Dota 2

I'd like to have a non-gameplay related discussion here. Who do you think would count as Woobies in this game? (Aside of the already listed one, Skywrath. But even you may disagree.)

I'd say Clinkz, but he seems to have gotten used to being a burning skeleton.

I think that Magnus is a pretty obvious example. It kinda sucks to have so many people you knew suddenly die.

By that point Phantom Lancer would be even sadder. Part of a group of simple fishermen conscripted into a war, only to be the last one left, then you get Cursed with Awesome by phantom images? Yeah, kinda sucks to be Azwraith.

I'll definitely take note of your suggestions.

Yeah, speaking of PL...

I just had this one game with PL that my early games were... simply atrocious. Clockwerk looked like he's about to lane with me, but then he left me to solo against Mirana and CM, causing atrocious farm and then Storm Spirit ganking me a lot, meaning that I had more deaths than assists. After the first tower was destroyed, I was just left with Boots and Wraith Band. Not to mention, enemy got a lot of sprees, and their Witch Doctor was abusing All Chat. I was like 'This is one of those games, isn't it? Where we get curb stomped to death?'

Then I managed to snatch some kills, quietly getting farms via jungle to build up my Diffusal Blade... to the point that I rarely die, and said Clockwerk and fellow Spirit Breaker have been disrupting their enemies a lot, allowing my PL to get some money. Even more so, the enemy Bounty Hunter get disconnected for quite some time. But he eventually came back when we are catching up kill scores (they were still ahead). But then, managed to grab Heart of Tarrasque and be a bit more active in team fights until we started dominating the enemy team (I remember draining the Storm Spirit so dry of mana, all he could do is run on foot while I chase him...). Needless to say we won, and the Witch Doctor was like "END FAST, MY MOM'S CALLING!" and disconnected near end game...

Is this the life of a carry? Atrocious early game, but endure that, then you're a monster in the battlefield?

(I still have less kills than that of Spirit Breaker and Clockwerk, but I think I have less deaths...)

edited 25th Aug '15 6:47:38 PM by ChrisX

That just means either your Clock and SB were good roamers and managed to shut them down, or the other team just let you snowball despite that early game deficit. Not saying you didn't do a good job, but that usually happens with hard carries who get stomped in the beginning but then get left alone during the mid-game, allowing them to catch up quickly and get all their essentials, albeit a little later than if they'd stomped early on.

Sometimes I participate in team fights when I just have Diffusal. Sometimes it helps and I managed to nab some kills, though sometimes I die as well. I didn't go Leeroy Jenkins on things, only felt more confident when I got Tarrasque to jump into battle, also I tend to be late in team fights.

But yeah, Clock and SB tends to die a lot, but they also killed as much, they have higher death count and kill count than me. IIRC, my KDA was... 15/9/Around 15. This is unusual since I usually has less kills than my deaths, though making it up with bigger Assist score, because I think I'm usually not kill-hungry enough...

Sometimes I thought not being kill-hungry would be detrimental to a Carry's play style, so I thought I'd do bad as carries.

edited 25th Aug '15 7:16:22 PM by ChrisX

Carries don't normally participate anywhere in the map until mid-game or so, aside from just nabbing safe lanes and farming the hell out of them. Think how RTZ normally plays: he rarely actually involved himself in fights and skirmishes until roughly the 15-20 mark.

So if I am playing a carry, I really have to stay the hell away from big fights until I got my items? Well... it sounds... legit. I think my mindset back then that the biggest income source is by killing enemy heroes means that I need to make sure that I kill lots of heroes once I clear my lane, so I can buy my items to become unstoppable (unless of course the hero kills I got are from the heroes from the same lane). This kinda changes everything.

Tell me if this is true before I start changing my style. Thanks.

It sort of depends on the hero. Some Carries can start fighting at lvl 1, while others need a lot more gold, exp and items before they can participate in teamfights.

As a general rule of thumb, as a Carry you'll want to be spending most of you're Early Game and Mid Game farming the lane and jungle. If you see a teamfight happening, you can either teleport to a nearby tower and try to score a couple of kills, or you can push your lane to try and destroy a tower. Whatever you choose, you should go back to farming the instant the teamfight is over/the tower is destroyed.

The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time doing nothing. That means don't sit behind Mid Tower, waiting for a teamfight, or smoking through their jungle for a kill that might never happen. It's all about efficiency.

Heck, a lot of times the Hard Carry rarely participates in early smokes unless they're really being shut down, since it normally becomes suspect when they suddenly vanish from farming an easy lane for them. It's usually the mid who does so, since they can more easily transition themselves and their supports for a jungle smoke gank or any other smoke gank.

Gyrocopter is a good example of a carry who can participate in early teamfights. He only really has one "carry" ability. The rest are good for teamfights or skirmishes in general.

On the topic of carry jobs, it depends on the game. In my group, we have a guy who likes to play Anti-Mage a lot, and is good at ricing. One game however, he had to change things a bit and push with us because the enemy team were going for a splitpush strat and we got superior teamfighting. They also got Techies. Initially, he refused to push quickly and teamfight with us and continued farming, which was bad because we got split off and thus picked off during the split pushes. It took us losing T3 towers and almost one of our raxes before AM realized that he had to start teamfighting with us. Lo and behold, we got towers and raxes because we forced teamfights on the enemy team.

Oh yeah, useful Phantom Lancer tip. Skadi can be a good alternative purchase over Heart, as it provides both good agility and tankiness for Phantom Lancer, who already wants to hit as quickly as he can. The slow is also greatly beneficial.

edited 26th Aug '15 4:13:23 AM by Eldrake

Skadi is almost always the right answer for Agility carries over Heart. The only time Heart is really better than Skadi is for slow sieges, where the regen becomes useful.

Also right at the moment, I'm trying to write up something about the clashing fandom between Dota 2 and LOL. I'd like to ask this to you guys who seems to be more accepting than those in the Steam forums...

I always wonder why Dota 2 heroes are always considered 'having no personalities or backstories' when compared to LOL Champions. Sure, it's greatly more of an Excuse Plot than LOL's lore, but I thought the upgrade from the old Dota's cookie-cutter profiles are always a big step up to make the world more colorful. What do you think, Dota 2 fans? Do the heroes now have more personalities, and how does it compare with League?

From how I see it, the personality comes not from the world itself but from the characters themselves. Which makes sense, because Dota 2 is not about the Hometown of Lina and Crystal Maiden, or the Kingdom of Wraith King, but about the characters themselves duking it out in the battlefield of two primordial gods who really hate each other. The world can be considered an Excuse Plot, but that doesn't change that the heroes got their own distinct and fleshed out personalities (coming from their voice responses, their lore and their design).

When you think about it, Valve had plenty of chances to go with a design that would have screamed "no personality". For example, Valve could easily have made Winter Wyvern a generic no-personality dragon if they wanted to (and it would have cost them no money to do so), but they made her a Bookwyrm who disregards magical artifacts as "not-books". Oracle could also have been a generic blind old seer (in fact, early texture indicated that he was going to be something like that), but Valve decided that he should be an alien from a completely different dimension that no longer exists because Oracle himself fucked everything up.

Team Fortress 2 is an example of a Valve game that follows a similar philosophy. The backstory of TF2 (RED and BLU wants each other's territory, and is willing to hire bloodthirsty mercenaries for that purpose) is largely an Excuse Plot about why similar looking guys in different colors are shooting and killing and punching each other. Yet if you claim that the TF2 classes got no personality, you WILL be laughed out by anyone reasonably sane and/or informed.

Consider that when there's lore about Dota 2, and it's not specifically about the heroes, it's pretty much always about something that's in the game itself or to justify a game mechanic. Even one of the comics that didn't focus on the heroes focused on the shopkeepers of the sideshops, who can be found ingame right now. No doubt that Valve consider it a waste of time to write lore about something that isn't connected to the gameplay itself.

edited 27th Aug '15 5:50:43 AM by Eldrake

That's... really weird, because while I wouldn't consider DOTA2's characterization super fantastic, I'd still give it the edge over League. DOTA2's characters are often quirky in just the right ways to make them really memorable. This is in contrast to League, where there's pretty much only three that really stuck with me: Jarvan, Swain and Blitzcrank. The first two because they break the mould of the backstories and try to murder each other right there in the guild's hall. The third because he also doesn't have a generic "I'm so special that they just had to have me" background. I didn't really even care to play those three that much, they're just the ones who stuck out the most to me. There were quite a few Champions who I enjoyed in terms of just straight-up gameplay (off the top of my head, Lulu, Jayce, Annie, Garen), but when it came to their stories/personalities, I often found myself asking "Who is this again? Meh, whatever."

Then you've got guys like Wraith King. To me, he has one of the most enjoyable personalities in the game, but he also has one of the least enjoyable playstyles in the game.

Sometimes, I like to imagine Heroes with personalities different from what the writers likely intended. Such as Anti-Mage and Nature's Prophet being massive, massive hypocrites. In those cases, it's rather easy.

It's a good thing these Heroes have such unique backstories and personalities, since it makes up for their, at times, excessively generic and grimdark appearances (this is one of the things that made me leery of playing the game). For instance, Bloodseeker, Faceless Void, and Bane all look too similar to each other.

It's worth pointing out that the heroes in Dota 2 have way more lines in-game than the champs in League. That adds a lot of flavor to the game as they have specific lines for killing specific enemies, or meeting certain allies. It lends itself to quirks like Kotl flirting with every female hero he meets, or Axe spouting "YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY SIR!" "I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!"

edited 27th Aug '15 1:32:36 PM by Pannic

All these positiveness and it makes me wonder why the overall crowd usually prefers League and their world building and characterization. What makes Dota's characterization not quite click with the crowds and usually considered more bland? AKA... what's they got that we don't have?

Please no 'because common people's tastes are crap'.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:42:39 PM by ChrisX

League is more popular because it's been out longer than Dota 2 (Dota has been around longer, but it required you to purchase an old PC RTS that wasn't exactly at the height of popularity in the mid-2000s) and because Riot puts loads into marketing.

If something in Dota 2 doesn't click, it might have something to do with the fact that 50-85% of any given hero's dialogue will consist of puns.

One thing with League is that the heroes have more relationships between each other really spelled out in their profiles and the like. In Dota 2 it can feel like each hero lives in his or her own little bubble, with rare exceptions like Lina and Crystal Maiden being sister.

edited 27th Aug '15 8:00:09 PM by Pannic

I am guessing that it's a basic fanboy thing. While I would prefer to not make a sweeping generalization, League fans are more likely to claim that "Dota 2 heroes has no personality" just to make their game look better.

Sane people can do that as well, preferring League without being obnoxious. I've met some, this is why I'm convinced that this is not just some fanboy stuff, there must be something aside of being 'newbie friendly' that Dota avoids in terms of design and in turn, kind of turned off the more casual fandom.

Not saying it's a bad choice, I'm sure Valve and IceFrog noticed that and chose to roll with it anyway to keep the integrity of Dota.

edited 28th Aug '15 3:03:48 AM by ChrisX

Since we're on the subject of lore, Techies fan comic!

It's beautiful.

Seems like Dota 2 Reborn client will soon be mandatory.

As Matt suggests, everyone who haven't installed the Reborn client should do now so that you guys don't have to wait in a queue. You don't have to play it either, just install it.