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Dota 2 Beta Thread 4: Even Mike Ross Plays [Elder Titan]

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I've played Dota for years and only just found out Axe's call goes through magic immunity.

As for BKB/magic immunity in general, a simple way for me to remember what goes through and doesn't is (for Ultimate skills):

1) Damage (most skills) does not go through BKB
2) Stuns/slows/other effects DOES go through BKB

As for non-ultimates, nearly all non-ultimate skills don't work
 
FieryBalrog said:
Well yeah, this aspect of DotA is very much superior. But the way to enjoy league is just as a casual action strategy game, there is still enough depth that it's fun for me, and I like the constant use of skillshots for everything. I like matchups in lane based more on skillshot usage and harass, than constantly doing animation cancels and little jukes and wiggles to fight over last hitting a creep. I strongly prefer playing melee heroes in DotA (always have) because they're allowed to do more damage and have more satisfying last hit animations, because last hitting with Lina is just a giant pain in the ass (still a fun hero and obviously don't need to last hit as much, but do need to deny). Riot somewhat makes up for the large simplifactions in other areas of the game by letting heroes have lots of different actives, and reliant on landing chains of combos. The heroes are definitely more homogeneous by an order of magnitude and the number of different skills they riff off of is pretty shamefully low.
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The constant use of skillshots is actually what drove me away from the game. Specifically how trivial it is when you miss with them, excluding ultimates like Ashe's or Ezreal's. Then again, I do feel like the skills in LoL have low impact.

... I miss Taric, but let's not talk about what happened to him.
 
Internets said:
I've played Dota for years and only just found out Axe's call goes through magic immunity.

As for BKB/magic immunity in general, a simple way for me to remember what goes through and doesn't is:

1) Damage (most skills) does not go through BKB
2) Stuns/slows/other effects DOES go through BKB
Click to expand...


What... you build BKB to block stuns/slows.
 
Internets said:
I've played Dota for years and only just found out Axe's call goes through magic immunity.

As for BKB/magic immunity in general, a simple way for me to remember what goes through and doesn't is (for Ultimate skills):

1) Damage (most skills) does not go through BKB
2) Stuns/slows/other effects DOES go through BKB

As for non-ultimates, nearly all non-ultimate skills don't work
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Yeah like the other dude said, BKB blocks most skills, but there's certain elites and and some skills that go through, doesn't seem to set pattern to it, more seems like gameplay balance.
 
marrec said:
Whaaaa?

I love playing support because Creep Stacking is one of the myriad of things I have to do in order to make sure my team wins. Creep Stacking is boring if that's ALL you're doing, but if that's ALL you're doing then you aren't being a very good support.
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bounchfx said:
I disagree.

It feels good knowing you are the reason your team is kicking ass. Support ++
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This. The actual good players will always respect a well played support.

This guy once flamed our team saying everyone except x player sucked. I told him to fuck off and x player agreed with me and how we dominated together.
 
Volodja said:
No one likes playing support because you don't get kills and have little farm to play with, not because of stacking.
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And also because you're doing the team's chores, that's basically your responsibility by definition

obviously, there are some people in this thread who really like doing the dishes and vacuuming
 
supporting a shitty team is like the worse feeling ever

but supporting a good team, feels good.

Also, counter warding is the best feeling ever as a support. "Haha, fuck you i know you're poor as fuck"
 
Holden said:
supporting a shitty team is like the worse feeling ever

but supporting a good team, feels good.

Also, counter warding the best feeling ever as a support.
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Counter Warding may as well be it's only little meta-game. But ya, supporting a team that doesn't care that you've given them vision well into their jungle/top lane and can see exactly where they all are and don't listen to you when you say we can push now... are dumb. They are dumb!

Or they yell at you for not helping them in lane when you go to stack/pull...
 
Holden said:
supporting a shitty team is like the worse feeling ever

but supporting a good team, feels good.

Also, counter warding the best feeling ever as a support. "Haha, fuck you i know you're poor as fuck"
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So true.

I always have a decent stack of sentries for team fights/ganking invis heroes and counter warding. I find I like sentries more than dust because you get a few seconds of them not realizing that they can be seen, which means death. Dust gives it away instantly.
 
Vi3trice said:
The constant use of skillshots is actually what drove me away from the game. Specifically how trivial it is when you miss with them, excluding ultimates like Ashe's or Ezreal's. Then again, I do feel like the skills in LoL have low impact.

... I miss Taric, but let's not talk about what happened to him.
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Obviously it's not trivial at all in roaming or teamfight phases or lane ganks, really, missing Lux's Q at a clutch time is trivial? or a whole bunch of other skill shots? Even in lane harass, it isn't trivial when you miss them; one of the benefits of having a reasonably skill intensive act repeated over and over is it allows some increase in skill ceiling. In DotA this is all about denying, which has a higher skill ceiling but is just a lot of extra work for a not particularly fun activity, especially heroes with obnoxious animations.
 
Holden said:
supporting a shitty team is like the worse feeling ever

but supporting a good team, feels good.

Also, counter warding is the best feeling ever as a support. "Haha, fuck you i know you're poor as fuck"
Click to expand...

I had a game as a disruptor where I was the one who bought and upgraded the courier in 8 mins, bought observers, sentries for my lane, even with a Leshrac in our team (Leshrac had a BH in his lane and kept asking me to buy sentries and use them on their lane), gave almost all LH to my lane partner, harassed a lot the enemy. 10 mins in and they were asking where was my mek and said I was feeding because I was at 0/2/something at 20mins. Pretty annoying things to hear as a support. We won, though.
 
FieryBalrog said:
Obviously it's not trivial at all in roaming or teamfight phases or lane ganks, really, missing Lux's Q at a clutch time is trivial? or a whole bunch of other skill shots? Even in lane harass, it isn't trivial when you miss them; one of the benefits of having a reasonably skill intensive act repeated over and over is it allows some increase in skill ceiling. In DotA this is all about denying, which has a higher skill ceiling but is just a lot of extra work for a not particularly fun activity, especially heroes with obnoxious animations.
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I meant more in terms of cooldowns. Lux's Light Binding is definitely up there at 11 seconds, but boy does it feel stale with Xerath. The 0.75 delays makes me feel like I'm playing Dota 2 to boot.
 
I think support is fun wen you are playing at a high level. Watching navi's support setup of kotl and shadow demon/ leshac combo is amazing. You pick up alot if you pay attention. The roam support strat the offensive tri lane are all things that require a high level of compentence as a support player.

Even basic things like double stack the creep camp before pulling the safe lane is something i learned by watching them. They get xp and gold or how if you are on the opposite team a good way to push down the hardlane tower is to pull the lane in to the creeps giving your wave of creeps time to push down the tower and giving you alot of gold.

Or how lone druid with his bear can do the same thing with a double lane.
 
FieryBalrog said:
And also because you're doing the team's chores, that's basically your responsibility by definition

obviously, there are some people in this thread who really like doing the dishes and vacuuming
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Supporting duties are not any more of a chore than last hitting creeps is (and I don't think any of the 2 is a chore at all).
To be clear, in my previous post I described what I perceived to be the attitude towards supporting of a lot of people that you can find in my MM skill bracket (which I would imagine is low) and not mine.
I enjoy supporting just fine in normal circumstances and I play a 4 or (more often) 5-ish position quite a bit, especially when in a party.
 
Vi3trice said:
I meant more in terms of cooldowns. Lux's Light Binding is definitely up there at 11 seconds, but boy does it feel stale with Xerath. The 0.75 delays makes me feel like I'm playing Dota 2 to boot.
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xerath barely counts as having skillshots :p

though i do like the tension inherent in his W, he's a pretty boring champ
 
Volodja said:
Supporting duties are not any more of a chore than last hitting creeps is (and I don't think any of the 2 is a chore at all).
To be clear, in my previous post I described what I perceived to be the attitude towards supporting of a lot of people that you can find in my MM skill bracket (which I would imagine is low) and not mine.
I enjoy supporting just fine in normal circumstances and I play a 4 or (more often) 5-ish position quite a bit, especially when in a party.
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I always find that as support you're expected to have the most knowledge of where the other team's at, where the runes are at, and where the team should be pushing/ganking. Maybe that's just how my team plays, but the carries/pushers are usually concentrating on a very specific task where map and enemy awareness are for you.
 
Principate said:
Yeah like the other dude said, BKB blocks most skills, but there's certain elites and and some skills that go through, doesn't seem to set pattern to it, more seems like gameplay balance.
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I can see some of the interactions are for gameplay balance reasons. But some others are definitely carry-overs from the Warcraft III engine and balance.

Ensnare for example goes through magic immunity. This was needed in Warcraft III or else Orcs would have no way of stopping Night Elf Dryads or Undead Destroyers. It's just one of those things that carried over from normal Warcraft III to Dota.

Now that Dota 2 isn't restricted by the Warcraft III engine, I'm hoping Valve/Icefrog would go through the whole game and make skills and interactions more consistent. But, at least for now, they seem to be more concerned with making Dota 2 play exactly like Dota 1, even if it means replicating odd interactions and "bugs". Like the old Lycan's maximum movement speed after resurrection with Aegis bug. It was there in Dota 1 so, they felt the need to put that in Dota 2 too.
 
Principate said:
Yeah like the other dude said, BKB blocks most skills, but there's certain elites and and some skills that go through, doesn't seem to set pattern to it, more seems like gameplay balance.
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And even if you've memorized all those rules and exceptions, there's still the idiosyncrasies of dispels. For example, Slardar's ultimate goes through an active BKB. However, if you cast it and they haven't activated their BKB yet, they can dispel it by activating their BKB. Meanwhile, Bane's Enfeeble is the opposite; BKB blocks you from casting it, but won't dispel it if activated after Enfeeble has landed. Not to mention Diffusal Blade; what can and what can't be purged by Diffusal Blade appears to have no pattern whatsoever.
 
FieryBalrog said:
xerath barely counts as having skillshots :p

though i do like the tension inherent in his W, he's a pretty boring champ
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What defines a skillshot anyway? It reminds me of that PCGamer LoL/D2 debate where Pudge's Hook Shot was the "only" skillshot. The only reason I would rule out Arcanopulse is because of how wide it is compared to the others, but you normally should be able to evade it.
 
Vi3trice said:
What defines a skillshot anyway? It reminds me of that PCGamer LoL/D2 debate where Pudge's Hook Shot was the "only" skillshot. The only reason I would rule out Arcanopulse is because of how wide it is compared to the others, but you normally should be able to evade it.
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Nothing, I think it's just a matter of convention how it's used, usually just means landing the skill isn't trivial (like, say, most spells in DotA 2 which are based on Warcraft 3 model, where it's point and click; or Sion's Q, which uses the same model; or Xerath's R, which is so huge that it's not really a skillshot). Xerath's Q is wide enough that it's pretty easy to lead, the slight delay makes it fair and somewhat like a skillshot, but like I said, barely :p Obviously if you're playing a top level Xerath, there is a little bit of play there in leading your Q's perfectly.

What is a skillshot in DotA 2, personally I think, there obviously aren't that many, but for example Lina's W is a skillshot and always has been. It's ground targeted, but the significant delay in activating it makes it non-trivial to land. Same with Kunkka's Q. Shadowfiend's QWE, large AOE but variable range that you have to eyeball.

And of course, Pudge's hook is a harder to land skillshot than just about anything in League.
 
I keep getting client out of date but I already downloaded an update. Verified my files, downloaded 154 missing files, still doesn't work, and it's not downloading anything. My other friend has this problem too. But another one is in and it works. Anybody else having this shit?
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
Empire, WHY U THROW GAME AT DRAFT?!

:(
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Na'Vi mathematically eliminated from the D2L now, their new lineup looks more probable to go further in the playoffs than the original (which put them on the brink of elimination in the first place). Short of throwing the game, maybe they just decided it wasn't do-or-die (with some side-benefits if Mouz took it).

thespot84 said:
this works except for things like windrunner's shackle...
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Eh, latter half of the skill is definitely aimed manually (the tree angle and flight time).
 
Pinko Marx said:
Shackle is targetted isn't it?
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It is, but it is also vastly harder to "land" (a hero and a tree, a hero and a creep, or two heroes) than pretty much every LoL skill shot in existence, which I think was his point.
 
dave is ok said:
Exactly. There aren't as many 'straight line' skill shots in Dota, but there are plenty of ground targeted ones.
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But there are more line skill shots that you would initially think, it's just that most of them are actually relocates(skewer, ball lightning, hookshot, pounce, burrowstrike, etc.). There are lots of line nukes that require skill to hit multiple targets(shockwave, impale, earthspike, burrowstrike again, meteor, tornado, deafening blast, etc.), but you are right that the majority of dota skillshots are timing related

There are no skills in LoL that I know of that take as much skill to hit as long distance AA ulti, rocketflare, sun strike. Skills like torrent, split earth, light strike array are hard to land because of the enormous cast delays that basically no spell in LoL has.
 
Pinko Marx said:
I just define skillshots as any skill that is aimed manually, as opposed to tracking automatically to the hero that you click on.
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That's like saying KOTL's giant lane clearing wave is a skillshot (there's obviously skill involved in properly making use of it, but that's not what's meant by 'skillshot' I think...). I just like the definition 'any skill that's usually non-trivial to land'.
 
FieryBalrog said:
The design issues you speak of in LoL primarily apply to the Esports side of things, where they are legitimate issues. DOTA has several massive design issues of it's own as a pub game, which I've listed in the past (snowballing in pubs, courier, scaling on heroes, etc.). And solo queue is a shitfest because of it. I remember saying a year ago that DOTA makes for a shittier pub game, and though I love the hero design and prefer some aspects of it to LoL, my experience in solo queue is basically abundant confirmation of that. Literally about 90% of games involve a leaver, a ridiculous amount of feeding, and end in either an Abandon or a complete stomp one way or another. The amount of team communication is non-existent, especially as 2+ teammates are usually foreigners with a questionable grasp of English. The queue times for NA only are high and still involve foreigners because, apparently at least, the matchmaking couldn't find enough NA players.

It's not like DOTA is free of design issues even outside of the pub scene anyway. Lots of stuff is in the game just as a sort of legacy/nostalgia element or because of some random quirk of the WC3 engine. The amount of stupidly arbitrary interactions between spells that you have to memorize is fucking insane. What is arbitrarily allowed to go through BKB, what doesn't; what WC3 spell code allows XYZ status effect to interact with another PQR status effect (direct HP damage interacts with Cyclone's banish, why? because WC3. Banished units can't earn XP/gold splits, why? because WC3. Why does Pudge's Hook path that way? Because, uh, WC3 did it.)

Some of the hardcore DotA fans love it, of course, because they've painstakingly memorized a ton of garbage like this. I did memorize a bunch of it too, at one point.

That's not good or clean game design.

Let me also mention that the sight ranges and camera stuff in this game is also fucking insane and again, because of WC3 did it. The camera is zoomed in so far on your character that it feels pretty shitty, and it's because you're directly copy-pasting from a game that had it's camera built in 2002. Spells are much easier to see coming at you horizontally than vertically on widescreen, because of this. It's also easier to play Radiant because the gigantically bloated UI (hi, WC3) doesn't get in your face when you default the camera on hero when you double select, and it's easier to play Dire because the badly placed minimap doesn't get in your way when you retreat diagonally.

Reading GAF, I have the exact opposite impression.
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Almost all of the things you mention existing because of WC3 exist now not because of legacy or nostalgia, but because of game balance. Certain ultimates go through bkb to give that skill use on a bkb'd target, read: almost every single target ultimate. As others have mentioned, these engine quirks have been used by players to influence the balance of the game, so they must remain implemented in order to retain consistency between the two versions. They might be changed over time, but like any balance change in dota it will be thought about long and hard before being implemented.

The camera is entirely a personal problem. It's no different than starcraft2, and no one complains about that camera, same for the mini map. The UI is also entirely new, and has nothing to do with WC3.

EDIT: Oh wow I didnt realize how behind I was. Just as a temporary addition: Kotl's blast is a skillshot, sorry. Landing that skill effectively in teamfights is pretty hard.
 
Going to go through the list of dota heroes and name skill shots here. Keep in mind I will NOT be listing targeted aoe stuns (sven, alc, etc) even though those could be considered to have skill shot elements in order to make them better.

Kunkka: Torrent, Boat
Beastmaster: axes
Earthshaker: fissure, could argue echo
Tiny: Stun, could argue toss because of all you can do with it
Tauren Chieftan: everything
Wisp: orbs
Clockwerk: Cogs, grapple, could argue rocket but that's pretty easy to make basic use of
Going to pass on phoenix because I haven't played him, but i think there are things here.
Tusk: Ice wall
Shredder: Tree Grapple, Kind of his aoe because of tree req
Pit Lord: Pit
Pudge: Hook
Mag: Could argue everything, but I'll only list shockwave
Sand King: Stun
Jugg: could argue omni to optimize it, but I'll pass
Luna: Same as above
Mirana: Arrow
Troll: Ranged axes
Gyro: Could argue ulti
Drow: Silence
Nyx: Could argue stun, but it is single target targettable
SF: Raze
Veno: Gale
Meepo: Net
Razor: Static Field
Slark: Leap, sort of
Void: Chrono
Puck: Orb
Kotl: As above, blast
Lina: Stun
WR: Shackle
Disruptor: Kinetic Field
Techies: lol
Jakiro: Kind of everything
Shadow Shaman: Wards if you count ward trapping
Rubick: Can steal any spell, so possibly anything
DS: Kind of vac
DP: Silence
Lion: Stun
Enigma: Black Hole
Qop: Kind of ultimate
Shadow Demon: Soul Catcher
Batrider: Flamebreak
Invoker: Invoker
Leschrac: Stun
WD: Maledict
AA: Ultimate
Winter Wyvern: Haven't played but his w seems hard

Welp that's a lot of skill shots.

EDIT: With regard to the garbage PCGamer article, the moment I read the dota guy call heroes champions I laughed and stopped reading.
 
What about things with two modes such as Fissure, Burrowstrike and Impale?
 
iamblades said:
There are no skills in LoL that I know of that take as much skill to hit as long distance AA ulti, rocketflare, sun strike. Skills like torrent, split earth, light strike array are hard to land because of the enormous cast delays that basically no spell in LoL has.
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Took out a fleeing Void in the fog from halfway across the map today with a rocket flare, felt awesome

Too bad their Lancer stomped all of our asses twenty minutes later...
 
I'm having some real doubts about this game. I'm assuming it's because I'm stuck with n00bs or new people (I'm only lvl 3 with a pathetic win / loss ratio), I don't know, but there's ALWAYS a riki, ALWAYS a drow and it's fucking doing my head in. It's like a broken record. Their riki get's to level 6 then takes off, drow up's her agility early and literally devastates and my team (and probably me included) have no way to subdue. This happens pretty much EVERY game now and it's becoming a fucking ball ache. It's frustrating as hell. Just played a game and it went 45 minutes. 4 kills to their 85. 4 KILLS TO THEIR 85.

It wasn't like this when I first started out. It was actually fun. Not so sure anymore. It's starting to feel cheap.

/vent
 
As usual I can't thank DOTAgaf enough for helping me get through my rough noobish days. I am getting there though!!! LOOK AT MY RECORD FEELS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!

Picture removed.
 
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