DOTA2

[Hoax]

In a long fight you can cast spell steal 2 times. Which means if you went into the fight with something stolen you cast 3+ enemy spells. If you steal big stuff you can cast multiple ults. You can steal stuns. You provide a very useful aura spell damage reduction. Your stun is a long disable w/ a aoe stun on the drop. Fae bolt is late game relevant because it debuffs attacks.

He's incredibly flexible and can make massive plays with almost no farm. He always fits a lineup and almost always can force the enemy to play a little differently or else risk you making them look very stupid.

[Johny Cee]

Rubick is one of those heroes that fits in really well with a good team/good players and a synergizing lineup.  His lift (telekinesis) is instant cast, can stun around where you drop the enemy, and you can use it to throw the enemy back....  so awesome in a trilane/ganking situation where you lift and set up the skillshot stun (say, Lina's stun or Leshrac's stun).  A rubick and another stunner can make a lane a kill zone.  His nuke is decent aoe damage and counterpush.  His passive is basically a free Hood for everyone.  And spellsteal can be amazing.

I personally don't think he's great in a pub setting where you are forced into the 5 role (ward bitch) and coordination can be dicey.  The range on lift isn't great, so you really need a gap closer and he doesn't have a secondary disable or escape so he is prone to getting blown up (without a force staff or whatever).  As a Lion, I can drop an impale to stun multiple people and then hex the first guy to jump on me, giving me enough time to get back a bit and wait for another impale.  Even CM....  Nova, bite the carry when they jump on you, pop ult or run back.

In a dual lane, I prefer a CM or Lion as well.  Bite, you go on them and then Nova when they start to run (or vice versa).  Lion you hex, go on him, impale (or vice versa and hope you delay the retreat long enough for impale number 2).  Rubick has lift and bolt, then it's scurry away. 

[Margalis]

I just played a game where I bought bracers and had boots on the courier. Then my game froze and I disconnected. When I reconnected I had 2 bracers in my inventory and boots, as well as boots on courier.

I tried asking my team if it looked to them if I had multiples and nobody would answer. So I got my second pair of boots delivered, sold one pair of boots, then still had 2 boots. Meanwhile the enemy Bane was apparently also broken in a different way and like 2-shotting people or something...weird bugs.

[Johny Cee]

I just played a game where I bought bracers and had boots on the courier. Then my game froze and I disconnected. When I reconnected I had 2 bracers in my inventory and boots, as well as boots on courier.

I tried asking my team if it looked to them if I had multiples and nobody would answer. So I got my second pair of boots delivered, sold one pair of boots, then still had 2 boots. Meanwhile the enemy Bane was apparently also broken in a different way and like 2-shotting people or something...weird bugs.

Weird.  I've never seen anything like that.  The most common bug is you can't buy items ("shop bug"), just say something and pause, leave the game and restart dota, join the game again and it should be fixed.  I've had a bug where my keyboard commands don't register which is really fucking odd and I'm still not sure if that was something on my computers end or the games end.  Restarting Dota fixed that as well.  The Bane thing might not have been a bug.  If a Bane gets way ahead early game and your allies are squishy/underfarmed, his nuke can really hurt.  Same with Lina....   you get ahead on a Lina and it's surprising how hard your combo hits (stun, nuke, ult) in that you can blow up most non-strength heroes hard.

I actually really like taking Lina as a support against Bounty just because you can blow his shit up if he tries any shenanigans on you, where as most other supports will get shit on by his "citical hit, invis and wait, critical hit again, use his shuriken toss for the kill" nonsense.


In general, if it's something server side your game will drop everyone and servers will go down for a bit, and you'll get the "this game doesn't exist" error if you try to reconnect.

[Margalis]

Yeah it was weird. Multiple people on the enemy team were talking about their Bane being bugged, I didn't really see him in action myself.

The shop bug happens to me A LOT. I get stuck in a weird selection state where I can't buy stuff from bottom section (where it shows combines) and my cursor has an icon permastuck to it. It happens so often that I think there must be some order of operations I perform at the start of the game that produces it. Maybe if you open the shop and click in certain places right as the game finishes loading or something. I probably happens to me like 1 every 8 games.

[Johny Cee]

Oh Agh's Viper, I love you so!

Had a game yesterday where our lanes were really fucked up (solo Ember top against Bounty, Bane/SF in a voluntary mid lane against TA, Me on Viper/Elder Titan bot against a trilane of Io/Skywrath/Mirana).  Both top and mid were losing, while bot we had kills but not the greatest farm because they could pull and we couldn't contest too hard against three.... and ET was trying to last hit.  Mid game was AWFUL, with our other two lanes losing hard and then doubling down on the loses when we tried to TP support.  They just had good rotation, and TA and Sky plus Mirana ult/arrows can be beastly midgame.  Lost a bunch of towers, things were looking grim.

And then they started throwing.  Kept going into bad positions with only a couple when our whole team was covering each other, and we could safely farm when they were dead.  Finished up my Agh's, and then it was hilarious....  TA blinks in?  Nooooope, have a Viper Strike and some autos.  BH split pushing?  Viper Strike for you!  Anyone gets revealed remotely near?  Viper Strike!  Why not, it's off cooldown in 12 seconds.

Agh's on Viper just really bumps his tank, and the 12 second CD means that with good usage you can dump it on multiples in a drawn out fight.  750 damage, debuffs attack and movement speed 80%, goes through BKB/magic immunity?  Yes please.

[Thrawn]

So DotA is getting pretty big - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

[Fordel]

Valve knows exactly what they are doing.

[Thrawn]

Valve knows exactly what they are doing.

I think this is what I found most amazing really -



DotA 2 accounting for over 25% of hours played across ALL Steam games since 2009.

*edit* Actually I think it's closer to 20% at a second glance, but it's still a super impressive number.

[Kail]

DotA 2 accounting for over 25% of hours played across ALL Steam games since 2009.

Yow, that's crazy, considering Dota 2 only released (officially, anyways) in 2013.

[Margalis]

I just played an 80 minute match.

Their team was stomping us. Then we started to make a comeback, but every time we did someone on our team would get caught for absolutely no reason pushing into enemy territory 1 v 5. Two people on our team appeared to have no idea wtf they were doing. At one point all 5 of them were alive, 2 of us where dead, and one of our 3 alive guys was randomly jungling as they pushed down mid to try to win the game. We ended up stalling long enough for some teammates to revive.

We eventually won, largely because I bought a Mek + pipes (as Shadow Demon) and used them to negate their Zeus damage while Outworld Devourer and I put their attack damage guys in statis. Our OD was really good and I played pretty well. Meanwhile our Goblin Alchemist bought a BKB and had no idea what it did and just used it in base for no reason. (lol)

[Megrim]

Sounds suspicious. In fact, sounds like you might be having fun.

[Johny Cee]

I just played an 80 minute match.

Their team was stomping us. Then we started to make a comeback, but every time we did someone on our team would get caught for absolutely no reason pushing into enemy territory 1 v 5. Two people on our team appeared to have no idea wtf they were doing. At one point all 5 of them were alive, 2 of us where dead, and one of our 3 alive guys was randomly jungling as they pushed down mid to try to win the game. We ended up stalling long enough for some teammates to revive.

We eventually won, largely because I bought a Mek + pipes (as Shadow Demon) and used them to negate their Zeus damage while Outworld Devourer and I put their attack damage guys in statis. Our OD was really good and I played pretty well. Meanwhile our Goblin Alchemist bought a BKB and had no idea what it did and just used it in base for no reason. (lol)

Fucking Alchemist players....   Lost too many games to guys that pick Alch, max greed first and acid second, go Midas no matter what, and get pushed out of lane because we have no potential to threaten the opposing dual lane.  Usually this guy then goes afk farming while the rest of our team fights a losing effort against their whole team, manages to catch up a bit on farm, then starts whining about how fed the enemy team is and spamming "gg, ff, noob team."  Listen guy, if you had prioritized your stun and built some early game items you wouldn't have conceded your lane early, and wouldn't have put your team in the position of losing the entire map in a desperate 5 v. 4 delaying action.


My current pet peeve is guys that don't adjust their builds for how the game is going and what enemy heroes we're up against.  If they have an aggressive dual lane against your safe lane, don't go Midas.  If they have burst, build something tanky first.  Batrider or Bristle?  Buy a stick.  Won a game we were behind in the late game because none of their heroes built BKBs against our stun heavy line-up.  Ember is brutal with farm and all that, but it doesn't matter when your supports can blink disable and murder him before he can leverage his two Battlefuries and Daedalus.


Yesterday played a PA game.  Now, I'm on board with the "don't buy Battlefury on PA" philosophy since she is really squishy and can be huge in the early/mid game with some decent mid-tier items.  Went Phase into Vlads first, since we were a PA/Necro against a Brood/other dual lane that got ganked a ton.  Then, because Brood was being an asshole, went into Battlefury.  My necro started shit-talking right away because "omg, PA going Bfury at 20 minutes!1!"

Dude, it's for the fucking spiders!  Otherwise Brood will just push in our rax no problem since our aoe is weak.  Started to mount a serious comeback, had both Battlefury and BKB finished by 32 minutes despite how one sided the early game was, when Necro disconnects and then abandons.  Welp.  Game over.

[Hoax]

I've found that the quality of games and level of fun seems to go way up when you play a true draft mode. But still nobody I plays with can handle the extra 7 minutes of waiting for the longer queue and the drafting. Sad really. Even though after every drafted game they tell me how much better the lineup and lanes actually having a plan made the game.

[Margalis]

Dota2 has a lot of modes, not sure if that's a good thing. It seem like paring them down would make each remaining one more popular.

I like playing Alchemist but it's hard. By end game I often feel like I can obliterate bases but in teamfights I mostly just run around soaking up damage and chasing people but not accomplishing too much on my own. Chase chase chase, stun a guy, chase chase chase, stun a guy again.

One thing I think Dota2 does a good job of is making items and skilling have fewer no-brainers. As you say Cee what items you want depends a great deal on team comp, lanes, when you expect to fight, etc. The same is true of skilling and Alchemist is a good example - there are legit reasons for almost any possible skill allocation. Whereas in League both item and skill point choices are usually pretty simple.

[Thrawn]

One thing I think Dota2 does a good job of is making items and skilling have fewer no-brainers. As you say Cee what items you want depends a great deal on team comp, lanes, when you expect to fight, etc. The same is true of skilling and Alchemist is a good example - there are legit reasons for almost any possible skill allocation. Whereas in League both item and skill point choices are usually pretty simple.

Which can be a mixed blessing because so many people get stuck in "THIS IS THE BUILD I USE" mindset even when it's horrible given the circumstances.

[Megrim]

If you want to make Alchy useful in a different way, I used to play him more as a battering ram - mek, armlet, deso, bkb, etc.. Basically use him as a siege engine and just beat down towers under Acid Spray. The other team then has to choose between focusing a (hard to kill) STR hero, or initiating into an unfavourable team fight.

[Fordel]

http://www.dota2.com/springcleaning/

-Meepo is no longer available in Ability Draft


Awwww 

[Johny Cee]

Wow, some big stuff in there.

- Buffs to Meepo again.  Plus 10 movement speed.  He might be the second fastest non-boots hero in the game, after Sky?
- Terrorblade nerfs!  His strength gain is down alot, making him squishier.  His slow is rebalanced!  It now scales so that his level 1 slow is only for 2 seconds!!  A Terrorblade at level 2/3 plus some kind of support with a stun initiation meant auto-first blood unless you played really far back (and conceded your lane) so this is really good news.
- Tide anchor smash now reduces damage by 60%.  So blink-ravage-anchor smash seems really good as an initiator/counter-initiation.
- Sven base damage increased by 6?  This is either going to be big (makes him stronger at level 1/getting last hits) or a completely pointless change, since he is still a melee.
- Skywrath with no boots is now as fast as CM with boots?  Lol.  He was already fast as shit, but he is so squishy and prone to getting blown up....  really like to play him as a hard nuking support.  This could actually make him more viable.
- PA had the cd on dagger reduced, and the maxed out evasion is now 50% which is pretty ridiculous.  Makes MKB mandatory when playing against her.
- Omni is even more annoying!  Yeah?
- Lina attack range buff.  She already had ridiculous attack range, and it got better?  Should be good for laning as you will now be the harass queen.  Especially with Fiery Soul (passive that boosts att speed) she can dish out the right click late game with a damage item.
- Lich frost armor on buildings seems funny.  That's a significant amount of armor/slow on a tower when you are getting pushed in.  No bounce limit on Agh's ulti seems lolzy, as late game you just fire it and it will still be there all team fight. 
- KotL.  This seems like fun, and might actually help a hero who seems pointless after the mid-game.  Permanent ult form means you always have access to his disarm, you don't have to hang around to nuke, and now he gives the big aoe heals from his nuke.
- The Unique Attack Modifier thing I'll have to look up.  This is one of those weird legacy things that decides which passive abilities on heroes can be used when, and which stack or overwrite each other.  Looks like Huskar can no longer harass you with burning spears and not get creep aggro though.
- Drow silence now knocks heroes back further, I think?
- Some minor nerfs to Ember, but nothing too bad.

Should mix things up a bit.

[Hoax]

Meaningful reductions in how often you should pick them =

-Terrorblade, the auto fb and broken 1 value point slow shit was what made him auto-win.

-Ember Spirit, I was getting lower and lower on him as is. Now he's just going to be too slow to become damaging and too slow to farm that damage, I don't like him in safelane and now he needs safelane.

-Luna, minus 20% primary stat at L1, pretty big. Sure her skillset is still amazing but it was pretty much pick Luna in every situation and now I'd say its a bit more nuanced.

-Dazzle, this is the most iffy but I really think no ministun is a big deal and tbh people were going a little crazy with picking Dazzle even in strats that didn't involve diving heroes or minus armor or huge heal damage setups (think brood or sdemon). I think Dazzle is still great but...

***

Lots of gimmicky boosts, Aghs stuff, annoying cheese skill builds might be stronger, what will people come up with for Huskar/Ursa now etc.

That said here is shit that sounds cash and we should see the hero more =

-Medusa, her skills all just got better. Good for her. I think she is even more pub pickable now. Esp in wood league where aoe ults are so strong against idiots.

-Earthshaker, apparently his fissure range was bugged and not long enough? Icefrog pls. Also the echo change helps.

-KOTL, will be broken now. Remember he does get farm  a safelane uncontested tri. God I hate KOTL so much. Worst changes of the patch.

-Drow, I think that gust change is huge? I mean Gust seemed powerful and he just doubled the knockback somehow? Its hard to tell what the change means exactly.

-Kunkka, already pubstomps really hard. Now much better. I am not thrilled at all. Also pretty sure that boat buff makes some comps just broken. Remember the DK comp with Kunkka mid and Tony + Wisp?

-QoP, is the bitch back? I would guess so. The matchups she crushed thanks to shadow strike spam are now going to be like 10-0 in her favor. Jesus.

-Tiny, craggy wasn't good enough? This hero wasn't seeing enough pro play as is. Get ready for more tiny bullshit. With 6 bans I'm pretty sure nobody lets Wisp and Tiny through ever again, maybe one or the other.

-Phantom Assassin, contesting her just got harder with faster dagger spam. Probably not enough. This is iffy.

[Thrawn]

I'm curious to see how the Ursa chance will effect Rosh timing since you won't need a full Vlad's for life steal anymore, just the Morbid Mask.  I wonder if you could do some gimmicky build with getting pooled a few tangles and rush Morbid for a super early Rosh.

[Kail]

- The Unique Attack Modifier thing I'll have to look up.  This is one of those weird legacy things that decides which passive abilities on heroes can be used when, and which stack or overwrite each other.  Looks like Huskar can no longer harass you with burning spears and not get creep aggro though.

I think the big issue for Huskar was that lifesteal was almost all unique attack modifiers (except the aura on Vlad).

[Johny Cee]

On the Unique Attack Modifier thing:

It's just a fucking mess.  Hard to remember what stacks with what, and what doesn't, which is why I was confused.  People are suggesting that things like Desolator, Satanic, Skadi, or Diffusal will now be possibilities for Ursa....  and Huskar can now go Helm.  For me, the most annoying thing about Husk was harass which was a fucking pain so at least that should be better.  Late game, who gives a shit buy a Eul's or a ghost, watch him suicide himself into your team again and again.

The Ember nerfs aren't too bad, though the searing chain nerf will decrease his ganking ability.  He really wasn't a problem with Sleight until he had farmed up a few damage items like Crit, BF, or Deso and at that point the 20 damage nerf is meh.  Overall he is just a shitty laner unless he is safe lane against a solo.


Used to play Luna alot.  My most epic comeback game was on a Luna, where we lost all lanes except safe lane, but my support Rubick left lane early since I didn't dive tower with him at level 2/3 to try for a kill on the offlaner.  Turtled for 20 minutes with no outer towers until I was fed enough to mostly crush their team without much support.  The whole time I was being bad-mouthed by our Rubick.  Asked him if I was still a noob in allchat as we were throning.  Shithead still bad-mouthed me, the other team didn't agree. 

This just seems like an overnerf since playing her with early aura meant most lanes were pretty easy the first few levels, and you really shouldn't have missed any last hits with the old damage.  Aura is still broken in a dual/tri lane, because your supports are now hitting really hard.  Luna/Lina(or anyone else with a stun and long attack range) was pretty funny.

The nerf seems weird because she was already balanced by having really awful range for a ranged hero and being really squishy.  Kind of seems like a hero killing nerf... 

[Fordel]

I do not understand what the Windrunner Agh's change actually does. Explain please!

[Thrawn]

So tired of captains who don't realize that stuns are good. 

[Kail]

I do not understand what the Windrunner Agh's change actually does. Explain please!

Not sure, but I think the way it works now is that she gets max attack speed but each attack only deals 50% damage, but the Scepter upgrade means she'll have only a 30% reduction at first level (so she'll be hitting for 70%).  At max level, she'll be hitting for her full damage at max attack speed.

[Hoax]

So tired of captains who don't realize that stuns are good. 

Game is fucking hard. Drafting DOTA takes such a wide view. You need to make your lanes work which means your right click can't be way weaker than theirs. You need to take into account lock down and esp lockdown combos. You need enough damage to burst 800 hp at L2 and 1k by L5 or else your lane doesn't have the kill potential and can get bullied. You need to consider if your team is too weak to bkb's. Just so many things. Its very often that when I make my final pick I see a hole that all I can do is hope the enemy team doesn't exploit through proper lane setups, item builds or strategy.

[Johny Cee]

I don't do Captain's Mode, mostly because it feels a bit too serious business.  Like the fact that All Pick can be so randomly good or bad depending on picks.

Lost a couple games yesterday to overconfidence in the late mid/late game after a killer early/early-mid game, but one really hurt me: 

Roaming CM(me) and Bane gank squad went around getting kills after a minute 0 successful gank on mid Storm and killing the off-laner 3 times , leaving our Terrorblade to do his thing.  Kept warding ancients so the Medusa couldn't farm, killed her a couple times.  Pushed in all the outer towers and then our team just didn't follow through.  TB managed to rax one lane.  Let it get to late game and Medusa has managed to score some decent items, we keep getting picked off a couple at a time because we thought we were so far ahead, and all of a sudden we are getting wrecked in team fights. 

What pisses me off most is that the other team had a shitload of stuns (SS, Lion, Ember, Medusa ult), and our Terror never bought a fucking BKB.  He even complained about the stuns in all chat, but he kept on building tanky stat items (Manta, Skadi, etc.) then went into travels despite the fact that we were losing team-fights and the other team was countering his split push pretty hard with tps and rotating.  If he had built a BKB he wouldn't have been chain-stunned every fight.  Also, the other team was really smart:  Medusa, SS and one other all built Linkens (I know it's standard on Dusa), meaning our initiation and counter initiation could both be pretty sub-par when Storm is guaranteed to blow up one support while Dusa ult is freezing everyone.

BUILD YOUR ITEMS TO REFLECT WHAT THE OTHER TEAM IS TRYING TO DO TO YOU.  I don't care if TB is usually not a BKB carrier, if they have a million disables build a BKB.  If the other team has a Doom and a Venge and a Viper, build a fucking Linkens.

[Kail]

So, compendium for the 2014 International is out (but the rewards it gives are not, causing much merriment on the forums).  Apparently you get points for making predictions about stuff like most picked hero, most deaths, total deaths over the entire qualifier series, etc.  Any insights as to what values would be reasonable guesses?

[Fordel]

The ASUS ROG Dreamleague was basically the beta test for all that fantasy dota stuff, so maybe those numbers are a decent baseline?

Honestly, I have no idea.

[Fordel]

Most of the NA teams in the qualifiers are ABYSMAL.

[Hoax]

Its pretty uncanny how much the pressure is getting to them. They aren't great but usually they don't look this bad.

That's the main reason Union is doing so well atm I'd guess. They have played as a team with that lineup for much much longer.

[Kail]

Weird picks, from what I've seen so far.  The tournaments I've watched in the last few months have been really heavy on Centaur and Ember (even after the nerf) but I haven't seen either today, picked or banned, just Treant and Mirana and Shadow Demon.

[Hoax]

Potm is probably the most flexible hero in the pool atm and will be picked or banned pretty much 100%. Centaur is usually quite common esp in the east not sure why he wouldn't be played as much. A new style of Tree has been popularized by EG and so you'll see it a lot in other American squads ditto Shadow Demon who is globally respected after being ignored by the pro scene for who knows what reasons.

Ember is pretty shit now. He just doesn't really fit.

[Megrim]

Both potm and SD are incredibly versatile heroes. POTM on the dps side of things, and Shadow Daemon on the support. He typically gets picked as a counter to heavy single-target focus from the other team, so depending on what's en vogue at the moment, it might be a reaction. Actually, picking sd against potm is not a bad choice.