DOTA2

[Thrawn]

I'm pretty disgusted that Valve won't just copy the one thing LoL does better which is having a quick and easy draft mode. CM takes too long but drafting is the best format for the genre. Riot accidentally made a good compromise that gets games going but with some semblance of order and Valve refuses to just steal it.

That's probably one of the biggest reasons I like Random Draft so much and hate All Pick.

[Fordel]

Standard double rapier game: http://youtu.be/kaLbI2SN2E8   

Game 2 draft starts at 43mins. Long ass game, ridiculous ending (can jump to 2 hours in to see the ending).

[Megrim]

It was actually a triple rapier. He had one in the stash, 'just in case'.  

[Fordel]

It's not a REAL rapier unless it's in the field imo 

[Kail]

On a related topic, are there any good places to catch Dota streams/tournaments?  For League of Legends, Riot plasters links to that shit all over the game and their website, and has a featured streamers section for when nothing's going on, but everything I've found Valve pimping for Dota 2 (aside from just random spectating) is behind a paywall.

[Fordel]

http://www.teamliquid.net/

-edit-

The pay wall stuff from Valve is all in game live replay with choices of commentary. Generally people only buy it if they are super anal about which action they want to see, or if they want to support a specific tourney (or get a fancy courier sometimes). When TI3 hits, you'll be able to watch the games through the client for random chance of prizes and junk or something along those lines.

Team Liquid has pretty much all the relevant info you'd want for Tournaments and Streams. If it isn't listed on their calender or sidebar, it's probably not worth you're trouble.

[Megrim]

I tend to get my stuff from TobiWan's site.

[K9]

I like Purge's Youtube channel, he mostly uploads games he plays, but he plays at a pretty high level, and has a very lsitenable voice and  good knowledge. I think he casts pro tournaments on twitch, you'd need to check his twitter to see what he's doing (I think).

[Thrawn]

On a related topic, are there any good places to catch Dota streams/tournaments?  For League of Legends, Riot plasters links to that shit all over the game and their website, and has a featured streamers section for when nothing's going on, but everything I've found Valve pimping for Dota 2 (aside from just random spectating) is behind a paywall.

For tournaments and live streams all you likely need is -
http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Dota%202
and
http://www.dotacinema.com/vods

The DotaCinema vod section is great because you can filter down the games if you are looking for certain things.  You could do "I want to see a game with Alliance, I want someone to be playing Alchemist and someone playing Lone Druid and i want to pick my caster so I don't have to risk listening to TobiWan or Shreever".

[Fordel]

http://blog.dota2.com/2013/07/the-coils-of-life-and-death-now-bind-us-all/

They've expanded the little tutorial, quite a bit. It's definitely worth doing if you want a quick and easy way to grasp the various mechanics of the game. It's also rather cute, with all the little creeps playing out a storyline for you.


What I find most interesting about it, is it isn't taking place on the actual Dota 2 Map, it's a bunch of custom built maps for each tutorial stage it seems. Wonder what kind of map making tools/tilesets they actually have available, and how robust they are. I could easily see some kind of PvE campaign being done through this, similar to Rexar's thing in War3. 

[Kail]

The game's released (free to play) for realsies now, by the way, so no more need to fiddle around with invites or anything.  Beta testers got some kind of unique item called a Bloodstone (apparently unrelated to the in game item, and can't be used for anything in game at all) which corresponds to the number of referrals they got.

Not sure why NOW is the release date, seems kind of sudden to me, they've still got heroes to add.  Maybe they're planning to do something for the summer sale or something.

[Fordel]

Six Charges :(

[cmlancas]

FYI Bann and I are playing a lot again.  We're keeping it light and not competitive. :D

[Bann]

Interesting note I got when logging in today. I got the "We've recently taken action against someone you reported blah blah blah." message.  The only guy I've reported in the last week was really part of stack of dudes who refused to communicate in English but would complain in chat/voice the entire game about lack of wards, or a kill I stol... secured as Jakiro. I reported one guy for communication abuse with "refusing to communicate in English on US servers." Apparently you can punish the Brazilians for being on your lawn now? 

[Thrawn]

Interesting note I got when logging in today. I got the "We've recently taken action against someone you reported blah blah blah." message.  The only guy I've reported in the last week was really part of stack of dudes who refused to communicate in English but would complain in chat/voice the entire game about lack of wards, or a kill I stol... secured as Jakiro. I reported one guy for communication abuse with "refusing to communicate in English on US servers." Apparently you can punish the Brazilians for being on your lawn now? 

It has some sort of automated system now, if you reported him, and enough other people reported him, he gets muted for a while regardless of if he did anything or not.

[Hoax]

Yeah its actually insanely abusive and shitty now. So chalk up another thing that godhead GabeN's guys can't even manage Riot levels of success with.

I'm fairly certain that despite Valve's claims to the contrary at least when it was first introduced a stack could mass report someone and they would get instant muted.

[NiX]

I recently uninstalled Dota 2. Unfortunately a majority of the people I play with get incredibly competitive and verbal when they're losing. I get that you don't want to waste 45 minutes of your time, but eventually you're going to lose, whether it be to a bad player on your team or the other team just simply being better organized.

My biggest gripe are people who become stream warriors. They watch a bunch of live streams and VODs of Na'vi and then think they understand what it is they do right. During the next game they demand a tri-lane from a group of people who don't play Dota 2 consistently, let alone together, and bitch when it all falls apart.

The sad part is I really do enjoy Dota 2's core mechanics when played with a group of friends. I get that in other competitive games people are shitheads too, but the importance of one player on your team is way more significant in Dota 2 than it is in Battlefield. Shitting all over the people you need to work with to win isn't going to thrust you to victory and I don't understand why people think it will.

Yeah its actually insanely abusive and shitty now. So chalk up another thing that godhead GabeN's guys can't even manage Riot levels of success with.

I'm fairly certain that despite Valve's claims to the contrary at least when it was first introduced a stack could mass report someone and they would get instant muted.

My stack has done this with a guy on the opposing team who started being a prick from the minute the game started. We didn't get the message until the next day and he was still able to chat the entire game. I'm not sure what the threshold is for the mute though or how the system works.

[Fordel]

On one hand I wouldn't be surprised if the automated system was exploitable like that.

On the other hand, whenever, no matter the game/place, I read about some poor innocent person being banned unfairly or whatever... then you see their actual chat logs and it's 500 hours of COCKGOBLIN spam 

[Maledict]

Every time I try to get into this game I hit the wall of 'too many options and too much info'. Possibly I'm just being anal, but the sheer amount of heroes and interactions and items just makes me feel like it would take 6 months of playing before I could even call myself passably okay at the game, and then I gve up because I hate not being at least average at something.

On the plus side, the new tutorials are nice and look like they could easily make some fun single player stuff with them based on the engine.

[Malakili]

Every time I try to get into this game I hit the wall of 'too many options and too much info'. Possibly I'm just being anal, but the sheer amount of heroes and interactions and items just makes me feel like it would take 6 months of playing before I could even call myself passably okay at the game, and then I gve up because I hate not being at least average at something.

On the plus side, the new tutorials are nice and look like they could easily make some fun single player stuff with them based on the engine.

If you are familiar with the genre, www.dota2alttab.com has really basic guides that get you rolling on a given character. 

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Every time I try to get into this game I hit the wall of 'too many options and too much info'. Possibly I'm just being anal, but the sheer amount of heroes and interactions and items just makes me feel like it would take 6 months of playing before I could even call myself passably okay at the game, and then I gve up because I hate not being at least average at something.

While this is definitely true in some sense, you definitely can approach the game one or two heroes at a time -- i.e. play some tutorial/bot stuff, pick a hero you like (or one hero in each general role of support, mid, carry) and then just learn a single basic item build for each of them. Providing you only play All Pick games, you really can get away with the same hero, same items, etc. for awhile until you start to feel generally competent at the game. (And then you branch out and realize you're still terrible, but so it goes.)

[Flinky]

Back when there was a group of us that were attempting to play DotA a bit more seriously (hahahahahaha) our rule of thumb was that every person should be familiar and able to play at least two of each type (Agil, Strength & Int) of Hero. That was mostly to get around counterpicks and bans, but it also means you've got a good variety to slot into any line-up in casual play.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Yeah, you really don't need to worry about counterpicks and bans when learning the game, though. If you get randomly counter-picked, that's a learning experience right there. 

[Megrim]

There really isn't such a thing as 'counter picks' in dota. Some heroes fare better against others in lane, but that tends to be some very few, and specific examples (i.e. templar assassin v batrider). So don't worry about it too much, and just play what you enjoy.

[Bann]

If you go into the game type options, they added a new one called "limited pool." In an effort to make the game more approachable to new players, It restricts picks to like 20 or so heroes, most of which are more straightforward. You'll only be playing people who have the same option selected, so hopefully other newish people - and you'll more quickly learn a solid set of heroes.

Another thing I still really useful games is the in game build guides. One of the buttons in the upperleft allows you to see rated build guides - the better ones will suggest items and skills and give reasons for it.

[Thrawn]

There really isn't such a thing as 'counter picks' in dota. Some heroes fare better against others in lane, but that tends to be some very few, and specific examples (i.e. templar assassin v batrider). So don't worry about it too much, and just play what you enjoy.

Their are a ton of counter picks at a hero vs hero level.  It's just that people tend to get caught up in that and fail to pick well at the team level.  You don't 5th pick Bounty Hunter or Slardar just to try and counter their Riki when what your team really needs is a 5 slot support.

[Hoax]

Compared to LoL counter picks aren't really a real thing in Dota I'd say.

There are heros that open up counter pick decisions like TA (strong or weak against refraction) or Silencer (can he abuse his DoT in lane or not). I'd say that as long as Shadow Blade is this strong that stealth is everywhere so its not really a counter pick thing anymore. I guess there is the whole bkb carry versus ignore bkb ult "counter pick" thing going on. Maybe.

But overall its really not important.

If you want to learn dota quickly without taking on information overload that isn't too difficult.

i.e. l2p Rhasta, OD and WR. With just those 3 heros you have strong options for 1-5 (WR can play the 3-5, OD can play the 1-3, Rhasta can play the 3-5) and lanes WR can lane anywhere, OD can mid or could safelane carry though people would bitch bc they don't see it on stream, Rhasta can mid or support.

In addition you only need to learn the item options for int heros. Which means you only have to get used to the costs and recipes for a smaller subset of items.

There is a downside to that plan. Int heros aren't as simple to play as Str heros which are by far the most newb friendly but in terms of cutting the game down to a tiny amount of required knowledge I'd say thats the best you can do.

Also that plan is worse if all you want is wins to just learning a pubstomp hero like Ursa or Riki or BS or SB and shit playing it every game while learning details from the other 9 heros and their items through observation. That's my advice if you are a fresh newb and want to keep it simple and win.

Also you could substitute a lot of other heros if you didn't like those 3. Rhasta could be SD, Bane, Lion, Death Prophet, AA, Zues, Warlock or Lesh. OD could be Invoker, Storm Spirit, Puck, QoP or NP and WR could be replaced with Batrider or Dark Seer.

Or you could just learn WR, Batrider and Dark Seer if you wanted to pick top tiers who are incredibly flexible and useful in almost every lineup and lane arrangement. But there's a lot to be said for picking the stuff you think looks cool.

[Megrim]

When I started playing, I tended to just pick what I thought looked cool and was fun to play. Every other consideration - not so much.

[Malakili]

I just played 100 or so games of Single Draft and by the end had some experience with tons of heroes.

[Llyse]

When I started playing, I tended to just pick what I thought looked cool and was fun to play. Every other consideration - not so much.

What Megrim said. Play heroes that are intuitive for you and you'll learn other heroes when you vs em 

[Fordel]

Or you could just learn WR, Batrider and Dark Seer if you wanted to pick top tiers who are incredibly flexible and useful in almost every lineup and lane arrangement. But there's a lot to be said for picking the stuff you think looks cool.

The other side benefit to these heroes is no one will ever yell at you for picking them. Unlike the dude who picks Anti-Mage in the lineup with 3 carries already 

[cmlancas]

I recently uninstalled Dota 2. Unfortunately a majority of the people I play with get incredibly competitive and verbal when they're losing. I get that you don't want to waste 45 minutes of your time, but eventually you're going to lose, whether it be to a bad player on your team or the other team just simply being better organized.

I played with this guy in your team and had a terrible game.  I'm pretty sure he wanted to rape my mother when we were finished.

Well, at least I think I remember him saying that. 

I can't blame you, because as soon as the people become pricks DotA2 becomes unfun.

[Fordel]

First Wild Card game for Ti3 is starting up in like 5 mins:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=423215

Pick your stream of choice or watch in game!

[Rasix]

They didn't give me any rares! >< Watching the BeyondTheSummit guys. The guy's voice is your generic shout caster dude instead of the hysterics of Toby.

[Yegolev]

Started tutorial (THANKS STEAM CARDS), found ALT-TAB breaks all the shit.  /sadf