DOTA2

[Thrawn]

I don't think I've ever gotten to play in a properly done tri-lane before, that was just a thing of beauty.

We were Chaos Knight, Rubick, Sand King (me) vs Treant and Viper for the first while.  You can't remotely get in range of any of us or you just die without ever having control of your hero.  I think Viper was level 3 when CK and Rub hit 5 and Treant had died 4 times already.  

[Malakili]

Well, finally uninstalled this, for basically the same reasons I ended up uninstalling LoL in the end.  I just can't have my ever dwindling gaming time held hostage by 9 random idiots. 

[Llyse]

Well, finally uninstalled this, for basically the same reasons I ended up uninstalling LoL in the end.  I just can't have my ever dwindling gaming time held hostage by 9 random idiots. 

Same here except in my case it's 4 of my real life friends 

[Mosesandstick]

I've got two copies if anybody wants to give it a go.

[Fordel]

I am very frustrated with my inability to properly harass when playing a support player.


Like, if I'm in a lane and giving farm to the other person, and I am a ranged hero and the enemies in lane are both melee's with little lane presence. I should be able to show off the enemies pretty well, right?

I see other people do it, I've had other people do it to me, In theory I know what I am supposed to do. Yet all that ever seems to happen is I either over extend and die, or take too much creep wave damage and die, or am just completely ineffectual at actually harassing anyone away.


I can't even shoo the easy bots away it seems.

[Ingmar]

The bots don't tend to run away from what I noticed unless you use something that has a CC effect on them - like lich's snare/DD thing. Just shooting them with Sniper or whatever didn't put them off nearly as much but when they get that snare on them they think OH NOSE GOING TO GET GANKED and run away.

[cmlancas]

I am very frustrated with my inability to properly harass when playing a support player.


Like, if I'm in a lane and giving farm to the other person, and I am a ranged hero and the enemies in lane are both melee's with little lane presence. I should be able to show off the enemies pretty well, right?

I see other people do it, I've had other people do it to me, In theory I know what I am supposed to do. Yet all that ever seems to happen is I either over extend and die, or take too much creep wave damage and die, or am just completely ineffectual at actually harassing anyone away.


I can't even shoo the easy bots away it seems.

Who specifically are you trying to do this with?  Someone like Disruptor, Lich, or Shadow Shaman might be good practice for you.

I try to do one (or all) of three things:
-  punish the enemy hero for coming in range to get a creep.  Want to farm?  Costs you at least 100hp every time.  For a hero that's carrying regen a la tangoes or a pot, they'll only be able to withstand so much before your partner either gets a kill or they're forced to heal.
-  position myself so they can't get in range for experience.  With a hero such as Lich, this is your forte.  With frost nova and autoattack, you're in the neighborhood of 300hp direct damage through nova and autoattack at level 3.
-  deny.  You'll hopefully be executing #2 so you'll find yourself a little further out than you'll normally be.  Every deny helps you control the lane push and stay closer to your tower.  This makes ganks easier and your other hero's farm safer.

(Hopefully the folks I've played with from f13 won't call me out too harshly for saying this and not executing it.   )

[Fordel]

Mostly Windrunner, been trying to get better with that hero in general.

[Llyse]

The only advice I can give is if the enemy melee heroes are not running in for the last hits you've done your job. Just get those denys as the icing on top.

If they're double stun melee heroes (SandKing and Sven/DK) you can still punish them for getting last hits but you have to be very careful not to get double stunned death. What usually happens to me in this scenario is they'll kill me (CM) but one of them dies with melee assist and the other guy is on 0 hp and buggers off.

Which isn't too bad because you're trading support for a melee.

[bhodi]

This is part of the "Purge Plays..." series, if you want to see how to play a hero, watch as a (semi) pro plays and explains exactly what he's doing and why. It's helped me get a handle on a bunch of characters, though this one looks pretty old. The later characters are much better. Also feel free to post your playids if you have specific games where you aren't sure what you did wrong. I'm not the best player here but I at least know the theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=701bTe1AV4s

[Fordel]

Yea, I've seen that video. I watch a lot of tutorials from http://www.youtube.com/user/dotacinema them as well.



I'll dig through my games and find the one that really bothered me.

[bhodi]

FYI Centaur is broken beyond belief and you should instalock him before your opponents do.

Silencer and Drow are now seriously strong as well.

Tree got screwed, all his abilities are now melee range. For some reason. Because you know, people needed to stop owning with tree.

[Fordel]

When Tree had the global Aura, he had the highest win percentage of any hero  


Tree is weird, I don't think Icefrog quite knows what he wants tree to do yet.



-edit- Haha shit, I just actually tried out the drow changes. Her Aura more then doubles the damage of ranged creeps. 

[Thrawn]

FYI Centaur is broken beyond belief and you should instalock him before your opponents do.

Silencer and Drow are now seriously strong as well.

Tree got screwed, all his abilities are now melee range. For some reason. Because you know, people needed to stop owning with tree.

Take Drow, Silencer, Centaur on your team, win all games.  New Last Word is insane harass that wins all lanes and Centaur ult is just straight up OP.

*edit*  Seriously, it's insane.  Every part about Centaur ult is crazy, it's global, it's only 50 mana, it's a 60 second cooldown, it has a stun, it has good damage, it lets you go move through units and gives max move speed.

[Fordel]

http://dota2.com/diretide/

The Dota 2 Halloween event is super rad. It's a really nice mix up on the standard game and everyone so far seems really mellow about it, unlike the normal matchmaking stuff. The little boss fight at the end against Roshan is great fun. "Here's 20k Gold and instant re-spawns, go slay the boss!" 

[Thrawn]

In typical gamer fashion it's already been figured out how to bug Rosh and kill him in seconds and apparently Meepo is so good in this that he makes it pointless to even play if you're against him.  (Haven't seen it first hand yet.)

[Fordel]

Yea I can see how a meepo would ruin the game. Nature's Prophet is pretty OP in that regard too.

[Thrawn]

Yea I can see how a meepo would ruin the game. Nature's Prophet is pretty OP in that regard too.

I think it was fixed now, but Meepo was broken because global experience applied to all of his clones as well.  So he got gold and xp X times as many clones as he had (up to 5X more).

[Fordel]

Haha, that must've been fun.

[Thrawn]

http://i.imgur.com/CXtzF.jpg

[Fordel]

That's fantastic <3


Kunka and Tide, total bros!

[Rasix]

Looks like I have an extra copy to give away.  PM me if you're interested.

[Ingmar]

I have some also.

[Brennik]

Yea, I got an extra invite too if anyone wants one.

[Fordel]

The Dota2 winter event is going on now: http://www.dota2.com/greeviling/

It's sorta fun, but it's the inverse of the Halloween events in a way. Instead of getting ALL the gold and xp you can handle, you get none of it. No Gold, No Lane Creeps, the only items you get are from random drops and are random themselves.

It also uses your greevil from the halloween event, so if you went to the trouble of making an awesome courier, you are pretty beastly in game. My greevil is a pooper :(


The main attraction is the guaranteed item reward. People love them some free hats!




ps. I still suck at windrunner  




-edit- New Announcer Pack! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K5Rt4OCsyk

[Hawkbit]

The early access holiday pack is up for $7.49 right now.  That should get my account out of spectator mode.  Is it worth it, or should I just stick with LoL?

[Rasix]

If you need a key, I think several people have some free.  I know I do. 

I like DOTA 2, but it has a lot of stupid archaic mechanics that they should change but never will (jungle stacking, etc).  Also, the games can go a little long and it requires a lot more micro than LoL.

It's a good game, but just not for me.

[Hoax]

The early access holiday pack is up for $7.49 right now.  That should get my account out of spectator mode.  Is it worth it, or should I just stick with LoL?

You can get into the game for way way cheaper than that. There are lots and lots of invites being given out if you look around and you can trade for one for 1 or 2 keys which is under $5.

If you need a key, I think several people have some free.  I know I do.  

I like DOTA 2, but it has a lot of stupid archaic mechanics that they should change but never will (jungle stacking, etc).  Also, the games can go a little long and it requires a lot more micro than LoL.

It's a good game, but just not for me.

I'd agree with this but if you play 50 games of both I don't know how you can ever play LoL because games in LoL are predictably over with no chance of a comeback within 10 minutes thanks to mainly item design but also how little kills are worth compared to neutral buffs/baron which makes it really tedious to slog out compared to a dota2 game even if some dota games really punish you thanks to no surrender.

Personally I think jungle stacking is just another skill and really gives you another layer of flexibility in hero roles and team comp which is good. LoL teams are so incredibly constrained in construction which also leads to so many aborted games in queue because your team must look like xyz or its a waste of time.

Making placing wards into an obnoxious finicky thing with no real way for a new player to know why he can't place it somewhere was my favorite gripe when starting out. Totally unnecessary.

[jakonovski]

DOTA2 was on sale, I tried to buy but Steam said I already had it. Went on to install the game tonight, turns out I have a "spectator client". Sale is gone now.

I guess it's back to LoL or something.

[Malakili]

DOTA2 was on sale, I tried to buy but Steam said I already had it. Went on to install the game tonight, turns out I have a "spectator client". Sale is gone now.

I guess it's back to LoL or something.

The game is still in beta technically isn't it?  That sale was for a starter pack which gets you into the beta and some stuff from the store.  A lot of people have extra invites lying around, I'm sure you can get one.

[jakonovski]

DOTA2 was on sale, I tried to buy but Steam said I already had it. Went on to install the game tonight, turns out I have a "spectator client". Sale is gone now.

I guess it's back to LoL or something.

The game is still in beta technically isn't it?  That sale was for a starter pack which gets you into the beta and some stuff from the store.  A lot of people have extra invites lying around, I'm sure you can get one.

Yeah, that seems to be the case. They should really edit the store page for Dota 2, it looks just like all the games I actually do own.

fake edit: if anyone has a spare beta key lying around, I would be grateful.

[Eldron]

I have 5 dota 2 invites if you want. Send me your steam id and I can send it to you.

[Brennik]

Yea, I've got a couple of invites laying around too, hit me with a pm here if you want one.

[Rasix]

Yeah, same deal.  Friend me on Steam and send me a PM.   Free key.

[HaemishM]

Anyone need invites to this? I just got 4 dumped in my Steam inventory.