Dota 2 Discussion (~Boston Majors & Road to TI7~)

[RK47]

how long does a dota2 match last ?
i really can't stand playing a map for a over 30 mins and not seeing an end game in sight.
That made me ditch the original since I can't maintain interest long enough.
kony gifted me a copy and im not sure if i should even try this.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It depends on who/how you play. I'd say 35 minutes is pretty typical. If I win a game on huskar though, I've generally gotten a bkb (and other shit) by the 25 minute mark and can easily start a game ending push for at least one barracks if not the throne. Push oriented lineups in an organized game can end shit even faster. But in a normal pub with just random heroes you're probably looking at 35-45 unless it is a one sided stomp (which is fairly common, but even then it might drag out if the winners are being pussies about it or the losing side is just hard to push against.)

The thing is, until hero levels reach ~16 very few teams have the ability to destroy a base tower in under 30 seconds, and under level 16 your respawn timer is under 30 seconds, so trying to end the game entails killing the entire enemy team, twice, at their tower. If they're good. If they're shitty it might entail killing half the enemy team twice, once outside their base and again at their tower, while the other half dicks around and accomplishes nothing. But even doing that is pretty difficult with a shitty team that doesn't get support items like arcane boots, mekanism and urn to heal up after a successful teamfight and continue pushing without returning to the well for healing.

 

[Zed]

I haven't really been playing much lately. How fares Medusa as a carry nowadays? Back when I played her in WC3 she had purge/chainlightning/manashield/multishot. I had one game with an opponent playing as her and she was pretty useless. The snake skill feels like it could be an excellent harassment ability.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It can be, but at the same time if you're good and playing a ranged hero with boots you have plenty of time to dodge it if it's thrown at melee creeps to hurt you most on the last bounce.

As a hero, I feel like she's playable, but only as a counterpick. Her ultimate rapes the shit out of illusions, and can turn off an entire Omniknight ultimate at once. So I could see her being a viable pick against PL, CK, Dark Seer, or Omniknight. Maybe only if the team had 2 of those. She also gets raped hard by an antimage or a nyx. The ulti also plays nice with other big AoE combo shit- you'd have to be braindead to not land a great epicenter or echo slam when the entire enemy team is moving at snail speed for 5 whole seconds. Would also make an ulti like Lich's much more effective, both by stopping them from spreading and by clearing out illusions that otherwise absorb bounces.

That said, she takes forever to get off the ground and start being an actual threat. She can't farm very quickly until she has tons of gear to make splitshot effective. By comparison, a drow with a helm of the dominator can farm stacked ancients pretty easily, which is basically the hardest thing to farm in the game. I actually didn't mind playing against her at all as a PL just because I knew in a pub she'd likely be farming so slow between poor last hitting and allies not making space for her that I'd have plenty of time to get a heart and manta before she could threaten our rax.

 

[SerratedBiz]

A thing I've noticed about Dota is that it very often seems to bring out the worst in the internetz. It's an already highly competitive environment which is very dependant on successful teamplay and, in line with what DR said above, it's a lot easier to play your retarded teammates for not playing to your standards than it is to realize what you might've done wrong or could've done to increase your chances of success. Coupled with internet anonimity, the extremely low chances of meeting people beyond the one game you're currently playing, and it all too often ends up in free-for-all shitflinging instead of anything productive.

A little over 100 games in now, still noobing it out. At least I'm getting more familiar with supports like Puck and Ancient Apparition, which I fall to when I'm having an extremely poor randoms day.

 

[Castanova]

I've been trying Slark for a few games now and... how is this not a massively popular hero in competitive circles? The hero can farm a stacked jungle very quickly and efficiently if you max pact first. When you hit 6, you can ruthlessly deward the enemy without risking a gem or even having highground vision. The burst damage you add to a gank is massive even assuming the target has sentry wards to counter you. Once you farm enough to get decent hp you can basically make it impossible for anyone to ever be alone, since even if you can't kill them in a single attack, you can hurt them very badly and fully recover from any damage you take within seconds. You basically force the enemy into a playstyle of grouping up and playing without observer wards. It's insane. And Slark isn't even weak in lane, since he has both good burst damage, a snare, and an escape, all at a very low mana cost on a single skill. It's not even possible to stun him for more than a second if his reaction time is good because pact clears stuns too. Which, incidentally, makes him excellent for initiating teamfights by dumbfucking in, eating a stun and then leaping out and healing to full while the enemy chases you into your entire team that hasn't wasted spells trying to kill a slark.

Why the fuck is this not a top picked hero? Is it like Scout in HoN where everyone just plays him wrong in pubs and he wasn't popular until someone realized you could just rice faster than an antimage and the invis=noob thing wasn't actually relevant since you ran like a fucking roadrunner anyways?

Not sure why he isn't a top-picked competitive hero. However, you can't BOTH be good in the lane by abusing his snare and be able to rice a stacked jungle by maxing pact first. The other problem I have when I play him is that, yeah, he has infinite health regen but he is actually very mana intensive. You're basically OOM after every single gank attempt. So, yeah, you're full life now, but what are you going to do with it? Last time I played him, I got Orb of Venom for lane harass and then got Skadi as my first item for increased stats. Mana became less of a problem then.

 

[Damned Registrations]

My build on him has been treads > blademail > pointbooster into skaadi. Orb of venom probably fits in there somewhere but I usually forget it exists. You do need some extra mana early on for sure. Skill wise I go WQWQQRQWWE- So you get leap to level 2 (which is plenty of damage at level 3-5 if you have a decent lane support or are just harassing a mid hero) and then max pact. Passive isn't gotten until level 10. Whether or not you can gank depends mostly on the enemy heroes, if it's going to take an invis to finish them off you might be better off jungling. You can clear the medium camp + the lane then stack the heavy camp for a few minutes, then clear it when it gets to a 5 stack (you don't even lose hp while doing this.) But if you're ganking with a support helping, you really just need to leap and pact once, which is only 115 mana, not intensive at all. Just those two spells will put out ~500 burst damage, on par with a lina gank (without ulti) for half the mana.

 

[Castanova]

What do you need the Blade Mail for, besides the +10 intelligence? I mean, I know Slark is supposed to make ballsy initiations where he gets exposed to damage but how often do you initiate on someone in the early game and lose due to being outdamaged versus simply being crowd-controlled?

 

[Malakal]

Slark has atrocious health so... he wont survive nukes for long. Also is a weak carry since hes mellee, has no disable skill and no boosting skill too. Maybe he is a decent nuker, but seriously as carry he fails.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What do you need the Blade Mail for, besides the +10 intelligence? I mean, I know Slark is supposed to make ballsy initiations where he gets exposed to damage but how often do you initiate on someone in the early game and lose due to being outdamaged versus simply being crowd-controlled?

In the early game not terribly often. But it can also let you make some ganks you othewise couldn't (1v2 or vs a particularly strong enemy). But it stays incredibly useful lategame, when you can initiate a teamfight by leaping in like a dumbfuck and then just pact and run away, and heal up then 1500 damage you just took while the enemies that deal it to you (and took it because of blademail) have to engage your team. And what else are you going to get that early? A skaadi component? That's just more hp. You have more than enough hp to gank early on, especially with a blademail active. Slark also has atrocious base armor an agi growth, so the 5 armor is actually rather nice as well.

The thing that makes Slark scale lategame is the passive that basically functions as an uber heart. You know how annoying it is trying to kill an antimage or QoP with 2500 hp and heart that keeps blinking away and regening up and coming back a minute later? Slark does the same shit except he comes back 10-20 seconds later and gets continually stronger the longer he stays alive while engaging and disengaging from fights. You can kite something like a naix around forever by tapping him several times then running away to heal up, and eventually you'll have tons more agility and he'll have less all stats and you outcarry him. And this is if you've been heavily outfarmed, which shouldn't be the case to begin with. If your items are on par there isn't enough of a discrepency between slark and other carries that you won't be able to talk out half of the guy's HP in an engagement and then escape, come back 8 seconds later and finish him.

 

[Orma]

The funniest part about DOTA is people complaining about their teammates and never thinking that maybe they were the problem

Yep, full of retards who are complaining about their teammates instead of playing.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

I wonder of the increased player base after release will make for better match making? Currently don't even know why I bother solo queuing. Especially in the very high bracket difference in skill level can be huge in game due to the smaller player base. You can end up with people playing in major tournaments and those who barely just won enough to get bumped up the bracket in the same game. Naturally you end up with all the bads.

Any way wouldn't mind a few others to queue up with. Play with Malakal here fairly often, and a few others from the Codex occasionally. A full 5 stack would be nice a little more often.
Or how about that Codex in house game? There ought to be a quite a few more players by now. There was some interest last time around, but I think some lacked the game then. I've alone another 10 invites available, so thats surely not a problem.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Risky. With a full stack you'll be going up against other full stacks... In solo MM your personal skill plays a far bigger role since there will be retards on the enemy team just as there will be on yours, and if you *are* at the top you should aim at 60% solo winrate on average if you try your best almost every game.

Unless you truly are at the top of the skill ladder in mm with your mates (I know I'm not), "stacking" is not really worth it except for the social aspect.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Well it's not like I'm not coming up against full stacks when I solo queue any way. For example this is from my latest game played.

Well a couple of them changed their names since it was played it would seem. But yeah full stack and while you get matched with a bunch of feeders, lots of fun that.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

@Merkwürdigliebe

http://www.google.com/search?q=strangby, he used to be well-known in HoN inhouses and played on a pro team (can't recall the name).

Your SF actually did not so bad, judging by GPM.

Can't same the same about you (sorry).

Midas on Naix (you were jungling right?)... can't win games this way, esp. not against opponents who know what they are doing - and not against their line-up.

...


Anyhow, on topic: you can go solo q vs. stack, but it adds a (+) value to their rating so you'll get lower ranked people in a stack when you solo, than you would normally when solo v. solo.

Even more on topic: matchmaking is irrelevant to anything, I treat is as opportunity to practice with heroes I feel I'm weakest with (or just have plain dumb fun, which can both happen at the same time but not necessarily) atm and nothing more. "Real" dota is played at 5v5 level, but to play scrims vs. good teams you need to get good in terms of individual skill first, of course... which takes matchmaking, inevitably (but thoughtful and self-critical - work on your mistakes). When you do get good enough for 5v5, people will invite you to party, ask you to sub in scrims etc. - you will know when it happens. In the meantime, keep on the lookout for any inhouse leagues popping up - they usually appear and die within a month, you may get some "tryhard" 5v5 games there as well.

Read this http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=385238 - you may not want to "go pro", but it's quite well-written with regard to getting better in general

 

[Damned Registrations]

Eh, it's too general to say that. For all we know the SF sat around freefarming mid and still had shit GPM while he had to deal with constant jungle invasions and bail out his lane with constant TPs. Which was very likely the case since they had a wisp-jugg-np-spirit breaker combo and obviously ganked all game with it. If you're in that position a midas is the only way to get any decent farm at all, because spending even 2-3 minutes farming means losing a tower or watching an ally die to a gank. In general though they were just massively outpicked. I don't even want to know what awful lanes you had.

Agree with you about the matchmaknig thing though. Taking it seriously is just aggravating. I could probably climb to a fairly high bracket if I played nothing but Tiny mid and the like, but god does that ever get boring fast. And when you lose a game that is already boring and formulaic (because someone is just beyond all reason retarded, or drops halfway through or whatever) it is really infuriating.

The last match I had I panic picked huskar, came to the lane 30 seconds late after being afk a while, and was in a duo offlane. So not in a great position. How does the game go? We shit on their solo top for a while (though unable to get a kill because fucking huskar is worthless in a sidelane and the other guy was a beastmaster) until mid and their second offlaner come top. So I leave to jungle a bit on my way to bottom, which has died like 3 times to the incredibly powerful Broodmother/Batrider combo. Because, you know, that's real scary. We had duo lane bot, Dirge and someone else. I show up and kill the broodmother when she tries to gank me in the jungle, with only a morbid mask and no boots to my name, starting at pretty much half hp and level 5. So clearly, a very highly skilled broodmother that has been facerolling my dual lane bot. Then I need to buy sentries, observer wards, and fly the courier, because dirge, beastmaster, and the other sidelaner (AA, I remember now) won't. I ask, but AA says he needs mana boots and will get wards after. Meanwhile it is nightime and pudge is roaming for kills while we have 0 wards, and weaver has treads nothing at 8 minutes in. I buy the support shit, kill the broodmother and the pudge when they try to gank bot again. I point out that it is total bullshit I need to buy all this shit when I'm going to be forced to be our main carry and they pretend weaver is going to carry us. The weaver that basically lost mid to pudge and has less farm than me even after I waste gold on support items and time ganking instead of efficiently farming. Apparently his farm is going to explode past me somehow. So the game continues, I have to buy a fucking gem because the brood won't GTFO of our jungle and I can't afford to buy sentries constantly (enemy team is good enough to spam their own sentries and eventually get a gem). I solo rosh for us and AA pretends this is of more benefit to my farm than his somehow. Because nothing raises your networth like taking a couple minutes to slowly kill roshan after spending gold on smoke and sentries to make sure you do it safely, and my entire team ONLY gets half the gold for doing absolutely nothing. After this point my farm continues to increase as I stack ancients and generally roflstomp the enemy team with hardly any help. Weaver has decided that his build is going to be Treads-Aquila-Radiance. He ended the game without finishing the radiance AFAIR.

Now, imagine if I had been just trying to have fun and played a hero that couldn't do all this shit. Imagine if I picked a Riki or PA and had to lane with an Dirge that fights me for rice, gets no support shit and feeds kills to a broodmother/batrider lane somehow. I would be SO FUCKED. I could play a perfect game as Riki and still be utterly screwed with a team like that. God forbid I had picked something like Enigma and trusted in Weaver to carry us. 3-3-1 at the end of the game as the winning team, less than 400 gpm. He was in basically zero fights until the final push and still never farmed fucking anything. You can't treat a game like that as being real. And this was a game with a team that was decent enough to win. I get games with teams so bad I can't save them even as huskar or tiny or whoever. Those are the worst, when you pick a hero you've played a million times because you just want to break a losing streak and drag your shit team up a notch, and you lose anyways because they demand the right to lose mid, farm aggressively as a Lina or Sand King, feed first blood within a minute and make you buy every single support item for the entire team.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Eh, it's too general to say that. For all we know the SF sat around freefarming mid and still had shit GPM while he had to deal with constant jungle invasions and bail out his lane with constant TPs. Which was very likely the case since they had a wisp-jugg-np-spirit breaker combo and obviously ganked all game with it. If you're in that position a midas is the only way to get any decent farm at all, because spending even 2-3 minutes farming means losing a tower or watching an ally die to a gank. In general though they were just massively outpicked. I don't even want to know what awful lanes you had.

Pretty much, bot and top were losing their lanes very badly. Mid did alright, but then I had go there often to prevent SF from dieing from a gank. Doesn't help the average gpm when the game is essentially over by 20 min and your confined in your base for the next 20 mins with no farm. While the other team just fucks around and doesn't push.

Strangby pro? He played liked a retard to say the least. Losing magnus/keeper lane vs solo spirit breaker, how is that even possible?

 

[Castanova]

I don't know. Some of the second/third/fourth-tier "pros" can actually be pretty bad sometimes. Like, my friend and I played a match against two guys from the ROOT Gaming team and we whooped them... and we're not even that good at the game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

A lot of guys don't take matchmaking seriously at all though. If you encounter a 'pro' and beat them... while they were using MoM/Phase Boots/Dagon... you probably didn't have a real match with them.

 

[Malakal]

Well true "pros" are beyond our league even if the dont play seriously. I once played with MyM-Merlini in dota 1, he took huskar (obviously a non serious hero) mid got first blood on level 2 or 3 made heart by 20 min or something like that and finished the game by 25 min. Alone. I have similar memories about playing with CoL player (dont remember which one) but he went mid enigma.

 

[Castanova]

Obviously these guys weren't taking the match seriously but when I watch top-tier pros streaming they tend to do pretty well even when they're not taking the game seriously. My point was about these second-class pros, some of whom seem to be fairly bad unless they're playing with their stack and concentrating.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Damned Registrations Your post reminds me why I went back to HoN; the matchmaking seems to do a better / less random job (not to mention faster at getting into games, at least since I last played dota 2 a couple months back) and you can at least get out of totally retarded games by conceding or remaking. I like Dota 2 but find it soul crushingly tedious in its current state because of these two issues.

 

[Garbonzo]

What is the community like in Dota2 compared to LoL and HoN?

 

[Zed]

What is the community like in Dota2 compared to LoL and HoN?

the worst.
don't play dota for the social interaction.

 

[ohWOW]

unwashed russian hordes.


just don't play this garbage, go hon. it's heaven compared to this crap.