DotA2 - Original Thread

[Malthe]

I like Queen of Pain a lot, along with Crystal Maiden and Windrunner. And i've recently had a Lina high lol. Do they have any 'Core' items or is every build different? Queen i've been going Linkin Sphere into Scepter and the other 3 i do like Force Staff and then random from there xd..

Well, a lot of heroes have 'core' items that they simply synergize really well with, but a lot of heroes don't and are more versatile, this often applies to supports.
Both crystal maiden and lina are generally played as supports due to how strong they are early on + they don't need items to scale. As far as boots goes you'll generally want tranquil boots on CM to get a form of hp regen and arcane boots on lina for more mana. Situational items include: Drum of endurance, urn of shadows, forcestaff and ghost scepter, if you become really farmed as either of them euls scepter of divinity synergizes nicely with luna and her delayed stun and scythe of vyse is nice on both of them. Heaven's halberd is also a situational pick-up to deal with an enemy carry that does not utilize manta style or BKB and gets in your face.

Wind runner generally goes for phase boots as far as boots goes and follow it up with a forcestaff to get more mobility.
Situational items include: Scythe of vyse, mekansm, pipe of insight, necronomicon, orchid of melevolance and anything that adds surviveability and some damage. Items like linken sphere can be situationally nice to get and you can also get maelstrom for extra farm ability if you're planning to carry. Really lategame monkey king bar, daedalus and desolator all add nice DPS for wind runner.

Queen of pain can go too many routes to list.
Generally speaking you'll want power treads because her auto attacks mean a lot to her.
Going straight linken sphere isn't optimal in most games and generally speaking you'd rather just get a BKB to deal with disables and magic stuff, aghanims scepter is decent if you're planning to go really late and if the enemy is planning to push.
Other great items include: Orchid of malevolence, necronomicon, forcestaff(If you have to deal with a hero like riki or disruptor with AOE silences), scythe of vyse. And if you wanna go for some more DPS-ish for later on monkey king bar, desolator, daedalus and eye of skadhi are all nice items.

Items are generally situational and varies greatly from match-up to match-up, but in the beginning you should just stick with what you are comfortable with, that is more important as you'll learn when to get what as you play.

Also: http://imgur.com/a/BhaPr custom UI incoming VERY soon. These are dire vs radiant UI changes.

[Question]

THE ULTIMATE TROLL IS BORN

Behold Troll Warlord

[Remoir]

Well, a lot of heroes have 'core' items that they simply synergize really well with, but a lot of heroes don't and are more versatile, this often applies to supports.
Both crystal maiden and lina are generally played as supports due to how strong they are early on + they don't need items to scale. As far as boots goes you'll generally want tranquil boots on CM to get a form of hp regen and arcane boots on lina for more mana. Situational items include: Drum of endurance, urn of shadows, forcestaff and ghost scepter, if you become really farmed as either of them euls scepter of divinity synergizes nicely with luna and her delayed stun and scythe of vyse is nice on both of them. Heaven's halberd is also a situational pick-up to deal with an enemy carry that does not utilize manta style or BKB and gets in your face.

Wind runner generally goes for phase boots as far as boots goes and follow it up with a forcestaff to get more mobility.
Situational items include: Scythe of vyse, mekansm, pipe of insight, necronomicon, orchid of melevolance and anything that adds surviveability and some damage. Items like linken sphere can be situationally nice to get and you can also get maelstrom for extra farm ability if you're planning to carry. Really lategame monkey king bar, daedalus and desolator all add nice DPS for wind runner.

Queen of pain can go too many routes to list.
Generally speaking you'll want power treads because her auto attacks mean a lot to her.
Going straight linken sphere isn't optimal in most games and generally speaking you'd rather just get a BKB to deal with disables and magic stuff, aghanims scepter is decent if you're planning to go really late and if the enemy is planning to push.
Other great items include: Orchid of malevolence, necronomicon, forcestaff(If you have to deal with a hero like riki or disruptor with AOE silences), scythe of vyse. And if you wanna go for some more DPS-ish for later on monkey king bar, desolator, daedalus and eye of skadhi are all nice items.

Items are generally situational and varies greatly from match-up to match-up, but in the beginning you should just stick with what you are comfortable with, that is more important as you'll learn when to get what as you play.

Also: http://imgur.com/a/BhaPr custom UI incoming VERY soon. These are dire vs radiant UI changes.

Thanks for that. I'll try out some different items with them in future games.

I pretty much go Linken first cos of it giving hp/mp regen along with flat stats across the board. The spell blocking part is just a nice bonus. Maybe its because im used to playing LoL but item buys and stats are very different between the 2 games and i feel like in Dota i always need lots of regen due to not being able to go back to base constantly.

[Malthe]

You'll generally want a bottle as QoP which should take care of any kind of HP regen you might be looking for coupled with a magic wand.
Mana regen will be completely solved once you have a scythe of vyse or orchid of malevolence.
Linkens is just, a very situational item which is only good if you're playing against a hero with a magic-immunity-piercing disable such as roar from beast master or lasso from bat rider. In 90% of all other cases Black king bar will do you much more good in teamfights.

Generally speaking you shouldn't be losing health unless you're fighting enemies and QoP has a lot of mana to work with. Bottle is standard on her due to being one of the stronger mid-laners in the game with the best rune control in the game.

As far as HP regen goes, mekansm is also nice on Queen of pain. And helps your team loads.

[Words]

Is anyone having trouble with the client or lagging badly?
Lately the "Find Match" button will disappear, and it takes forever to load anything. Last night, I finished a game and I hit close on the scoreboard that appears at the end but it says that I abandoned that game. Today, I'm trying to create a lobby and clicking on the "create lobby" button won't do anything... I have to restart the game a couple of times every now and then because of all of these things that won't load. Is it just lag or what? :(
Ah, also my Bastion announcer isn't loading automatically like it used to :(

[Dusk]

I haven't had any issues.

Also, feeling pretty good about this

[Malthe]

Never cared for DBR, regardless i'm where i was sure i'd be.
In the top 2% currently. Which still isn't my 'real' MMR, atleast not in valve's system anyway, because i'm currently against people that i am way better than. I win more than i lose, and in 75% of the games i lose it is unwinnable games because of my allies, like these:

Spoiler

https://dotabuff.com/matches/103890427 This one i like to call: "Hey i'm bounty hunter and we have 4 raxes down at 30 minutes, let me farm with my battlefury because gondar is obviously a good lategame carry :)))))))))" Yes some of the team, me included, pushed down 4 enemy rax and bounty hunter refused to end it. Needless to say we got raped at minute 50.

https://dotabuff.com/matches/106987574 This one i like to call: "Hey, we have a lone druid let's all be useless besides beast master because certainly a beast master and lone druid and they can carry versus 5 heroes, oh and let me get linkens sphere on QoP instead of BKB against a lineup with disables up the ass" holy pineapple this game literally felt like a 2v5.

https://dotabuff.com/matches/106469296 This one i like to call: "Hey i pick dark seer but i can't offlane him for some reason, plz lone druid you off lane vs chen kotl and PL it's not like my hero could avoid the harass completely whilst yours is forced to go to base every few minutes, oh and let me get vanguard instead of mekansm, oh and let's have a timbersaw support who comes steal the limited farm lone druid is trying to get for himself"

https://dotabuff.com/matches/106248095 This one i like to call: "Hey, i'll last pick medusa for off-lane because i'm a counter to a wisp, CK, beast master and lonedruid(Yes she actually said this) and then force rubick to off-lane with me leaving huskar solo against a lone druid which is an unwinnable lane, oh we're losing our lane but dw medusa is good at lategame, oh the enemies are raping us in the early game and are now ending it, who would've thought" What pineappleing retard thinks medusa is good off-lane AND is good vs that team?

https://dotabuff.com/matches/105770499 This one i like to call: "Hey, who needs to be useful as dark seer or sand king, right? you guys can win 3v5 with us feeding, right?"

https://dotabuff.com/matches/104714242 And this gem is: "Hey let's pick tiny and timbersaw for off-lane with our DK mid, oh our off-lane sucks? Let's go bother DK who was stomping pudge, oh tiny dies, tiny leaves, everyone leaves."

I really don't mind losing, i have lost games that were fun to play as well, but i hate these one sided retarded games that are impossible to win.
These were good games that i lost recently:

Spoiler

https://dotabuff.com/matches/105800885 - We got outcarried because we couldn't end, but that's fair, most of us did what we could.

https://dotabuff.com/matches/104672404 - Well this one sucked a bit as well but it wasn't a bad game, our bounty thought he should be a farming hero too though which kind of lost us the game, but whatever, game was still fun and we could've won if he had just gone for a better build.

[Raul]

Never cared for DBR, regardless i'm where i was sure i'd be.
In the top 2% currently.

Bronze Scum!
Anyhow, I want racist Legion Commander.

[Malthe]

Bronze scum my ass
Even my smurfs are in platinum.

But yea, i'm just a bit bothered lately by the teams i tend to get, because most of them are just such retarded games that i can't figure out how i could've made a difference in them.

Maybe i should just start picking SF again...
No idea why i stopped picking him:

Spoiler

And yes if Legion commander isn't racist i'll be deeply disappointed.

[DarkForgeJ]

I really need to start playing again... i am playing rarely now :(

[Dusk]

Never cared for DBR, regardless i'm where i was sure i'd be.
In the top 2% currently. Which still isn't my 'real' MMR, atleast not in valve's system anyway, because i'm currently against people that i am way better than. I win more than i lose, and in 75% of the games i lose it is unwinnable games because of my allies, like these:

Sorry, but I don't agree with that. Matchmaking tries to balance the MMR on both teams, but that isn't always possible due to the wide skill ranges among all the people playing (especially since a lot of people queue in parties of 2 or 3). So you may get games where your allies have no idea what they're doing, but that's because it's a lower level game and you're expected to compensate for their lower skill. It doesn't make you better than your actual MMR.

[Malthe]

I still win more than i lose, which would imply that i have yet to plateau at a fitting MMR.
And yes, valve's MM sucks because of that, it really shouldn't be putting people with such a wide skill difference in the same game, having 2 people that literally do nothing but go out and die make the game impossible from the get go more or less. I know that they have made analysis and high skill players have a more positive impact than low skill players have a negative impact on a game, but that requires you to pick a hero that can have an impact on the game at the right time, which is mostly earlygame, if your team is utterly losing all their lanes and you're playing a carry or a hero that really can't go change it, the game is just a lost cause most of the time.
I have a few reasons to believe that i can easily get to a higher MMR by just playing. But i am getting utterly frustrated when i am put into a game where no matter what i do, i can not change the outcome of the game.

I'm on the verge of getting into diamond, although DBR will be pointless after a few days due to default privacy. But MM never gets better, even page 1 games have these kind of idiots on them sometimes.

[Words]

I need to play more vs. humans games:

But I feel like I still suck so bad :(

[Malthe]

Holy flying pineapple.

Spoiler

Deleted rant, just needed it out of the system because holy pineapple that team was awful.

Drums: Good item, multiple drums are amazing.
Vanguard: Mediocre item, pomegranate on ranged heroes generally.
Huskar burning spears: Don't max it, one point for harass is all you need.

That game was awful.

[Words]

How should I use Treant Protector's ulti? Is it like Tide Hunters: just blink in middle of team fight and root everyone?
I haven't used it that way, I just use it to let everyone escape when they're being harassed. I'm unsure of how/when to use it.

[Malthe]

Generally speaking it can be used in two different ways:
1: The aggressive way, you get into the middle of enemies with your invis and then pop your ulti and allowed your allies to wreck targets that can't get free since they can't run and can't get closer to allies.
2: The defensive, use it and run.
Blink isn't needed on treant at all. More standard items are:
Necronomicon.
Mekansm.
Sheepstick.
Shiva's guard.
Refresher orb.

Not all of them, they're just situational and you can pick them up depending on the game. Orchid of malevolence also works on him against certain heroes.

Also about the whole dotabuff incident, this gives good insight in what the pineapple went down:

Spoiler

Terrafros:

"I must point out that everything we know now is based on assumption and speculation.
Mind you, it is not the privacy setting that DOTABUFF shut down from. It is the fact that Valve closed the method that DOTABUFF was using to get data from Dota 2.
There are two APIs. One is for the client, and intended only for the client, which gives access to everything which includes steam friends lists, replay urls, for a while it even showed your MMR. The second API is a WebAPI, that was specifically designed for third parties like DOTABUFF to pull data from and build sites around. However, instead of using or waiting for the WebAPI to finish implementation, DOTABUFF chose to use a method which deceives the Valve servers into thinking that their own data aggregation programs are actually the Dota 2 client.
There now is a WebAPI, that is fully supported by Valve, and accessible by every single person that wants to use it, even you and me. Unlike DOTABUFF's method, it is not illegal, and it is likely going to receive a lot of development to show a lot of useful features.
So, to summarise: DOTABUFF pulled data from the Valve servers using a backdoor into the API intended for the Dota 2 client, and Valve decided they did not want third parties to use this backdoor and use the actual official provided WebAPI instead. The fact they asked people payment for this illegal method probably played a part as well."

[emailbox]

On a related note, did anyone actually check their DBR? I was curious and apparently I'm in the top 10% of players which was a gigantic epeen boost. I find it amusing that DB went on to release their DBR despite Valve's very obvious objection to the MMR idea, then made a Reddit post crying about how they were "shut down" by Valve the next day.

[Malthe]

The move valve made most likely had very little to do with the DBR and a lot more to do with DB using valve's client API and monetizing it, the client API has data that you shouldn't have access to as a third party site. That's why valve's working on improving their web API and cut off access to the client API.
Valve even released a new web API which makes it very unlikely that valve did it just because of DBR since they probably wouldn't have gotten a new web API ready in such a short time-span.

Also i was in the top 2% according to DBR. Meh.

The main problem was basically DB using something that was in the gray area as far as legal vs illegal and valve simply decided to restrict the access to it(To mention one thing, it had information about your friend list, even if you had it set to private in your profile).

DB haven't even tried working with the new web API but decided to state that 'valve shut us down'. It's so silly.

[Words]

Generally speaking it can be used in two different ways:
1: The aggressive way, you get into the middle of enemies with your invis and then pop your ulti and allowed your allies to wreck targets that can't get free since they can't run and can't get closer to allies.
2: The defensive, use it and run.
Blink isn't needed on treant at all. More standard items are:
Necronomicon.
Mekansm.
Sheepstick.
Shiva's guard.
Refresher orb.

Not all of them, they're just situational and you can pick them up depending on the game. Orchid of malevolence also works on him against certain heroes.

Also about the whole dotabuff incident, this gives good insight in what the pineapple went down:

Spoiler

Terrafros:

Ah, I see. Yeah, I wasn't buying the Blink Dagger because it's expensive and I was unsure it would help. I don't get that much farm so I usually just buy Arcane Boots, Mekansm, and Drum or Vladimir's Offering depending on what other heroes have got. I think that's my new favorite Hero! His skills aren't flashy but they're cool, last hitting is easy and it's really hard to get killed while playing Treant.
I also played Leshrac again, he's so much fun and it's so much easier now that I understand how some things work. I still need to improve my last hitting skills :P

[Malthe]

I just want to sit ontop of treant protector and have him tell me stories of his battles.
That pineappleing voice.

Spoiler

Also:

You were killed by a tree! A tree!