BH is the much more obnoxious stealth hero. Hurr durr I have phase boots, level 9, 10 cs and I can murder supports and holla holla get dolla with track.
riki at least needs treads/diffusal to start murdering people
Shameful pursuits and utterly stupid opinions
+3
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited December 2012
You could just do what I do. Play Nightstalker and get an early gem, and the first night phase, just chase Riki around fist fucking him. Then it doesn't matter if your team is competent at stopping Stealth, every night phase Riki is just held down while you forcefully surprise sex him.
Oh yeah that's great but again it just kinda proves my point that binary stealth is pretty dull. Either it's stealthed or it isn't and either it's a really strong advantage or your effectively rendered shitty.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah that's great but again it just kinda proves my point that binary stealth is pretty dull. Either it's stealthed or it isn't and either it's a really strong advantage or your effectively rendered shitty.
It forced a counter pick out of me didn't it though? I mean, just speaking in the case where I grab Nightsalker specifically to chase around Riki.
That's kind of where the interesting part of it is, it forces a meta change.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
BH is fun to play, I have to admit. I love taking him suicide lane solo and laughing my way to level 6 and then making Scrooge McDuck stacks off of Track.
Well that's good to hear about Oracles. It used to persist death and only cost like 250g, it was stupid.
I disagree on stealth. While it's certainly annoying at times, it adds a layer of complexity I appreciate in my gaming. The tools are there to stop any stealther, it's just another level of play people have to learn. In many cases, a stealther against a competent team is a hindrance (barring Bounty Hunter). Since many of the stealth characters in the game are balanced against that stealth, once you know how to counter it, it hurts them a lot (Riki is one of these).
Plus, without stealth, we wouldn't have Smoke of Deceit, and Smoke is one of the best items in Dota. It can be a game turner if you're behind, or it can help you seal a complete victory if you're ahead. I love Smoke.
Oracles never persisted upon death, excepting that if you didn't chug the potion to get the stealth vision and you died, it stayed in your inventory.
I remember this pretty well because of a very stupid game I had before they even released champs past 40 where an Ashe was complaining because she couldn't see Twitch with Oracle's potion... in her inventory.
I also like how different players always have completely different (relatively) minor reasons why DotA is better than League. One person, I remember, was very adamant that it was Catalyst (large heal and mana regen, at the time instant and now over time, when you level up) and the fact you got all the mana and health from levelling up any time even when you were at 1% HP and Mana, that was making League's laning phase far less aggressive.
As for killing League: it won't. People may transfer over, and people may play both, but at this point it's basically open beta anyway, and even when it becomes fully open it'd also have to be advertised a lot in order to even get the playerbase noticing that DotA 2 exists if they didn't already know and ignore it. It'll take a chunk out of the pie, but it won't be the big winner.
Also, as one positive for League nobody ever seems to mention, it has active cooldown reduction, which is really pretty awesome and was new enough that I believe WoW copied them on that idea.
And honestly while forcing a counter pick is fun, you don't need stealth to do that. I think Evelynn's re-work where stealth lets you slip past wards and into a short range of champions vision is a more interesting take because it encourages better positioning and general game sense as counters.
Yeah, Oracles is pretty trash atm but vision is still cheap as fuck so... yeah, ganking is hard unless the opposition is retarded.
I think my issue with stealth is that I can shut it down, I know how to shut it down and if I do it's binary, the stealth doesn't work therefore the guy is fucked. But because:
1) I can't trust my team to do it
2) It's binary
I find it dull and fustrating. I feel an ARTS where there could be varying levels of detection that gave say a dodge chance or damage reduction to the partially revealed would be better. As it stands it's either 'lol we have a sight stone get the fuck out' or 'fucking Riki too fed'.
1-> You can't trust your pub team to ward, courier, smoke or get detection or support items -> Get a real team to yell at to buy shit that won't mute you
2-> Stuns,roots are binary as well, there's no half stunned or anything.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Well that's good to hear about Oracles. It used to persist death and only cost like 250g, it was stupid.
I disagree on stealth. While it's certainly annoying at times, it adds a layer of complexity I appreciate in my gaming. The tools are there to stop any stealther, it's just another level of play people have to learn. In many cases, a stealther against a competent team is a hindrance (barring Bounty Hunter). Since many of the stealth characters in the game are balanced against that stealth, once you know how to counter it, it hurts them a lot (Riki is one of these).
Plus, without stealth, we wouldn't have Smoke of Deceit, and Smoke is one of the best items in Dota. It can be a game turner if you're behind, or it can help you seal a complete victory if you're ahead. I love Smoke.
Oracles never persisted upon death, excepting that if you didn't chug the potion to get the stealth vision and you died, it stayed in your inventory.
I remember this pretty well because of a very stupid game I had before they even released champs past 40 where an Ashe was complaining because she couldn't see Twitch with Oracle's potion... in her inventory.
I also like how different players always have completely different (relatively) minor reasons why DotA is better than League. One person, I remember, was very adamant that it was Catalyst (large heal and mana regen, at the time instant and now over time, when you level up) and the fact you got all the mana and health from levelling up any time even when you were at 1% HP and Mana, that was making League's laning phase far less aggressive.
As for killing League: it won't. People may transfer over, and people may play both, but at this point it's basically open beta anyway, and even when it becomes fully open it'd also have to be advertised a lot in order to even get the playerbase noticing that DotA 2 exists if they didn't already know and ignore it. It'll take a chunk out of the pie, but it won't be the big winner.
Also, as one positive for League nobody ever seems to mention, it has active cooldown reduction, which is really pretty awesome and was new enough that I believe WoW copied them on that idea.
I have a lot of reasons I think Dota is a better game, but this my stance on LoL:
Is it easier? Yes, but it's not easy, it's still a complex game.
Is Dota better? In my personal opinion yes, but obviously I thought LoL was pretty fun at one point, or I wouldn't played it as much as I did.
Also, I don't think anyone (least of all me) thinks Dota 2 will kill LoL, but I do think there is going to be some transfer over, and I think there are some really appealing things for LoL players in Dota 2.
(And I hate CDR, I think it's one of the worst, most difficult, to balance mechanics...if Dota had CDR, things like Blackhole would have to be completely nerfed...as it is Refresher Orb which is a CD reset can make heroes like Tide and Enigma go over the top).
Active cooldown reduction and cooldown reduction are not the same thing. CDR has existed forever. Active cooldown reduction, e.g. "do this and the cooldown timer decreases by 2 seconds" is the interesting mechanic.
League is balanced around CDR; I wouldn't try to transfer it to DotA for no reason, but League *is* balanced around it. And refresher orb is a far more difficult to balance mechanic than cooldown reduction with a cap, because you don't ever have to think "what if Magnataur gets to stun the entire enemy team for 8 seconds" with cooldown reduction.
Also, honestly, Black Hole could probably get a cooldown reduction and still be fine since Magnataur is doing Enigma better than Enigma can (yeah, yeah, I know they're different heroes, but since the primary advantage Enigma had was that he could easily farm up the jungle and get fairly reliable levels and cash, and now Magnus has a good enough lane presence to do that himself...)
Yeah, Oracles is pretty trash atm but vision is still cheap as fuck so... yeah, ganking is hard unless the opposition is retarded.
I think my issue with stealth is that I can shut it down, I know how to shut it down and if I do it's binary, the stealth doesn't work therefore the guy is fucked. But because:
1) I can't trust my team to do it
2) It's binary
I find it dull and fustrating. I feel an ARTS where there could be varying levels of detection that gave say a dodge chance or damage reduction to the partially revealed would be better. As it stands it's either 'lol we have a sight stone get the fuck out' or 'fucking Riki too fed'.
1-> You can't trust your pub team to ward, courier, smoke or get detection or support items -> Get a real team to yell at to buy shit that won't mute you
2-> Stuns,roots are binary as well, there's no half stunned or anything.
BKB isn't always providing magic immunity in an AOE. Stuns can be of varying strengths (especially as root is essentially a less stunned stun) there's variance in the system past 'is stealthed' and 'is not stealthed'.
Saying that you need a real team doesn't invalidate it's fuck this shit aspect of it, it's like pudge, sure you know how to dodge hooks but your team might not and then you're boned.
Also with regards to CDR: It works with League where abilities are spammy and there is other forms of scaling on abilities than just cooldown, in DOTA it would be broken. For example a full CDR Lux has to give up some damage to get there (at least early game) so it's a nice trade off.
The most appealing thing for me in DOTA2 is how you can carry yourself with a derp team so much easier because of how scary carries get. They actually carry unlike League where the AD carry is basically just a glass cannon that needs protecting to do your murder work.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited December 2012
Refresher orb is predictable though, very predictable. I can see when an enemy has it, and now I can automatically predict when he'll have a double ravage or a double black hole. I also know the static cooldown on Refresher, so if I see someone do a double ultimate, I can tell my team "okay, we have 160 seconds before he can do that again".
It also takes a lot of money to buy, it's not a mechanic anyone starts the game with. It's a very predictable force, and thus very easy to balance against.
CDR is also fairly expensive and awkward to itemize for most champions. But I have two major problems with it. Unlike every other stat in this game, every point of CDR is more valuable than the last, so you're encouraged to either go all in with it or not bother; and blue buff gives so much CDR that mages don't need to bother with itemizing for it at all, and even if they did it would be difficult to do so without "wasting" some CDR while you have blue buff.
I've never actually built re-fresher, probably because my Tide never gets that farmed as I tend to play him as the lowest priority support. This is because according to pubs there are 3 levels of farm:
1: Themselves
2: those other fucks who locked in 3 other carries
3: that poor fuck who decided to lock in a support and try and play a team game, fag.
I'm convinced this is their mental process. Considering I've seen two players who were clearly a duo decide that DK/Juggernaut is an AWESOME lane idea and get confused when they lose to a solo windrunner.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Yeah, Tide is not really a low priority support. He at the very least needs blink dagger, which is not cheap. Things like Heart and Refresher don't hurt either.
This is why my main support is CM, it's hard to really go wrong with her because if at the end of the game you have boots and two bracers, you will have warded for the greater good the whole entire map.
Refresher orb is predictable though, very predictable. I can see when an enemy has it, and now I can automatically predict when he'll have a double ravage or a double black hole. I also know the static cooldown on Refresher, so if I see someone do a double ultimate, I can tell my team "okay, we have 160 seconds before he can do that again".
It also takes a lot of money to buy, it's not a mechanic anyone starts the game with. It's a very predictable force, and thus very easy to balance against.
CDR is just as predictable as refresher orb, though? I mean, if I see a Lux with 40% CDR and she's past level 16, I know that she's got a laser up every 24 seconds. And CDR also isn't something everybody starts with for free; in fact, itemizing to 40% CDR assuming you aren't going with Bluebuff gives you some pretty marginal stats besides the CDR unless you're a bruiser type champion; for mages most of the CDR itemization is (or was, since Liandry's Torment is absurdly strong) basically terrible.
I mean, every argument you've got for why refresher orb is "easy to balance against" basically applies to CDR as well, so I'm not really sure what the point is. We should probably step back and also realize this entire conversation sprung up because of a misinterpretation between CDR and active CDR (e.g. Zilean's rewind).
Athene's unholy grail and deathfire grasp each have 15% CDR on them, and neither of them is a bad item so getting CDR is not actually hard at all in league for mages, plus they get blue buff to cap it off.
Did someone do level 1 Roshan in a tournament? I've had it happen three games today. First game, none of us were paying attention to there being Skeleton King and Ursa on the same team until it says Ursa was killed by Roshan. Then shortly thereafter, Roshan is dead and Luna has immortality and levels. The rest of the match went poorly.
Next game, I notice the same two players on the load screen. Sure enough, they pick Skeleton King and Ursa. This time we shut them down every time they tried going for Roshan. Which they did multiple times. Was an easy win.
Later, I'm teamed with a Lich and Ursa, doing Roshan at level 1. They got kinda mad at me for being in XP range. Whole game was a one sided stomp in our favor. Timbersaw and I, as Nyx, never even died.
Athene's+DFG rushed on an AP carry rather than Deathcap and some other high end AP item is a pretty huge tradeoff, though, is the point. Athene's and deathcap together is an awkward itemization that leads to you probably not needing the mana from Athene's very much and having a piddling DFG blast.
Oh yeah that's great but again it just kinda proves my point that binary stealth is pretty dull. Either it's stealthed or it isn't and either it's a really strong advantage or your effectively rendered shitty.
sentry wards/dust make for interesting plays w.r.t stealth. you can blind dust to catch an out of position stealther scouting your team, or you can do things like diffusal purge dust off yourself with riki. counterplaying sentries as brood is also fun.
once gem shows up (or necro 3) it becomes boring though. But most of the invis heroes are at least functional without stealth, if not good. Clinkz has gotten some play, Brood is Brood, Riki doesn't get play but honestly he's pretty good, BH is retarded.
Really the only 'bad' invis hero is Slark, and his issue is mostly that pounce is (was?) completely bugged.
Shameful pursuits and utterly stupid opinions
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Refresher orb is predictable though, very predictable. I can see when an enemy has it, and now I can automatically predict when he'll have a double ravage or a double black hole. I also know the static cooldown on Refresher, so if I see someone do a double ultimate, I can tell my team "okay, we have 160 seconds before he can do that again".
It also takes a lot of money to buy, it's not a mechanic anyone starts the game with. It's a very predictable force, and thus very easy to balance against.
CDR is just as predictable as refresher orb, though? I mean, if I see a Lux with 40% CDR and she's past level 16, I know that she's got a laser up every 24 seconds. And CDR also isn't something everybody starts with for free; in fact, itemizing to 40% CDR assuming you aren't going with Bluebuff gives you some pretty marginal stats besides the CDR unless you're a bruiser type champion; for mages most of the CDR itemization is (or was, since Liandry's Torment is absurdly strong) basically terrible.
I mean, every argument you've got for why refresher orb is "easy to balance against" basically applies to CDR as well, so I'm not really sure what the point is. We should probably step back and also realize this entire conversation sprung up because of a misinterpretation between CDR and active CDR (e.g. Zilean's rewind).
Refresher orb is predictable because it can only happen once every 160 seconds and it's unique. Refresher orb always costs the same, and once it's active it always has the same 160 second cycle and it's effect is always exactly the same. It doesn't stack with anything else, you don't have to balance it against other items with the same effect. You don't have to balance it against any of the runes, because we don't have stat buffs like LoL does. There's two variables to balance against: Do they have the orb? How often can they orb? That's it. The cost puts a natural floor on how early you can get it, so even that becomes very predictable. You can safely say it's only going to be active late game, and that when it becomes active, you know exactly when a double ult is possible if you've been timing their refresher use (easy to do if you're thinking about it as a factor and they are actually using it to double ult).
The "when can you get orb?" is the most elastic of the variables involved with the item. Now look at all the CDR items you just listed in LoL. They all have to be balanced against each other, the blue buff, and against the variable effect of CDR stacking. It's a huge amount more variables to balance across the board.
e: Even Tinker's Reload is predictable for much the same reasons, though on a stupidly faster scale once he has Boots of Travel.
Did someone do level 1 Roshan in a tournament? I've had it happen three games today. First game, none of us were paying attention to there being Skeleton King and Ursa on the same team until it says Ursa was killed by Roshan. Then shortly thereafter, Roshan is dead and Luna has immortality and levels. The rest of the match went poorly.
Next game, I notice the same two players on the load screen. Sure enough, they pick Skeleton King and Ursa. This time we shut them down every time they tried going for Roshan. Which they did multiple times. Was an easy win.
Later, I'm teamed with a Lich and Ursa, doing Roshan at level 1. They got kinda mad at me for being in XP range. Whole game was a one sided stomp in our favor. Timbersaw and I, as Nyx, never even died.
General rule of thumb for me is that if the enemy has ursa you always need to keep an eye on rosh since early rosh kills are his thing.
Refresher orb is predictable though, very predictable. I can see when an enemy has it, and now I can automatically predict when he'll have a double ravage or a double black hole. I also know the static cooldown on Refresher, so if I see someone do a double ultimate, I can tell my team "okay, we have 160 seconds before he can do that again".
It also takes a lot of money to buy, it's not a mechanic anyone starts the game with. It's a very predictable force, and thus very easy to balance against.
CDR is just as predictable as refresher orb, though? I mean, if I see a Lux with 40% CDR and she's past level 16, I know that she's got a laser up every 24 seconds. And CDR also isn't something everybody starts with for free; in fact, itemizing to 40% CDR assuming you aren't going with Bluebuff gives you some pretty marginal stats besides the CDR unless you're a bruiser type champion; for mages most of the CDR itemization is (or was, since Liandry's Torment is absurdly strong) basically terrible.
I mean, every argument you've got for why refresher orb is "easy to balance against" basically applies to CDR as well, so I'm not really sure what the point is. We should probably step back and also realize this entire conversation sprung up because of a misinterpretation between CDR and active CDR (e.g. Zilean's rewind).
Refresher orb is predictable because it can only happen once every 160 seconds and it's unique. Refresher orb always costs the same, and once it's active it always has the same 160 second cycle and it's effect is always exactly the same. It doesn't stack with anything else, you don't have to balance it against other items with the same effect. You don't have to balance it against any of the runes, because we don't have stat buffs like LoL does. There's two variables to balance against: Do they have the orb? How often can they orb? That's it. The cost puts a natural floor on how early you can get it, so even that becomes very predictable. You can safely say it's only going to be active late game, and that when it becomes active, you know exactly when a double ult is possible if you've been timing their refresher use (easy to do if you're thinking about it as a factor and they are actually using it to double ult).
The "when can you get orb?" is the most elastic of the variables involved with the item. Now look at all the CDR items you just listed in LoL. They all have to be balanced against each other, the blue buff, and against the variable effect of CDR stacking. It's a huge amount more variables to balance across the board.
e: Even Tinker's Reload is predictable for much the same reasons, though on a stupidly faster scale once he has Boots of Travel.
None of what you said is really not applicable to CDR, though. Besides the fact CDR isn't binary, the basics of it are just "how early can they get CDR online" and "how long do I have between spells with CDR up." The only other thing is that multiple items provide CDR, but if we're ignoring what the stats provide for Refresher, we can fairly safely ignore what the stats on the buildup to CDR are.
EDIT: Yes, Refresher does have the (roughly) trinary dynamic that anybody with a ~<80 second cooldown ult can always ult once and refresher ult once every 160 seconds, everybody up to 160 will generally refresher ult once in that period, and Enigma has a cooldown on his ult greater than that of refresher orb. I don't really see that as being significantly simpler than "when do spells come online with X% CDR"
the most interesting part to me about people not wanting to leave league because of their money spent is how people treat digital stuff the same way they treat physical stuff. they are attached in that same way. i still play league a bit, but i treat the money i spent on it more like... dollars per hour of entertainment i guess?
i mean i've barely spent 40 dollars on the game probably and gotten a LOT of hours of entertainment out of it. way more than any 60 dollar single player game i've recently bought. that alone is worth it, by "quitting" or even just playing way less i don't feel like i'm really throwing anything away
at least league skins and champions won't take up space in my basement like any other hobby... much easier to be a pack rat with digital things
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited December 2012
Your glossing over the fact that CDR items have to be balanced against each other and blue buff. You can't have one CDR item giving too much CDR, or it lessens the value of other CDR items. At the same time, each CDR item has to provide value for it's money. Then you have to factor in blue buff, which as you and others have already said yourself, devalues some CDR items on certain characters. Those are all balance factors, none of which Refresher has to worry about. This is even if we're completely ignoring any stats.
Your glossing over the fact that CDR items have to be balanced against each other and blue buff. You can't have one CDR item giving too much CDR, or it lessens the value of other CDR items. At the same time, each CDR item has to provide value for it's money. Then you have to factor in blue buff, which as you and others have already said yourself, devalues some CDR items on certain characters. Those are all balance factors, none of which Refresher has to worry about. This is even if we're completely ignoring any stats.
But CDR items have to be balanced against other items, CDR or not, the same way refresher has to be balanced against other items, refresh active or (in all cases) not. The issue is basically never "is this item providing too much CDR relative to other items," but simply "is this item too good."
For instance, nobody's going to call an item that gives 20% CDR and no other stats for 1.2k "too good" simply because it's the most efficient permanent CDR in the game. Items in both games are balanced around the sum of their parts and actives, not any one stat, and saying CDR is "more complicated" because you have to balance CDR is just silly. Refresher has to worry about the exact same thing other items have to worry about: Does it provide a good value but not overpowered value for its cost at least some of the time on some hero.
All the Polycount winners have also been announced, and the grand winner should absolutely not surprise you if you even followed that contest but for an instant.
Did someone do level 1 Roshan in a tournament? I've had it happen three games today. First game, none of us were paying attention to there being Skeleton King and Ursa on the same team until it says Ursa was killed by Roshan. Then shortly thereafter, Roshan is dead and Luna has immortality and levels. The rest of the match went poorly.
Next game, I notice the same two players on the load screen. Sure enough, they pick Skeleton King and Ursa. This time we shut them down every time they tried going for Roshan. Which they did multiple times. Was an easy win.
Later, I'm teamed with a Lich and Ursa, doing Roshan at level 1. They got kinda mad at me for being in XP range. Whole game was a one sided stomp in our favor. Timbersaw and I, as Nyx, never even died.
General rule of thumb for me is that if the enemy has ursa you always need to keep an eye on rosh since early rosh kills are his thing.
The other rule of thumb is, if the enemy has both Skeleton King and Ursa, CHECK ROSH IMMEDIATELY. That's the most well known level 1 Rosh combo.
So... does 110 attack speed reduction on enchantress mean that she can literally tank any non-hero unit that isn't magic immune just by virtue of slowing its aspd to the negatives?
As for the rest of the patch: Holy shit, I am really impressed with Icefrog. I'm new to DotA, but it's really rare that I look at a changelog and agree with 90% of it. The only gripe I see is that the buff to Skadi could be better in terms of alleviating its terrible build-up, which is why I personally think it's not worth building unless you're steamrolling. Good shit in general.
gt: Bobby2Socks | steam: Billy Boot-Snatcher
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
Morphling
- Cast animation time decreased from 0.4 to 0.25
Yeah, but it's 110 at 4 points. You'll be pretty much done with jungling by the time you get 4 points into that passive.
I wasn't so much thinking about jungling with it (it's a lot slower) so much as I was thinking that she could just tank minion waves forever, leading to excellent pushes with full HP neutral followers and creeps, but apparently she has to take at least some damage... just at 20% speed.
Posts
riki at least needs treads/diffusal to start murdering people
It forced a counter pick out of me didn't it though? I mean, just speaking in the case where I grab Nightsalker specifically to chase around Riki.
That's kind of where the interesting part of it is, it forces a meta change.
Oracles never persisted upon death, excepting that if you didn't chug the potion to get the stealth vision and you died, it stayed in your inventory.
I remember this pretty well because of a very stupid game I had before they even released champs past 40 where an Ashe was complaining because she couldn't see Twitch with Oracle's potion... in her inventory.
I also like how different players always have completely different (relatively) minor reasons why DotA is better than League. One person, I remember, was very adamant that it was Catalyst (large heal and mana regen, at the time instant and now over time, when you level up) and the fact you got all the mana and health from levelling up any time even when you were at 1% HP and Mana, that was making League's laning phase far less aggressive.
As for killing League: it won't. People may transfer over, and people may play both, but at this point it's basically open beta anyway, and even when it becomes fully open it'd also have to be advertised a lot in order to even get the playerbase noticing that DotA 2 exists if they didn't already know and ignore it. It'll take a chunk out of the pie, but it won't be the big winner.
Also, as one positive for League nobody ever seems to mention, it has active cooldown reduction, which is really pretty awesome and was new enough that I believe WoW copied them on that idea.
And honestly while forcing a counter pick is fun, you don't need stealth to do that. I think Evelynn's re-work where stealth lets you slip past wards and into a short range of champions vision is a more interesting take because it encourages better positioning and general game sense as counters.
1-> You can't trust your pub team to ward, courier, smoke or get detection or support items -> Get a real team to yell at to buy shit that won't mute you
2-> Stuns,roots are binary as well, there's no half stunned or anything.
I have a lot of reasons I think Dota is a better game, but this my stance on LoL:
Is it easier? Yes, but it's not easy, it's still a complex game.
Is Dota better? In my personal opinion yes, but obviously I thought LoL was pretty fun at one point, or I wouldn't played it as much as I did.
Also, I don't think anyone (least of all me) thinks Dota 2 will kill LoL, but I do think there is going to be some transfer over, and I think there are some really appealing things for LoL players in Dota 2.
(And I hate CDR, I think it's one of the worst, most difficult, to balance mechanics...if Dota had CDR, things like Blackhole would have to be completely nerfed...as it is Refresher Orb which is a CD reset can make heroes like Tide and Enigma go over the top).
League is balanced around CDR; I wouldn't try to transfer it to DotA for no reason, but League *is* balanced around it. And refresher orb is a far more difficult to balance mechanic than cooldown reduction with a cap, because you don't ever have to think "what if Magnataur gets to stun the entire enemy team for 8 seconds" with cooldown reduction.
Also, honestly, Black Hole could probably get a cooldown reduction and still be fine since Magnataur is doing Enigma better than Enigma can (yeah, yeah, I know they're different heroes, but since the primary advantage Enigma had was that he could easily farm up the jungle and get fairly reliable levels and cash, and now Magnus has a good enough lane presence to do that himself...)
BKB isn't always providing magic immunity in an AOE. Stuns can be of varying strengths (especially as root is essentially a less stunned stun) there's variance in the system past 'is stealthed' and 'is not stealthed'.
Saying that you need a real team doesn't invalidate it's fuck this shit aspect of it, it's like pudge, sure you know how to dodge hooks but your team might not and then you're boned.
Also with regards to CDR: It works with League where abilities are spammy and there is other forms of scaling on abilities than just cooldown, in DOTA it would be broken. For example a full CDR Lux has to give up some damage to get there (at least early game) so it's a nice trade off.
The most appealing thing for me in DOTA2 is how you can carry yourself with a derp team so much easier because of how scary carries get. They actually carry unlike League where the AD carry is basically just a glass cannon that needs protecting to do your murder work.
It also takes a lot of money to buy, it's not a mechanic anyone starts the game with. It's a very predictable force, and thus very easy to balance against.
1: Themselves
2: those other fucks who locked in 3 other carries
3: that poor fuck who decided to lock in a support and try and play a team game, fag.
I'm convinced this is their mental process. Considering I've seen two players who were clearly a duo decide that DK/Juggernaut is an AWESOME lane idea and get confused when they lose to a solo windrunner.
CDR is just as predictable as refresher orb, though? I mean, if I see a Lux with 40% CDR and she's past level 16, I know that she's got a laser up every 24 seconds. And CDR also isn't something everybody starts with for free; in fact, itemizing to 40% CDR assuming you aren't going with Bluebuff gives you some pretty marginal stats besides the CDR unless you're a bruiser type champion; for mages most of the CDR itemization is (or was, since Liandry's Torment is absurdly strong) basically terrible.
I mean, every argument you've got for why refresher orb is "easy to balance against" basically applies to CDR as well, so I'm not really sure what the point is. We should probably step back and also realize this entire conversation sprung up because of a misinterpretation between CDR and active CDR (e.g. Zilean's rewind).
Next game, I notice the same two players on the load screen. Sure enough, they pick Skeleton King and Ursa. This time we shut them down every time they tried going for Roshan. Which they did multiple times. Was an easy win.
Later, I'm teamed with a Lich and Ursa, doing Roshan at level 1. They got kinda mad at me for being in XP range. Whole game was a one sided stomp in our favor. Timbersaw and I, as Nyx, never even died.
once gem shows up (or necro 3) it becomes boring though. But most of the invis heroes are at least functional without stealth, if not good. Clinkz has gotten some play, Brood is Brood, Riki doesn't get play but honestly he's pretty good, BH is retarded.
Really the only 'bad' invis hero is Slark, and his issue is mostly that pounce is (was?) completely bugged.
Refresher orb is predictable because it can only happen once every 160 seconds and it's unique. Refresher orb always costs the same, and once it's active it always has the same 160 second cycle and it's effect is always exactly the same. It doesn't stack with anything else, you don't have to balance it against other items with the same effect. You don't have to balance it against any of the runes, because we don't have stat buffs like LoL does. There's two variables to balance against: Do they have the orb? How often can they orb? That's it. The cost puts a natural floor on how early you can get it, so even that becomes very predictable. You can safely say it's only going to be active late game, and that when it becomes active, you know exactly when a double ult is possible if you've been timing their refresher use (easy to do if you're thinking about it as a factor and they are actually using it to double ult).
The "when can you get orb?" is the most elastic of the variables involved with the item. Now look at all the CDR items you just listed in LoL. They all have to be balanced against each other, the blue buff, and against the variable effect of CDR stacking. It's a huge amount more variables to balance across the board.
e: Even Tinker's Reload is predictable for much the same reasons, though on a stupidly faster scale once he has Boots of Travel.
General rule of thumb for me is that if the enemy has ursa you always need to keep an eye on rosh since early rosh kills are his thing.
None of what you said is really not applicable to CDR, though. Besides the fact CDR isn't binary, the basics of it are just "how early can they get CDR online" and "how long do I have between spells with CDR up." The only other thing is that multiple items provide CDR, but if we're ignoring what the stats provide for Refresher, we can fairly safely ignore what the stats on the buildup to CDR are.
EDIT: Yes, Refresher does have the (roughly) trinary dynamic that anybody with a ~<80 second cooldown ult can always ult once and refresher ult once every 160 seconds, everybody up to 160 will generally refresher ult once in that period, and Enigma has a cooldown on his ult greater than that of refresher orb. I don't really see that as being significantly simpler than "when do spells come online with X% CDR"
i mean i've barely spent 40 dollars on the game probably and gotten a LOT of hours of entertainment out of it. way more than any 60 dollar single player game i've recently bought. that alone is worth it, by "quitting" or even just playing way less i don't feel like i'm really throwing anything away
at least league skins and champions won't take up space in my basement like any other hobby... much easier to be a pack rat with digital things
But CDR items have to be balanced against other items, CDR or not, the same way refresher has to be balanced against other items, refresh active or (in all cases) not. The issue is basically never "is this item providing too much CDR relative to other items," but simply "is this item too good."
For instance, nobody's going to call an item that gives 20% CDR and no other stats for 1.2k "too good" simply because it's the most efficient permanent CDR in the game. Items in both games are balanced around the sum of their parts and actives, not any one stat, and saying CDR is "more complicated" because you have to balance CDR is just silly. Refresher has to worry about the exact same thing other items have to worry about: Does it provide a good value but not overpowered value for its cost at least some of the time on some hero.
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
All the Polycount winners have also been announced, and the grand winner should absolutely not surprise you if you even followed that contest but for an instant.
The other rule of thumb is, if the enemy has both Skeleton King and Ursa, CHECK ROSH IMMEDIATELY. That's the most well known level 1 Rosh combo.
Oh, and unrelated to what I just said (tombstone unchanged):
http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1203260
6.77 patch notes.
Wow, get owned Gondar.
As for the rest of the patch: Holy shit, I am really impressed with Icefrog. I'm new to DotA, but it's really rare that I look at a changelog and agree with 90% of it. The only gripe I see is that the buff to Skadi could be better in terms of alleviating its terrible build-up, which is why I personally think it's not worth building unless you're steamrolling. Good shit in general.
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
you thought it was over
I wasn't so much thinking about jungling with it (it's a lot slower) so much as I was thinking that she could just tank minion waves forever, leading to excellent pushes with full HP neutral followers and creeps, but apparently she has to take at least some damage... just at 20% speed.