DoTA 2 One: Not to be confused with DoTA 1 Two

[TubaMortim]

So the next patch update was spoiled, and I like the look of it. It buffs most of the heroes I play, and does small nerfs to some heroes who were seeing a little too much competitive play. Only problem I see is Treant Protector is now useless at night, I mean the regen got better but it will only help your lane partner/ tower, that's bad. Nighstalker now hard counters him. In general though I'm most excited for the Pugna change, since he is one of my favorites.

Pretty much all "leaked" balance patches are fake, and this one very likely too. Doesn't seem very Icefrog-y.

[Trixie]

No one linked this yet? Shame

HL 333 confirmed :3

[Octopus Jack]

No one linked this yet? Shame

HL 333 confirmed :3

Godammit! Now I'll have to chose between this and my Pyrion Flax announcer, man has never had such a difficult choice.

In other news I've been playing a lot of Nature's Prophet (or should I say: Profit) lately and by that I mean a lot. He's just so much fun to play, has amazing map presence and as long as your team can turtle half decently you're unlikely to lose the game.

[Welf]

I have a few Quiry sumemr crates to trade. Link. Any offers?

[Octopus Jack]

Just got a proper game in with Storm Spirit for the first time and dayum that was fun. Early game went alright, nothing special then I started to get kills and farm like crazy.

Ended up with a 21 stack Bloodstone, Scythe of Vise, Shiva's Guard, Orchid, Treads and Bottle. Literally jumping around in teamfights utterly destroying people whilst Storm Spirit makes quips was the most fun I had in a while.

Zaaaaaap

[Teln]

Just got a proper game in with Storm Spirit for the first time and dayum that was fun. Early game went alright, nothing special then I started to get kills and farm like crazy.

Ended up with a 21 stack Bloodstone, Scythe of Vise, Shiva's Guard, Orchid, Treads and Bottle. Literally jumping around in teamfights utterly destroying people whilst Storm Spirit makes quips was the most fun I had in a while.

Zaaaaaap

Nice to hear it, he looks quite fun. Would you mind sharing the match ID?

[Octopus Jack]

Nice to hear it, he looks quite fun. Would you mind sharing the match ID?

Sure it's: 306774564 largest bloodstone stack I got was 23 before I started being very silly when I was sure we had already won.

Was queuing/in voip with SK and Lina who are both fairly new players, especially Lina who I was constantly yelling at to 'stop moving' as Bloodseeker ulted him more often than not.

Once again been playing a lot of Furion, he just seems unfair in pub games, mostly I build him pusher but last game I built him as a carry due to our team having no real late game, still need to try out Dagon on him for fun in pub games.

[Fan]

If we're passing out match id's.

307897962

A pretty good weaver game, not as stompy as the TA or Tinker games (replays expire faster than I thought.), but still a good example of how to play the character sans when I got bored later on.

Also 307875604

For a decent OD game, though I'll go ahead and put out a "Big ego, big mouth" warning for Morphling. Literally everyone in the game reported him for his comm abuse, both sides.

[Dumbledore lives]

Had a fun kind of stupid set of inhouses yesterday. Essentially we had maybe five good players, and five players of skill from 'okay' to 'have you played dota before?' So we ended up randoming teams to start the games quicker, and each time it was ridiculously unbalanced. I ended up randoming all times and played Queen of Pain in the offlane solo first, then an offlane anti-mage against a Huskar and Nature's Prophet, then finally a jungling Enigma. I had played only anti-mage before in any capacity and it was so freaking difficult offlane, with burning spears just killing me if I got hit more than like once.

Anyway we ended up dominating in all games and I rarely died, only really when diving or doing other stupid stuff. Sometimes it is fun to just mess around like that, even when there's no challenge. We were also all on the same teamspeak channel, both teams, so that was even better really.

[Trixie]

So, First Blood soon. Opinion?

[Anteros]

So, First Blood soon. Opinion?

They fixed like 4 bugs, added a few skins and marketed it as a major patch...is this normal procedure for them?

[Trixie]

A few skins?

Spoiler

Show

*ahem*

[ufo]

They fixed like 4 bugs, added a few skins and marketed it as a major patch...is this normal procedure for them?

I think the "major" part is all the gameplay changes. Personally, I'm pretty excited about these:

Item purchases can be made at the secret shop if the courier is at that location without selecting the courier

Control groups are now saved to the cloud, per hero, and will persist across games and disconnects. They are saved per hero
[sic]
Alt-left clicking on an enemy icon in the top bar will send a chat message that the hero is missing

Seems like little details that will provide a much more streamlined gameplay.

[Trixie]

*you're winning. More accurately, you happen to be on the same team as winners*

[Octopus Jack]

So, First Blood soon. Opinion?

I am greatly looking forward to this, wondering how much the Portal Pack will cost as that'll probably be the decider, the little gameplay and backpack tweaks look pretty cool.

[Bayar]

They fixed like 4 bugs, added a few skins and marketed it as a major patch...is this normal procedure for them?

Well, if you are willing to ignore LAN capabilities, arguably something that will make it even more popular in China/Korea/Asia in general/Ex-Soviet block, then sure, it's a normal patch.

[The Underlord]

So new player of DotA here, I tried it once during beta, but decided to give it a second chance after playing SMITE and familiarizing myself with the genre. I have gone through Welcome to DotA, You Suck, and I know the basics of the game. I have played most of the tutorials and played a few bot matches. Any recommendations (specifically hero suggestions, as I am pretty lost for which of 100 or so heroes to play and general lane composition as I assume the meta has changed since Welcome to Dota, You Suck) for a new player to DotA?

[Dumbledore lives]

So new player of DotA here, I tried it once during beta, but decided to give it a second chance after playing SMITE and familiarizing myself with the genre. I have gone through Welcome to DotA, You Suck, and I know the basics of MOBAs. I have played most of the tutorials and played a few bot matches. Any recommendations (specifically hero suggestions, as I am pretty lost for which of 100 or so heroes to play and general lane composition as I assume the meta has changed since Welcome to Dota, You Suck) for a new player to DotA?

Play a support first. Even if only for a couple games. While you're doing that watch what the carries do, and always be with the team in team fights or ganks. Learn basic ward placement and make sure to buy them, it helps so much more than you can imagine. There is a limited hero pool mode which has the 20 simplest heroes, theoretically, which is a good start. Play a few matches with limited heroes to get your bearings. Because there are less things to learn you can kind of anticipate what a certain hero means, and how to deal with it. It'll be difficult, the start always is, but before too long you should at least get your bearings.

[Bayar]

So new player of DotA here, I tried it once during beta, but decided to give it a second chance after playing SMITE and familiarizing myself with the genre. I have gone through Welcome to DotA, You Suck, and I know the basics of MOBAs. I have played most of the tutorials and played a few bot matches. Any recommendations (specifically hero suggestions, as I am pretty lost for which of 100 or so heroes to play and general lane composition as I assume the meta has changed since Welcome to Dota, You Suck) for a new player to DotA?

I recommend you not calling it a MOBA. Call it DotA, or if you want a genre, ARTS.

[Octopus Jack]

Play a support first. Even if only for a couple games. While you're doing that watch what the carries do, and always be with the team in team fights or ganks. Learn basic ward placement and make sure to buy them, it helps so much more than you can imagine. There is a limited hero pool mode which has the 20 simplest heroes, theoretically, which is a good start. Play a few matches with limited heroes to get your bearings. Because there are less things to learn you can kind of anticipate what a certain hero means, and how to deal with it. It'll be difficult, the start always is, but before too long you should at least get your bearings.

This is really good advice, but there are a couple of well I wouldn't call them trap supports but ones that either require more advanced understanding of the game than most new players have, micro skills or reliable team-mates which should be avoided at all costs. I'd suggest staying away from Enchantress, Chen, Visage and Wisp to start off with and focus on supports with much more of a ganking/teamfight presence.

My favourite support for new players, and also my favourite hero when I started playing is Shadow Shaman. He has a nuke, two forms of hard CC and a fantastic ult. Word of advice on the ult, it spawns a bunch of Serpent Wards that attack targets near them for a decent amount of damage, you can select them and focus them on one target and you can also cast them directly ontop of an enemy to trap them inside it. This is especially effective on melee caries as most new players wont try to attack move out to start to clear the wards. Another good one with strong CC and a teamfight presence is Witch Doctor.

Another good reason for playing a support in your early days is most people will want to play carries, you will find teams of 5 carries all fighting over farm and kills. In the early game a well played support should be able to stomp all over them and allow your carries to get fed and win. You also will be able to provide essential items like a Courier, Wards and Dust of Appearance if they have any invisible heroes which a team of 5 carries is unlikely to purchase.

Hope a little bit of that helps.

In unrelated news I now have 4 Tiny Cards, 2 PL cards and 2 Riki cards if anyone would like to trade Steam Trading cards? The 4 Tinys has annoyed me to no end.

[Bayar]

WHat exactly do you want for the cards ?

[Octopus Jack]

WHat exactly do you want for the cards ?

Either Venge or Bounty Hunter as I'd like to complete the set if you have them.

[Grytorm]

Is Necrolyte's ult's damage calculated when the damage is dealt or when he spell is cast. I cast it on a highly fed full health bounty and I don't know if it did any damage.

[Lunix Vandal]

It's calculated at the end of the stun duration. This means it's possible for other players to save someone from the Scythe by dropping a sufficient amount of healing on them (and/or Dazzle's Shallow Grave) -- or for Necrolyte's allies to secure a kill by bringing a target below the instagib threshold between the cast and the damage.

As for Scythe doing no damage to a "highly fed full health bounty," that's its intended behavior. Unlike (for example) Garen's very similar ult in LoL, Scythe has no static damage component, and thus will have little-to-no effect on enemies that aren't already severely hurt.

[Grytorm]

I know how the ult works, but just not when damage was calculated. It was 2v1 and he had a BKB so I wanted to make sure we jumped him when we had a chance. I had Gem and the other guy was a Sven. I ulted Bounty when he came up to us for the stun.

[Octopus Jack]

So I've moved back to my Uni town and into a house with some friends, due to student loans and 5 contact hours a week we've pretty much got a gaming house down and sorted.

Had a complete rofl stomp as Anti-Mage going 32/0/6 and just storming through their team, one nice thing that you don't see all that often was, in spite of me being incredibly fed and able to wreck face almost without support, the other team not giving up and just sitting at spawn. Sure Medusa called 'GG' a few times but they still tried to defend objectives and win the game.

Far too many people see a match start to go badly and quit/afk meaning there is no chance for a turnaround or an interesting game for either side.

[Bayar]

So I've moved back to my Uni town and into a house with some friends, due to student loans and 5 contact hours a week we've pretty much got a gaming house down and sorted.

Had a complete rofl stomp as Anti-Mage going 32/0/6 and just storming through their team, one nice thing that you don't see all that often was, in spite of me being incredibly fed and able to wreck face almost without support, the other team not giving up and just sitting at spawn. Sure Medusa called 'GG' a few times but they still tried to defend objectives and win the game.

Far too many people see a match start to go badly and quit/afk meaning there is no chance for a turnaround or an interesting game for either side.

Tried LAN mode ?

[Octopus Jack]

Tried LAN mode ?

Not yet, it'd be hard to 1) Make fair teams and 2) Keep tempers down as one of our players gets very into it, especially for scrim matches we've had.

We'll get round to it eventually, but it'll probably be a student party alcohol fueled night which will hopefully get recorded.

[Anteros]

Your student alcohol party fueled nights are...very different from my student alcohol party fueled nights.

So I just had a fun match with AA and Zeus against a line up of squishy heroes. All the convenience of a monster kill, without the hassle of ever having to leave your base.

[Octopus Jack]

Your student alcohol party fueled nights are...very different from my student alcohol party fueled nights.

So I just had a fun match with AA and Zeus against a line up of squishy heroes. All the convenience of a monster kill, without the hassle of ever having to leave your base.

Well you don't go to a backwater Welsh university where the town has a population of around 2000, we run out of things to do quite quickly.

AA's ult sound effect is possibly my favourite sound effect in Dota, I just love the bowling pin noise, still havn't gotten round to playing him due to me mostly playing carry heroes and he's unfortunately rarely picked in matches so I don't get to hear that sweet sweet sound very often.