DOTA2

[Lounge]

This is one of the better guides for new players...

http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck

Went over that, thanks, most of it makes a lot of sense.  I've still got a few newbie questions though if anyone's got the time:

1) The guide mentions that you should play support characters, ok, fine, I like support characters... but what exactly do they do in Dota?  In LoL you're generally poking at your opponents and keeping your carry alive with spells, in this game, you can't cast more than three or so spells before you head back.  I assume you're not supposed to last hit (not that I have much choice, given last hitting seems way harder than it is in LoL) so is there anything to do other than stand there drinking tea?  Because there is a looooot of farming in this game, and being a walking aura for ten minutes is not exactly engaging gameplay.

2) So when you level, you can rank up attributes instead of skills, yes?  When do you generally do this, or is it very hero dependent?  I noticed that I have a ton of trouble last hitting early on, and I'm not sure if I should be pouring points into attributes or maxing every skill first or what.  Are there heroes that you don't get all their skills on, generally, or do you try to max everything if you can?

3) Healing seems like a pain... You have to blow a TP scroll to get back to base, sit there while your bar goes up, and then another to get back to the front lines... Do people generally just bring a backpack full of potions or something?  Because I'm blowing a fortune on these damn scrolls.

1- During the laning phase supports job is helping control the lane.  Primary focus should be on harassing the enemy heroes away from the creeps (and away from your carry).  Additionally you want to be controlling the position of the lane.  This can be done in a few ways.  Generally if you are in the long lane (top for radiant and bottom for dire) you want to be attacking your own creep under half (this pulls the lane back to your tower which means safety) or in the short lane you want to stack and pull to deny an entire creepwave to the enemy team and pull the lane WAY back.

2- On 90% of the heroes in the game you always want to max out all of your skills first.  There are a few heroes where you want to mix this up.  Sven for instance you generally want to alternate between stun and stats for the first 7 or 8 levels.

3- Regeneration items are REALLY important in the game.  Health and mana potions are cheap and will keep you in the lane a long time.  Generally speaking if you are going back to the well in the first 10 minutes it should be because you dove hard for a kill and bearly got away, or you got dove hard and bearly lived.  Another thing to remember is that you can buy regen items and courier them out without having to hit the well.

I would recommend you pick one hero and stick to that hero for 10 or 15 games until you grasp some of these mechanics.  If you want to go support I would suggest a hero like Lich, Vengeful Spirit, Venomancer, Crystal maiden and read a guide and get to where you feel like you are making a significant impact to the team.  This means you're buying courier, upgrading courier, buying / planting wards, etc.  These are the true responsibility of the support.

[Lounge]

You don't record every step a unit takes, just the points where decisions are made. The engine figures out the rest.

FYI the Dota2 replay format is documented and public here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dota_2_Demo_Format

[jakonovski]

I played some bot matches. Game plays just fine, is definitely different. I like it, but there are two unspeakable features:

1) Shopping is convoluted for the sake of being convoluted. I can't imagine it being fun for anyone.

2) No assists for healing. Incentivizing 101.

[Ingmar]

Heals in DOTA2 mostly have other effects besides healing and thus shouldn't need to credit assists - take Omniknight's heal for example, it damages the target and heals allies around it; you don't need to get an assist for the healing because you're getting it for the damage already. Similar deal with Treant Protector's leech seed, Dazzle's shadow wave, etc.

[jakonovski]

That explains it a bit, but won't help much since I've taken a liking to Witch Doctor. Oh well, at least he's got an awesome ulti.

[Malakili]

2) No assists for healing. Incentivizing 101.

Winning the game isn't incentive?

[Kail]

Is there some way to disable automatically autoattacking something whenever you're near it?  It's driving me nuts.  My guy keeps dying during the laning phase because if I'm not clicking every half second to keep him pacing back and forth, he heads off after some random creep half a screen away and gets ganked.  It's really getting frustrating, feels like I'm spending half my time fighting the UI.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, it should be right there in the settings.

[jakonovski]

2) No assists for healing. Incentivizing 101.

Winning the game isn't incentive?

You speak as if the game didn't measure and reward player performance as a key mechanic during a match.

[Malakili]

Well, if you think supports aren't getting enough gold that would be a balance issue I'd think, not an incentive issue.  But fair enough.

[Lounge]

1) Shopping is convoluted for the sake of being convoluted. I can't imagine it being fun for anyone.

The dota2 store is amazing if you know what you want to buy.  Typical flow for me... hit the hotkey to open the shop, type the first few letters of item in search box, shift click it in the store, right click buy parts to item as you get gold, courier them out.

If you are a new player the experience it's pretty overwhelming and confusing for sure.  If you have been playing dota for a while its amazing.  This is an issue of learn ability (poor) vs usability (great).  I'm not sure what they could do to improve it without wrecking it for more experienced players.

[jakonovski]

Well, if you think supports aren't getting enough gold that would be a balance issue I'd think, not an incentive issue.  But fair enough.

To me it's mostly a case of not giving players the impression that healing is somehow an unworthy thing to do. Giving assists would also help against the "omg noob u suck" crowd. MOBA communities need all the help they can get.   

[HaemishM]

MOBA communities need all the help smallpox they can get.   

FIFY

[Hoax]

How do you even manage to heal someone with WD and not get a single auto attack in? Its not like that heal is long range and you can heal and auto.

[jakonovski]

How do you even manage to heal someone with WD and not get a single auto attack in? Its not like that heal is long range and you can heal and auto.

Yeah yeah, I'm a nub and stfu and l2p.

[Ingmar]

The witch doctor heal is basically passive right? On/off aura, with a mana cost so you can't run it all the time?

EDIT: I guess I could look it up. Yeah. So, that's probably part of it too, you aren't really forced to choose between healing and doing something else that could contribute, you flip the aura on then hit other buttons and are presumably contributing towards kills in that way. Granted the mana cost does make it have some opportunity cost, but I'm not a WD player so I couldn't say how significant it is.

[jakonovski]

The witch doctor heal is basically passive right? On/off aura, with a mana cost so you can't run it all the time?

Yeah, it's a toggle aura that sucks a lot of mana. Game balance wise he's perfectly good, I just suffer from healer PTSD.

[Ingmar]

You're probably already better than me, I really suck at this game. 

[jakonovski]

Ok this is just stupid, I'm 2/0/0 at 15 minutes and the enemy carry just comes and autoattacks me to death while I stand under my tower trying to get away from him.

I'm posting this at the 30 minutes mark where we've lost the game but can't surrender and the enemy doesn't kill our base.

edit: yeah, this pretty much forces me to stop playing. Impossible to enjoy a game where douchebags can grief by preventing the match from ending.

[Malakili]

Ok this is just stupid, I'm 2/0/0 at 15 minutes and the enemy carry just comes and autoattacks me to death while I stand under my tower trying to get away from him.

I'm posting this at the 30 minutes mark where we've lost the game but can't surrender and the enemy doesn't kill our base.

edit: yeah, this pretty much forces me to stop playing. Impossible to enjoy a game where douchebags can grief by preventing the match from ending.

Towers aren't safe zones like they are in LoL.  I'll basically agree re: Surrendering, although I will say often times it isn't trolling, it can be legitimately difficult to push into a base given high ground mechanics.

[jakonovski]

It wasn't the tower that bothered me, but how a carry had somehow snowballed so fast that the game was basically over at that point.

[jakonovski]

it can be legitimately difficult to push into a base given high ground mechanics.

I'd say this is a balance problem then. They were basically immortal in anything less than 4v1, PvE shouldn't be an obstacle at that point.

[Ingmar]

It wasn't the tower that bothered me, but how a carry had somehow snowballed so fast that the game was basically over at that point.

The thing about that is, it can feel like a broken character or something but I guarantee there is something your team could have done to prevent that snowball with better play.

I don't mean that as a L2P thing, just to say that for a carry to be destroying people easily early in the game like that, there almost certainly had to be a major breakdown somewhere.

[Sophismata]

it can be legitimately difficult to push into a base given high ground mechanics.

I'd say this is a balance problem then. They were basically immortal in anything less than 4v1, PvE shouldn't be an obstacle at that point.

Do you have a replay of the match?

[jakonovski]

97666605 is the match id. I'm Tiny, the moment everything fell apart was at 15 minutes.

[Megrim]

From what I saw of the first ~20 minutes:

* you were 2-3 around the time the Drow showed up

* as Tiny, level Avalanche and Toss to max, before anything else

* don't level Craggy early plz

* if you are laning with a carry (Luna), buy wards for the river

* if you are laning against an SA, buy sentry wards for around when he hits 6

* don't spam your low-level, low-damage spells and waste your already low mana-pool. If you had near max Avalanche/Toss by about 15 mins into the game, you can two shot anyone on their team


tl;dr

you're new, play more

[jakonovski]

Haha, it was my first game ever as Tiny. I think a couple of dudes were playing their first game ever even. I never quite figured out how Toss works.

So what about that Drow thing at 15mins? What can be done to stop such ganks?

[Hoax]

Welcome to DOTA its not a nice  game but there really are counters to everything you just need to know what they are. A lot of times though like any game from this genre the counter is not letting an enemy have twice your farm and be building the right items while you have half their farm and all the wrong items/skills. When that happens in DOTA its pretty fucking brutal.

Also death is death, the key isn't to never die because in Dota abilities are too powerful and towers too weak. The key is to make it cost their side more than they gain or have your death be what protects your hard carry or gives him the space to get the item he needs to win the next teamfight that gets you Rosh or 2 towers or whatever.

This isn't LoL if you are playing CM or Lich or <insert support here> sometimes you are just dead. But if they used 2 tp's and a carry spending all that time not farming sneaking up on you plus two ults and your team then forces them to take a fight without those ults or takes a tower b/c they don't have them or they were out of position then your death was a win for your team.

I can't stress enough though, this isn't LoL. Compare a highest level high stakes Dota2 game to a highest level highest stakes LoL game. Look at the difference in kills. Death just happens in Dota2 way more often than LoL.

[Fordel]

There wasn't any actual griefing in that game. Both teams were just incredibly shitty at everything. Standard newb game really.

[Sophismata]

Haha, it was my first game ever as Tiny. I think a couple of dudes were playing their first game ever even. I never quite figured out how Toss works.

So what about that Drow thing at 15mins? What can be done to stop such ganks?

As Tiny you are actually in a great position vs hard carries like Drow early in the game. You need to level your stun and toss, using them both on almost any carry hero will kill him/her. Watch your mana and avoid spamming your spells without need. You just need practice and experience.

[Hoax]

Tiny is just a 100% dota hero. His abilities are nothing like LoL abilities and therefore if you have no idea how he's supposed to work its unlikely you'll have a lot of fun.

[jakonovski]

I guess I shouls've known, sufficiently advanced shittiness is indistinguishable from griefing. Thanks all, I feel a bit better now. Though I still think that Drizzt clone  is a bit of a BS hero.

[Malakili]

I guess I shouls've known, sufficiently advanced shittiness is indistinguishable from griefing. Thanks all, I feel a bit better now. Though I still think that Drizzt clone  is a bit of a BS hero.

I'm not sure which hero you mean, do you mean spectre?

[jakonovski]

Drow Ranger.

[Malakili]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with her, she is a fairly straight forward carry type of character.  If you died to a fed carry there isn't a ton to explain.  She isn't so much of a ganker by herself?  Can you explain what was happening?