DOTA 2

[Null]

The game is definitely much more forgiving now than it was before. There's comeback gold similar to League where broken killstreaks award bounties. Leads are very fragile compared to old patches and it's easy to be up a 12k gold lead, lose a single 5 man fight, and then be up only a nominal 2k gold. The game is literally nothing but ridiculously sophisticated farming simulator, so losing gold advantage like that is an extraordinary big deal.

If you have two teams of near equal skill and composition but give one more items, they will win nearly all the time. It's that simple.

New players to DOTA should start learning the game by ignoring their entire team, playing random* heroes until they find one that 1) they enjoy playing and 2) has built in farm mechanics, and then start playing as if you're the only real person on your team. Farm continuously, ignore your team unless their fights are convenient to your farm rotation, and mute everyone who annoys you. Expect nothing, farm selfishly. You'll start winning and then you'll have real games.

I've played thousands of games across both League and Dota and you can not win by playing a pure support in low MMR. Position 4 is probably the most comfortable position for me but I've forced myself to play more farmy to win more often. If you're putting your time into improving someone else's farm and that person is a retard, you lose 60% of the time. If you are new to the game but farm better than other plays new to the game, you'll probably win 60% of the time or more.

* By random, I mean go to Dota Buff, sort by win rate at the Archon tier, and then find one that farms and instalock it.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

@Null Do you have any other advice for new players? I started playing DOTA 2 a few months ago (I'm entirely new to the ASSFAGGOTS genre of gaming) and I've barely managed to grasp a fraction of this game, yet I'm intrigued by it so I've kept on attempting to learn it.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

I think the concern about surrender votes is that toxic players would abuse it and it would make pubs even shittier. It's better to be forced to play games you can't win than to lose games you could've actually won just because some nigger from Peru flamed the team into surrendering.
Though honestly seeing how much the game has changed makes me think Valve might eventually add some kind of surrender feature at some point.

I actually already had a teammate bullied into AFK by somebody on voice who wouldn't stop bitching about how they "had mid stolen from them" when they didn't and the entire team was telling them to shut up and play.
I think an ff button at this point is just a QoL change. I understand the argument but in practice the same number of winnable games are lost to griefers and afks anyways.

Depends on the patch. This is absolutely a snowball patch but there have been rubberband patches. IMO, one of the biggest difference between low and high skill lobbies is that high skill players know how to push an advantage and close out games. If you're curious, go look up VODs of TI4 and then look up VODs of DAC 2015 and spot the difference.

That's pretty funny, especially because when I pointed out how my games feel extremely lopsided I basically got told that high MMR players are the ones who benefit from comeback mechanics the most. Again in the comparison of League, I was told in no uncertain terms Dota has more comeback mechanics. But it really feels the opposite. It's fine not to but people get real defensive about Thing They Like not being the best at every aspect.
Mechanics that shocked me are things like super creeps being worth LESS gold than regular ones, towers not giving much gold to last hitter compared to League and also how barracks never respawn. It's an incredibly uphill fight once you lose a single set of barracks here, whereas in LoL you just need to defend until inhib respawns.
Things like objective bounties have also helped a ton.
Dota as it is right now feels a lot like LoLs assassin meta did, where it's a oneshot or be oneshot world. I know there is a big focus on HP bloat right now but damage seems crazy high. Sometimes I die in a sub 2 second silence. I was getting oneshot by an Orchid QoP yesterday when i was 6 slotted, for example.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

The game is definitely much more forgiving now than it was before. There's comeback gold similar to League where broken killstreaks award bounties. Leads are very fragile compared to old patches and it's easy to be up a 12k gold lead, lose a single 5 man fight, and then be up only a nominal 2k gold. The game is literally nothing but ridiculously sophisticated farming simulator, so losing gold advantage like that is an extraordinary big deal.

If you have two teams of near equal skill and composition but give one more items, they will win nearly all the time. It's that simple.

New players to DOTA should start learning the game by ignoring their entire team, playing random* heroes until they find one that 1) they enjoy playing and 2) has built in farm mechanics, and then start playing as if you're the only real person on your team. Farm continuously, ignore your team unless their fights are convenient to your farm rotation, and mute everyone who annoys you. Expect nothing, farm selfishly. You'll start winning and then you'll have real games.

I've played thousands of games across both League and Dota and you can not win by playing a pure support in low MMR. Position 4 is probably the most comfortable position for me but I've forced myself to play more farmy to win more often. If you're putting your time into improving someone else's farm and that person is a retard, you lose 60% of the time. If you are new to the game but farm better than other plays new to the game, you'll probably win 60% of the time or more.

* By random, I mean go to Dota Buff, sort by win rate at the Archon tier, and then find one that farms and instalock it.

That sucks because I have also enjoyed Pos4/5. I really like playing Shadow Shaman, for example.

Do you have any examples of abilities that farm quickly? I know I see a lot of melee carries get battlefury and apparently glepnier is broken AF right now for ranged but I find I run out of mana so fast if I try to spam abilities on camps to farm quick. The carries I have enjoyed are Silencer and PA but both are often banned. I like playing Doom a lot, probably my favorite hero so far. Night Stalker is also a lot of fun with how he interacts with day/night which is such a cool concept. Troll Warlord should be an easy swap for me since i was a tryndamere player in LoL but it just misses that je ne sais quoi.

Also laning as a new player feels so hard with the concept of denies. I get constantly denied in lane and I am not sure what the fuck I am doing so wrong.

 

[Null]

Part of the reason you (I) enjoy Pos 4/5 is that farming is not fun and 4/5 does not farm. Embrace the farm, win game.

 

[Kotol]

@Null Do you have any other advice for new players? I started playing DOTA 2 a few months ago (I'm entirely new to the ASSFAGGOTS genre of gaming) and I've barely managed to grasp a fraction of this game, yet I'm intrigued by it so I've kept on attempting to learn it.

Null's advice to find a hero you like playing first, then learning the game, is important. I would suggest figuring out what playstyle you like and going from there. Last hitting as a melee is easier than on a ranged hero, yet casters/mages can flash farm with their abilities at level 5-7 most of the time.

One piece of advice I would give is to try and only focus on learning one mechanic at a time. One game you focus purely on getting those last hits down, one game you try to stack camps every minute or every other minute, one game you focus on denying last hits between your own last hitting, etc. Oh yeah and either learn the buttons for couriers or make adjustments to the keybindings. I use C for courier. The game itself is all about efficiency. Wasting time in the shop or with courier management will make you miss precious last hits and give the enemy laner chances to deny you creeps.

As for abilities that farm quick - basically any AOE ability with low cooldown and high damage. Crystal Maiden's Crystal Nova, or Lina's Dragon Slave, Queen of Pain's Scream of Pain, those are all relatively low cooldown and highly damaging abilities. Sometimes the best play is to just shove waves, then go to jungle and use your abilities to get some extra money, even if it costs mana. It is better to not be full mana 24/7 unless you need mana for an upcoming gank or fight, since your mana regeneration can only be used if you are not at full mana. The gist of Dota is "You got resources, so use them." , you gotta think about the strengths and weaknesses of your heroes and figure out what you wanna enhance or compensate with your items, or what you want to counter if your enemies have some nasty spells.

Finally, getting denied. In 80% of the time, securing at least the ranged creep with an ability is worth it, but only if you are not going to use the mana for much else in the near future as I said. Oof, I realize how much I keep spewing on and on about the game without teaching too much, but I hope a few minor insights at least helped you somewhat.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

Part of the reason you (I) enjoy Pos 4/5 is that farming is not fun and 4/5 does not farm. Embrace the farm, win game.

Yeah I just want to manfight all the time. The fun part of the game is running at people for me and bouncing between camps is just not that enjoyable. Deathballing definitely feels strong though and I really wish I could splitpush effectively in Dota but it feels like such a waste when its a death sentence to do so with how fast heroes move around the map.
Stacking camps as a pos4/5 also feels like shit and is boring.

Wasting time in the shop or with courier management will make you miss precious last hits and give the enemy laner chances to deny you creeps.

I am super bad about this right now. I have keybinds for courier but if I don't do it manually it feels so gross. I think I just have to break the habit. I definitely like the game insisting on you not basing to fountain for regen often though.

In 80% of the time, securing at least the ranged creep with an ability is worth it, but only if you are not going to use the mana for much else in the near future as I said.

yeah I realized when playing Nightstalker that it is usually worth to Q the ranged creep over poking my opponent in most cases. I hate getting bottle mid though so I only play it if nobody else on my team wants to. I feel like I play a lot of characters that are bad at farming camps though. My current heroes are
Razor
Doom
Chaos Knight and Phantom Assassin (only when I have to pos1)
Bloodseeker
Troll Warlord
Night Stalker
Silencer
Lycan (but only spirit wolves because wolves micro is too hard for my brain)
Bounty Hunter
Bane

PS I hate sniper
Also I wish I could play Huskar more as he is so much fun but it feels like literally everything counters the fuck out of his gameplay style. I have been on the receiving end of a fed Huskar and once we got some healcut he just evaporated. Am I missing something or is he just not in a good place right now?

 

[Rembrandt]

Yeah I just want to manfight all the time

Heroes of The Storm will be more up your alley, as matches revolve much more around teamfights. Maps are smaller, you can use a mount to quickly move between lanes, maps constantly have objectives you're incentivized to group up for, little emphasis on farming as there's no shop to speak of nor can you last hit/deny. Game is surprisingly still alive and updated in 2024.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

Heroes of The Storm will be more up your alley, as matches revolve much more around teamfights. Maps are smaller, you can use a mount to quickly move between lanes, maps constantly have objectives you're incentivized to group up for, little emphasis on farming as there's no shop to speak of nor can you last hit/deny. Game is surprisingly still alive and updated in 2024.

I actually used to play HoTS. Game has some of the best hero design ever, I loved leoric and anubarak and abathur. I thought the game died though? I stopped playing cause lol blizzard but also blizz client.

 

[Rembrandt]

I actually used to play HoTS. Game has some of the best hero design ever, I loved leoric and anubarak and abathur. I thought the game died though? I stopped playing cause lol blizzard but also blizz client.

Surprisingly no, it's still alive and kicking. There's also a fanmade remake of the game as a SC2 mod called HoTS - Resurgence you can check out. Still in the works, but from what I recall I think it's in a playable state

 

[Null]

This game is a perfect example of a game where networth shows its importance. It was a miserable, miserable slog of a game and I came out bottom networth because I was shunted into Pos 5 and they completely shut me down anytime I tried to push a lane.

Check out this fucking misery chart.



But you see what happened? Tree and WD, who were HEAVY hitters in the early game and made all early-mid game teamfights misery, fell way the fuck off. Tiny, who was also destroying teamfights mid-game, fell off HARD. This silencer was their top Pos 1 and I almost caught up to him in networth.



Every lane lost, people were reporting each other, going AFK jungle in the side jungle, it was joever, but because people just kept farming instead of rotating around looking for ganks endlessly (like the Radiant did), we eventually caught up. Keep in mind a 2K wealth gap at 40~50 minutes isn't as impactful as it is at 10 minutes.

So, yeah. The game is a lot of smoke and mirrors concealing the fact that it's entirely about wealth control. With the assumption that the players are vaguely on the same level, and the compositions are sane, the name of the game is making money and staying alive long enough to seal up the gap.


Edit: Side thought, a big reason I didn't want to play normals instead of turbo was that games are so long, and even now I find that the billed 35 minute average game length is bullshit and most take at least 45 minutes. I've also had many comebacks in my recent matches. I think that in my level (I'm around Archon 5, based on the badges I see) the winning team has a hard time coordinating to actually close out the match and will prefer to roam with their advantage and gank/initiate teamfights, until they've lost their advantage.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

snip

That's actually pretty interesting. I have very few games with charts like that, but also your net worth never tanked into like 20k difference. How large was the kills gap at its worst? Was the networth catchup really from farming or did your team hit a breakpoint with items that caused them to be able to take better fights which then spiraled into networth gain through teamfighting?

What were skywrath's items btw? Cause holy shit that KDA

Also what happened with wraith king and viper.

 

[Inebriated Ark Monk]

Support is in a weird place. You still technically don't get to "farm" per se but there are a lot more ways you have items, including built-in regen in lane from the lotuses, tormentor giving free shard, increased gold bounty for ending kill streaks, etc. So a lot of the strong 4's right now literally just get a farming item like maelstrom and basically just play position 3.5 while moving around the map to get whatever farm they can until a fight happens. Seems like the meta is all about teamfights and initiation in the early game before everyone is too tanky to kill. What's your MMR Jersh? @Null I just hit 6k for the first time was pretty stoked after all these years. I do agree with your statement about farming not being fun though, I hate playing pos 1 so much I have thousands of games and only a couple hundred on carry. Miss the days that support was literally just non-stop fighting, was fun.

 

[Null]

Also what happened with wraith king and viper.

Mentally ill.

I don't have MMR. I do not think I have never played a ranked game, ever. I'll try ranked when I'm back in the US and have a wired Internet.

I don't have the game in front of me but both SW and I had built Atos. I saw a pro player build Atos and I thought it was genius. Coincidentally, because I last picked not realizing the game had started, there's actually a lot of synergy between SW and UL. Sniper built push stick, which is normal, but it really cucks SW out of his ult. Unless there's two Atos and Pit.

 

[VasonJoorhees]

Is the game worth picking back up? I have not played since 2016, around when Underlord was added. When I played I explored a lot of the characters but my favorite was Clinkz. Clunky shit autoattacks aside he was fun if you got fed and built your bloodthorns and such, breaking invis and instapopping people was very fun. I remember Ursa being extremely annoying to fight. I see a lot of new characters have been added since then, Muerta looks like she could be fun. But then again I enjoy most characters besides champs like Meepo or Invoker or ES, I always referred to these as 'guitar hero champs' because of the micro involved to be successful with them (especially Invoker).

I quit playing mainly because the various friend groups I was in at the time only played LoL so I was roped into that for ages. Long story short I stopped being friends with those people and years of frustration with shitty unbalanced items and characters built up for me, Vanguard anticheat being forced onto us was the final nail in the coffin and I uninstalled that shit. Need something to scratch my MOBA itch again, but it's hard for me to get into these games when I have fuck-all in terms of people to play with.

 

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

So, yeah. The game is a lot of smoke and mirrors concealing the fact that it's entirely about wealth control. With the assumption that the players are vaguely on the same level, and the compositions are sane, the name of the game is making money and staying alive long enough to seal up the gap.

DOTA has always been about better macro decision making than mechanical skill. You could easily get into top 10% players in ranked with bad mechanics but very good decision making and macro plays, because most players just want to fight people. And there are plenty of heroes to pick from where mechanical skill ceiling isn't very high.

 

[Lightning's Heraldry]

Mentally ill.

You hate to see it, but you see it so often. I feel like a lot of moba players never learn the importance of "stopping the bleeding" to win games. You can often get carried by your teammates if you just don't die as opposed to doing well. This does seem really hard in dota though where towers basically grant no protection from dives.

Did you ever upgrade Atos into Glep or did you focus networth elsewhere after you had it? But yeah makes sense SW would do well if he could get off his ultimate consistently.

Is the game worth picking back up? I have not played since 2016, around when Underlord was added. When I played I explored a lot of the characters but my favorite was Clinkz. Clunky shit autoattacks aside he was fun if you got fed and built your bloodthorns and such, breaking invis and instapopping people was very fun. I remember Ursa being extremely annoying to fight. I see a lot of new characters have been added since then, Muerta looks like she could be fun. But then again I enjoy most characters besides champs like Meepo or Invoker or ES, I always referred to these as 'guitar hero champs' because of the micro involved to be successful with them (especially Invoker).

I quit playing mainly because the various friend groups I was in at the time only played LoL so I was roped into that for ages. Long story short I stopped being friends with those people and years of frustration with shitty unbalanced items and characters built up for me, Vanguard anticheat being forced onto us was the final nail in the coffin and I uninstalled that shit. Need something to scratch my MOBA itch again, but it's hard for me to get into these games when I have fuck-all in terms of people to play with.

As somebody who is very new I can say it's harder without friends in this game. The NA community feels like it's literally half non-english speaking mexicans so it can also be a language barrier to try and communicate plays with your teammates. I have considered just sucking it up and playing on EUW even with the higher ping for this reason. Patch 7.37 also apparently changed the game in a massive way giving many heroes passives for the first time and there are also optional facets now which slightly alters the playstyle of a hero akin to runes in LoL.

That said the game is fun in spite of these qualities and not being asked to pay $10 for every single skin is nice too. I also have gotten so many free skins from this current "crownfall" event. It really feels like 2017 League where you could just earn skins by playing instead of needing to piggy to have your character not look like shit. I am not the biggest fan of how expensive some Arcanas are though and Dota seems to have a lot of time exclusive skins which feels bad if that's the best looking one for the hero you like.

My recommendation is just try it out for a bit. Play Turbo if you want a fast demo experience of the game. The game is actually free to play and you don't have to unlock heroes so you can try out everybody in demo mode and decide from there if the game feels right or not.

 

[VasonJoorhees]

To me a lot of the arcanas are fairly cheap, most of the ones are marketplace you can find for less than $30 USD. My real complaint lies with half of the arcanas being tied to old battlepasses and thus no longer attainable, I want Drow Rangers and QoP's and Lich Kings but they aren't attainable anymore. I still own the one for PA and Juggernaut. The real expensive items are old limited time sets, I sold Fantoccini's Dilemma for Rubick several years back for like $80, it's now worth literal hundreds.

I've already played Dota a lot, just have not in a long time. I've also heard jungling isn't much of a thing anymore? I'll probably redownload and fuck around in normals tonight.

 

[Cucktry Roads]

I've been playing veno lately. I don't know he's allowed to remain in his current state. You can snowball out of control early since you can start jungling as 4 at the first minute. If you get Scepter early, the enemy heroes just melt.

 

[PandaChai]

I would like to request this soundbite be added to the OP as a dire warning

(also Jakiro is best hero)