DotA 2 - Valve's up and coming hat simulator

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Originally Posted by Tazar

Thanks for the advice! I'll take a look into Lich as well; I played Plague Rider a bit in HoN, and I don't recall him being particularly difficult, so he shouldn't be too hard to pick up.

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Sure thing. My WR item build is usually something like ring of prot, 3 branches, a clarity, and 6 tangos. Make basilius when you can (but turn it off!) turn the branches into wand and the make phase. From that point you've got 4 slots filled so I'd probably snag mek and maybe force staff to finish off your core. Skipping basi is prob fine, but its a cheap way to pick up some damage, mana, armor and be a good teammate. From that point start selling the cheap stuff. Skill build is usually wr/shackle/power/power/power/power and then alternate shackle and wr. Get ult at 14,15,16.

Lich should skill ritual/nova/nova/ritual/nova/ult/nova/rit/rit/armor/ult/finish armor, unless you're in a ton of early team fights or not solo. Ritual is really important. Be sure to use it even when you're at full mana. As soon as creeps spawn, kill one off with ritual. Lich is one of my favorite early picks in scrims, and I completely demolished a really good clock player yesterday in a 1v1 lane by just denying everything. As for items, I usually start with 3 branches ror,tangos. This is all assuming I'm not courier/ward duty, which is a fair assumption with predominately solo heroes. Finish that mek up fast. You should end up pretty rich.

I dislike ags on most heroes but it's not terrible here if you're good at baiting them into good CF positions. In the game I mentioned our team was VS, Tide, Potm, Pugna. Vs was prime bait as she was quite underfarmed compare to potm, pug, and myself. Whenever they engaged her she swapped tide in for a nasty ult and I got some good CF opportunities. If you have good aoe and positioning powers, that ags can be a team wrecker. Shame Dota 2's CF looks pretty lame.

I think that's just a placeholder animation for chain frost...

I HOPE it's just a placeholder...PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

lol

Lich is one of my favorite Int heros. Him and Bane are rawkzor. I like that new ring on Bane, the one that lets you swap 100 health for 100 mana. Do that, then go munch someone's brain literally for free. Do that on CD, and you'll harrass your lane pretty effectively.

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Originally Posted by Tazar

Thanks for the advice! I'll take a look into Lich as well; I played Plague Rider a bit in HoN, and I don't recall him being particularly difficult, so he shouldn't be too hard to pick up.

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Plague Rider is the easiest character in any DotA-like. Including Flint Beastwood/King Leoric/Old Lifestealer.

Edit: Even easier the Blood Hunter.

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Originally Posted by Inhuman Bot

Plague Rider is the easiest character in any DotA-like. Including Flint Beastwood/King Leoric/Old Lifestealer.

Edit: Even easier the Blood Hunter.

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Meh, I felt that Leoric was the easiest, then Sniper. But then again, Death Knight isn't an auto-attack hero, those just pretty much farm all day and then just win cuz you're farmed. :smalltongue:

The only guide to Skeleton King you'll ever need:

Unfortunate language within:

Spoiler

Show

http://dotabestguides.com/?p=131

Any carry immediately has one harder aspect of play in that you need to be a good farmer, so I would say the easiest hero in all of DotA is Ogre Magi.

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Originally Posted by toasty

Meh, I felt that Leoric was the easiest, then Sniper. But then again, Death Knight isn't an auto-attack hero, those just pretty much farm all day and then just win cuz you're farmed. :smalltongue:

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The thing about Leoric is, with one active spell, you need to really use it at the perfect time. Sniper needs to farm/carry.

Plague Rider eats allied creeps for free lane control and hits R to win even harder then Tidehunter.

Leoric also has to remember to turn his Armlet on and off, which can unfortunately be harder than it seems. :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by Meta

The only guide to Skeleton King you'll ever need:

Unfortunate language within:

Spoiler

Show

http://dotabestguides.com/?p=131

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QFT. I can't wait to see his model (and voice!) in DotA2. Here's hoping Jon St. John voiced him!

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Originally Posted by Inhuman Bot

The thing about Leoric is, with one active spell, you need to really use it at the perfect time. Sniper needs to farm/carry.

Plague Rider eats allied creeps for free lane control and hits R to win even harder then Tidehunter.

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Death Knight's Ultimate isn't so amazingly strong that he auto wins fights, it just makes him immortal for a while. :smalltongue:

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Originally Posted by toasty

Death Knight's Ultimate isn't so amazingly strong that he auto wins fights, it just makes him immortal for a while. :smalltongue:

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Unless there's a certain demon-orc running around.

I just watched some videos from this.

WHY SO MUCH CUDDLY OH GODS WHY!

It looks like TF2 decided to cosplay and fight with rubber sticks and flaslights.

Where's my corpse catapults? Where's my blood and angry trees throwing rocks? Where are my pointy ziggurats throwing damend souls?

Sure WC III graphics are horribly outdated, but I would still take them over this cutesy land.

They could've actualy brought out WC III's fantasy feel (like in Wow), but noooo, plushies to atract the small children to the game.

/Rant.

Don't forget, the game has not even entered public beta yet. They can still change alot of things. Also, I think trees that throw rocks and towers that attack with souls might be copyrighted.

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Originally Posted by deuterio12

I just watched some videos from this.

WHY SO MUCH CUDDLY OH GODS WHY!

It looks like TF2 decided to cosplay and fight with rubber sticks and flaslights.

Where's my corpse catapults? Where's my blood and angry trees throwing rocks? Where are my pointy ziggurats throwing damend souls?

Sure WC III graphics are horribly outdated, but I would still take them over this cutesy land.

They could've actualy brought out WC III's fantasy feel (like in Wow), but noooo, plushies to atract the small children to the game.

/Rant.

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Blizzard probably has copyrights to their likeness you know.

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Originally Posted by deuterio12

I just watched some videos from this.

WHY SO MUCH CUDDLY OH GODS WHY!

It looks like TF2 decided to cosplay and fight with rubber sticks and flaslights.

Where's my corpse catapults? Where's my blood and angry trees throwing rocks? Where are my pointy ziggurats throwing damend souls?

Sure WC III graphics are horribly outdated, but I would still take them over this cutesy land.

They could've actualy brought out WC III's fantasy feel (like in Wow), but noooo, plushies to atract the small children to the game.

/Rant.

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I suspect the Dire and the Radiant are meant to be more unmemorable than the Scourge and Sentinel were. Keeping the creeps and towers more simple makes the story more about the heroes and less about WC3's storyline. I remember how the old naix model was just a slightly larger ghoul, and that was no fun either.

I think the creep models themselves could use a little sprucing up myself, but have you seen the portraits? They look very cool.

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Originally Posted by Meta

I remember how the old naix model was just a slightly larger ghoul, and that was no fun either.

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Originally Posted by Meta

and that was no fun either.

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Originally Posted by Meta

was no fun

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Just what are you talking about? there was NOTHING funnier then walking up to some creeps trying to farm a bit and ohgodthatghoulsiseatingmyfacewhysweetmercywhy?

sadly this was quickly fixed in favor of making the model slightly distinct from the normal ghouls.

Old Naix was boss too. His slow poison combined with attack speed increase basically ment that if Naix started meleeing you, you were dead unless you had friends with you. Back in the day, I used to build Lothar's on Naix for invisiMUNCHMUNCHMUNCH because it was just so dang hillarious.

Speaking of back in the day...

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Originally Posted by Keld Denar

Do you have a link to this? That would be awesome!

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Originally Posted by Winterwind

Go here.

Create a BattleNet account, if you don't already have one, and log in.

At the bottom, under ACCOUNT, there is a list of options including "Add Game". Click on that.

Enter the CD-Key in the window that opens then.

You should now have a "Download Client" option. Click it.

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...did it work? :smallwink:

You know, I've been home about 2 hours total since I posted that. Between work, yoga, a huge party, a massive outdoor rock concert, and running a D&D game for my GF and her parents, I've been completely tapped out. I'll give it a try today after work. I've been jonesing for some good DotA lately.

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Originally Posted by deuterio12

I just watched some videos from this.

WHY SO MUCH CUDDLY OH GODS WHY!

It looks like TF2 decided to cosplay and fight with rubber sticks and flaslights.

Where's my corpse catapults? Where's my blood and angry trees throwing rocks? Where are my pointy ziggurats throwing damend souls?

Sure WC III graphics are horribly outdated, but I would still take them over this cutesy land.

They could've actualy brought out WC III's fantasy feel (like in Wow), but noooo, plushies to atract the small children to the game.

/Rant.

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It looks completely fine, IMO. I don't get how people associate DOTA2 with "childish and cutesy" and yet are fine with Warcraft style graphics.

Warcraft is even more stylized and exaggerated than the DOTA2 graphical style. WCIII is anything but a "dark" game. Seriously, go take a close look at it, it's super cartoony.

Out of curiosity, is there a storyline attached to the DotA 2? Hero lore? Background stuff?

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Originally Posted by Winterwind

There is such a thing as objectively bad design

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AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

hahahahahaha

hahaha

heh heh

Good one.

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Originally Posted by faceroll

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

hahahahahaha

hahaha

heh heh

Good one.

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I have to ask, what is so funny about that one?

Look, we've known from the start of this thread that there's people who worship LoL and everything that comes out of riots offices while hating on dota because someone told them denying didn't make sense (neither do respawn-timers), but can we please not talk about that HERE, this is the Dota2-thread, not the LoL-Dota flamewar discussion.

As for storyline, the first Dota didn't have much, except for hero descriptions (which were very mutually-exclusive most of the time) and a funny blurp in each item (this item is said to grant immortality to the chosen one, to all others, it grants 250 hitpoints.)

DotA's story was basically just a part of WC3's. World Tree and Frozen Throne. Scourge battling the more good aligned. More importantly though, was how the struggle involved the heroes. Phantom Assassin murdering VS, or Magina trying to redeem Terrorblade. It's not a story line so much as just the character backstories and the actual story takes place in the famous top, mid, and bot! In this way, I think the personal remarks between the heroes is the single best way any sort of DotA story could be implemented. Most of the ones we've seen has more to do with similar heroes taunting each other, like Venomancer and Viper, but AM apologizing sadly after killing TB would be a pretty epic allusion, imo.

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Originally Posted by Adumbration

Out of curiosity, is there a storyline attached to the DotA 2? Hero lore? Background stuff?

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Valve has indicated that they plan to develop the DOTA2 story via comics and videos akin to TF2; as such, I would be surprised if heroes didn't launch with some kind of backstory blurb.

I really look forward to seeing what Valve can do with a story; they're excellent at subtly inserting story into a game.

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Originally Posted by Tazar

Valve has indicated that they plan to develop the DOTA2 story via comics and videos akin to TF2; as such, I would be surprised if heroes didn't launch with some kind of backstory blurb.

I really look forward to seeing what Valve can do with a story; they're excellent at subtly inserting story into a game.

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I'd be interested to see how they do this. DotA's got over 10x as many characters as TF2, so I'm wondering whether they'll just focus on a handful, or if they have something else planned.

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Originally Posted by Bodez

I have to ask, what is so funny about that one?

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Probably the fact he called what was his opinion a fact.

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Originally Posted by Inhuman Bot

Probably the fact he called what was his opinion a fact.

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There is objectively bad design though. For example, if you were trying to adjust DotA to make ganking more prevalent and made a few superficial changes there (maybe increasing death timers by a flat 4 seconds) while also making Strength give 50% more hp per point, that would be terrible game design.

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Originally Posted by Suedars

There is objectively bad design though. For example, if you were trying to adjust DotA to make ganking more prevalent and made a few superficial changes there (maybe increasing death timers by a flat 4 seconds) while also making Strength give 50% more hp per point, that would be terrible game design.

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No it wouldn't because adjectives like 'bad', 'worse' and 'terrible' are all subjective. So they can't be objective fact.

Saying that something doesn't work as intended is objective. Saying 'this is a terrible idea' is not.

/lurking

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Originally Posted by HalfTangible

No it wouldn't because adjectives like 'bad', 'worse' and 'terrible' are all subjective. So they can't be objective fact.

Saying that something doesn't work as intended is objective. Saying 'this is a terrible idea' is not.

/lurking

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Saying that chocolate ice cream is worse than vanilla ice cream is subjective. Saying that chocolate ice cream is worse than vanilla in terms of being white is fact. These terms aren't subjective when they're qualified. If you're trying to diet, eating 20 lbs. of bacon is terrible. In a game of soccer, scoring no goals is worse than scoring 4. Promoting defensive play in an attempt to encourage ganking is bad game design.

Perhaps the issue is some terminology. I would see wanting to making the game more gank heavy as a design decision. Making heroes have more HP would just be poor implementation of that design, not a bad design idea. That might be what the 'no bad design' camp is getting at.