Dota anyone?

[shadowxknight]

Quick question, if I registered at US West can I login to US East with the same SN?

And for those that are new to the game, I suggest using an easy hero such as Skeleton King or Dwarvern Sniper.
Get proficient with them before trying someone new.

[mathieumg]

No, you need to reg again.

[Poison_Fish]

So, 6.55. Amazingly buggy, so I'm not a huge fan of it, as well as some balance issues. Lots of new changes. I like the change to keeper of the light, though mana leak was still good, now it's amazingly good.

Enchantress, however, is extremely powerful. I will in fact even say overpowered at this point. Sure, there are some heroes who can just go out and kill her, but the change to impetus is quite stunning. She's a baby sitter until 6, at 6 she can dish out a lot of damage.

The new heroes are so-so. Though the Admiral I can see some fun uses for. He largely makes me think of him as a support strength hero though. Not quite as much as pit lord, but more of an alchemist with the way his skills pan out. However, a lot of really good team battling skills.

The other new hero I haven't had much of a chance to look at yet.

Overall, I'll want them to patch this pretty quick. Also, the way the lanes are now isn't that fun. Everything is huge.

[Artemician]

So, 6.55. Amazingly buggy, so I'm not a huge fan of it, as well as some balance issues. Lots of new changes.

Holy ****, that IS a huge change.

Let's run down the list some, shall we...

* Reworked Black King Bar
* Aegis now respawns you where you died with full hp and mana but is undroppable and unstackable. Roshan takes it back when he respawns if it is unused
* The game now announces who acquires Aegis
* Reduced Kelen's Dagger cooldown from 30 to 15 seconds
* Kelen's Dagger now only triggers on player controlled damage
* Changed Max Stock on Observer Wards to 2
* Decreased Sentry Ward's truesight range
* Couriers can no longer place wards

* Tower gold is split if Sentinel or Scourge gets the last hit
* Denied towers give 50% team gold rather than 0%.
* Changed and standardized the bounty values on all structures
* Slight adjustments to gold bounty variance on Sentinel and Scourge creeps
* Global team tower bounty increases a little per tower level
* Roshan now gradually becomes stronger over time instead of after death
* Increased Hero Kill Experience bonus a little bit (+8 unshared experience per hero level in an area)
* Hero Kills now give a flat gold bounty in an area (+40, not to killer)

* You can now purchase items in your base without a courier (they drop to the floor)
* Removed Crow's mana upgrade capability

***

Analysis:

Lots of balancing issues. Tide nerf, Spectre nerf, Clockwork nerf, GA nerf, Bkb rework, etc.

But the biggest change now is that.

Basically, farming gets buffed, and ganking gets nerfed AGAIN.

With new non-Agility Hero Lothars edge and buffed blink, more heroes can now get away from ganks. In addition, the lowered hero bounty (what, 1 creep?) really, really makes it unappealing to gank. The gold you get from a hero isn't worth the opportunity cost now.

Pushing also becomes a lot more appealing, with the concept of a Ward-War knocked down, and more escape mechanisms, the difference in danger between fighting near your tower and fighting further up/down the lane is reduced. Coupled with the nerf in Tower Deny, I think we're going to see a lot more in the likes of Brood, DP, Furion, Chen, Meepo and the like, as well as their counters THD, Lina, Lion etc.

Thoughts? I'm just thinking broadly here, not dealing with the details just yet.

[Poison_Fish]

I'd be inclined to agree. Which is a bit sad. I enjoyed the days when the metagame was largely ganking.

Although, the one change I actually like is to dagger. I miss the old days of dagger.

Though, I also like being able to buy in base without a chicken. But at this point, I've gotten used to having a chicken so much ferrying me things it's hard to not go without one.

Oh, and I love the change done to KotL, making him actually useful. In a game of farming as well, perhaps one of the best baby sitter/pushers too. Not that I'm a huge fan of the farm feast, considering my favorite heroes are the likes of PoTM, Tiny, NA, etc.

Edit: Also, a lot of the new abilities Linkens is broken on. Like KotL's mana rupture the linkens will absorb, but the debuff will still be on you draining your mana/stunning you. Which sucks. So, plenty of bugs.

Although, I did have a fun game of enchantress walking around with a linkens, BoT's, Orchids, Sheep Stick, and a heart while working on a 2nd heart. Having an omniknight on the team as well to put repel on me allowed me literally to tank a whole team of 5 thanks to untouchable + repel.

[Artemician]

Maelk on 6.55

A lot of you tend to focus on the Blink Dagger change, but I don't think thats the key-change at all. Far from it.

What differs so much in this version compared to the prior .50's, is that BKB has been changed drastically in a way that ultimate dependent heroes can still put it to the use it was intended (Crystal Maiden, Sandking etc.) while it isn't as viable to make it on the DPS-lategamers any longer which means they aren't invulnerable while firing off their 300-damage pr. shot. +1.

New BKB
=========
Ogre Axe(1000)
Mithril Hammer (1610)
Recipe (1300)
24 Damage
10 Strength
80/75/70/65/60/55 seconds cooldown
10/9/8/7/6/5 seconds
Total: 3910



And that isn't even the biggest change. The most influential change this version is a general change that all shares one purpose: Less vision.

Most tend to focus on the Crow-change and the change of wards. But that isn't all. Visage's birds no longer provide the same vision, there are more ways of detecting invisibility than ever before so Weaver's watchers aren't as good as before either plus they were slightly nerfed and finally and foremost: The webs of Broodmother are essentially useless for vision. Great success.

* Decreased day vision on Visage's Revenants by 400
* Decreased Watcher's vision a little bit
* Reduced vision aoe on Spin Webs


So what is going to happen in the game now that these three major changes has arrived(BKB, Vision, Blink Dagger)?

Well, from a strictly theoretical point of view, everyone will start to play gank strategies. So one or two heroes from each team will constantly roam around the map trying to gank the other team. Neither of them with any real vision other than what they explore, the wards they have on runespots and the intelligence they gather from the minimap - Are all heroes in their lanes? Considering both teams will most likely be running these strategies: No, all heroes are not visible on the minimap because the other team is out ganking as well! So what happens? Either each team is ganking a different location or they both intend to gank the same lane. So they meet before ever reaching the lane, or just before arriving to where they intended to gank. Tonnes of scrimmages will occur everywhere on the map and people will start focusing on aiding their allies in these scrimmages and as the metagame of this version evolves more and more heroes will help out until finally we see battles of 8 to 10 heroes happening from the very beginning. And that is when the herochoices falls back on Lich, Luna and Tidehunter rather than Nerubian Assassin, Lina and Lion. Because you adjust to how the metagame is going. Not how the version made the game to be. And in the middle of all these 5v5-battles taking place, a team decides to fight them 4v5 while having their lategamer farm somewhere different. So the other team adjusts and does the same. Only with two heroes. Because that is what the metagame developed into. Not the version. The playstyle. And in the middle of all this, teams go back to all in ganking heroes to eliminate these lategamers.

And in between all of this, someone is pushing your throne in 30 minutes.

Ultimately the version doesn't actually have any influence on the competitive games other than what items are used, and what specific heroes are used rather than another of the same hero-class. The teams, the strategies and the playstyle decides how games turns out. The current stable version already proved that any strategy is viable depending on what lineup your opponents are running.

What Icefrog can, and has done, is make the games more interesting through balancing the game so that more and more heroes are viable to play, and the number vastly increases with each version. He has and still tries to do so that nearly all items can be used competitively and has a purpose so that there isn't an 'ultimate itembuild'. Not even a combination of the most expensive items for your class is necessarily the best itembuild. He can add overall changes that will lead to faster paced games both actual game as well as the strategical factor prior to it. The current version, 6.52e, might involve a lot of lategamers, but in the versions before that it would take heroes 60-90 minutes to farm up their gear. Now it takes them 40 to 60 minutes. Will it be less with this version? Probably not as a limit needs to be set at some point.

This version sees more balancing than any ever before and a wide variety of heroes are viable to see play, more than the version we are currently using, its just a matter of time when we can expect the unexpected; Any hero can see play. Soon it won't be a matter of whether its good enough be used, but instead simply how you use it.

Lastly, one major changed he's worked in, that might have more to say than the vision-change, is how the game now has a lot of focus on teamwork. And amen to that. Through various different changes he's made an ingenious change that might make for the most interesting overall change to date.

New TP Scroll:
===============
Any number of people can teleport at the same location at the same time.
You can choose the relative area around the structure that you want to TP
to.
Only allies see the exact position, your enemies see it on the building
only.
Does not give any bonus armor
If structure dies while you are tping, the tp does not force cancel
2 second shop cooldown
Available in Goblin Shops

A major change with so many little things helping to a great improvement in the gameplay. Less cooldown on it. Something this simple already took off a vast amount of seconds of each game. Not joking.

Does not give bonus armor. No longer can you save your buildings for all eternity simply by standing in fountain. Well, through Glyph yes, but that isn't nearly as long as 15 seconds (if coordinated correctly) and it isn't every 75 seconds.

Any number can teleport at the same location at the same time. **** yes.

You can choose the relative area around the structure that you want to TP to. Ahhh... I no longer have to fear being dead on arrival because I land INFRONT of the tower (hi Scourge) or being instantly disabled.

* Tower gold is split if Sentinel or Scourge gets the last hit
* Changed First Blood to be given to the Assist players when creeps kill the
hero rather than giving it to Sentinel or Scourge and splitting
* When there is only 1 Assist to a Sentinel or Scourge kill, the kill is
instead given to that hero. When there are multiple assists to a Sentinel or
Scourge kill, the gold is split amongst those assisters rather than the
entire team

No longer can something as silly as a Druid or a Necromancer take your hard earned hero/tower kill thus setting back your economy.

* Denied towers give 50% team gold rather than 0%.

So now the enemy team actually does contribute by having the tower in my safe lane denied. Damn, and here they tried avoid pushing it so that I wouldn't have free farm for as long as I can stop the wave from moving. Jokes aside, teams will no longer be as scared of pushing towers unless of course they are certain it will actually go down to their hands.

* Global team tower bounty increases a little per tower level

Getting their tier 2 and base towers might actually prove the time and risk worthy! I say we do it!

* Increased Hero Kill Experience bonus a little bit (+8 unshared experience per hero level in an area)
* Hero Kills now give a flat gold bounty in an area (+40, not to killer)

On second thoughts, I kinda agree with him.

[Cynan Machae]

I've played only one game so far on the new map, but I can say that the change to the terrain are quite disorienting. I'll get used to it I guess

I really liek the changes to KotL; havent seen him in action tho. The changes to enchantress certainly show, and I think it's a change in the good direction. Untouchable as an ultimate was silly.

Haven't seen the Windrunner in action yet, but I like the concept. The game I've played had someone playing the Admiral, and led to a few laugh. I also think the concept seems good.

From the overall feel of the changes, I have to agree to that post by Maelk. At first I felt as those change favored again more ganking (especially due to the wards nerf).

The only change I didnt like I think was that change to Track. I think it will only lead to even more people picking Gondar in pubs in order to "ks" the bounty. I really don't like Gondar because I think he is a sucky hero. Now more people will pick him


Anyway so, people will be present for the DotA session tonight? I will quite probably be there from 6 EST (4 MST).

[mathieumg]

Of course, I will be there for many games :)

[Douglas]

I'm waiting in the channel, but no one's there.

[Inhuman Bot]

I'll join up.

Name: Slaanash

Ralvious and I should be on for a while.

Anyone want to play?

and whats the channel?

[Cynan Machae]

Channel is hunt on USEast.

Feel free to join, yes

And sorry I went to play some SC games when i saw nobody was there

[Cynan Machae]

Ok sorry guys, seems my connection went awry and now I can't stay connect for more than 30 seconds... :\

Well, I guess that's it for today for me.

Good games guys. And god I can't play Syllabear.

[mathieumg]

And god I can't play Syllabear.

What happened, you used to be good with him. :P

[Douglas]

Good games guys. And god I can't play Syllabear.

Oh well, I made up for it with my 20-6 meepo. Multiple triple kills, some of them in the enemy base.

[EndlessWrath]

I just tried the new map a day ago... I must agree that I have negative feelings for it.

I don't like the map terrain.. the forrest is really oddley set up.. and I don't understand why he moved the Taverns... the only explanation I've come up with is that he encourages freezing leaver heroes.

Have no understanding of new heroes... need to try them.

New items are a ok... Wand is a neat idea. Could live without the terrain and the messing up of the lane shops...

overall I did not find the new version worth playing over the last version.

Thoughts?

[Poison_Fish]

Ok sorry guys, seems my connection went awry and now I can't stay connect for more than 30 seconds... :\

Well, I guess that's it for today for me.

Good games guys. And god I can't play Syllabear.

Eh, you were out denying me early on. But as I said, I'd have some latency issues, :-P. Couldn't ramp up my damage to harass you all that much from last hits.

Granted, I don't play nevermore much. I think that was my third time playing him.

Also, no meepo's in 3 v 3's. :-p

[Douglas]

Also, no meepo's in 3 v 3's. :-p

Why does the number of players matter? Played right he's a strong hero in any size game.

[Poison_Fish]

Why does the number of players matter? Played right he's a strong hero in any size game.

You can counter pick him easier without to much hurt on the team. Especially in a game that's 3 solo's/rd, counter picking him is rather rough. Also, he's far more cautious solo ganking when there is more out to kill him.

[Artemician]

You can counter pick him easier without to much hurt on the team. Especially in a game that's 3 solo's/rd, counter picking him is rather rough. Also, he's far more cautious solo ganking when there is more out to kill him.

Not to mention, Meepo's hard counters tend to be Int nukers, who are the ones with the AoE disable skills. By and large, these heroes can't solo lanes (bar a few exceptions, like Lion, Qop, or Tiny/Leshrac solo mid - but anyone can solo mid really), which is a necessity in 3v3 matchups.

[Adumbration]

Just played the new admiral hero yesterday. It was -ap, and I sucked early game, dying five times. We were losing, but towards the end I pulled it together and we won.

Analysis on Admiral:

The first spell, the what's-it's-name, the one that throws the enemy up, deals damage, and slows. It's awesome. The range is extremely long, and just like impale, the enemies can't do anything while airborne. The slow is just the icing on the cake.

Admiral's sword ability. I like it. Early game it's good for harassing, 'cause you can attack enemy heroes just by attacking a nearby creep. The downside is the long cooldown and low damage. Late game it's great, allowing you to kill whole waves of creeps with ease.

I didn't try out the third ability much at all, didn't see the point.

The ultimate is great, once you get to know it. It gives your enemies the illusion that you're not taking any damage, and so easily discourages them to run away. And if you get on a hot spot, it's great for fleeing as well, due to the +30% movespeed.

Overall, I like it.

[Poison_Fish]

The third ability is amazing and for team games is quite possibly one of his best save for the ship.

Marks the spot combo's with his other abilities like lining up an explosion of water. Or lining up a combo with lesherac or any other sort of chasing. It works wonders on: Those who are porting out, those who blink, etc. I've even used it to kill a stealth happy bounty hunter with a lina by my side to nuke the area I X'd when I returned him.

My favorite moment though has to be the skeleton king who ported out to evade us but got Marked. So much rage was had by making him waste his scroll and die.

Don't forget his ship does a a little nuking damage too.

[mathieumg]

The first spell, the what's-it's-name, the one that throws the enemy up, deals damage, and slows. It's awesome.

Torrent :p

[EndlessWrath]

I heard (haven't played either yet) from my buddy that Admiral is quite OP. I'm expecting a nerf on him in the next versions.

Windrunner is apparently a bit harder but quite interesting hero. I don't know much about her, anyone care to explain her to me?

[Artemician]

I heard (haven't played either yet) from my buddy that Admiral is quite OP. I'm expecting a nerf on him in the next versions.

Windrunner is apparently a bit harder but quite interesting hero. I don't know much about her, anyone care to explain her to me?

Windrunner just... fails, to be honest.

She's one of those High Str Low Agi Decent Int kind of Intelligence heroes, like Raijin. She plays... very similarly to Raijin, but more focused offensively than defensively. Like Raijin, she has a good attack animation, good base damage and 600

Skills are:

Powershot => Wild-axe type skill that chops down trees, but reduces damage with each target hit. Not suitable for mob clearing, really, but ridiculous for harassment early. May be used situationally to clear paths through forests and to pull creeps.

Shackle Shot => Situational dual-target stun that only works when two enemy heroes are close together, or one hero is next to a tree. No damage dealt, doesn't work when only one hero is around.

Windrunner => Escape-type skill, gives you bonus movement speed and 100% evasion for some seconds (5 max)

Focus Shot (Ultimate) => Gives you max attack speed for 9 attacks (ala Ursa's Overpower), but reduces the damage dealt by each attack. Due to a bug currently, it also reduces all damage taken by the target until you finish shooting the target 9 times, including spell damage. Prohibitive mana cost (400 O.o) Essentially worthless.

Windrunner has very good lane control early, with a spammable long range harass, good hp, 600 range, good damage and animation, as well as an escape mechanism. However, she's absolutely worthless late game, barring an occasional, situational Shackle shot and maybe a Hex from Guinsoo provided you farm it fast enough. There seriously is absolutely nothing you can do, other than Guinsoo, not even the seemingly obvious choice of a Mjolnir/Mkb/Deso rush for burst damage, because of the stupidly high mana cost of Focus Shot. Not a hero I'd recommend at all.

[Poison_Fish]

The use I found for the speed shooting. You can take towers down pretty quick with it if it's low.

As well as finishing blows with that arrow if you hit an enemy with it.

But overall she's a meh hero.

[Arang]

I'm not sure I like the trend with new heroes. Look at the Admiral's Torrent and the ship: one has AoE damage, stun, a delay and the throwing effect, the other has AoE damage, stun, the speed effect and the damage delay. Meanwhile, take a look at Storm Bolt/Hellfire Orb: Damage, stun. I'm not principally opposed to there being abilities in the game with more than one effect, but why does it have to be all of them?

Eh. Maybe I'm overreacting. Faceless Void is a load of fun to play. It's just so much fun to hear people sputter when you Timewalk out.

[Artemician]

I'm not sure I like the trend with new heroes. Look at the Admiral's Torrent and the ship: one has AoE damage, stun, a delay and the throwing effect, the other has AoE damage, stun, the speed effect and the damage delay. Meanwhile, take a look at Storm Bolt/Hellfire Orb: Damage, stun. I'm not principally opposed to there being abilities in the game with more than one effect, but why does it have to be all of them?

Eh. Maybe I'm overreacting. Faceless Void is a load of fun to play. It's just so much fun to hear people sputter when you Timewalk out.

Because most of the vanilla, hard-coded spells are already implemented in-game, and obviously when making new heroes you must make new spells to go with them. I wouldn't want to play a new hero that's just more of the same, and neither, I suspect, would most other players.

* * * * * * * *

On a completely unrelated note:

The mixed Ukranian and Russian team DTS Gaming was one of the favourites to proceed, but even with Vigoss in the team you can lose if you have a bad game. And that is exactly what DTS did. In their third round encounter against Bulgaria HideHeroNames, they got a sound beating.

Skeleton King, Visage and Pit Lord were too much for Vigoss' team, and especially the SK gave DTS a hard time. Finishing the game with 19-0, 250 creepkills in 50 minutes and 6-0 in towers, Bulgaria naix4o really gave DTS a lesson in how to play Leoric.

Replay

That's some screwed up Leoric build. 1 level of Blast, early Crit? But Naix4o still went...

Gah. There's got to be some explanation for this. There has to be!

[Poison_Fish]

Because most of the vanilla, hard-coded spells are already implemented in-game, and obviously when making new heroes you must make new spells to go with them. I wouldn't want to play a new hero that's just more of the same, and neither, I suspect, would most other players.

That's some screwed up Leoric build. 1 level of Blast, early Crit? But Naix4o still went...

Gah. There's got to be some explanation for this. There has to be!

Agreed as well. In addition to that, compare the admiral to say: Sven or Skeleton King. The other two hard carry much better then the admiral does, so it's not necessarily making them better heroes.

Also, I once made the mistake of getting crit at level 4 on Chaos Knight. But... it ended up with me getting about 5 kills I wouldn't have gotten, so I was quite surprised.

Edit: I imagine if your going to be farming, crit early isn't entirely bad either. Stats can only add a little bit of damage, and the reason you usually go stun/stats on SK is to have more mana to stun.

[shadowxknight]

With the recent nerf to Aegis, SK's ult is now better than ever.
It gives a free Aegis every few minutes.

I played Windrunner yesterday, I'll give everyone a quick rundown of her abilities:

Shackleshot: When it hits an enemy that is alone, it mini stuns them. If that enemy is around other enemies it stuns them both up to 3.5 seconds(level 4). If the enemy is around trees it shackles him on the tree for up to 3.5 seconds. Note that this ability doesn't do damage by itself.

Powershot: Deals a certain amount of damage in a straight line. Goes through multiple enemies but loses 10% potency for each enemy after the first. The range is around 1700 so it's pretty useful for hitting escaping heroes.

Windrun: Allows the user to Phase. Speed boost and run through creeps. I don't think it's worth it for the 100 mana, especially when she STOPS after she casts it.

Focus Fire: The Windrunner hits an enemy 10 times at the highest attack speed(whatever that is, but she pretty much shoots like a machinegun) with reduced damage. I had lifesteal and buriza on my Windrunner, so it was extremely effective

[Poison_Fish]

With the recent nerf to Aegis, SK's ult is now better than ever.
It gives a free Aegis every few minutes.

I played Windrunner yesterday, I'll give everyone a quick rundown of her abilities:

Shackleshot: When it hits an enemy that is alone, it mini stuns them. If that enemy is around other enemies it stuns them both up to 3.5 seconds(level 4). If the enemy is around trees it shackles him on the tree for up to 3.5 seconds. Note that this ability doesn't do damage by itself.

Powershot: Deals a certain amount of damage in a straight line. Goes through multiple enemies but loses 10% potency for each enemy after the first. The range is around 1700 so it's pretty useful for hitting escaping heroes.

Windrun: Allows the user to Phase. Speed boost and run through creeps. I don't think it's worth it for the 100 mana, especially when she STOPS after she casts it.

Focus Fire: The Windrunner hits an enemy 10 times at the highest attack speed(whatever that is, but she pretty much shoots like a machinegun) with reduced damage. I had lifesteal and buriza on my Windrunner, so it was extremely effective

Your forgetting that windrun makes you immune to normal attacks(including the towers). It makes a nice tower diving skill and avoidance/chasing skill.