DOTA2

[Thrawn]

http://www.own3d.tv/video/619136/joinDOTA_Masters_-_NextKZ_vs_Fnatic

Another crazy tense game worth watching, is just insane near the end.  (the commentator gets annoying near the end he's flipping out so much)

[Slayerik]

Something about it kinda bugs me. Seems a little too big maybe? IDK.

[Fordel]

http://www.own3d.tv/video/619136/joinDOTA_Masters_-_NextKZ_vs_Fnatic

Another crazy tense game worth watching, is just insane near the end.  (the commentator gets annoying near the end he's flipping out so much)

Crazy over the top commentators are the bread and butter of E-Sports  


-edit- Any game with Ursa is a good game 

[Der Helm]

Haemish got me into beta and I am suprised at how much fun this game actually is.

[Kail]

In case anybody cares, looks like the scrap between Valve and Blizzard regarding the DOTA brand has been resolved.  Valve keeps the rights to the DOTA title, mods for Blizzard games can continue to use the name DOTA as long as they're free, and Blizzard's DOTA game gets renamed to "Blizzard All-Stars."

[Fordel]

Is there a good place to see what all the various items do? The joinDOTA site has all the heroes, but not the items.

[Thrawn]

Is there a good place to see what all the various items do? The joinDOTA site has all the heroes, but not the items.

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/items

Can probably find a better once since those aren't sorted or anything nice and it's still the older images, but it has the items.

[Thrawn]

Ursa is so silly to watch. Enemies were vaporizing once he got his claws on them.

Got to play Ursa in a single draft game last night, so much fun.  My favorite moment  -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uzAc6sdZfE

[Fordel]

Thanks for the list, Heros can change so dramatically because of their items it felt like I was only getting half the story each VOD.

[Lounge]

Is there a good place to see what all the various items do? The joinDOTA site has all the heroes, but not the items.

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/items

Can probably find a better once since those aren't sorted or anything nice and it's still the older images, but it has the items.

This site is the best for being up to date with heros and items.
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Dota_2_Wiki

It doesn't have any builds though so dotafire.com or playdota.com for those.

Another fun site is http://stats.dota2.be/ which lets you view your match history online.

[HaemishM]

I played this again in the last few days. The UI is still just a godawful, confusing, fuckstupidly large eyesore. Did anyone else have really long wait times before matchmaking found a match this weekend no matter what settings were used?

[Thrawn]

I played this again in the last few days. The UI is still just a godawful, confusing, fuckstupidly large eyesore. Did anyone else have really long wait times before matchmaking found a match this weekend no matter what settings were used?

I only ever queue SD/RD and my queues were usually around 5 minutes, don't think I ever had any longer than 10.  However I think the matchmaking servers were actually down for a bit at some point in the weekend.

[HaemishM]

Must have been yesterday because that's when I couldn't get anything to work and just went and played some LOL.

[Rasix]

I tried a game. Not a good first impression.  

I imagine it'd feel better if I was from a DOTA background instead of a LoL background.  Game just felt foreign.  Interface might be the biggest culprit, but the movement, last hitting (I guess animations in general), art style, and OMG I JUST DIED BECAUSE I TRIED TO LAST HIT weren't great either.  

Seems like I'd need 200 odd games to get the hang of it all. No time; must injure my arm playing D3 come tomorrow.

[HaemishM]

It definitely FEELS a lot slower moving then LoL, attack animations especially.

[HaemishM]

Played again at lunch because Riot Games has shit the bed with the latest patch. Got an item - a treasure chest. Which in order to get anything from, I have to buy a key from the store for $2.49. Still no fucking idea what I'm doing in the game, was absolutely horrible at it but the team was good so I got a win.

It looks like the store is modeled directly after Team Fortess 2's store. So there's that.

[Fordel]

They really seem to be supporting the competitive end of it. ( http://blog.dota2.com/2012/06/did-you-see-that-kill/ )


I know that in SC2 a lot of people would gladly pay for access to every replay from a tourney, and I imagine the Dota games would be similar.

[Thrawn]

I bought the $5 pass and it was easily worth it.  I mostly just bought it out of a "hey, I'll try to support eSports" but the few matches I actually watched it was really slick.  You can select any announcers audio stream, select any announcers point of view, or just control your own camera or have it auto directed.  It was all very smooth and very cool.

On a different note, I played Rubrick for the first time in a single draft game last night.  I never want to play anyone else now.  

For anyone that knows nothing about him, his ult (on a 15 second cooldown) is that you copy the last spell any target enemy cast.  You now have that spell for 2-3 minutes to cast as you please with it's normal cooldown, but it's always off cooldown when you steal it.  When you steal it overwrites your previous stolen spell, but the fast cool down makes it very usable multiple times in a big fight still.  Last night I initiated a fight with an Earthshaker fissure, cast an Omniknight ult mid fight, then was able to get away from someone chasing me using Skeleton King's stun.    His own base spells are really good as well to top it off.

[Fordel]

Do the replays granted from the pass include the casting audio too?

[Thrawn]

Do the replays granted from the pass include the casting audio too?

Yes

[Fordel]

That's pretty sweet, being able to listen to the casting while keeping your own camera control if you want. Like 90% of the time I follow the casters camera, but there's always that moment where they miss a drop/play and you can see it on the mini-map and your like LOOK OVER THERE AAARGH.

[Fordel]

I got into Beta and have been dicking around against the Easy bots.

My first impression as someone who has never really played a Dota/Moba style game... last hitting is a bitch.  I am the master of SECOND to last hitting  . I mostly got the concept of it, it's the execution that I need to work on, that will only come with time I imagine.


I started off with Nature's Prophet, since he's almost exactly the same deal as he was in War3 (as in the actual RTS). I picked up my noob items, took my treants into the forest and proceeded to farm enough gold to buy up every stacking aura I could find in the shop. 10-20 Minutes later my tree army had pushed down every tower and rax and my victory over easy bots was complete.


Of course, that wouldn't work in an actual game, so next I went to Luna and headed to middle lane, which the friendly bots let me have solo. I proceeded to farm up roughly negative 450 gold before I went back into the forest to farm neutrals. I kitted her out like I was going to a dungeon run in WoW and was eventually able to farm entire creep lanes/camps in like 2 attacks thanks to her mass cleave passive. I won that game through sheer attrition against enemy rax's.

I did that more or less a few more times, getting a little better on last hitting each time, figuring out I need more then 1 tree eating item to live etc.


Then I wanted to Try the other cat rider, the Priestess of the Moon. I went roughly 3-20 on arrow hits and like 1-16 on kills/deaths and earned my first loss against the easy bots. How embarrassing. 

Next one I tried was Ursa, I didn't even get like 5 minutes into that attempt because I bought the wrong item/skills and couldn't jungle effectively. That's okay though, Bots don't care if you ditch them.

Did Treant Protector one game, love the hero thematically, have no fucking idea what to do with him mechanically once I hit mid game. I was surprisingly good at last hitting with HIM of all heroes, high base damage or something... but yea, early game in the lanes, I actually did almost good and proper. Once the mid game started up I became utterly lost on what My job was. I built a Mechanisim and tried to follow my team around to 'support' them. The tiny range on my leech seed and my cumbersome speed meant I just did nothing but feed all game. Loss number TWO against the easy bots 


So I went back to Luna and really focused down on trying to lane/last hit properly. I went to the bottom lane where a friendly Tidehunter was waiting for me. He didn't immediately abandon me in the lane alone, so I took that as a sign I was in the right spot for once. I also adjusted my starting skills and items. I had been doing it entirely ass backwards before, skilling up glaives early and ignoring the +dmg aura. This time I went Aura/Nuke maxed, picking up my Ult at 6. So instead of constantly pushing the wave into the enemy tower, I actually had some decent base damage and could land actual last hits, instead of my amazing second to last hits. I also decided to make the enemy Juggernaut my little bitch. Every time he poked his head into the lane for a hit, he ate a LunarBeam nuke thing, then Fishbot would hit him with a Gush and he would have to run all the way back to his base.

So I was finally getting gold and not dieing horribly to the Easy AI. Life was great! Then around when I hit level 7 or 8, Fishbot disappeared and 3-4 enemy heroes showed up to run a train on me  . I had apparently missed the memo that we were now in the push/gank phase of the game. This game I was fairly resolute to NOT feed the damn bots, so I started buying up every item I thought would actually keep me alive. I got this sword that let me turn invisible and run faster, I got this bar that made me immune to magic, I got this hat that gave me life stealing and more armor. I even eventually got Link's Sphere or something that stopped the first spell cast against me. I PROOOBABLY only needed like, 1 or 2 of those items, not all of them at once... but I was determined to NOT die this game.

I also had a change of tactics, instead of me trying to push lanes and towers, I was just going to follow Fishbot around, let the enemy attack Fishbot and then I would swoop in and spam all my abilities till something died. It turns out when I don't instantly get focused on and die, my abilities hurt like a son of a bitch. Especially against the bots, since they don't seem to have any concept of spreading out to avoid AE and I do nothing BUT AE with my auto attacks. I even managed to gank a few bots by myself on occasion, the highlight of that being me winning a 1v2 against a Lina and Windrunner, die ginger scum!


So 12 kills, 6 deaths and 10 assists later, I am Victorious!



Maybe tomorrow I'll put the bots on normal 



-fake edit- How do I lock the camera to my hero? I was really struggling to keep vision while microing stuff around.

[Der Helm]

Don't play against bots. 

[Lounge]

-fake edit- How do I lock the camera to my hero? I was really struggling to keep vision while microing stuff around.

I don't believe you can and while I don't want to sound like a smug asshole and say you shouldn't play that way anyways, I can't help myself.

[Fordel]

You double click the char portrait to lock to target.


-edit- My first REAL game:



The Easy Bots were harder then those guys.

My item build was funny. The other team fed into us so much, I hit all my planned items REALLY fast and I hadn't really thought past getting the boots and mech. 

My last hitting was extra terrible (it's bad in the best of circumstances) because I got to solo Mid against the Invoker and Ursa. The Ursa was completely retarded though and I managed to kill him at least 2-3 times in that lane. Every so often the Riki would hop over to mid, I would Ult and we would get a kill or two.


The other team sans the Broodmother all just left at like 15-20 mins in. It was like 18-0 at that point.


The mana pool on Treant is a total bitch, I need to experiment with a SoulRing or something. It also took me like 15 seconds to figure out how to buy/place the donkey. 


We even got to kill Roshan!


All in all, I don't think I could ask for a better first game.

[Llyse]

Congrats on the first win Fordel! 

Hope it continues and you enjoy Dota much more than me! 

[Fordel]

I got a few more games in today, a bunch of weird ones.


One game had 4 out of 5 people on the enemy team CONSTANTLY feeding. Like, I don't mean they were bad and kept dieing. They were like, bots or something, they just kept auto running into lanes and suicide into our towers. The one human person on the other team started off confused, then got angry, then just resigned himself to his fate and begged us to end the game faster. I felt bad for him :(  ( we won 61-1 )


Another game had one person on our team that seemed to be WAY better then everyone else in the game. He went 25/0 and had more then double the Last Hits of anyone else in the entire game. We won that one like 40-5 or something. It was pretty silly. The all-star was playing a Riki.


One game we SHOULD have won, we had all the advantages and had just wiped the other team at their mid rax AND took the rax... But for the life of me I could not convince the 3 carries on my team to rotate top. It turns out me and a dazzle can't take a rax before the enemy team re-spawns and wipes our other 3 team members that are circle jerking each other all along the empty mid lane for the past minute. We slowly lost as the other team pushed in all the lanes and took OUR raxes, like we should have done to them.  


The other game I lost was fairly unremarkable, we just got beat, the end. Can't win them all and all that.



The last game I played, this one I am rather pleased with:

Me and the Spirit Breaker had the top lane and we were up against the BountyHunter and Omniknight and it felt like we shut them down pretty damn hard. We wiped them out at least twice, with a bonus gank on the BH at one point. Though the SB did die at least once in the lane, when I ran OOM. (Story of my life as Treant, NOT ENOUGH MAAANAAAA). We also managed the creeps nicely, keeping them just beside our tower so we could be safe, but not so close that the tower was stealing hits from us. We even pushed the tier 1 fairly early and it got me enough farm for Arcane Boots and a Ring of Basilius. They eventually gave up on top and moved to middle.

The bottom lane was the Void and Clinkz against the Riki and PA. The Void and Clinkz shut that pair down even better then we did on the top lane, to the point where the Riki just bailed from the game like 15 mins in after I roamed bottom for a gank.

Middle lane was the Undying free farming towers for the first like 10/15 mins, because their Lycan went into their jungle to farm, and promptly died at least twice to neutral creeps. I watched the replay just to figure out how the HELL he was dying in there and the first time he managed to block himself into a corner as the Trolls spawned skeletons on him.   When the BH and Omni moved to middle, the Undying was having a harder time of things and had to back off, but it let us push down the tier 2 on top and a tier 1 bottom.

I tried to get the guys on bottom to back up to our tower, but only one dude listened to me and the others over extended on bottom and got wiped. This let their team attack our bottom tower, but they got a little to confident, since 3 of our guys were dead and I was no where to be seen. They probably thought I went back to base, but I was actually invisible beside them the entire time, waiting for the tower to bring one of them low.. one leechseed, auto-attack and ult later there was a dead Omni and a Treant who got away scot free!

This bought us time for respawns and we pushed them back, I went back to base to finish off my Mek while everyone else went to mid lane to pressure there. They went in too far on mid, and were getting pushed back and in danger of wiping again, but the giant Tree-man got there in time to Ulty, Mek and Leechseed to heal everyone back up. What should've been a wipe, turned into a rout in our favor! This pretty much sealed the deal for us, as we were able to take mid rax, back out safely, kill them a few more times then take top rax and then the GG.



4 wins, 2 losses now, wining record!  



-edit- I almost forgot to mention how I solo'ed the BH at one point. I was backing out of a lane to rotate, and he caught me alone without any towers or creeps around. So I tried to invis to get away, but he was still able to see me somehow (I had to look up the BH track ability after the game to figure that out), but my Ult had JUST gotten off cooldown, so I poped it and my leechseed, and beat him down instead. My Tree then said "Someone put a bounty on a tree?" and I laughed, the end!

[Fordel]

First time I've seen Wisp used in a pro-game. Wisp + Prophet turns any lane into a full team fight, it's nuts. Wisp is squishy as hell though, sneeze on it and it dies.

http://www.joindota.com/en/vods/1341-the-defense-navi-vs-mtw-group-stage-part-1
http://www.joindota.com/en/vods/1340-the-defense-navi-vs-mtw-group-stage-part-2

[Thrawn]

First time I've seen Wisp used in a pro-game. Wisp + Prophet turns any lane into a full team fight, it's nuts. Wisp is squishy as hell though, sneeze on it and it dies.

http://www.joindota.com/en/vods/1341-the-defense-navi-vs-mtw-group-stage-part-1
http://www.joindota.com/en/vods/1340-the-defense-navi-vs-mtw-group-stage-part-2

Wisp was banned in almost every game since it was put into Captain's mode that I've watched.  Look forward to watching these later, got a chance to play Wisp in a single draft game last week and really enjoyed it.  Saw Rubrick in a few games as well but he just got crushed.

[Fordel]

Game 7 was a long one, that started off really shitty, but turned out great in the end :

I started off on bottom, paired with the Lina and between the two of us, I think we managed a dozen Last Hits  . We were up against a CK/BH duo and I didn't think to buy Sentry Wards for the first like 5 minutes. We were getting out farmed badly, but we traded evenly on kills at least. (In general, I really struggle with the Treant's early game. The mana pool is so shit, my regen and armor haven't kicked in and I am usually missing SOMETHING useful still. Everything smooths out around level 8-10, then my abilities are all available and useful and I'll have Arcane Boots by then to sustain it. Cast one leech seed/nature's guise and OOM for 2 levels. )

The top lane wasn't doing much better, with the DK and Clinkz being out farmed and losing a tower during the first night. Our Mirana in middle lane was the only thing holding any of our lanes together, she kept tabs on the runes and ganked into bottom when opportunity came up. We still lost all our tier 1 towers within the first 10-15 minutes it felt like.

In the mid game, our team kept getting caught out in ganks and uneven team fights, so we just hunkered down into a defensive posture and farmed what we could without dieing. This turned out to be a good idea, as the other team came to push one of our towers down and we were finally all in position for a proper team fight. I got at least 3-4 if not all 5 enemy hero's in my ultimate and we won the fight easily, with only the Lina dieing. This gave me enough farm to actually get my support items going, Mek, Medallion etc. Also caught us up a bunch of levels which REALLY helps my mana situation.

This pattern repeated a half dozen times, we would push some lane a bit, wait for them to come in, then clean them out. The amount of HP I could restore with my leech seed and mek going constantly in the fights, is kinda obscene. I could even keep the Lina alive half the time. The Medallion is way more useful offensively then I initially thought. Once I hit mid/late game, my armor is in the mid 20's so the drop isn't a big deal for me but on something like a sniper or BH, its virtually a nuke. I was just using it for easy Roshans before, the more you know! *rainbow*

This just basically demoralized the other team, from starting off strong and in control, to feeling utterly helpless as they lost team fight after team fight. We just went around the map cleaning out the towers and there was nothing the other side could really do about it. They kept trading 1 kill for 3-5 deaths. We went from being like a dozen kills behind to a dozen ahead in the end. I enjoyed the fact I could tank the last set of towers without even losing HP. There was also one team fight just outside the radiant tier 2, where I spent the entire fight invisible, since I can use all my spells without breaking it, as long as I have trees to hide beside, ult included apparently.

The Mirana did a really good job on making sure we didn't over-extend, she was on the ball on where and when to move out.
The DK had a moment where we all died in a TF, but he had aegis, re-spawned and decided to just farm the creeps instead of trying to escape before the other team found him again 
The Lina was pretty quiet, but she always got all her spells off before they focused her down.
The Clinkz was my partner in crime in picking off stragglers then sneak away.

The CK went Manta, fucking 24 illusions with his ult up too. 
The Luna was just squishy, I don't know what her gameplan was.
The Sniper, he was always on the outskirts of the fight but always managed to die anyways.
The BountyHunter kept trying to gank our Clinkz and I kept stopping him.
The BeastMaster seemed to be the best one on their team and was the one who asked us to end his pain at the end.



Everyone was friendly on my team and we slowly but surely synced up. Another GG!



I seriously need a better plan for the first like 10 levels though, I have mana pool for NOTHING. I'll review my replay tommorow, I'm sure I can find lots of mistakes I made outside the obvious "LAWL TOWER DIIIIVE"

[Thrawn]

Did that CK never buy boots? 

[Bungee]

I seriously need a better plan for the first like 10 levels though, I have mana pool for NOTHING. I'll review my replay tommorow, I'm sure I can find lots of mistakes I made outside the obvious "LAWL TOWER DIIIIVE"

FWIW: There are quite a few guides out there on how to build certain heroes to achieve certain goals.
E.g.: playdota guide

As to DotA2: I didn't get to play the beta yet but watches some hours worth of streaming (twitch.tv). Personally enjoying Heroes of Newerth the most of all the DotA clones (and I know I'm very much in the minority here...), I can't see myself switching over to DotA2 from HoN. It's mostly the gamespeed and visual feedback that kinda turns me down. And I kinda dislike the artwork, but that may very well be because I got too used to HoN's style over the years...
I'll still give it a shot though once I get a chance to play it myself.

[Fordel]

He might of sold them at the end when we were dicking around their base for the last 5-10 minutes. I don't know for certain to be honest. CK was pretty damn fast either way. He simply out ran us a few times at the end of a team fight.




Yea, I've browsed the playdota guides, there's only two relevant to Treant though. He apparently went a major overhaul relatively recently and the older guides are talking about abilities that don't exist anymore. I think he's just level dependent, he has pretty nice stat scaling on leveling. I either need to get a lot better at that early game last hitting, or always find someone who can own a lane to partner up with. I'm not super farm dependent, I can live with just arcane boots and *support item*. Vanguard and Medallion were both luxuries simply because I had extra farm at that point, though I'm probably going to grab Medallion as a core from now on too. It's cheap enough to be a realistic goal.

I've been very conservative with my items though, like that last game I could have probably just farmed a tiny bit more and picked up like, a Radiance or maybe even a Maelstrom/Mjolnir. I have a love/hate with Radiance, it takes so much effort to actually buy up, but once you have it you can make that farm back in no time AND pressure the shit out of lanes.

Or I could double up and get a pipe beside the mek. That probably makes more sense.



-edit-

I'm not sure I've even seen a HoN match before, it seems like the red-headed stepchild of the Dota world the way people talk about it.

[Hayduke]

Just can't get over the sluggishness of the controls.  Why did they do it this way?  HoN and LoL are just so much more responsive.

[Fordel]

I've never played HoN or LoL, so I don't have anything to compare it too really, but I haven't had any issue with the controls so far.


The goals seems to be to make everything as true to the original as possible, for good or ill.