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[Dota 2] TI3. Look who's comin for dinner!
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There are plenty of known timing windows and break point items, but it's not like Starcraft where a timing push is supposed to end the game. Even if you could get this crazy-amazing level 11 aghs ult there are 2 things that would happen: either the other teams sees the aghs and just fucks off and doesn't team fight, or they don't see it, get wiped, and respawn in 20 seconds, so maybe you get a single tier 1 tower, at which point they know you have the aghs and simply fuck off and not give up another team fight, leaving your carry with a 4200 gold item that gives them no damage probably doesn't scale well.
There actually are timing pushes like those in Starcraft, ones that are designed to just win the game, but they're rarer because it's often possible for the other team to see them coming and either ban a crucial hero (say it's an aura strat and they ban BM, which fucks the whole thing), or counterpick it. And a failed timing push in dota usually leaves the pushing team in a desperate position, underlevelled (habing 4 or 5 heroes taking the same xp), underfarmed (only getting the cs from 1 lane), and down by towers if they other team had good split pushing heroes. That kind of strat is often considered a cheese strat, used by a team that doesn't think they can win a normal game against their opponents, making them more like cheese plays in Starcraft.
There are important item timings and scouting information in dota, though. A team with an important initiator will wait till they get their blink before they fight, then hide that blink until they're ready for the fight, and then only fight when it will allow them to take an objective, unless they're forced to use it by the other team being aggressive. Often a team will back off from fights and send their support to get some farm so they can get their 6 or 11 or force staff, and when a team has a hero that can rush mek they'll start grouping and pushing as soon as that's available, because having a mek advantage is usually more important than a carry or initiator having level 11 or whatever. And when a team falls behind they will often protect an important hero so they can get a big item that will let them take fights, like a sheepstick or big dps item on the carry.
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It's entirely possible I'm not seeing them. I watch a decent amount of pro-DOTA, but definitely not enough to be sure.
It may also have to do with the drastic changes to the game that are still being implemented. Most of my posts have been focusing on Aghs and that items is constantly being overhauled. Hell, a few months ago several heroes who now have Aghs buffs didn't at all.
I may be operating under the assumption that the game is going to stabilize and allow the meta some time to evolve beyond basic mek, blink, or bkb timings. It may not be happening as soon as I think, though.
Twitters
Dota in my opinion tends to be a grinding out affair with short bursts of high tension. That's changing though, as many pro teams now are so fluid in moving people around the map that some games practically play out as FPS team shooters would. Minus the chinese of course, they're still solidly stuck in the 4p1, win a fight and go farm some more mode.
There's just so much chaos in a game of DotA that truly makes each game unique. A blink can come earlier for your mid if he gets a great rune. A jungler can get something slower if his camps get blocked or he gets unfavorable spawns.
I don't think the game will ever "stabilize" to the point where games evolve beyond those timings. Even swapping out two heroes will change the way that people itemize across the game. The thing with timings is that you have to hit them and you need to predict if you can hit them. Circumstances in a DotA are constantly shifting so that timing target is always moving.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Purge is supposed to be here today though, so I'm gonna track him down for an autograph.
Maybe Valve didn't want to try to have a serious presence at PAX right after finishing TI3? I dunno.
I know the PA folks are big LoL fans but...who knows.
But it is odd since Valve was actually in the same convention center for TI3.
Icefrog himself knows that there's no place in which dota stops. It's about evolution. You can't really have a game that never changes and expect it to keep going, and that's especially true in the free-to-play market.
Brood War never quite reached a perfectly stable state because organizers were smart enough to realize that even if they couldn't update the game's balance or tweak numbers, they could keep changing the maps. Different maps meant different strategies, which meant different counter-strategies, and so on. Whenever it looked like a map had been solved, they just dropped it and added a new one. That's what kept Brood War alive, while a peer like Quake 3 slowly died because they're still playing most of the exact same maps they were playing 2 years after release. As comforting as it may be to see a ztn or pro-dm6 now and again, everyone saw that shit being played out 7 years ago. If someone had the foresight to take things over and do what kespa did then I actually think Quake Live would still be a bigger draw. There was cpma, which at least brought in new maps, but it was never going to be the same, or as big.
The dota map doesn't change that much, so the heroes change instead. That's what keeps people coming back to the competitive game. You can be sure that the hero pools will be shaken up regularly enough to keep things interesting, and Icefrog is usually patient enough to let people work things out themselves.
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This should be in the OP, great stuff page.
By the end I would just eat 2 or 3 enemy players in a team fight super super fast which was really cool. I tend to not play carriers because my lh are bad and I like playing more support oriented heroes. Like I was going nuts without wards on the map and was thinking of spending my precious carry gold on them mid way though the game.
Oh well, it can be played at the Plantronics booth if you're at PAX and want to play. Purge said he's played there a couple of times, and will again, so you might get lucky and be able to group up with Purge and/or CyborgMatt.
Too much bandwidth? Bullshit. Watching the games from within the client uses a fraction of what a stream feed does at 480P on twitch.
Yeah and that's with 4 simultaneous audio lines.
I guess it depends, enforcers are volunteers after all, they probably have no idea why. I wouldn't at all be surprised if Riot had a hand in it though. Or maybe whoever set up the free to play is a big LoL homer.
What is surprising is Valve's complete lack of hustle on showing it there. Though I suppose they dumped all their chips into TI3, and couldn't be arsed to man a booth and give out swag. Disappointing regardless, seems like a wasted opportunity.
TI3 was at Benaroya Hall, a few blocks from the convention center. PAX used it as the main theater a few years ago but it's not part of the center.
So yeah, that's a thing. I am a bit frown town that PA/PAX saw this as okay. Doesn't this sort of go against the spirit of the entire convention? Or has it just reached a point where commercialization's unstoppable force has taken over? It's one thing to allow Riot to have a huge presence there, it's another to allow them to buy out the "free" play PC area and not allow a competitors game on the machines.
That really sucks. PAX is suppose to be for all nerds, gamers and such but that is kind of telling the DoTA folks that your aren't welcome here.
I understand though it is a lot of money now and my guess Riot through a ton for it to be on the computers there. Still it is sad because the "free" to play stuff should be allowed to have any game on it.
Does anyone really care what games are available at a non-byoc area in a convention that's already anti-competitive gaming?
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And yes I care. Excluding an entire group of gamers from playing their game of choice for some dollars from Riot goes completely against the spirit of PAX.
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