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Dota 2 |OT4| The saga of Vade and ReRixo: the Boat Anchors continues.

ViviOggi

Member
I wish I could watch everything with a Twitch chat sidebar.

I KNOW RIGHT?

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ReRixo

Banned
Documentary was decent, cool learning more about the players. I didn't realise TI1 finals was Dendi's first time playing Engima lol, and I'm glad Fear finally has a good team.
 

Fevaweva

Member
Sometimes I feel like I should give less of a fuck about team composition when I play by myself. Invariably I always have to choose a support hero otherwise it will be 5 carries.

But if I do that then I am just as bad as everyone else
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I wonder how many name tags will be wasted on this new BM Eagle about beating Russians or communism or some other dumb uncreative thing.
Fun fact, there is currently no way to get more name tags, they were in every vermilion chest post new bloom, but last patch took them out with the chest revamp, and they still aren't in the store.
 

Pratfall

Member
Sometimes I feel like I should give less of a fuck about team composition when I play by myself. Invariably I always have to choose a support hero otherwise it will be 5 carries.

But if I do that then I am just as bad as everyone else

This is why I play unranked RD exclusively. If I am picking first, I pick a support, if I am picking late, I either grab a support if we need one or grab a hero to fill the role we are missing. I play a lot of support but I really don't mind at all. Winning the game is always more fun for me than being a sick pro mid or whatever. I really can't even understand the mentality of people who only play mid, unless they are actually really great at it. I don't see babysitting as a chore, it is hard to do well.
 
I pretty much only do all pick ranked and I haven't had much issue. It's a lot better since they implemented the gold loss mechanic. I'm definitely not learning as much or trying as many heroes as when I mostly played RD, but I don't have terrible games.
 
This is why I play unranked RD exclusively. If I am picking first, I pick a support, if I am picking late, I either grab a support if we need one or grab a hero to fill the role we are missing. I play a lot of support but I really don't mind at all. Winning the game is always more fun for me than being a sick pro mid or whatever. I really can't even understand the mentality of people who only play mid, unless they are actually really great at it. I don't see babysitting as a chore, it is hard to do well.

As someone who used to share your mentality, I can tell you why I play almost exclusively mid these days when I solo Q. Fact of the matter is that at my skill level, most people have problems farming up properly even when given space to and an early level advantage playing a high impact hero gives you both mid-late game strength and the ability to give your carry space to farm. It's super frustrating when you do your job early game as support but because your carry and mid have no game sense, the game drags on to the point where you have little to no impact outside of your relatively weaker spells and eventually their late game carry gets farmed just because the game dragged out.
 
Didn't they play the movie at TI3?

If so it's been done for like year. It just wasn't out?
Yes, we saw it at TI. I haven't watched this version. I assume it has some additional edits that were not in the screening we saw. I'll watch it today and report back.
 

Pratfall

Member
As someone who used to share your mentality, I can tell you why I play almost exclusively mid these days when I solo Q. Fact of the matter is that at my skill level, most people have problems farming up properly even when given space to and an early level advantage playing a high impact hero gives you both mid-late game strength and the ability to give your carry space to farm. It's super frustrating when you do your job early game as support but because your carry and mid have no game sense, the game drags on to the point where you have little to no impact outside of your relatively weaker spells and eventually their late game carry gets farmed just because the game dragged out.

Yeah, I can totally see this. It is probably a lack of confidence in my abilities as a mid that keeps me away from it and I hate to lose and feel like it is my fault entirely (which has happened to me when playing mid).
 

Calidor

Member
Sometimes I feel like I should give less of a fuck about team composition when I play by myself. Invariably I always have to choose a support hero otherwise it will be 5 carries.

But if I do that then I am just as bad as everyone else

I think people puts too much emphasis on the perfect draft composition (2 supports, 1 carry, 1 offlane, 1 mid) on pubs.

I have lost many games with that setup against early-mid game heroes, and also won many games with 5 carries (lol)

but maybe it's because I'm a sub 5k
(4k)
scrub and that works at my level!
 
Yeah, I can totally see this. It is probably a lack of confidence in my abilities as a mid that keeps me away from it and I hate to lose and feel like it is my fault entirely (which has happened to me when playing mid).

I look at it as a learning experience. Playing mid is an exercise in laning and ultimately, it makes you a better laner at the other positions. Sure you'll lose mid every once in awhile but honestly, if you're matched properly in your skill bracket, most of the time just sticking close to the opponent's CS and not dying usually puts you in a good position midgame. Obviously you want to successfully gank lanes and what not but outright stomping your opposing mid during laning phase isn't a prerequisite to snowballing later on.
 

Procarbine

Forever Platinum
Hylian man I hate to dogpile on you but you have to pull your head out of your ass. We were watching your stream last night when you played pudge mid against a TA, and the end of the game just before. You had absolutely NO IDEA how to play that match up or how strong that hero is against you. You hooked her at level 5 when she had a dd and were surprised she killed you, you hooked her earlier in the game and she should've killed you. To make the whole thing better you complained the entire game how top lane lost when you got completely dominated mid yourself. Yeah, that matchup is really bad but you run the risk of strong counterpicks when you select Pudge before anyone on the enemy team picks a hero in AP ranked. You should've known that your goal in that lane is not to die, steal last hits when you can, but most importantly get your level 6 at around the same time TA does because after that you can't really go back, as you found out. Except you were level 5 when she was level 8. You let your dumb pubs convince you to roam early, you got nothing done and were completely out of the game.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Kind of on topic of this (and the other post). I still feel like I always have trouble with camera control, especially when things get frantic.

Honestly, I think that is the root of all my problems.

It's why I don't look at other lanes much because I'm afraid I'll lose control of the camera and whiff last hits, or even worse, die.

So I guess my question is how the hell do you get to where controlling the camera doesn't feel cumbersome?
I played StarCraft a bit, so I couldn't even imagine edge panning in Dota so I started with WASD for camera, CAPS for ATTACK, SPACE for stop. Tab,Q,E,R for skills. Ctrl+Tab for Steam overlay so I can shift queue. The only problem is using Tab to cycle units so unit micro is harder for stuff like visage birds, but 2,tab,3tab isn't so bad.
Camera control and having my mouse where it always should be feels too important.
 

manfestival

Member
I dont really follow any competitive gaming scenes until recently (well I was in the scene for cod1 and 2 but those games were essentially insignificant at their respective times due to the scene being so small). So what exactly happened to the might of the chinese gaming scene? I started following the dota 2 scene not too long ago just looking for ideas to become better(everyone hates to suck). However, the current top of the scene is just alliance , Na'vi, and etc (I can name a bunch of teams and only a couple are asian).
 
My take is that the game became so much more about strategy and innovation than straight skill (I believe this is reflected in recent patches where mid got "wrecked" with the changes to denies). The Chinese seemed to do so well just because they just practiced so well and were so solid in the actual mechanics. With the frequency of patches and the meta shifting so quickly (relative) they don't have the time to sit and perfect one thing anymore. Coming up with something new was never their strength, dominating the existing was.

If you want to be cynical you can say the country got taken over by LoL.
 

n0b

Member
what items should i check for when im deciding whether to gank a lane or not?

tps (will there be backup and can they leave)
regen (if they are low on health and mana can they heal it back up and be full strength before you get there or heal during the gank)
hp items (do the people on your team even have the damage output to get the kill, this is especially important on pudge since to pudge health is damage in solo kills; generally you shouldn't try to solo gank people with more health than you)
wards (do they have a single ward, or did they have a ward in inventory a minute ago? they probably have your ganking path warded)

I think people puts too much emphasis on the perfect draft composition (2 supports, 1 carry, 1 offlane, 1 mid) on pubs.

Agree and disagree, people do focus too much on picking heroes for the perfect draft. On the other hand, people don't focus enough on adapting their picks to proper composition; I've won many games because I've played a "carry" as a support or an offlane, or because an extra carry played support for me. Instalock or insta-random your hero if you want, just be prepared to adapt your pick to whichever role is needed to improve the state of the game.
 
I dont really follow any competitive gaming scenes until recently (well I was in the scene for cod1 and 2 but those games were essentially insignificant at their respective times due to the scene being so small). So what exactly happened to the might of the chinese gaming scene? I started following the dota 2 scene not too long ago just looking for ideas to become better(everyone hates to suck). However, the current top of the scene is just alliance , Na'vi, and etc (I can name a bunch of teams and only a couple are asian).

There was a mandate from the Chinese pro leagues that these top tier Chinese teams could only play in tourneys where the prize pool was like 60K and above. So basically they played in significantly less tournaments and just in general a lot more complacent (a few pro players got called out for streaming solo way too much- I think it was someone IG). Anyways, even given that, look at the top 8 finishers for TI3, 4/8 were Asian, 3/8 were Chinese. I mean it was a down year but it's weird to conclude that China is no longer a powerhouse for DOTA2. Outside of Na'Vi and Alliance, I didn't see the European teams all of a sudden trashing Asian teams left and right.
 

Randdalf

Member
Drafting is one of my favourite things to do in Dota 2, but I sometimes do really bad drafts trying to incorporate suggestions from my friends and team mates. It's surprisingly easy to get flustered and focus too much on counter-picks/bans or pick overly greedy lineups.
 

sixghost

Member
I played StarCraft a bit, so I couldn't even imagine edge panning in Dota so I started with WASD for camera, CAPS for ATTACK, SPACE for stop. Tab,Q,E,R for skills. Ctrl+Tab for Steam overlay so I can shift queue. The only problem is using Tab to cycle units so unit micro is harder for stuff like visage birds, but 2,tab,3tab isn't so bad.
Camera control and having my mouse where it always should be feels too important.
This sentence doesn't make any sense.
 

Artanisix

Member
D1TVqM8.png

CREDITS: EranFolio for the title art; DireDude for character art.

IMPORTANT LINKS
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With over 100 heroes in the game, you have quite the selection of heroes to fall in love with. Here are some tips:
  • Go to the gym to get swole and boost your strength stats.
  • Go to the library to get smarts and boost your intellect stats.
  • Go to the nightclub to dance and boost your agility stats.
  • Try to interact with your chosen lover at least once a day.
  • Each hero prefers a different stat. Do some research before buying items for them.
  • The good ending is only achieved when you earn 100 in your chosen stat.
  • Venge is hotter than Luna.


VMFYJs6.png

lXCPPSh.png
kYR2eNp.png

pI06bJb.png
oAJoxoM.png

on8sOev.png
mTuHB74.png
 

Jex

Member
I've just had a couple of...interesting games.

I largely play unranked in a 4 or 5 stack when possible. We tend to play All Pick or Captain's Draft because we like the level of competition there. In the majority of cases the level of organisation and play I see there is pretty good (from opponents) e.g. solid drafting, solid warding/dewarding, smoke ganks, good positioning, well organised pushes/ganks, good overall strategy etc.

Due to, well, life, I can't always play with my friends so I thought I'd try and dip my toe into ranked matchmaking solo to try and 'discover' my MMR and to allow me to play more roles (usually hard support). Dear god the level of play in there was appalling, honestly some of the worst DOTA play I've seen in months. No communication, no supports, bad picks, no co-ordination, really sloppy/no reactions, awful reaction times etc. It was just an absolute mess. It really felt like I was playing on booster account or something because the level of play across the board had just deteriorated.
 
Hylian man I hate to dogpile on you but you have to pull your head out of your ass. We were watching your stream last night when you played pudge mid against a TA, and the end of the game just before. You had absolutely NO IDEA how to play that match up or how strong that hero is against you. You hooked her at level 5 when she had a dd and were surprised she killed you, you hooked her earlier in the game and she should've killed you. To make the whole thing better you complained the entire game how top lane lost when you got completely dominated mid yourself. Yeah, that matchup is really bad but you run the risk of strong counterpicks when you select Pudge before anyone on the enemy team picks a hero in AP ranked. You should've known that your goal in that lane is not to die, steal last hits when you can, but most importantly get your level 6 at around the same time TA does because after that you can't really go back, as you found out. Except you were level 5 when she was level 8. You let your dumb pubs convince you to roam early, you got nothing done and were completely out of the game.
Once I remember how to play dotes, I'm gonna stream so that I can get some of this criticism. I'm rather jealous.
 

mfaex

Member
I dont really follow any competitive gaming scenes until recently (well I was in the scene for cod1 and 2 but those games were essentially insignificant at their respective times due to the scene being so small). So what exactly happened to the might of the chinese gaming scene? I started following the dota 2 scene not too long ago just looking for ideas to become better(everyone hates to suck). However, the current top of the scene is just alliance , Na'vi, and etc (I can name a bunch of teams and only a couple are asian).

China had the superior commitment to the game in the past (dota 1, early dota 2). They played more, trained more, trained more efficiently, and made more money by playing than their peers. Basically their pro scene developed much faster. There's more to it than this, but by and large the EU/CIS scenes have caught up to this level of commitment, and they already had the significant pool of skilled players. I think most pro players would argue that China is still the strongest scene, it's just not anywhere near the Korea-SC level of dominance that Chinese dota once approached.
 

rac

Banned
I do focus on improvement, you just have no idea how incredibly frustrating it is when you get boneheaded teams that make it impossible to win, even if you were Dendi.

I think n0b has some idea of how frustrating that is, I mean he plays with me a lot.

edit: Also how come I never see you in IHs Hylian?
 

Radec

Member
Hylian man I hate to dogpile on you but you have to pull your head out of your ass. We were watching your stream last night when you played pudge mid against a TA, and the end of the game just before. You had absolutely NO IDEA how to play that match up or how strong that hero is against you. You hooked her at level 5 when she had a dd and were surprised she killed you, you hooked her earlier in the game and she should've killed you. To make the whole thing better you complained the entire game how top lane lost when you got completely dominated mid yourself. Yeah, that matchup is really bad but you run the risk of strong counterpicks when you select Pudge before anyone on the enemy team picks a hero in AP ranked. You should've known that your goal in that lane is not to die, steal last hits when you can, but most importantly get your level 6 at around the same time TA does because after that you can't really go back, as you found out. Except you were level 5 when she was level 8. You let your dumb pubs convince you to roam early, you got nothing done and were completely out of the game.

Yikes.
 

Hylian7

Member
I think n0b has some idea of how frustrating that is, I mean he plays with me a lot.

edit: Also how come I never see you in IHs Hylian?

A. You guys always start them when I'm in a 5-stack.
B. I'm not around for whatever reason (something IRL usually)
C. I do sometimes.
 

rac

Banned
A. You guys always start them when I'm in a 5-stack.
B. I'm not around for whatever reason (something IRL usually)
C. I do sometimes.

I don't play in them much anymore,
not at all
. So that's probably why I've never seen you in one.
 

Demoli

Member
Dreamleague is great when Lumi and Draskyll are commentating, and when James, Bruno, Draskyll and Lumi are post comentating. When anything gets inbetween this line up it usually doesnt fare well.
 

Atlantis

Member
Sometimes I feel like I should give less of a fuck about team composition when I play by myself. Invariably I always have to choose a support hero otherwise it will be 5 carries.

But if I do that then I am just as bad as everyone else

I almost always play support, but last night I wanted to mix it up so I decided to play QoP since I finally leveled her Premier League set and wanted to use it. Of course, I ended up with five carries and had to play 'support' anyway.

Once my inventory filled up I even bought wards and asked for someone else to place them, still no luck.

The struggle is real.
We won.

Venge's third head style is the best

I've taken a liking to the second style, personally.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I almost always play support, but last night I wanted to mix it up so I decided to play QoP since I finally leveled her Premier League set and wanted to use it. Of course, I ended up with five carries and had to play 'support' anyway.

Once my inventory filled up I even bought wards and asked for someone else to place them, still no luck.

The struggle is real.
We won.

I have gotten advice on what to do in times like those. You need to swap out your weakest item for a short time for the wards, then put them back in base. Its a pain in the ass though, but its true you really don't need to lug observers around 24/7.
 

Atlantis

Member
I have gotten advice on what to do in times like those. You need to swap out your weakest item for a short time for the wards, then put them back in base. Its a pain in the ass though, but its true you really don't need to lug observers around 24/7.

Oh sure, at first I'd swap out my Magic Wand or my Bottle and quickly place some Observer Wards. Eventually though it came down to things like Veil and Aghs (I also had a Gem taking up space) and my teammates still had some open slots, so...

Inventory space is something that you quickly learn to deal with in low level pubs, since a lot of the time you'll end up carrying all the support consumables.
 

n0b

Member
I think n0b has some idea of how frustrating that is, I mean he plays with me a lot.

Or you know, trying to teach a friend that played for the first time after I was more than a thousand games in.

I know its hard to not get mad at teammates, but I've been trying to get better about that, these days I try to make sure to compliment and point out good plays as well as point out the bad as politely as possible. (its so hard)

I still have a million problems with my own play that I really need to fix before I have a right to complain beyond the exact moment something is going horribly wrong.
 

Calidor

Member
I try to follow the Chinese scene closely, and to my understanding seems that there are mainly two big problems with it:

1) Many high skilled and talented pubstars (think SingSing good) lack proper sponsorship to be fully committed. With less tournaments going on, they have to face terribly hard qualifiers against much organized teams.

2) Chinese pro scene is really close knitted, dominated by well known players and veterans. Semi pro teams like "Team Dog" "sadboys" or "eHug" are not common, although this seems to be changing with CIS and DT

Finally I spent several weeks in various cities in China last month, and pretty much everyone still plays Dota 1
 
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