Dota 2

[GoodGame]

Invictus Gaming dethroned Natus Vincere at The International last night, earning a $1million pot ~( 6 million yuan)

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

Shame that the final game was so dull.

 

[remake20]

Do we have any idea when the public release date is?

 

[GoodGame]

I thought it technically was out as part of a pack

 

[BravenSword]

I tired playing dota a few weeks ago, I couldnt get into it. not really sure whats up there.

My wife loves it tho so \(P_P)/

 

[GoodGame]

I tired playing dota a few weeks ago, I couldnt get into it. not really sure whats up there.

My wife loves it tho so \(P_P)/

It takes a while to get it, and then it might not have lasting appeal. I lost interest in it, although a friend I introduced to it loves it.

There's a lot of Youtube videos and character guides that explain the nuances of playing it. I think that's what is fun about the game---learning nuances and devising one's own strategy and tactics, but that also causes a lot of flaming and ignorant behavior as people come to believe there is only one 'right' way to play certain characters and the game.

 

[bonefang]

Not too sure about Dota 2 , but then if the mechanics are similar to DOta, then there are some very good guides available on the net. Google should be able to assist you on that.

Best way to get to know Dota is to play multiplayer. The ai maps are just not too good stupid

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

Bringing this one back from the dead...

I have recently come to the decision that the position requiring the lowest skill is carry. Think about it, as a carry your primary responsibility is to farm and not die for the first 30 minutes or so, then just clean up the enemy team once you have the requisite items. To accomplish this you need to know how to a) last hit and b) spot a gank coming. Admittedly, acquiring these skills do take some practice, but the complexity of the role pales in comparison to gankers and support. These guys are really the ones who win or lose games.
Gankers and support must both protect their own carry and limit the enemy carry's farm as much as possible. They need to ward and counterward, gank whenever possible, defend and push towers, stack and pull creeps, and do all of this on limited funds so that the carry can get more last hits. The efficacy of a team's carry in late game is a direct result of the other team's early game success. A carry that has been harassed out of lane and constantly ganked will be severely outclassed by a carry that had ample support and protection.

Supports win games.

 

[azzaman333]

I wouldn't say carries require the least skill, but they typically have the most basic skillset required. If your carry is a muppet, doesn't matter how good the support is, you probably can't win if it reaches late game.

 

[bonefang]

I am yet to get a serial key for this ...
So its Dota 6.74 for me .

 

[Thrawn]

Pretty sure I have a spare key if you want one.

 

[bonefang]

Ohh nice .. I would be very interested !!

 

[Thrawn]

Ok I sent you a pm.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I have literally a dozen dota2 keys, so if anyone is interested: PM me.

 

[GoodGame]

Bringing this one back from the dead...

I have recently come to the decision that the position requiring the lowest skill is carry. Think about it, as a carry your primary responsibility is to farm and not die for the first 30 minutes or so, then just clean up the enemy team once you have the requisite items.
<snip>
Supports win games.

Supports are important, but not all carries are one-dimensional skill-less heroes.

I agree that not taking one support is a bad idea. But taking like 3 supports is usually a bad idea. And the DOTA 2 'class' naming is usually pretty weak, as a lot of supports usually have 3 to 5 roles, so supports aren't really just supports. Like a lot of supports are also really good nukers or stunners and can be played as semi-carries themselves. Tide-hunter is a support but he's basically a stunner/tank. Jakiro is a support but he's a nuker. Ogre-Magi is not intended to be a support really, but he's pretty easy to play as an item support (Mekansm, Pipe, Urn, got buffs and stuns).

The most one-dimensional carries are picked the most often, and cried about the most often e.g. Drow, Sniper, Ursa, etc... I'd say the 'auto-cast' carries (Drow, Viper, Clinkz) probably require the least skill so those are the ones that people usually cry about. But then there's also 'over-powered' carries---Blood Seeker, Life Stealer, Spirit Breaker, which are pretty easy to skill build with and usually dominate team fights; and they usually get picked up in lots together on the same team. And there's also 'noob' carries that new people are attracted to play (e.g. Ursa, Riki, Medusa) but aren't as easy to play as they initially seem.

Farming on some carries requires skill, and devising an item/skill build for a carry requires some strategy for some carries. Troll Warlord is a farming carry that requires a bit of strategy and skill and is very flexible to build up. Medusa and Ursa require a good bit of farming skill in my book. A lot of players cannot efficiently farm Ursa which can cost the game. And then there's Invoker who is both really simple (about 2 or 3 ways to play it) but also very customizable.


And definitely carries can take part in team fights in some way by about 15 min mark. Usually the lane-ing phase is over by 20 minutes. Medusa is about the only carry I can think of that I dont see team-fighting until late game.

 

[civvver]

Carries seem to take less skill because once they've out farmed you they're unstoppable. That's why everyone complains about Drow, if she gets a couple levels on you you're screwed. And stealthers like Bounty Hunter and Riki and Slark are easily countered with sentrys but it's annoying to have to drop 200g to kill a character and most people don't bother, then whine when Riki has 20 kbs and 0 deaths. They're more annoying than op.

But they do imo require less skill than a good support, support does indeed win games, all a carry really has to do is just not die til lvl 15 and stay farmed. Not that hard compared to some support.

Bloodseeker isn't that strong imo, he's really a one trick pony with his ultimate, he's very squishy for a melee. He's essentially a ganker. He is super good if you build a team around him and have an initiator and disablers, he can go in the middle of a team fight and clean house, but if you expect him to carry alone smart teams just focus him first and he's a non-factor.

I agree you don't want 3 total support like enchantress + omniknight + dazzle, but if you mix support nukers like lina/lion/shadow shaman/witch dr it's fine to have 3. I think the biggest component for success is actually mixing ranged and melee and having enough disables plus one good initiator. I was in a match recently where we somehow ended up with Sven, Tusk, Huskar (ranged but short range), Slardar (me) and another melee I am forgetting vs Bounty, Riki, Disruptor, Lich and Dark Seer. Tusk is a good initiator but every team fight they would Riki silence, Dark Seer gravity warp us while Disruptor trapped us in that static field thingy and lich would ultimate us while all trapped. We got crushed. If we had had a couple real ranged at most one or two melee would've been trapped but our range would've mowed them down cus their whole team was squishy.

By contrast I play with a friend who is almost always spirit breaker. So I go Lina or Witch Dr and we annihilate people in our lane by timing disables plus nukes. CC generally wins the day and to counter CC you need to be spread out, thus mix ranged and melee.

 

[civvver]

I'm noticing that most pug players underestimate the power of farm. It seems like after the initial laneing phase no one knows what to do so 3-4 start clustering together in a lane and trying to push the second tier towers. But that drastically reduces your farm rate since 3-4 of you are sharing mobs, and often the opposing team converges on you with all 5 and gets 3 kills with one of maybe no deaths.

By contrast, if you simply go farm the heck out of your jungle and make a push into the other teams jungle, jumping back and forth between lane and jungle and teleporting out or retreating when they come to gank you, you can farm several levels ahead of the opponent and get items to turn the game. I think people get so obsessed with kills around mid game, early teen levels, they forget the real end game is 10-15 mins away. Most carries don't have the items they need til 18+ depending on their farm.

Now good teams will counter this approach as they'll have warded their jungles and will either gank you badly or at least force you back and stop your farm. But it's rare to find an opposing team willing to ward aggressively and be that coordinated.

Some recent game examples, I don't remember our team makeup but I was playing some support and my friend was shadowfiend. He went mid, got to level 10 or so and then kept plugging away in the jungle and solo bottom lane while the rest of us screwed around mid lane. We weren't getting anywhere in levels or kills, just slowly getting pushed back. Then we lost a big team fight but he came out of the jungle and popped his ultimate on their entire team for 4 instant kills, since we had just lost the team fight and they were low. All the sudden he was level 20 when all the rest of us were 15 on both sides. We promptly won that game.

There was another game where he was queen of pain and we started losing from the start. You don't really think of queen as a creep farmer but he managed to keep avoiding the other team with his teleports and farmed up a ton of items. Around level 20 they were all in our based, but because he had so many items he was able to kill them all and grab a few levels and we ended up winning the game, despite being down by about 10 kills at the end. I asked him what the secret was and he explained, people overvalue early player kills. 3 creeps is about the same gold and exp as an early player kill. He is totally right and I've gotten a lot better by focusing more on farm and opportunistic player fights vs the traditional lane fights mid game.

 

[bonefang]

I was about to bring up this point..

Now good teams will counter this approach as they'll have warded their jungles and will either gank you badly or at least force you back and stop your farm. But it's rare to find an opposing team willing to ward aggressively and be that coordinated.

respect ++

I asked him what the secret was and he explained, people overvalue early player kills. 3 creeps is about the same gold and exp as an early player kill. He is totally right and I've gotten a lot better by focusing more on farm and opportunistic player fights vs the traditional lane fights mid game.

What is the name of this person ? Ace or Cyft ?

 

[GoodGame]

I'm noticing that most pug players underestimate the power of farm. It seems like after the initial laneing phase no one knows what to do so 3-4 start clustering together in a lane and trying to push the second tier towers. But that drastically reduces your farm rate since 3-4 of you are sharing mobs, and often the opposing team converges on you with all 5 and gets 3 kills with one of maybe no deaths.

This is very true, especially since most heroes in the game are dependent on items.
It's important to remind people to go back to farming after losing a few towers.
It's also important to know how to farm a specific area (lane/mid/jungle camps) most efficiently, if a specific hero does better in jungle/lane, and what items to equip for fastest farming.

By contrast, if you simply go farm the heck out of your jungle and make a push into the other teams jungle, jumping back and forth between lane and jungle and teleporting out or retreating when they come to gank you, you can farm several levels ahead of the opponent and get items to turn the game.

The thing too is that some heroes are just not useful for jungle camp farming, so just telling the team to farm jungle won't help. In some cases lane farming can be faster as long as you don't push your lane to hard (i.e. don't take out enemy towers, don't push the creep wave all the way to the tower, DO deny your creeps while still last hitting to manipulate the creep wave to be some place convenient for your farming).
And there's also the issue of travel speed so someone without boots going back and forth into the jungle might not be as efficient farming jungle as lane. Sometime Jungle carmps just act like a side-solo-lane that helps if the team has a lot of carries, but isn't absolutely needed.

The farming mechanic(s) are pretty complicated, which I think new players have the most problem with because it looks really simple/unimportant on the surface.

I think people get so obsessed with kills around mid game, early teen levels, they forget the real end game is 10-15 mins away.

I agree this is kind of true, although not all heroes need farm though (item-independent), and some are more about support/ganking since they don't have armor/lifesteal/AoE nukes, etc... that help with farming. So they can roam in packs to get kills and be effective. e.g. Bounty Hunter who is a great ganker/gank-support hero that should be roaming around killing, not farming as much (even though the Valve default build for BH has Battle Fury which is farming item).

 

[bonefang]

I guess the BattleFury is just to add to his 3rd skill : Crit. But a Deso, instead of a BF serves this purpose better.