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[Dota 2] The International 2013 main event, Aug 7th - 11th
Skab
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cSFPIwMEq4What is this Dota you speak of?
Defense of the Ancents was originally created in Warcraft 3 by the mapmaker Eul, and was based off of the Starcraft custom game Aeon of Strife. When WC3: The Frozen Throne was released Eul stopped updating the map, which then caused a flood of different varients to appear across battle.net. Among them was DotA Allstars, which was created by Guinsoo, which became main version that we have today. During Guinsoos time, Pendragon came along and made dota-allstars.com in reponse to the need for a main dedicated website for the growing community. With version 6.01, Guinsoo passed authorship off to Icefrog, who started adding new heroes, items, mechanics and fixes, and still runs the game to this day.
Guinsoo and Pendragon would later go on to work at Riot and help create League of Legends, while Icefrog and Eul would go on to work at Valve and are now working on Dota 2.
Dota 2 is the sequel to that popular Warcraft 3 custom game that has since spawned an entire genre with the likes of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. If you have played either of those games then you have a basic idea of how things work.
Gameplay remains true to the original Dota, but takes advantage of everything the source engine and Steam have to offer. Besides better graphics, this means things like reconnecting, being able to spectate any match currently in progress even while waiting in que for matchmaking, and no longer having this happen to you
New to the game and want to learn? The following links will get you started. Dota has a massive learning curve, so you wont learn everything here, but it should be enough to get you on your feet.
(Credit for this list actually goes to Gully State over on Gaf.)
First
First Watch 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akUNmFAzS98
Map Guide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9QaEuQHSHk
Then read http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akUNmFAzS98Map Guide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9QaEuQHSHkThen read http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck
Second (Warning, these are long.)
How to spend starting gold 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k6XM4MlYts&feature=relmfu
Laning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54g5ej4NAek
Item Summary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-qHJGIUvU
Warding for map vision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgNHEEUmQYI&list=FLj7gHItNuttevJnGS6YSQuQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k6XM4MlYts&feature=relmfuLaning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54g5ej4NAekItem Summary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-qHJGIUvUWarding for map vision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgNHEEUmQYI&list=FLj7gHItNuttevJnGS6YSQuQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video"Hey, I'm freaking amazing at LoL so I should be good at this too, right?"
Not exactly. While at their core they are similar, there are some some key differences that make the meta/feel/pace different. Some of these include things like the way carry heroes work, denying, gold loss on death, towers behaving differently, runes, a larger map, a str/agi/int based stat system, more active/useable items, and more.
Heroes & Items
There are currently 108 heroes in Dota, and while all of them will be coming over to Dota 2, only about 3/4s of the hero pool is available in the current beta build. Currently we get about one new heroes a week, with Valve sometimes surprising us with either more or none at all.
Current hero pool: http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Heroes
Items: http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Items
Curious what heroes are on their way? http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Unreleased_Content
Other Useful Links
http://blog.dota2.com
http://www.joindota.com/en/start
Announcement art (also in the valve store as posters)
(This OP is a work in progress, more info will be added as more people are able to get their hands on the game.)
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But he is hilarious against people who play greedy and feed you.
@disco11 I don't think it does, I could be wrong though.
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It doesn't. Also will slowly tick down neutral camps without aggro-ing them.
I actually love playing Necro. I don't think he's bad per say, but he's unfortunately a support hero that has to farm like a carry. Or just a mediocre carry with a heal.
Actually it's HP removal. Same effect. Urn is also HP removal, won't break urn or salve healing.
http://dotametrics.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/6-77cs-treant-protector-is-secretly-really-good/
I've come up against a few players running the armor build, and it's frustrating to go up against.
He's still a pretty high skill threshold hero though. I swear no one knows how to use his invis. correctly.
Now I'm not fluent in spanish but I speak it well enough and as the game goes on I notice they are just relentlessly insulting me both verbally and written. These guys are all friends playing together. So as my team has apparently decided to ban me, I appeal to the other team hoping for some sympathy. Turns out, they also are all spanish speaking and at the end of the game, join in with my team in bashing the only yankee playing.
So I'm pretty sure I'm about to get a mute ban.
Biscuit was just tweeting about the language thing yesterday:
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Although, as a point of order....playing an all pick solo q game and randoming is a great first step in guaranteeing a loss. (I really wish they'd just remove the option altogether.) Regardless, once Wisp is on your team, it's game over anyway - as that little ball of light might be about the worst pub pick ever.
Most of the time if I go solo and pick early/random, my team makes every attempt to pick the worst heroes ever. 4 hard carries? Why not? Not a single stun? No problem! Bonus points if 2 people pick heroes that need mid and then spend the first couple minutes fighting over farm in the lane.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Same thing happened to me last night, but with Russian instead of Spanish. I think my friend and I were the only Aussies in the game and we both got shit on for the entire game for not being Russian.
And while I'm sure not every Russian is a bad, any time there's more than 1 on my team we lose. Seeing a full enemy team of Russian names = easy win.
Its more if you pick to play in the english language queue and don't speak it that he has a problem with.
Yeah that's really annoying.
And then procede to report/verbally abuse the english language players.
So the random option is pretty awesome! I enjoy it. Maybe I like playing a broader set of heroes than most (anything but zero CS supports that don't really set up kills, which only excludes me from very few characters and a slightly broader set of lane pairings), but the random button is a nice way to get paid to make sure I don't stagnate my picking options.
would you report someone who didn't say anything all match?
I know I know, it's just been a particular pet peeve of mine for awhile. Too many games with too many bad picks, which I guess I should make clear isn't the random players' fault so much as the not-randoming people who make shit picks after them.
I've been on a holy terror with Bristleback lately, good god is he fun to play.
So the comparison is a bit more complex than "people who speak a language you don't understand, contributing nothing" versus "people who don't speak at all, contributing nothing." The latter can at least be broken up into the categories of does/doesn't understand what you're saying to them. I wouldn't even call it a minor detail, since the "does understand" category is, if nothing else, a fair bit more likely to not run to lanes already taken (which I'll grant is about the extent of guaranteed communication).
Language queues probably don't need to be enforced strictly, but if the playerbase is large enough to support well matched games of the appropriate language and location, it also doesn't have any real negatives I can see.
EDIT to DS: That's why, unless I'm stacked significantly (3+ minimum, usually in 4 or 5), I don't instarandom; I give it a fair amount of time to make sure we haven't locked out any given role, and then I random (with enough time left to let other people pick reasonably) and things get figured out pretty well, with the worst thing that might happen is if we have only a mid pick and I also random a mid pick. Bad picks are going to happen, but if you're a reasonable randomer (waiting until people who just have to pick certain things get their pick in, mostly), randoming 1 or 2 people, by itself, shouldn't generally create worse AP compositions than normal. It's just that sometimes people make bad picks, and one of those bad picks is definitely randoming when you're already saturated with a role.
almost lost though cause lifestealer is ridonkustupid and global silence
we basically lost every teamfight global silence was up and got a rax every time it was down
Oh my.
vs
Icecube, Ferrari, Singsing, Kuroky, ixmike
EDIT: The limited items thing is interesting just because most items are now created by people besides Valve, and I'm not sure how happy they'd be about having a continuous revenue stream essentially capped at a specific value. It lets people who want to arbitrage steam cash using items happy, though, which probably doesn't hurt.
Unfortunately that completely screws over anyone that doesn't speak English, Russian or Chinese.
Oh I agree in that regard. I was just referring to what total biscuit and the others are saying, the game would definitely need more language options IF it were to go that route.
Which is why it wont go that route. There is no way to successfully enforce language options without adding so many languages that you splinter the player base so much the damage outweighs any benefits.
It isn't even nearly as big of an issue as people make it out to be anyway.