DotA2 - Original Thread

[Dusk]

Yeah, just watched the series live. I was rooting for EG, but those were very good games.

[Malthe]

1. When should I try to go to team fights while we're laning? Should I use a scroll for that? It's still hard for me to keep track of things happening outside my own screen, so
2. Is there anything I can do if I get caught by Pudge?

Sorry for the slow reply!

1: You should try to always have a TP scroll on you if your team is engaged upon near a tower or if you're planning to engage the enemies, you're still quite new to the game so as long as you keep track of what you're doing yourself and paying attention to pings, you should be fine. When you become more aware of the sorroundings, you should start to check what's happening on different lanes every now and then, as long as it doesn't influence your own performance in your own lane.

2: When you play against a pudge mid you need to ward his high-ground so you always have vision of him and you need to position yourself so he can not hook you, it nearly doesn't matter who you are, an early game hook latch from pudge is mostly a kill, vision against pudge is key.

Zeus is also a hero with a relatively weak laning phase, and his attack animation is extremely bad making last-hitting with him hard, you might want to pick up some clarity potions before leaving base and later picking up a bottle and arcane boots so you can last hit with arc lightning, of course if you think you can get a last hit without arc lighting, feel free to do so, it is the better result, but don't feel bad for using arc lightning for last-hitting, it's the only way to get some sort of good farm as zeus against an opponent that denies.


Also i don't know who this will benefit but i wrote this, maybe it'll help some newcomers:

Spoiler

Lanes:

DotA is composed of 3 lanes which people will utilize to gain both experience and gold.
We have the short lanes, the mid lane and the long lanes.

The short lane(Safe lane) are for the dire the top lane and for radiant the bottom lane.
Short lanes are known for having the creeps meet close to your own tower and having access to easy creep-pulling, keeping the lane forever in your favor, theoretically.
They also have your own jungle next to you, allowing junglers(if you have one) to support said lane with ganks.

The mid is the same for both teams.
The mid is known for being a lane where rune-control and experience matters more than any other lane, small advantages in this lane can snowball into kills on your opponent, this is why creep-blocking is important(Can get you to level 3 before your opponent does, theoretically).

The long lane(Hard lane) is the top for the radiant and for the dire the bottom lane.
They are known for having the creeps meet far away from your tower, creating a risky lane for yourself where you are vulnerable. They also have the enemy jungle near them, further increasing the risks of this lane.


Last hitting and denying:

Getting gold and experience is essential for a team and the easiest way to achieve this is from getting last hits.
Last hitting a creep is probably the most important skill in DotA, it comes from taking your time and then attacking a creep when you know that your attack will be the killing blow, in most lanes you have a 'farming' hero that will have the priority and be allowed to take the last hits, as it is ineffecient to have two players fight for last hits.
But of course it's not this simple, you will not only fight your own judgement regarding when to attack, in DotA we also have the concept of denying, which is very simply put killing off your own units so your enemy does not recieve any gold and reduced experience.
Melee heroes are not punished as heavily as ranged heroes when it comes to the reduced experience from denied units, to make up for the fact that they are melee.

Denying isn't important just for preventing the enemy from getting experience, being able to attack your own units when they are sub 50% HP allows you to hold the creep waves at an equilibrium near your own tower, thus giving you safe farm.


Creep pulling and stacking:

Creep pulling is the act of making your allies creeps fight the creeps in the jungle by aggroing jungle creeps and having them aggro your lane creeps. Thus denying your opponent of gold and experience whilst allowing a support to last hit jungle creeps for extra farm that would normally not be available to the support.
This is mostly done at the medium size camps near the short-lanes, but just pulling is not very effecient because a creep wave is stronger than a medium sized creep camp and they will eventually just return to the lane and push it in the favor of your opponent.
So how do we solve this?
With stacking, units in the jungle in DotA will respawn at their camps at X:00 outside of the first spawn timer which is 0:30.
They will only respawn if there are no other units near the camp, and thus, aggroing the creeps in the camp and pulling them away from their camps at the right timing will stack the camp, allowing for 2 set of medium-sized creeps in the jungle, this stack will be enough to kill an entire creep-wave.
Stacking can also be utilized by supports to stack big camps and ancient camps for a carry to farm later for increased gold-income.


For an easier and more visual explanation:

Spoiler

Also, DotA2 FINALLY has PRD, pineapple yeah.

[Dusk]

Some of the spawn boxes run along the edges of cliffs, the map is a little inaccurate. Also, I like double pulling, gives more exp.

[Raul]

Holy pomegranate, Lina is fun.

[Malthe]

Holy pomegranate, Lina is fun.

Relevant:
Skip to 1:28

Spoiler

Also, with having a lot more time on my hands i'll probably start streaming DotA again soon, woo.

Also, been practicing meepo lately, so much smoother than in DotA1.


Also these two guides are god-tier for newer players IMHO:

The complete DotA2 guide to stat-manipulation
How to play support. (Good for people who don't play supports as well, it generally just has a LOT of good information.)

[Raul]

Relevant:
Skip to 1:28

Spoiler

It misses using Dragon Slave to farm.
Also, it may just be me, but it seems like there's a problem when the most-played champion in the game also has the highest winrates in the game at about 60%.

[Malthe]

It misses using Dragon Slave to farm.
Also, it may just be me, but it seems like there's a problem when the most-played champion in the game also has the highest winrates in the game at about 60%.

Drow ranger is not in captain's mode, same goes for the rest of the heroes who recieved a rework, no problems noticed.
DotA is made for captain's mode, all other modes are for fun modes. DotA always has had a group of heroes who weren't in captain's mode after recieving a rework, it's how IceFrog works. This is regardless of if the rework made them too strong or if the rework made them too weak of if it made them just perfect.

Drow most likely wouldn't be as strong in organized games as she is in unorganized games since she still has the problems that she's always had.

[Dusk]

It misses using Dragon Slave to farm.
Also, it may just be me, but it seems like there's a problem when the most-played champion in the game also has the highest winrates in the game at about 60%.

Noobs love Drow because she is such an easy silence and right-click to win hero. Almost all the top picked heroes are either super easy or extremely versatile (like Windrunner and Invoker). The easy ones tend to have the highest win rates, for obvious reasons.

That said, Drow definitely needs a bit of a rework. She gets ridiculously powerful without any farm whatsoever, and her aura completely destroys your towers.

[Malthe]

The main problem is the global part of her aura and possibly how big the spike is for her at level 6.

After 30 minutes into the game in so her damage isn't really bothering me at all, it's high(The agility from her ulti is 5 less compared to the old ulti in a teamfight with an organized team) but she's still incredibly vulnerable and easy to neutralize.
The only thing that bothers me is how her aura will keep all lanes pushed forever, that's the thing that will most likely be changed in 6.77.
Her pub winrate doesn't mean a lot, i mean brood has sub 40% winrate and she's still a very VERY good hero. Or clinkz at 42%

[Words]

I downloaded stream earlier to try TF2, mostly because it's free.
I remember seeing this thread so I was like "Oh, let's see if it's free too!" and it isn't but it says I already own it and I'm confused.
Anyone care explaining?

[Malthe]

I downloaded stream earlier to try TF2, mostly because it's free.
I remember seeing this thread so I was like "Oh, let's see if it's free too!" and it isn't but it says I already own it and I'm confused.
Anyone care explaining?

It is free, somewhat.
There are a multitude of invites circling around since it's still a beta, and getting an invite isn't hard at all, i still personally have keys around. Valve have a special pack for sale that includes ingame cosmetic items and an invite, but it's not really worth buying since invites are so easy to come by.

And what you 'own' is most likely the spectator client, not the actual game, they are nearly identical untill you get inside the game where you are only able to spectate, not play. Unless you actually already have the beta and you were signed up for a beta key or something?

Link me to your steam profile and i'll check which you are in possesion of.

Also, jesus christ i hope Magnus has his skewer changed and shockwave put on a slightly higher cooldown. Possibly tweak the cooldown of his ulti as well. The numbers on his ulti is fine though, but yea.

[Raul]

Also, jesus christ i hope Magnus has his skewer changed and shockwave put on a slightly higher cooldown. Possibly tweak the cooldown of his ulti as well. The numbers on his ulti is fine though, but yea.

Your wish is Valve's command.

[Malthe]

Your wish is Valve's command.

Nope, they didn't do anything of what i wanted, especially since Valve technically doesn't handle balance.
I want IceFrog to either up the mana cost or cooldown of shockwave because he's back to being one of the best solo mids due to how well he pushes lanes and controls runes. I want these changes:
Cooldown or mana change on shockwave.
Skewer should scale or not go through BKB, probably both. The range is too much at level 1.
Possibly increase the cooldown of empower so it's not on 24/7 on 2~3 heroes.
The ulti is fine, number wise. His ulti was never really broken, but because of how good his laning is now he no longer has the problems he used to have.

Magnus is the strongest hero in DotA right now, hands down. Mid-game impact is too high. Old magnus was too bad at laning though. Some number changes and he'd be back to being a good hero but not what he is right now, which is a nightmare combined with any kind of teamfighting lineup.

Glad they fixed empower staying on with BKB though.
And thank pineappleing god they finally fixed the neut pulling, holy pineapple.

- Added Pseudo Random chances for the following items: Daedalus, Crystalys, Abyssal Blade, Basher, Heaven's Halbred, Maelstrom, Mjollnir, Static Charge, Monkey King Bar, Poor Man's Shield, Sange, Sange and Yasha, Stout Shield, Vanguard.

pineapple YES This is a buff to Abyssal and basher though, you'll be building up bash chance while it's on cooldown, unless valve took that into account, i hope they did.


Big news:

Spoiler

Thank god, i hope 6.77 brings back the stability of the older patches, i want a good half year without patches again.

[Words]

So, I've been watching matches and it looks really fun and I have a couple questions:
1. When I select free camera, moving the mouse over any part of the screen makes it go really, really fast and far. Is it possible to change that, in both spectator and the other client?
2. UI is HUGE, can that be changed?
3. After reading and watching, best teams are the ones that are coordinated. Having no headset would affect my game play?

[Malthe]

So, I've been watching matches and it looks really fun and I have a couple questions:
1. When I select free camera, moving the mouse over any part of the screen makes it go really, really fast and far. Is it possible to change that, in both spectator and the other client?
2. UI is HUGE, can that be changed?
3. After reading and watching, best teams are the ones that are coordinated. Having no headset would affect my game play?

1. You can change the sensitivity in options, IIRC.
2. This is what the regular UI looks like(Warning the following picture is zoomed in, but didn't wanna look for a zoomed out picture with the newest UI), if yours looks bigger than this then i am not sure what the problem is, if it looks the same, then no there isn't. Although from what i gather we will be able to customize the UI soon.

Spoiler

3. In pubs(Public games, also called pugs by some) team coordination is generally low, not having a mic wont hinder you a lot, especially with the new chat-wheel:

Spoiler

When you're playing you'll usually not have to say more than a few single-words that comes to you after playing for a while, words like "Gank, rune top, rune bottom, back, go, care, wards and so on, although the chat wheel actually handles most of these.)


The game is like the average gaming community, filled with idiots and immature trolls. A good way to play is to actually just mute all your teammates the second they bother you.

If there are any other questions you have, feel free to ask.

Also a tutorial is in the makings and will be incredibly well done from what i gather.

[Dusk]

The UI looks bigger on non 16:9 resolutions, that might be the problem. I'm playing on 1920x1080 and it looks fine.

Also, I have more invites if anyone else wants to play.

[Malthe]

As a very active member of TL, this is amazing news to me:
Presenting, Liquid DotA!

[Words]

If it's not a big deal I'd like an invite. I'm guessing you guys will be kind enough to tutor me, right? :P
I'm gonna take a nap and I'll be back in a couple hours.

[Malthe]

If it's not a big deal I'd like an invite. I'm guessing you guys will be kind enough to tutor me, right? :P
I'm gonna take a nap and I'll be back in a couple hours.

Sure, message me on steam and i'll send one your way. And i'll be fresh to jump into co-op vs AI games with you and answer any questions you might have.

Edit: Just started a game, so i might not reply instantly.

[Dusk]

As a very active member of TL, this is amazing news to me:
Presenting, Liquid DotA!

It's basically just Complexity's team, rebranded. I'm happy to see more NA pro Dota action, though. We lag behind in all the big eSports.

@Words What's your steam name?