Dota 2

I've looked it up plenty of times. In Limited Heroes, bots replace players who leave. There is no punishment for leaving at all.

I'm not very good with Sven, but as a Viper player I can give you a few tips on how to handle him.

• To start with, he's an absurdly good duelist, especially in the early game. Try to avoid trying to trade with him, and focus more on last hitting. If you're feeling cheeky, you might even try concentrating more on denying your own creeps, since he'll be too busy trying to hit them to aim at you. If you're planning to take him on, try to make sure you have help, ideally with at least one stun on hand.
• The biggest part of his damage comes from Nethertoxin, which, as I imagine you have found out the hard way, deals several times does more damage as you lose health. So, while it should be obvious, try to top off before engaging him. Supports with heals are great for this, as are heroes with strong innate healing like Ogre Magi and Lifestealer.
• Another note on Nethertoxin: People tend to forget that it actually deals Physical, rather than Magical, damage. Armor buffs like Sven's Warcry and Lich's Ice Armor go a long way toward mitigating that. If it's enough of an issue, you might consider even picking up an early Chain Mail to counteract the worst of it while solo. Then, if you're a support you can eventually turn it into a Mek or Crimson Guard, while carries can make the perennial favorite, AC.
• If you've been keeping track of all that, you may have noticed something: Between her healing ability, naturally high armor and health, and hard disable that benefits heavily from having allies present, LC is one of the best counters for Viper available. [That wasn't a tip, that's just me geeking out about one of my other favorites.]

So there's some general stuff for how to deal with Viper in the future! Hope it helps.

EDIT: How long did it take you to finish the determination series? There is a decay factor to it, before it's been officially decided. [It took me 8 months and put me at 1918, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.] Though I am told that once it's set for real it only changes based on the results of the games you play, I suppose the conceit being that if you left for a long time the massive string of losses you set yourself up for will quickly adjust your MMR appropriately.

edited 1st Oct '14 7:06:18 AM by Lionrider

LC is actually really squishy for a Strength Hero.

The thing about Viper is he just doesn't do enough damage late game. While he can be tanky, his damage output falls off pretty hard. As long as you can make it though the midgame, you should be fine.

I took pretty long with it. Not a year, but quite a few months.

edited 30th Sep '14 9:51:30 PM by MetaSkipper

Sounds good. Viper's really tough to deal with and I'm not even that interested in playing him. If I see him, I'll remember what you told me. Also, I'm pretty disappointed that him and Venomancer are nearly identical, like Broodmother and Weaver, but to an even greater extent.

I guess Viper's not a carry, then. I see what you mean about not putting complete faith in Valve's official roles.

Quick note: When I first played this game, I was interested to learn that heroes have many more lines than the champions in League Of Legends. But then I found out that even compared to that game, the heroes in Dota 2 never. Shut. Up. So, I set the voices to event-only. I might change it back to "all" when I play Storm Spirit, just to see what it's like.

I love all the flavor things they say. All the cool interactions depending on who's on your team, who you kill, and such.

At times I really did my last hitting well, so long as I'm not being harassed. I could sometimes last hit well enough and timing it good. But there's this one game that I ended up playing so badly that I got 0 kills and 8 deaths, in other words, feeding like hell, but I farmed good, that my fellow lane partner, Queen of Pain, complained that I stole all her creeps, even if she was the one buying courier! (Thought she's Support, but... well, like I said, it's a Normal Game with a bunch of unknowns)

Still if he's physical and right-click dependant, even Blade Mail should have worked wonders on Viper. It worked great on Drow, or am I missing something?

All in all, it's like I could last hit better than previously, but something's telling me I could have always done better. The last time I got for Last Hit training score is 60% but... that was months ago I forgot.

The thing is, I think it may be just me, but in terms of MOBA, it doesn't matter if it's Dota, League Of Legends, or even Smite, get to a losing streak or something, or lose from a game I could have won, and it made me wonder about my worth of playing the game, whether I really do deserve to play the game despite how much I suck and make more losses than winning (and it doesn't matter which role I play. Carry, support, etc, it's the game I'm playing that I question my worth at.). This may be why for the moment I tend to play DOTA via cyber cafe account lately: In my personal account, despite me maining Sven, I have more losses than winning in him, (But on the other hand, I have more wins as Crystal Maiden, but most of the time in my victories, I died. A lot.), so there's this bit of embarrassment and fear when I try to touch my Steam account. I don't want to lose and make more embarrassment on my account.

This... is a bad mindset to have? I keep thinking that it could be...

Also how do you view your MMR, do you have to play Ranked Game first?

Also if you ask me "Go play with us, ask about our Steam accounts!"... well I'd love to, but... well I'm in an Asian region, not sure where you are, I'd surmise North American. If that is the case, then when I play at NA server, there will be big pings and delays, which may ruin some of my skills, so I thought if I do actually play with you, I'd be a hindrance... I actually played the NA version of League Of Legends and even the big pings were just minor inconvenience to me, but I'm not sure how it translates to Dota 2, seeing that there are higher risks over there.

edited 1st Oct '14 1:01:07 AM by ChrisX

Well, to start with, QoP, if she was a support, really shouldn't have been complaining about you taking last hits. That's probably on her. Yeah, I get it, 'supports need last hits too,' but in my experience, they'll ask for them when they need them, rather than simply expecting them and then getting angry when you don't just hand them over without any prompting. As for having QoP as a support...It's weird, but I guess I can kind of see it working? Maybe if she maxed the slow and blink over her two damaging spells, I dunno. Probably not ideal though.

With the Blade Mail, the difference probably cam from the fact that Drow comes with a lot of natural attack speed, especially if the Viper didn't have the presence of mind to try and close the gap to cancel out your ult. Sven has a much lower rate of attack, drastically reducing you personal damage output, and since Blade Mail only stays up for four seconds, you can't count on it to kill Viper all by itself. With Drow, it's nice bonus. With Sven, you would've been better off buying some form of attack speed.

As far as feeling bad after the match goes south, that's pretty normal. You just spent 30 minutes trying your best only to watch it fail anyways. That sucks. In my experience, especially in casual matches, I find it helps if you shift your priorities a bit from 'did I win?' to 'did I lean anything?/did I get better?' If you lost, or even if you won but felt like maybe you got carried, try to examine what you did, and think about what you might be able to improve on for next time around. Last hitting, ward coverage, map awareness, and so on and so forth. Try to worry less about what you did and be happy in the knowledge that next time you'll be able to do just a little bit better.

To see your MMR, you have to play 10 placement games in Ranked, and once set it will only change based on the results of your ranked games. Depending on when you started, you might not be able to play Ranked yet.

As far as playing with people you know goes, if you're from Asia, yeah, playing with most of us here might not be the best idea. But it really does become a lot more fun if you can play with other people, rather than relying on the luck of the draw with strangers. If you have friends, play with them. If you don't have any friends who play, maybe get them to try a game or two. I dunno. But playing in a group, in my experience, has always been hands-down a better time.

edited 1st Oct '14 7:47:59 AM by Lionrider

I think it's possible to see your MMR with a console command. Valve may have patched that out though.

Also, since Lionrider mentioned Map Awareness, I'd like to give this thread the very good tip of "Take a look at your minimap now and then". Often players are nice enough to inform you if someone has gone missing or not (when they don't forget it), but since you can't rely on that all the time, you will want to look at your minimap more often.

If you can't see the enemy team on the minimap except for the guy(s) on your lane? Get the hell out and stand behind your tower. They could be trying to gank you! Don't feel bad about missing some experience or gold, because it means that the enemy team will have less experience and gold, and your team could push the other lanes and damage the enemy towers (The gankers might also be forced to teleport or walk back to the lanes to protect the towers, making your lane that much safer). Be warned however, being behind your tower does not necessarily secure your safety, because it is entirely possible that the missing enemies will come up behind you. Don't assume that they're not doing that because your river ward didn't detect anyone, because smoke of deceit exists. In these cases, make sure to use your common sense.

If you can see that the entire enemy team is one of the other lanes? Push! That tower damage from the pushing could make all the difference (Assuming they don't have a Treant Protector, since he can heal towers).

In all honesty, you probably should have let Queen on Pain take the farm and transitioned into support Sven. But that's debatable.

Map awareness is... a lot of things. It's more than just knowing where the enemy team is. It's a matter of knowing where enemy presence is. Someone's gone missing. Are they checking the runes? Warding? Roaming to gank? Smoked? Walking back to lane? Doing Roshan? It's also a matter of knowing how to respond to where the enemy team is. Can you take a teamfight? Are you in position to defend a tower, or should you try to trade? Is the enemy team in position to defend if you push? Is trading better for you or your opponents?

I personally turn on "Show character icons on minimap." You do lose the ability to see which way people are facing on the minimap, but it makes it much easier to guess why X has gone missing and what they are doing.

Sniper confirmed amazing with Bloodrage.

Bloodrage Sniper, and watch him kill everything he see on sight before everything can react to the fact that a raging midget is murdering them.

How can you tell there was a Bloodrage Sniper?

Because I was Bloodseeker and I bloodraged Sniper before the beginning of most of the teamfights.

The Bloodlust buff from Ogre Magi works pretty well with him too, although that could probably be said of most right click carry.

It's what makes him one of my favourite supports

edited 1st Oct '14 7:17:41 PM by BaleFire

Ogre Magi's just a great support in general. Solid stun, nasty cripple, and a great attack speed steroid. I love that (those?) big guy(s?).

edited 1st Oct '14 7:40:53 PM by Lionrider

Severe mana problems. Also, I heard he needed a lot of gold to be effective. That sounds bad for a support.

Also, I heard that Earth Spirit is overpowered in high-level play and he's definitely useless in low-level play. If so, Earth Spirit is the most unbalanced hero, by virtue of occupying both extremes at once.

Really, one problem wit Dota 2 allowing every hero at once is that I feel like a kid who has dozens of toys to play with, so I pick up one, play with it for a couple minutes, then toss it away to play with a different toy, rather than focusing on any one two. It's just a minor problem, mind you.

He's got much more base health regeneration now, so he can gank a lot more effectively. He doesn't really need items that much more than other supports, especially with Aghanim's.

Earth Spirit... he has a high skill... floor. He's not in Captain's Mode, though, so time will tell.

Better to have the choice to play with who you want when you want then not.

I think its rather telling that it's taken longer for them to put ES into Captain's Mode than one hero who was added at the same time and two who were added afterwards. It seems they're just having a lot of trouble ironing out the absurd damage/utility-versus-skill ratio.

In my experience, Ogre doesn't really have mana problems. At least, no more or less than any other support does in the early game, where mana is a precious resource for everyone.

edited 1st Oct '14 9:21:14 PM by Lionrider

Higher level play is the one that matters and the kind that Icefrog is more concerned with unless the hero is a massive pubstomper that isn't making any leeway in comp.

Viper is a semi carry. He falls off late, but his time to shine is in the early and mid game.

Ogre probably wants Soul Ring now that it can build into Bloodstone if he manages to get the farm.

I just did my placement games in a few days when ranked games first came out. Started out at 2.4k, rose up to a lowly 2.8k later.

edited 1st Oct '14 10:47:58 PM by Marioguy128

unless the hero is a massive pubstomper that isn't making any leeway in comp.

Well, Omniknight has a disgustingly huge winrate right now, but who knows, it might drop in a week or two. I also think Icefrog is pretty desperate to get pros to notice Necrophos. It's not going to happen, and I'm afraid he'll get more and more of a pubstomper each patch.

Necro's actually getting picked now. He's not a top pick or ban though. Though at the beginning of a patch, it's experimenting time for pros. So who knows how this will turn out.

Omni's win rate is high because he's strong in the late game, and 6.82 buffed the lategame.

I thought it was carries who were strong in the lategame. Isn't Omniknight a heavy support who doesn't scale at all?

When I first read the patch notes, I thought that Bloodseeker's Blood Rite would be useless. After all, it takes 3 seconds to take effect. Then I played the patch and saw just how big 600 range is. I had trouble visualizing it before. Besides, it helps if he has a teammate to slow the enemies.

Omniknight is the most late-game support there is, and functions pretty well as a core. Guardian Angel gives your team physical immunity. Guess what damage type is most important late game, and in team fights in general?

On the other hand, he's awful at rotations, and is pretty bad in the laning phase. He's also pretty mana intensive, and scales better than most supports with gold and experience.

Omniknight can give a decently long spell immunity with a decent cooldown. In this patch where the BKB cooldown is tied to the hero instead of the item itself, Omniknight has become much more valuable as a late game support. Of course, the issue is that Repel can be purged, but Diffusal Blade only has so many charges.

edited 2nd Oct '14 6:51:50 AM by Eldrake

Wait a minute....

edited 2nd Oct '14 8:42:41 PM by MetaSkipper

Where did you read that?