody near as hyper-carryable as in DotA. So, how is it DotA carries need less farm when they eventually do that job more than in LoL, where they need more? :smallconfused:

You farm just as much in DotA? :smallconfused:

[Inhuman Bot]

So, how is it DotA carries need less farm when they eventually do that job more than in LoL, where they need more? :smallconfused:

Creeps, Killing Sprees and buildings give more gold.

[Grif]

Well, Lol player here, and I have to say I'd at least be interested in looking into DotA! I, for one, actually like looking at mechanics that LoL does not have, such as abilities like Rubick's telekinesis. Whatever I may think looks or sounds weird... eh, I should play it before I form a judgment.

There is one question I have, though, because I really know nothing of how DotA games play out. Now, in LoL, one of the more targetted features by other MOBA players, at least that I have seen, is the very passive farming game that you try to keep up. Obviously, this would be coming from the perspective of a game that does not have this problem. Yet, here is the weird part to me. LoL does not have a carry, at least apparently nobody near as hyper-carryable as in DotA. So, how is it DotA carries need less farm when they eventually do that job more than in LoL, where they need more? :smallconfused:

Huh? :smallconfused:

DotA carries that don't need to farm? Those two concepts are mutually inclusive. The only difference is whether they farm jungles, lanes or heroes.

[Daverin]

To expand, I don't mean "farm less" as in they literally need less gold and such, just that apparently more time is spent in LoL doing it than in DotA; however, thanks Inhuman for explaining (I think it was you I first heard about overly passive farming in LoL, as well.)

[Grif]

To expand, I don't mean "farm less" as in they literally need less gold and such, just that apparently more time is spent in LoL doing it than in DotA; however, thanks Inhuman for explaining (I think it was you I first heard about overly passive farming in LoL, as well.)

Ah, so that's what you meant. Just curious though, how much time is actually spent in LoL farming?

In DotA the (passive) farming usually stops by 10-20 minute mark, depending on the level of play. Sometimes even earlier, if some teams are playing aggressively.

[Tono]

Carries need farm in DotA as well. Hell, let any carry rice (Farm alone while keeping the lane pretty much in the same spot or letting it push back using deny.) long enough and you've lost the game. Now, I can't comment too much on how the game is exactly now, as when I played games lasted longer and that was when IF was starting to kill he length of the games, and there was none of that trilane stuff going on, but for the most part it was simply that less people needed farm compared to LoL. In DotA maybe two people will absolutely need the farm and the rest can get by with an item or two and support supplying chicken+flask+wards. And, items do tend to cost more for the higher tier stuff, with things costing between 4-5.5k.

Hm. While I am on this, can anyone explain the trilane business I've been hearing about? Like I said, I haven't played that much in a while, but to me, putting three people in a lane and leaving the side lanes to solo sounds like it would get decimated by simply having two people mid to counter mass pushing, a decent solo on the short lane and a harras carry on the long. The two mid would out-level and farm the mids assuming they can hold it off long enough, the duo would be a pain in the ass for most solos to handle, and the short would be normal. I assume one of the trilaners is a ganker, so that may help, but even then it sounds... inefficient. What am I missing, or is this just another example of Theory<Practice?

Edit: Wow, I took forever to type that. Mega-ninja'd.

[Daverin]

Grif: Depending on the plays, it never quite does. Either one of the teams itches for a fight everytime they are up, in which case the passive phase pretty much stops. Or, both teams will actually basically farm away, which can result in teamfights and ganks still, but then is going right back to the passive part. Basically, you as an individual player will always want to farm unless there is a definite team objective that has been decided upon, instead of perhaps more actively searching for an enemy or somesuch. (maybe this is true in DotA too. I'm only going off of what I heard, which did slightly confuse me.)

Tono: That is also a good point about need of farm. In the "classic" LoL team of a tank, a bruiser, an AD and AP carry, and a support, at least three of those, the bruiser and the carries, are considered wanting farm, and are accepted for taking it. Some tanks can do without, others would prefer it. Supports are not supposed to need it, but that still leaves 3 or even 4 players who would want to farm when they can (although the carries should be priority when at all possible.)

[Suedars]

Hm. While I am on this, can anyone explain the trilane business I've been hearing about? Like I said, I haven't played that much in a while, but to me, putting three people in a lane and leaving the side lanes to solo sounds like it would get decimated by simply having two people mid to counter mass pushing, a decent solo on the short lane and a harras carry on the long. The two mid would out-level and farm the mids assuming they can hold it off long enough, the duo would be a pain in the ass for most solos to handle, and the short would be normal. I assume one of the trilaners is a ganker, so that may help, but even then it sounds... inefficient. What am I missing, or is this just another example of Theory<Practice?

Trilanes aren't as good or as popular as they were a month or two ago, but the theory is that you dominate your trilane and get a very early tower, helping your other lanes out by giving them the gold from it, while pretty much completely denying a lane to the other team. It also gives you two solos. Generally your sidelane solo is going to have to play more defensively, and won't be able to farm as much, so you want that to be a hero that wants levels, but isn't as farm reliant. You can incorporate the usual solo mids.

Generally the counters are to either run a trilane of your own against it, or to completely sac that lane and put a solo in it, with two very aggressive heroes facing their solo sidelane, and either a jungler or a roamer who can put heavy pressure on their mid (generally better than running a dedicated dual lane in mid because it doesn't cripple your mid as much) and punish their trilane if they overextend.

If you're using that strategy it basically comes down to how hard can your dual lane pressure their solo, how well your roamer can neutralize their mid, and how well your sacrificial solo can turtle back. If you can avoid giving first blood and delay their taking of your tower you're usually in pretty good shape. If you die early and lose the tower though, the trilaning team is way ahead.

[Dragonus45]

Winterwind did the same thing with his DotA skill comparisons, however. Turnabout is fair play, after all. :smallwink:

But its not turnabout, winterwind was referencing the fact that all the skills mentioned in his post, other then the ones he conceded, were the same skills with numbers changed. Saying that if you went vague enough to say that any spell that deals damage and does something you could say the same thing for other games is a strange statement. I feel that that was deflecting the comment.

And ill defenitly be checking this game out, since i love mobas of all sizes. But denying is a major peeve of mine and the game will have a lot of work to do to make up for it.


Ah, so that's what you meant. Just curious though, how much time is actually spent in LoL farming?

In DotA the (passive) farming usually stops by 10-20 minute mark, depending on the level of play. Sometimes even earlier, if some teams are playing aggressively.

In lol it stops around that time as well, it really depends on what champs are involved and what the team comps are.

[Suedars]

But its not turnabout, winterwind was referencing the fact that all the skills mentioned in his post, other then the ones he conceded, were the same skills with numbers changed. Saying that if you went vague enough to say that any spell that deals damage and does something you could say the same thing for other games is a strange statement. I feel that that was deflecting the comment.

And ill defenitly be checking this game out, since i love mobas of all sizes. But denying is a major peeve of mine and the game will have a lot of work to do to make up for it.

Winterwind's comparisons are ridiculous. He's claiming that a 75 damage, melee range nuke with a 2.75 sec stun is essentially the same skill as an 1150 damage, 800 range nuke with no stun.

[Rhydeble]

Another thing to think about with the farming in DotA is that death hurts a lot more, and that casters don't really scale.

The scaling means that a team with a lot of casters in it wants to bunch up and push early on, because they'll have their ultimates and one or two good nukes ready. If two AoE nukes are used each creepwave, the pushing becomes quite scary, and you'll really have to try and stop them. Problem is, at this level strength and agility heroes are less powerful, because they don't have the items that do skill with them. This means that you sometimes want to make sure no-one can farm, by trying to defeat the enemy early on.

Dying makes you lose gold, that means that you have to plan what to buy in the laning phase, based on how good the enemy is at killing you. A free-farming Carry will go straight for the strong items, which are a big boost for them, problem is that these can cost around 3k a piece, so you'll need to farm for them, and during the farming you won't have their benefit, and you'll be easier to kill. And if you get killed, you lose gold (I think it was about 400, not sure though). If you harass and gank the carry a lot in the laning phase, He'll be forced to buy the cheaper items that he can afford, making him harder to gank, but also giving you a lot more time before he comes truly dangerous.

A third factor that makes the laning far more interesting is the runes, that spawn every two minutes at either the top or bottom river. If you pick up a rune at, say 3:50. it'll respawn at 4 minutes, and if you get lucky you'll have TWO runes. If this is double damage and, say, invisibility, SOMEONE WILL DIE.
Then there's also the regeneration items.the most important being flask tango and bottle. tango does what the healing in LoL does. Flask heals a lot more but gets interrupted if you take damage, meaning the enemy immediately goes for you if they can.
Bottle is a different story. Bottles are rather expensive, and give you three charges of quick healing and mana regen. It automatically refills at the fountain, and can't be used during combat. This gives someone a lot more staying power, at the cost of some farming potential that a wraith-band or similar item could have given you. It also allows you to store a rune in an empty bottle, giving two extra charges after you used the rune.
This means that you want to control the runes, expecially if you have a bottle and are a ganker. This means that everyone will try to have at least one ward at either of the rune spawns. (if it doesn't spawn top, it will be bottom).

Denying is a wholly different story that gives you a lot more options in the laning phase, much like creep-pulling (letting the neutral creeps fight with your creeps, giving you more exp and gold, and denying that to your enemy, at the cost of leaving the tower slightly more open).

[Tazar]

But its not turnabout, winterwind was referencing the fact that all the skills mentioned in his post, other then the ones he conceded, were the same skills with numbers changed. Saying that if you went vague enough to say that any spell that deals damage and does something you could say the same thing for other games is a strange statement. I feel that that was deflecting the comment.


Suedars responded to this already, but I'll quote it for emphasis:


Winterwind's comparisons are ridiculous. He's claiming that a 75 damage, melee range nuke with a 2.75 sec stun is essentially the same skill as an 1150 damage, 800 range nuke with no stun.

Winterwind's allegations that most of those spells were essentially the same thing with a minor numbers tweak have been solidly refuted by those who actually possess extensive knowledge of DotA, and continuing to defend them is rather pointless.

As far as denying goes, I actually enjoy it. I feel it adds a tension to the laning phase which is missing when all you have to do is attack low-HP creeps and watch out for enemy harass. I enjoy that added energy, personally, though I can see why some might find it frustrating.

I also find denying beneficial in that it gives a skilled player additional means of restraining late-game carry heroes by denying them much-needed gold and XP. It's a very useful tool, and additionally adds more depth to balancing heroes via their attack animations.

[Dragonus45]

As far as denying goes, I actually enjoy it. I feel it adds a tension to the laning phase which is missing when all you have to do is attack low-HP creeps and watch out for enemy harass. I enjoy that added energy, personally, though I can see why some might find it frustrating.

I also find denying beneficial in that it gives a skilled player additional means of restraining late-game carry heroes by denying them much-needed gold and XP. It's a very useful tool, and additionally adds more depth to balancing heroes via their attack animations.

Im less defending winterwind and more pointing out that inhuman bot was wrong in his statement.

My biggest nitpick with denying is more the ability to pull your own lane back. I find it rather infuriating. I don't mind gold loss on death, other than it makes things a bit too steam rolly.

[Cynan Machae]

For those who like these kind of things, this is interesting:
http://www.gosugamers.net/dota/thread/802775-a-history-of-dota-part-1

[Inhuman Bot]

Here's a banner art thing Valve made.
http://i.imgur.com/Kgy8F.jpg

From left to right, I believe it's Clinkz, Morphling, Juggernaut, Pudge, Nevermore or N'Aix and Treant Protector.

Kunkka claims this (http://media.playdota.com/misc/loadscreen/Dota2_Kunkka_Med.jpg) is also from DotA 2.

Featuring: Venomancer, Nevermore, Lightening Revenant, Enigma, Faceless Void, Tiny, Juggernaut, Rogue Knight, Lina and Crystal Maiden.

[Cynan Machae]

I'm pretty sure this is Sand king to the complete right in the first pick tho

And from what I've read the first pic is as old as spet 2010 so it's pretty early concept art :P

[Inhuman Bot]

I'm pretty sure this is Sand king to the complete right in the first pick tho

And from what I've read the first pic is as old as spet 2010 so it's pretty early concept art :P

Yeah, the first one is old. The second one Kunkka just recently posted, though.

The big sickle guy has some water effects around him. Might be Slithereen Guard or Tidehunter.

[Suedars]

Yeah, the first one is old. The second one Kunkka just recently posted, though.

The big sickle guy has some water effects around him. Might be Slithereen Guard or Tidehunter.

Slardar is my guess. Tidehunter would almost certainly have a shell.

Also I'm pretty sure that Veno there is actually Viper since he's flying.

And wow, I didn't notice Tiny at all. I thought he was just part of the terrain/scenery.

[Tazar]

:smalleek:

That picture is AWESOME! Loving CM's look, I can't wait to play her!

My only question is, can it really be accurate? Lina's hair isn't all firey anymore (unless they decided to change that.)

Everyone looks fantastic, Nevermore and Pebbles in particular-holy crap! And that's definitely Viper, Venomancer doesn't fly.

EDIT:
Checked the forums and yeah, Icefrog confirmed this is legit. I guess they decided to make Lina's hair not actually be fire, which I agree with, 'cause it looked a little silly.

Okay, after this I am officially extremely hyped. Wednesday can't come fast enough.

Now to wait and hope they reveal Alleria, Jakiro and Harby's new looks soon!

[Inhuman Bot]

Screenshot leak featuring Nevermore.
http://i56.tinypic.com/30k3r5g.jpg

Edit: Here's Doombringer.
http://i.imgur.com/pDSSw.jpg

[Fera Tian]

its so clean and pretty =]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

[Cynan Machae]

http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4559/80894784.jpg

[Tazar]

Who do we think this is?

http://www.dota-two.com/img/articles/dota24.png

It looks like it might be Slardar, but he's bulkier than this guy and has a tail.

Also, Windrunner has red hair now! As an Alleria player, I approve of this wholeheartedly.

Somebody said that the 10 heroes in Cynan's screenshot (portraits in the top bar) are, left from right, Shadow Shaman, Butcher, Windrunner, VS, Clockwerk, NA, Enchant, Moon Rider, Rooftrellen/Tiny (they both have treebeards now), and AA, which I'm inclined to agree with.

[Daverin]

Actually Tazar, I'm betting that smaller looking one is their look for Huskar, the Sacred Warrior. Seems somewhat trollish in appearance, includes a mohawk with ponytail (which I saw on of his more popular fan-arts before), and that appears to be a spear. At least seems like a possibility.

Also, it is really interesting to see how Valve is redoing these appearances. Although I can't help but feel that a few of the pictures have revealed maybe one too many blocky heads...

[Cynan Machae]

I thought it could be Meepo at first, beause of the shovel looking thing :P

[Kageru]

Dota2 huh. I will definitely try it out I just hope that they have better shop(s) than the ones in dota. That's the first thing I noticed in lol "wow their shop is actually organized and I can find items and their combinations without memorizing different shops" and I just don't want to deal with the dota shops ever again.

[Tazar]

Actually Tazar, I'm betting that smaller looking one is their look for Huskar, the Sacred Warrior. Seems somewhat trollish in appearance, includes a mohawk with ponytail (which I saw on of his more popular fan-arts before), and that appears to be a spear. At least seems like a possibility.

Also, it is really interesting to see how Valve is redoing these appearances. Although I can't help but feel that a few of the pictures have revealed maybe one too many blocky heads...

I don't think that's Huskar, based on the back fins. Slardar is the only hero who has one of those.

Huskar also has two short spears, one in each hand, not one long one.

[Inhuman Bot]

Vengeful Spirit looks pretty terrible, I'd say. Not sure who the pinkish, vaguely aquatic guy is.

[Daverin]

That's the thing, I don't think it is a fin, but rather an oversized mohawk with a ponytail ending (look VERY closely at the ending there. It doesn't help that the end loses the yellow). And the spear thing could completely fall in the realm of redesign.

Its either or to me: it could be Slardar, but losing the whole yaun-ti hybrid look seems like it is a bit more for his redesign, or it is a Huskar with an oversized mohawk/ponytail thing and only one spear instead of two.

That said, now looking at it, what I thought was some strange robe could be a a snake-like lower body, although losing the tail ending still seems... odd.

Ah well. Then I continue to wonder what Huskar will look like. Him and Axe.

[Tazar]

Vengeful Spirit looks pretty terrible, I'd say. Not sure who the pinkish, vaguely aquatic guy is.

Agreed that VS looks kinda "meh".

These screenshots are allegedly about 4 months old though, and people who have seen the current game claim it looks much better, the HUD in particular. So, hopefully they've added some kind of effect to VS to make her look better.

[Cynan Machae]

I thought the mohawk guy was Phantom Lancer <<

[Tazar]

Hmm, could be, but it would mean they'd totally changed his weapon.

Somebody suggested it could be Dazzle, which I could see, as he's definitely on the scrawnier side.

[Inhuman Bot]

Maybe it's Invoker.

Also, IceFrog has said Mana bars are visible to allies only.

[Daverin]

Huh, interesting. I 'think' I like that concept.

[Tazar]

Maybe it's Invoker.

Also, IceFrog has said Mana bars are visible to allies only.

Nah, no way it's Invoker, Invoker's an elf and he'll likely still have what resembles a full-body robe.

While there've been pretty drastic wardrobe changes, they still seem fairly consistent with the originals in design.

[Inhuman Bot]

Nah, no way it's Invoker, Invoker's an elf and he'll likely still have what resembles a full-body robe.

While there've been pretty drastic wardrobe changes, they still seem fairly consistent with the originals in design.

I was kidding. :smalltongue:


The reason for no mana bars makes sense, I'd say. It means (for example) Kunkka can start casting Torrent, have the animation for him casting it play, then stop it, with the enemy players still dodging it. Gladiator in HoN could do that too, but because his mana bar was visibile and didn't go down, you would know there wasn't a need to dodge his spike trap.

[Suedars]

Hopefully we'll still be able to click enemy heroes to see their mana, otherwise not having access to knowledge of enemy mana is going to be very annoying.

[Inhuman Bot]

Hopefully we'll still be able to click enemy heroes to see their mana, otherwise not having access to knowledge of enemy mana is going to be very annoying.

You can.

Edit: More leaks
http://i.imgur.com/JZDbP.png

http://i.imgur.com/JTpOz.png

[Keld Denar]

Is there a scheduled release date? Like, soon? Please?

[Suedars]

Is there a scheduled release date? Like, soon? Please?

Before the end of the year.

I'd guess mid-November.

[Tazar]

DOTA2's Steam page has stated that there will be a "large-scale beta" this fall, I believe.

I'm really hoping Windrunner gets some action in the International, I really want to see how she plays. She's not really a often-picked competitive play hero, though, if I recall.

[Cynan Machae]

Actually she is, at least she has been for a bit of time.

[Tazar]

Really? Fantastic! :smallbiggrin:
Guess I can (hopefully) look forward to seeing her in action, then. All those buffs must have finally taken!

Incidentally, the relative balance between the two new heroes in 6.55 (Alleria and Kunkka) always amused me. Remember how broken Kunkka used to be? He was nuts. I remember trying to lane him as Drow Ranger and getting absolutely destroyed by the cleave. Just horrifying. And Alleria was pretty terrible.

[Grif]

Really? Fantastic! :smallbiggrin:
Guess I can (hopefully) look forward to seeing her in action, then. All those buffs must have finally taken!

Incidentally, the relative balance between the two new heroes in 6.55 (Alleria and Kunkka) always amused me. Remember how broken Kunkka used to be? He was nuts. I remember trying to lane him as Drow Ranger and getting absolutely destroyed by the cleave. Just horrifying. And Alleria was pretty terrible.

Kunkka was nerfed pretty hard shortly after introduction. It's like the unwritten law of DotA. All new heroes must be overpowered before they are nerfed into balance or underpower territory.

Veterans might remember how OP Spectre was when she was first introduced.

[Tazar]

Kunkka was nerfed pretty hard shortly after introduction. It's like the unwritten law of DotA. All new heroes must be overpowered before they are nerfed into balance or underpower territory.

Veterans might remember how OP Spectre was when she was first introduced.

Heck, Kunkka was nerfed repeatedly for like five full versions straight, and he's still (if I recall) a highly competitive hero! Dude was nuts.

THE OFFICIAL TRAILER IS OUT! AND IT'S AWESOME!

My one regret is no Alleria, but just wow. That is fantastic. Can't wait to fight out the Rylai/Lina rivalry ingame.

[Cynan Machae]

For those that want a link:
http://www.dota2.com/trailer

It's pretty awesome yes :P

[FireJustice]

Yeah, new heroes normally were a little Op.

Yes a I remember Specter (and its aura that reflected a lot of damage on the enemies), and god Tauren Cheiftain and his OP broken combo.

anyway, Valve knows how to tease us to play, just saw a lovely trailer "What a hero needs" or something like it.

[toasty]

Yeah, new heroes normally were a little Op.

Yes a I remember Specter (and its aura that reflected a lot of damage on the enemies), and god Tauren Cheiftain and his OP broken combo.

anyway, Valve knows how to tease us to play, just saw a lovely trailer "What a hero needs" or something like it.

Tauren Chieftain. Oh God. I remember when my friend picked him and was like, "THIS HERO! SO OP!" That was a fun day. :smallbiggrin:

I think my favorite OP hero though was Nightcrawler. I stopped playing soon after his release, I dunno how strong he ended up, but I thought his regen/ability to steal agi was pretty stupid good.

[Alge'n]

New heroes are usually at least a bit OP for a simple reason : playtesting.
A good hero will see much more play than a bad one and will therefore be adjusted appropriately much faster.

Although for Nightcrawler/Slark that was not the case, he was really underwhelming at the start, got buffed quite a bit a still see barely any normal play, and no competitive play at all. He is a pretty good pubstomper but that's about it.

[Adumbration]

As a curiosity, is stunlocking still possible in DotA? Back when I played it in custom games, it was a pretty big deal, what with the hammer item that gave something like 15% stun chance (and stacked to boot, IIRC). N'aix was pretty much unbeatable if you got some farm on him.

[Keld Denar]

Well, late in DotA1, about 8-10 months ago?, they killed the stun chance stacking. Things like Slardar and Chrono had little red notes underneath them that said (This ability does not stack with Cranium Bashers), and they took out Cranium Basher's ability to stack with itself, so..yea. You can never get more than a 15% chance to bash with an item, or 25% chance with a talent.

So while its possible to chain a couple of stuns, compete stun lock is unlikely. Then again, chaining even 2 is pretty strong, and enough for most non-teleporting heros to be SoL.

[9mm]

I must admit, I hate that mini-map. Hopefully that isn't an indication of how the rest of the UI is; as I have no patience for being confused over what button does what.

[Inhuman Bot]

As a curiosity, is stunlocking still possible in DotA? Back when I played it in custom games, it was a pretty big deal, what with the hammer item that gave something like 15% stun chance (and stacked to boot, IIRC). N'aix was pretty much unbeatable if you got some farm on him.

Cranium Bashers don't stack.

Troll Warlord in melee mode can stucklock, especially if he uses Battle Trance.

Bane Elemental, Shadow Shaman, Demon Witch, Enigma, and Earthshaker can also stun you for about 8 seconds straight until you're dead.

[Tazar]

They took out actual permabashing from DotA1 a couple of years back, but several heroes (Troll notably) can still get pretty close to stunlocking.

Which is why I love Windrunner. Hard carry, you say? Here, have some 100% miss chance! :smallbiggrin:

[Inhuman Bot]

Tournament groups are up:
http://www.gosugamers.net/dota/facts.php?id=199

This has been confirmed, now.

http://i.imgur.com/vHDGp.jpg

I look forward to orbwalking with Viper again.

[Keld Denar]

Techies? Where are techies?

[Grif]

Techies? Where are techies?

You're right... WHERE'S MY FAVOURITEST HERO OF DOTA? :smallmad:

[Suedars]

Group stage predictions:

Group A: EHOME and iG advance, not even close.
Group B: Cakewalk for Tyloo and Ok.Nv.Cn
Group C: The group of death. I haven't seen much of MUFC since the WDC, but this should be a close one between MYM M5 and MUFC. I'd bet MYM and M5 advance, but it's a tough call between that and MYM MUFC advancing.
Group D: Na'Vi and GG.net are probably the best bets here, but Puppey and KuroKy are both famously inconsistent at lan tournaments and NeVo could definitely edge either one out.

[Inhuman Bot]

Techies? Where are techies?

Gone, I hope.

They haven't shown around 3/4s of the other heroes though, so..

[Suedars]

Gone, I hope.

They haven't shown around 3/4s of the other heroes though, so..

It's confirmed that every DotA hero will be in.

[Inhuman Bot]

It's confirmed that every DotA hero will be in.

What I meant was, they weren't showing all the heroes in that screenshot; That doesn't mean they aren't in.

By the way, beta.

[Keld Denar]

Where beta? I WANT BETA!!!!!

I can haz beta keyz?

[Tazar]

So I'm registered for the beta, are you?

Go to dota2.com and follow the instructions there to register.

[Suedars]

Does anyone know if there'll be VoDs of the tournament? I just realized that most of it will be taking place in the early AM in the US, at least tonight.

[toasty]

Does anyone know if there'll be VoDs of the tournament? I just realized that most of it will be taking place in the early AM in the US, at least tonight.

I hope there are VODs. I'm not getting up at 4AM to watch DotA.

[Tono]

The Schedule button says it will have replays.

[Keld Denar]

GAH!!!! I can't remember my steam login name...

Do steam usernames include your email suffix? Like, @gmail.com?

Bluh. I need to go home and look this crap up.

[Suedars]

GAH!!!! I can't remember my steam login name...

Do steam usernames include your email suffix? Like, @gmail.com?

Bluh. I need to go home and look this crap up.

No, it's independent of your email.

[Keld Denar]

Ah HA! On the list LIKE A BOSS!

[Tazar]

I hope there are VODs. I'm not getting up at 4AM to watch DotA.

<_<
>_>

I am.

[toasty]

<_<
>_>

I am.

A)I have bad internet right now
B) I'm not a huge DotA fan.

If I had good internet I'd be getting up for LoL at Gamescom. I don't though, so I'm not. :smalltongue:

[Penguinizer]

I'm getting out of school around 11 am. You can bet the first thing I do is go by the store to pick up snacks and then to the stream I go. :smallbiggrin:

[Cynan Machae]

Im might w atch it live <<

I was a bit used to it due to BW proleague and some GSL lol

[Fera Tian]

it looks so clean and sexy, also the streams are up

[Adumbration]

There's EH vs iG going on right now, I think. (http://www.gosugamers.net/dota/features/2778) Oh wait, it's down. Don't know why, last I checked the game was ongoing but lagging hard, which may or may not be the reason.

[FireJustice]

just watching in HD smooth right now


really pretty

[Tono]

Do the commentors keep going out for anyone else?
EDIT: Apperently its lag problems.

[potatocubed]

Logged into the livestream just in time to see a big explosion and 'the dire have won'. I don't even know what a dire is. =/

Anyway, it certainly looks like a swish game. Does anyone know how much it will cost?

[FireJustice]

Sentinel is now The Radiant

Scourge is now The Dire

[Inhuman Bot]

Sentinel is now The Radiant

Scourge is now The Dire

We've known that for awhile, now.

[Tono]

We've known that for awhile, now.

Obviously Potato didn't. For that matter before the streams, neither did I. Nobody claimed it was important news.

[Inhuman Bot]

So uh, about that match.

[Cynan Machae]

It looks pretty good so far, it's just sad the internet is making problems at gamescom due to the stream :P I guess they didnt expect that many viewers lol.

GosuGamers, Playdota, Owned.tv and Teamliquid all crashed at some point so far lol

[Tazar]

Man, they're streaming all the wrong games! We keep seeing Tide, VS and Lion again and again.

This game (http://dota2.com/tournaments/international/game/104)had Rylai, Alleria, Balanar, Chen, Venomancer, and a 22-1 Sniper! Can't wait to watch the replay of that, they'd better put it up!

[Alge'n]

Seeing Virus getting raped, while entertaining, is not exactly Replay-of-the-month material.

[Cynan Machae]

Now the game with Mym has WR DR and CM :D

[Tazar]

Now the game with Mym has WR DR and CM :D

Windrunner, Traxex AND Rylai? And I'll be at work for the next nine hours...:smallmad: Well, I'll enjoy the VOD of that one at least.

I am so mad right now. How do they look? I've yet to see any of their models ingame. Does Powershot still look sufficiently badass?

[Inhuman Bot]

Windrunner, Traxex AND Rylai? And I'll be at work for the next nine hours...:smallmad: Well, I'll enjoy the VOD of that one at least.

I am so mad right now. How do they look? I've yet to see any of their models ingame. Does Powershot still look sufficiently badass?

I'd put Windrunner somewhere between Vengeful spirit (baaad) and Tidehunter (awesome).

I don't like how Ishkafel looks. He looks like Engima/Darchow, and less like Gondar.

[Tazar]

Yeah, Tide was really awesome, and VS certainly needs work. If they just gave her some kind of "aura" thing, any kind of "post-processing" effect, I think that'd help a lot. She needs to be less lanky as well.

Anyone feel like throwing me a bone and posting a WR/Rylai screenshot? :smalltongue:

I'm dying to see what they look like and I won't be able to for nine hours.

[Volatar]

Observation: Dota2's spectator mode (http://i.imgur.com/PtYon.jpg) is severely lacking when compared to LoL's (http://i.imgur.com/kNibn.jpg), or even moreso, HoN's (http://i.imgur.com/Nh6LK.jpg).

[potatocubed]

I like when I look through the team comps on the torunament site and click on Engima's 'more information about this hero' tab all it says is "#enigma_blurb".

Very... enigmatic. :smalltongue:

[Tazar]

Observation: Dota2's spectator mode (http://i.imgur.com/PtYon.jpg) is severely lacking when compared to LoL's (http://i.imgur.com/kNibn.jpg), or even moreso, HoN's (http://i.imgur.com/Nh6LK.jpg).



While true, I wouldn't really cite that as a concern yet as the game hasn't even entered into beta. Spectator features should take second priority to implementing actual gameplay features.


I like when I look through the team comps on the torunament site and click on Engima's 'more information about this hero' tab all it says is "#enigma_blurb".

Very... enigmatic. :smalltongue:

Heh, so it wasn't just me? Good to know.

[Inhuman Bot]

MYM got destroyed so badly.

[Volatar]

While true, I wouldn't really cite that as a concern yet as the game hasn't even entered into beta. Spectator features should take second priority to implementing actual gameplay features.

Spectator mode is hugely important when your first big marketing push is a livestreamed million-dollar tournament. DotA2 is being developed by a large team. Spectator mode can easily be developed parallel to gameplay.

[Tazar]

Spectator mode is hugely important when your first big marketing push is a livestreamed million-dollar tournament. DotA2 is being developed by a large team. Spectator mode can easily be developed parallel to gameplay.

Spectator mode is important, but ensuring balanced and fair gameplay is even more so, and that's where I'd rather they put their resources at the moment (that and developing the promised suite of community tools).

I think the current spectator mode is perfectly adequate for purposes of the tournament; while it could be significantly improved upon, I did not feel my viewing experience was hindered in any way by it.

A team HP bar like HoN would have been nice, but that's the only thing I can really think of.

[Inhuman Bot]

Spectator mode is hugely important when your first big marketing push is a livestreamed million-dollar tournament. DotA2 is being developed by a large team. Spectator mode can easily be developed parallel to gameplay.

Comparing them, I'd have to say:

HoN's was best around a year ago, and it's worse now. It's still the best, even if it crashes if you try to minimize it.

LoL's is lol-worthy.

DotA 2's main problem is how much screen real estate it takes up. I'm confident that it will be improved, and at least it beats out LoL's.

[Tazar]

Alright, I just got a chance to see some Windrunner gameplay, and I like it!

The model is quite good, and the spell effects are very cool. I didn't get to see her Windrun, but Shackleshot looked nice and Powershot looked awesome. Definitely an enthusiastic two thumbs up from me!

Rylai looked cool as well, though I didn't get to see her spells in action. Chen's model is also quite nice.

A few need work, there's some size issues and VS is just plain bad, but overall I think the hero models are damn nice.

[Inhuman Bot]

Alright, I just got a chance to see some Windrunner gameplay, and I like it!

The model is quite good, and the spell effects are very cool. I didn't get to see her Windrun, but Shackleshot looked nice and Powershot looked awesome. Definitely an enthusiastic two thumbs up from me!

Rylai looked cool as well, though I didn't get to see her spells in action. Chen's model is also quite nice.

A few need work, there's some size issues and VS is just plain bad, but overall I think the hero models are damn nice.





The model is quite good, and the spell effects are very cool. I didn't get to see her Windrun, but Shackleshot looked nice and Powershot looked awesome. Definitely an enthusiastic two thumbs up from me!

Rylai looked cool as well, though I didn't get to see her spells in action. Chen's model is also quite nice.



Rylai looked cool as well, though I didn't get to see her spells in action. Chen's model is also quite nice.




Rylai looked cool as well,



Rylai cool

Oh, I get it.

[Tazar]

Heh, whoops. :smalltongue:

I have a bad habit of unintentionally making horrible puns.

So I hear Sniper quotes the TF2 sniper, and that his ult sound is the AWP from Counter-Strike?

[Inhuman Bot]

Heh, whoops. :smalltongue:

I have a bad habit of unintentionally making horrible puns.

So I hear Sniper quotes the TF2 sniper, and that his ult sound is the AWP from Counter-Strike?

It's true, but they might be placeholders

Edit: Hah, Magebane totally lost that last game.

[Suedars]

It's true, but they might be placeholders

Edit: Hah, Magebane totally lost that last game.

AM was fine in that game (I'm assuming you're talking about MYM vs. MUFC). He farmed well and had a decent teamfight presence without giving up kills. The problem was that MUFC lacked any sort of pushing power in their support and gankers, which meant that as the midgame went on and they fell behind by several towers and Rosh kills their support were badly underfarmed while MYM's were quite rich, so MYM was able to quickly melt 3 of MUFC's heroes at the start of every fight while having all their support stay intact.

[Inhuman Bot]

Valve's claiming that the (rather terrible) UI is an old build, which is stable. They've also said that sound effects, attack animations and so on are going to be worked on.

[MeatShield#236]

Valve's claiming that the (rather terrible) UI is an old build, which is stable. They've also said that sound effects, attack animations and so on are going to be worked on.

I sure hope so. It's kinda distracting hearing the the Unreal Tournament announcer calling out kill streaks.

[Inhuman Bot]

I sure hope so. It's kinda distracting hearing the the Unreal Tournament announcer calling out kill streaks.

I agree, but some people find it nostalgic.

Ellen Mclain and Jon St. John are both voiceacting. Maybe they'll do announcer work.

"Comedy" answer: Or they can use that one HoN announcer. If you've played the game, you'll know what I mean.

[Cynan Machae]

Concerning to spectator mode, you have to consider that HoN's is pretty good now yes, but those last few additions were made like a few weeks ago, which is quite a long time after Hon was first released. I'm pretty sure DotA2 can/will do better. As Slaan said it's not even in the beta yet.

[Volatar]

Concerning to spectator mode, you have to consider that HoN's is pretty good now yes, but those last few additions were made like a few weeks ago, which is quite a long time after Hon was first released. I'm pretty sure DotA2 can/will do better. As Slaan said it's not even in the beta yet.

Hey, you don't have to get all defensive. I am just pointing out areas that I would like to see improved. I know that they will be improving a ton.

The HUD and Mini Map could use some tweaks. There is a lot of wasted space on the HUD, and I would really like to see character portraits on the map.

[Tazar]

Valve's claiming that the (rather terrible) UI is an old build, which is stable. They've also said that sound effects, attack animations and so on are going to be worked on.

Good! I'm bummed because my Alleria doesn't have any of the oh-so-delightful sound bytes on ability use that all the other heroes seem to.

If they're going to widely implement heroes saying stuff on skill use (which I think they should) then everybody should get a fair share of the Valve voice acting goodness.

[Cynan Machae]

Valve's claiming that the (rather terrible) UI is an old build, which is stable. They've also said that sound effects, attack animations and so on are going to be worked on.
Where did you see that?

[Keld Denar]

Woah, I just watched GGnet vs nevo.

I gotta say, I was surprised by the end. I thought GGnet played a much tighter game. A well farmed AM though...thats something to reckon with.

[Meta]

Woah, I just watched GGnet vs nevo.

I gotta say, I was surprised by the end. I thought GGnet played a much tighter game. A well farmed AM though...thats something to reckon with.

Play much DotA? I mean that sincerely, I'm always looking for people to play with and I've played with some people in this tourney, so I'd say I'm fairly qualified to teach. :smallredface:

That goes to anyone wanting some games or pointers.

AM has become the carry of choice because it counters the Dusa and Morph that a lot of top teams were using not too long ago. Spec will see increased play as a good matchup to AM I think. And then Weaver matches up solidly with anything due to sheer difficulty ganking one.

Also, gl to you, Nv.Int and Navi. Especially Fear.

EDIT: I personally feel rylai's model is too large compared to some of the others, they should take some of NS's muscles and give them to Slardar, and larger dots on the map might be cool.

[Penguinizer]

I actually like the Quake announcer they had as a placeholder. It's the classic.

[Tazar]

CM is a little on the big side, true, but I think she still looks good. She could definitely stand to be shrunk a little, though, as Rylai was always one of the smaller heroes.

I really like the Quake announcer too. A whole bunch of people on the PA forums were complaining that it and the "pwned X's head" announcements were "amateurish" or "unprofessional". Clearly, they've never actually played DotA. :smalltongue:

[Keld Denar]

Play much DotA? I mean that sincerely, I'm always looking for people to play with and I've played with some people in this tourney, so I'd say I'm fairly qualified to teach. :smallredface:

I have. Between BNet and Garena, I've probably played some odd thousand games or so. I'm definitely not PERSONALLY up to the calibre that these players are, but I can recognize a lot of good strategy. GGnet ended up all 3 levels higher than nevo, which I'd attribute to their superior early game team ganks. That said, I only saw that AM make one mistake, about mid game, when he had DD and blunk up the ramp in the middle straight into 3 heros who chain CCed him to death. That was a little reckless, probably brought on by the fact that he had DD. Otherwise, GGnet had FAR superior rune control, more early ganks, and IMO, just altogether better play. Also, it seemed to me like Enigma was fairly useless in that game. I mean, he was essential in a couple of the late game engagements with his ulti, but I felt like he spent too much time in the jungle.

I really hope they fix some animations, as well. Chain Frost looks...dumb to say the least.

Also, anyone hear anything about how they will handle leavers? That was always one of the worst parts of DotA. Some noob gets FBed and ragequits so you have to start the game over after only 10 minutes right when things are getting good.

[toasty]

Also, anyone hear anything about how they will handle leavers? That was always one of the worst parts of DotA. Some noob gets FBed and ragequits so you have to start the game over after only 10 minutes right when things are getting good.

I would assume they would use a similar system as League of Legends. That is, if you leave during champion select, you must wait until you can rejoin the queue (this prevents people from leaving the game if someone picks a "bad" hero or picks a hero that person "has to play"). If you leave during a game, you can't rejoin the queue till that game is over and receive a "leaver" mark if you don't rejoin in a timely manner. People with multiple leaver marks will eventually get temp or even perma banned from the game.

[potatocubed]

I remember reading in one of the QAs that Dota 2 will have multiple ways of handling leavers - customisable bots and a 'gap filler' player queue are the two I remember.

[Tono]

Wow, if anybody is Watching Trust VS GG.net, Mith-Trust is playing amazingly.
And wins. That was amazingly fun to watch.

[Tazar]

The promised leaver system actually sounds fantastic.

In addition to being able to reconnect, allegedly it will be possible for people to join existing games in progress which have leavers, potentially for "karma points" or whatever system of rewards they adopt.

So if your friend is on and he has a leaver, you can pop in to even up the game instead of making a team play 4v5.

Dunno about you guys, but I think that's pretty awesome.

[Meta]

Trust just played a really strong game.

I wasn't trying to second guess your analysis, Keld, I actually hadn't seen that game, and that sounds of character from GGnet. I remember a time when every other person in a Bnet dota game would tell you Kuroky was the best player atm. It seems to be that GGnet has plenty of individual talent (on paper definitely, and in practice, usually) but it's usually the teamwork they lack imo, so that sounds surprising.

I'm not sure how I feel about joining someone's game in progress. Depending on what sort of ranking system, if any, that could cause havoc with its legitimacy.

Shame
Nv.Int picked up a loss. Did anyone watch the game live? Any impressions?

[Tazar]

RE: Nv.int vs iG:


That game was FANTASTIC! I really think Void lost it for them, though, which is a shame seeing as he played such a strong game in general. Constantly attempting to take out Weaver in Chronosphere instead of just wrecking the supports was inadvisable, I think, and he really should have gotten an MKB or a DR and pushed with Aegis when he was sitting on 10k in the bank.

Instead he ended up just wasting Aegis, and why'd he get a manta style? He needed something to either negate or overwhelm Weaver's miss chance. Don't think I agreed with that.

Overall a fantastic game, and great comeback from iG. I was rooting for nv.int, but I gotta give iG props.




I'm not sure how I feel about joining someone's game in progress. Depending on what sort of ranking system, if any, that could cause havoc with its legitimacy.

Yeah, it'd definitely need to be closely examined, but I think it's a good idea, especially seeing as a 4v5 (or worse) between two evenly-matched teams is not a winning proposition anyways.
I'd much rather take my chances with somebody random joining than simply eat a probable loss due to DC or ragequit.

Anyways, I imagine they'd have some kind of ranking structure so you can't have pros joining into an average game and stomping everyone.

[potatocubed]

Here's the source (http://blog.dota2.com/2010/11/dota-2-qa/) for my earlier comment about leavers.

It sounds pretty good to me, although as with all elements of a game like this it'll need some serious design and monitoring to keep the trolls out.

[Keld Denar]

Isn't there an issue with stunners and MKB? I coulda swore that if you proc a mini-stun while a foe is on a longer duration stun, it would end the full stun early. Or am I just making this up?

[Meta]

The 'newest' overwrites the old is the general rule when it comes to stun durations. There are always exceptions in DotA, so I'd have to test with MKB to be sure but it probably would. There's also a bit of a risk to images and bashes, though. Forewarning: this info was legitimate as of a few versions ago, and I don't think has been fixed, but I haven't checked every changelog for it.

People may already know this, but just in case: Illusions can cause bash. However, it's a pseudo bash. An illusion by itself will register the bash effect just as often as the actual hero, but no stun will actually occur. However, let's stay a troll warlord has a manta. He stuns an opponent with a bash generated off his model. If during this stun one of his images manages to proc a bash, this normally fake bash will actually stun the target, but only if they are 'extending' a legitimate bash.

The bad news is that it works both ways. If an illusion procs a bash (not stunning) and while this fake bash's duration is ongoing, the hero scores a bash, the fake bash's duration will be lengthed instead of a legitimate bash happening.

Basically boils down to image heroes (or with manta) need to be careful with their bash effects.

Found it! Check near the bottom: http://www.playdota.com/mechanics/illusions
Relevant because maybe power.net was going for perma bash? Not sure, just making sure we've got the all the info before debating whether it was a good choice or not.

[Grif]

The 'newest' overwrites the old is the general rule when it comes to stun durations. There are always exceptions in DotA, so I'd have to test with MKB to be sure but it probably would. There's also a bit of a risk to images and bashes, though. Forewarning: this info was legitimate as of a few versions ago, and I don't think has been fixed, but I haven't checked every changelog for it.

People may already know this, but just in case: Illusions can cause bash. However, it's a pseudo bash. An illusion by itself will register the bash effect just as often as the actual hero, but no stun will actually occur. However, let's stay a troll warlord has a manta. He stuns an opponent with a bash generated off his model. If during this stun one of his images manages to proc a bash, this normally fake bash will actually stun the target, but only if they are 'extending' a legitimate bash.

The bad news is that it works both ways. If an illusion procs a bash (not stunning) and while this fake bash's duration is ongoing, the hero scores a bash, the fake bash's duration will be lengthed instead of a legitimate bash happening.

Basically boils down to image heroes (or with manta) need to be careful with their bash effects.

Found it! Check near the bottom: http://www.playdota.com/mechanics/illusions
Relevant because maybe power.net was going for perma bash? Not sure, just making sure we've got the all the info before debating whether it was a good choice or not.

Aren't these all bugs with the way the Warcraft III engine processes bash? I doubt DotA 2 will have such confusing features. (And I hope they don't. I want a bash to be a bash, not overwritten by a mini-bash later.)

[toasty]

Aren't these all bugs with the way the Warcraft III engine processes bash? I doubt DotA 2 will have such confusing features. (And I hope they don't. I want a bash to be a bash, not overwritten by a mini-bash later.)

Seeing as Icefrog has seemed to be so clear that this is just a port to a new engine, I expect it to have all these confusing features, as annoying as they are. :smallsigh:

[Tazar]

Seeing as Icefrog has seemed to be so clear that this is just a port to a new engine, I expect it to have all these confusing features, as annoying as they are. :smallsigh:

And it should.

Like many other games, things that were engine limitations or glitches have now grown to become an integral part of the gameplay experience and game balance.

See, for example, Faceless Void's Backtrack skill. He's unable to regen from an attack that would kill him due to engine limitations, but this actually serves as a balancing mechanism to keep the ability from being too strong.

Same with things like orb-stacking; you can't do it,but that helps balance and promotes item choice and variety as well.

They may be a bit hard to get the hang of, but every game has its advanced mechanics, and DotA's no exception.

[Meta]

I do think that there should be a lengthy reference feature to clarify some of these interactions in DotA 2, but they most definitely should remain in the game.

The alternative is basher suddenly becoming a core item on naga siren, or illusions not being able to bash at all which would be a major exception to how images inherit abilities from the hero. Both of these are undesirable.

On the matter of stuns overwriting one another this is easily the best of the choices available imo. Stuns extending one another would lead to extremely boring and easy gameplay decisions and new stuns doing nothing if a unit is already stunned its fairly illogical and likewise undesirable.

Also, I THINK, but not confirmed a mini stun won't negate a bash if the source is a melee hero.

[Tazar]

I do think that there should be a lengthy reference feature to clarify some of these interactions in DotA 2, but they most definitely should remain in the game.

The alternative is basher suddenly becoming a core item on naga siren, or illusions not being able to bash at all which would be a major exception to how images inherit abilities from the hero. Both of these are undesirable.


Another great example of how an unintentional "engine limitation" ends up balancing the game for the better. The thought of a Naga Siren or Phantom Lancer who could proc true full-length bashes off of all of their images is enough to keep me up at night. :smalltongue:

These mechanics may be hard to learn at first, but it's all part of the learning curve, and all told I think they make for a far richer and deeper gameplay experience.