Disconnects for a total of 5 minutes.
Disconnect time is cumulative, meaning that a player who disconnects once for 2 minutes, reconnects, and disconnects again for 3 minutes, will be counted as an abandon.
Has not gained any experience for 5 minutes.
Leaves the game through the matchmaking menu.
Has not interacted with the game for 2 minutes.
Some fun picks and really impressive performances. In particular, the Shadow Fiend play by Sumail in EG vs VG was dominant. He did the hip new thing by getting Euls -> Mek before any damage items. 100+ CS ten minutes in to the game.
Eternal Envy's draft in the C9 game was pretty fun too. Troll + Sniper is just mean.
That Euls SF build strikes me as so clowny, will be interesting to see if it becomes the standard build. I have a feeling both Euls and MoM are going to be getting nerfed in the next round of changes.
That EG v VG game was also interesting for a Lone Druid pick that did well and the fact that EG went with 4 sets of tranquil boots.
I'm interested in Fear's 1 position no Radiance build. Towards the end of his time in comp Bulldog was building Radiance > Pipe, while Fear is doing Mjol > AC. Maybe with the current popularity of bruisers a fast Mjol is stronger for non split push builds. I'll definitely be watching the replays again later.
I'm interested in Fear's 1 position no Radiance build. Towards the end of his time in comp Bulldog was building Radiance > Pipe, while Fear is doing Mjol > AC. Maybe with the current popularity of bruisers a fast Mjol is stronger for non split push builds. I'll definitely be watching the replays again later.
It depends on the lineup your up against, with the constant heals that Fear was up against with Jugg/WD a Radiance wouldn't work very well. Bulldog was also building mael some games.
But with the Bear now having mana, going for mjor probably works better for most games as you can use static charge.
It was showing up a lot in NEL games that Merlini was playing last week, I think a lot of pro teams are really toying with the hero now. And it sure seemed viable in those games. Still..fuck that hero, it needs to go away.
I think Secret won that game in spite of Techies, though. They could have played any hero in that offlane, Arteezy and the supports dominated that game.
1) Silence 2) Books must be returned by the last date shown 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
+1
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I think Secret won that game in spite of Techies, though. They could have played any hero in that offlane, Arteezy and the supports dominated that game.
Naw man, they needed all that space Techies created, and randomly killing CM in their jungle was so clutch. Plus, they got more gold for each kill because Techies' feeding evened out the gold distribution! Pro-level strats, man.
I think Secret won that game in spite of Techies, though. They could have played any hero in that offlane, Arteezy and the supports dominated that game.
Naw man, they needed all that space Techies created, and randomly killing CM in their jungle was so clutch. Plus, they got more gold for each kill because Techies' feeding evened out the gold distribution! Pro-level strats, man.
The thing with techies is that it hard to judge his impact in pro games. A lot of what you get out of him in the pro scene is making your opponents constantly double think about every path the walk down. And all the free vision you get from mines.
Its not about so much about planting a trap and waiting all game to get one kill like pubs.
Some potentially good games coming up tonight guys!
@ 11EST (25 minutes from now) we have:
iG vs VG
C9 vs Secret
HGT v Big God
iG vs VS is probably going to be some pretty good Dota, but I'm going to be watching C9 v Secret.
Shit, I was meaning to stay on the ball with this, and watch these games live, but I've had other things on my mind this week. I'll just have to play catchup tonight.
I think Secret won that game in spite of Techies, though. They could have played any hero in that offlane, Arteezy and the supports dominated that game.
Naw man, they needed all that space Techies created, and randomly killing CM in their jungle was so clutch. Plus, they got more gold for each kill because Techies' feeding evened out the gold distribution! Pro-level strats, man.
The thing with techies is that it hard to judge his impact in pro games. A lot of what you get out of him in the pro scene is making your opponents constantly double think about every path the walk down. And all the free vision you get from mines.
Its not about so much about planting a trap and waiting all game to get one kill like pubs.
This is true, but Randle is pretty much right, Techies didn't accomplish a whole lot that game.
Watched that game over my lunch break today. I decided to watch the whole thing from Rubick's player perspective, which was very interesting. At :45 he blocked the bottom lane, then he was pretty much never seen laning again. TKing people onto the Roshan cliff was an interesting trick and I am itching to recreate that in the future.
One thing to take away from the Techies play is when he threw bombs up on the ward locations, they granted a lot more vision than I expected. I only saw him do it once, though. QoP's de-warding tactics were also pretty interesting to see.
Watched that game over my lunch break today. I decided to watch the whole thing from Rubick's player perspective, which was very interesting. At :45 he blocked the bottom lane, then he was pretty much never seen laning again. TKing people onto the Roshan cliff was an interesting trick and I am itching to recreate that in the future.
One thing to take away from the Techies play is when he threw bombs up on the ward locations, they granted a lot more vision than I expected. I only saw him do it once, though. QoP's de-warding tactics were also pretty interesting to see.
Rubick cliffing people is one of may most favorite things to watch:
Watched that game over my lunch break today. I decided to watch the whole thing from Rubick's player perspective, which was very interesting. At :45 he blocked the bottom lane, then he was pretty much never seen laning again. TKing people onto the Roshan cliff was an interesting trick and I am itching to recreate that in the future.
One thing to take away from the Techies play is when he threw bombs up on the ward locations, they granted a lot more vision than I expected. I only saw him do it once, though. QoP's de-warding tactics were also pretty interesting to see.
Rubick cliffing people is one of may most favorite things to watch:
It's not even just Newbee. 6 of the top 8 teams currently are Western (although Cloud 9 will probably fall out, they have a tough last two games), and the entire bottom half is Chinese/SEA. The only Chinese teams of the eight at the tournament doing well are IG and Big God, the team made up of "retired" players who enter tourneys for the hell of it.
Granted, it's just a bunch of Bo1's and that lends to a lot of variance, but given that it's being held in Shanghai and clearly set up to showcase the Eastern teams, it's got to be worrisome for the tourney organizers.
1) Silence 2) Books must be returned by the last date shown 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
I wouldn't be too worried if I was them. Considering the top 12 teams get to move on, plenty of asian teams are going to make it to the next stage. VG and iG are both pretty viable threats.
My money is on secret, but my heart's with NaVi: XBOCT has been playing out of his mind this tournament. Third highest GPM overall this tournament, behind only Arteezy and Burning. Despite their day one blowout they've looked pretty strong the past couple of days.
Yeah, I think a lot of eastern teams will start showing their oats as we get into the Bo3's. I'm not sure how long Navi can keep up this insane level of play, and Secret will start looking a lot less untouchable.
I think Na'Vi is going to have trouble once they get to the Bo3's. Funnik has been incredibly inconsistent and their support duo hasn't been performing all that well.
At what point is it okay to start playing matches online? I've been playing a bunch of bot matches this weekend and found a couple of characters that are fun (and a few more I didn't like at all) and it'd be nice to play with some other people. Is the matchmaking set up to pair me with other inexperienced people or am I going to ruin someone's game and get shouted at?
At what point is it okay to start playing matches online? I've been playing a bunch of bot matches this weekend and found a couple of characters that are fun (and a few more I didn't like at all) and it'd be nice to play with some other people. Is the matchmaking set up to pair me with other inexperienced people or am I going to ruin someone's game and get shouted at?
Matchmaking will pair you with equally clueless people. If you want to be extra sure you can also do the tutorials and that has a limited hero mode that will have nothing but people playing their first few games.
And if anyone ever shouts at you, or is rude, or you just don't like em for whatever reason then click the little icon on the top bar that looks like a list, and then click the red circle button by their name to mute that player.
At what point is it okay to start playing matches online? I've been playing a bunch of bot matches this weekend and found a couple of characters that are fun (and a few more I didn't like at all) and it'd be nice to play with some other people. Is the matchmaking set up to pair me with other inexperienced people or am I going to ruin someone's game and get shouted at?
Matchmaking will pair you with equally clueless people. If you want to be extra sure you can also do the tutorials and that has a limited hero mode that will have nothing but people playing their first few games.
And if anyone ever shouts at you, or is rude, or you just don't like em for whatever reason then click the little icon on the top bar that looks like a list, and then click the red circle button by their name to mute that player.
I had totally forgotten that that was in the training part, thank you. It went well!
At what point is it okay to start playing matches online? I've been playing a bunch of bot matches this weekend and found a couple of characters that are fun (and a few more I didn't like at all) and it'd be nice to play with some other people. Is the matchmaking set up to pair me with other inexperienced people or am I going to ruin someone's game and get shouted at?
Matchmaking will pair you with equally clueless people. If you want to be extra sure you can also do the tutorials and that has a limited hero mode that will have nothing but people playing their first few games.
And if anyone ever shouts at you, or is rude, or you just don't like em for whatever reason then click the little icon on the top bar that looks like a list, and then click the red circle button by their name to mute that player.
Is there a smurf queue for Dota2? I know how to cs and orbwalk from LoL, but have played ~5-10 games of Dota ever (last weekend), and after the first few, it started matching me with people who (talk as if they) have played well more than 5-10 games. I'm in a weird spot where my mechanics are okay (for a noob), but my game knowledge is nonexistent and I can't recognize any characters or have any idea what they do.
Also in a weird spot where I can't practice the game because the whole point of me playing is to find a MOBA where my bff and I play at approximately the same level...
Steam, LoL: credeiki
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Limited heroes kind of a nice place to start since you don't have to play with/against a lot of the more complicated heroes, but is sort of undercut by the fact that Viper and Razor are in the pool. New players don't know how to play against either of them, and even my more experienced DotA friends say that there isn't a strong counter to Viper in the entire game, never mind in a limited pool, so the team that picks Viper normally has a stupidly big advantage unless the other team gets Razor with someone who knows how to use him.
Limited heroes kind of a nice place to start since you don't have to play with/against a lot of the more complicated heroes, but is sort of undercut by the fact that Viper and Razor are in the pool. New players don't know how to play against either of them, and even my more experienced DotA friends say that there isn't a strong counter to Viper in the entire game, never mind in a limited pool, so the team that picks Viper normally has a stupidly big advantage unless the other team gets Razor with someone who knows how to use him.
Ah, I've been instalocking Viper, cause I main ADC in League so I figure the closest equivalent is a ranged Agility carry. Not even sure what to build; I've been getting some combination of like Power boots and Yasha and Daedalus and Butterfly and a defensive item? But again, I've only played about 4 games as him and 10 games ever...
I set queues to both limited heros and normal All Pick, and I just let it put me into whichever one is faster. Maybe I should limit it to limited heros and accept that the queue time is longer.
Steam, LoL: credeiki
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Limited heroes kind of a nice place to start since you don't have to play with/against a lot of the more complicated heroes, but is sort of undercut by the fact that Viper and Razor are in the pool. New players don't know how to play against either of them, and even my more experienced DotA friends say that there isn't a strong counter to Viper in the entire game, never mind in a limited pool, so the team that picks Viper normally has a stupidly big advantage unless the other team gets Razor with someone who knows how to use him.
Ah, I've been instalocking Viper, cause I main ADC in League so I figure the closest equivalent is a ranged Agility carry. Not even sure what to build; I've been getting some combination of like Power boots and Yasha and Daedalus and Butterfly and a defensive item? But again, I've only played about 4 games as him and 10 games ever...
I set queues to both limited heros and normal All Pick, and I just let it put me into whichever one is faster. Maybe I should limit it to limited heros and accept that the queue time is longer.
The basic idea with Viper's item build is Power Treads -> Mekanism -> Aghs. Viper is naturally really tanky and Mek will make it so you don't die ever. His ult has a 12 second cooldown with Aghs. 12 seconds. It's probably the best Aghs upgrade in the entire game. And then after that you can build the standard affair of agility items with all the gold you'll get from being able to ult every 12 seconds.
I don't know if you can tell but I really hate playing against Viper.
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Steam, LoL: credeiki
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Viper can't really be a glass cannon because he doesn't have burst, he has sustained damage with his orb and passives. And speaking of that, an orb is an ability that you can activate to in some way modify your auto-attack, usually costing some amount of mana per attack--for example, Viper's Q, which adds the poison+slow to his autoattack (another common example is Drow Ranger's Q, which is cheaper but just a slow). If you right-click it it's set to autocast, meaning it'll automatically apply it to your autoattacks for as long as you have the mana to sustain it, or you can just click Q and click the enemy to do it once (doing it manually has the benefit of counting as a spell, so you don't aggro creeps that way).
Orb-walking is different between LoL and DotA, I think--it's not just animation cancelling, it's specifically about these orb abilities. Since they cast as spells instead of autoattacks, you can animation cancel way earlier with them and it'll automatically cancel the animation at the right time for you because of how spells work. So basically Viper and Drow Ranger are stupidly good at chasing people down since their ability that gives their autos a slow also lets them chase faster than anyone else.
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Orbs are attack modifiers, the name comes back from the wc3 days. In the case of Viper he has a Unique attack modifer in his poison attack. because it is a Uam it does not stack with other uams, so you can't say use a desolator or skadi on him and posion attack at the same time.
the importance also comes in that if you manually use the skill instead of auto-casting it, it then counts as a spell rather then an auto-attack. Creeps/towers will turn on you and attack if you auto-attack near them but not if you use spells, so you can use them to get in attacks without getting agro and allowing you to harass freely.
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Orbs are attack modifiers, the name comes back from the wc3 days. In the case of Viper he has a Unique attack modifer in his poison attack. because it is a Uam it does not stack with other uams, so you can't say use a desolator or skadi on him and posion attack at the same time.
the importance also comes in that if you manually use the skill instead of auto-casting it, it then counts as a spell rather then an auto-attack. Creeps/towers will turn on you and attack if you auto-attack near them but not if you use spells, so you can use them to get in attacks without getting agro and allowing you to harass freely.
A couple of notes from a newb who's been learning this himself that can help clarify:
1. UAM is 'unique attack modifier'. Some abilities (most orbs and some passive auto-attack modifiers, like Anti-Mage's mana burn) are these, and some abilities granted by items are these--it'll have a note in the tooltip saying if it is. You can't have two UAMs active at once, so Desolator, which gives a UAM that reduces enemy armor when you attack them, won't work if Viper has his Q active.
2. Specifically, Towers will immediately target you if you attack an enemy hero in their range. They may or may not if you're just hitting creeps or the tower itself. Manually casting the orb on a hero will let you hit them without getting creep/tower aggro, so that's useful for harassing.
(Sidenote that some UAMs do stack--specifically, the items Orb of Venom and its upgrade Eye of Skadi have a slow UAM which also works with the items that give you lifesteal. Maelstrom and Mjollnir give you a UAM that has a random chance to proc chaining magical damage on autos, but is only a UAM when it procs--so a Viper can have a Maelstrom and keep using his Q, it's just that the one attack where Maelstrom procs won't have his Q on it, because one UAM overrode the other.)
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Orbs are attack modifiers, the name comes back from the wc3 days. In the case of Viper he has a Unique attack modifer in his poison attack. because it is a Uam it does not stack with other uams, so you can't say use a desolator or skadi on him and posion attack at the same time.
the importance also comes in that if you manually use the skill instead of auto-casting it, it then counts as a spell rather then an auto-attack. Creeps/towers will turn on you and attack if you auto-attack near them but not if you use spells, so you can use them to get in attacks without getting agro and allowing you to harass freely.
A couple of notes from a newb who's been learning this himself that can help clarify:
1. UAM is 'unique attack modifier'. Some abilities (most orbs and some passive auto-attack modifiers, like Anti-Mage's mana burn) are these, and some abilities granted by items are these--it'll have a note in the tooltip saying if it is. You can't have two UAMs active at once, so Desolator, which gives a UAM that reduces enemy armor when you attack them, won't work if Viper has his Q active.
2. Specifically, Towers will immediately target you if you attack an enemy hero in their range. They may or may not if you're just hitting creeps or the tower itself. Manually casting the orb on a hero will let you hit them without getting creep/tower aggro, so that's useful for harassing.
(Sidenote that some UAMs do stack--specifically, the items Orb of Venom and its upgrade Eye of Skadi have a slow UAM which also works with the items that give you lifesteal. Maelstrom and Mjollnir give you a UAM that has a random chance to proc chaining magical damage on autos, but is only a UAM when it procs--so a Viper can have a Maelstrom and keep using his Q, it's just that the one attack where Maelstrom procs won't have his Q on it, because one UAM overrode the other.)
Towers don't immediately switch targets. They queue an aggro list. You are safe to right-click someone under a tower as long as it's already targeting something else. As soon as its target dies or goes out of range, it will switch to the next target on the list, which would be a hero unit right-clicking withing range.
The exception of course, is that a tower will lose hero aggro if that hero targets a friendly units (and there is another, higher priority, target in the tower's range).
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Orb walking is usually referring to 2 distinct (but related) mechanics.
The first is simple animation cancelling. This is what RTS players (particularly SC players) know it is. They usually call it stutter stepping these days, and I'm pretty sure that's what they call it in LoL as well. Thing is, in LoL and SC, stutter stepping is pretty easy, and a standard and natural way of kiting, because the units have no turn rates. They can retreat and attack instantly. You can't do that in dota 2 because of the turn rates--in the time it takes to back up, turn around, and then attack, they're already on you again, and you may as well have stood still. It has no defensive benefit at all, outside of extreme cases like Drow Ranger's 60% movespeed slow Frost Arrows (and even then).
Not to say that animation cancelling isn't a necessary and important skill. However, its primary use is offensive, not defensive, and is used by both melee and ranged heroes (whether they have an orb attack or not). It's a somewhat common belief that animation cancelling allows a hero to attack faster, which is completely untrue. What it does allow them to do is get more attacks in through better positioning. By attacking, cancelling the backswing, moving in the direction the target wants to retreat to, and then attack again as soon as the cooldown is over, a hero can get many more hits in than they would if they just stood in place and right-clicked, or right-clicked and followed from behind the target (even if the attacker has higher move speed). Especially early game, where the cooldown between attacks is at least 1 second, being able to constantly move up on the target allows a few more hits before they can get away. You will see good players do this even with melee heroes (you never want to just run in and attack them from the back when you could be moving around them and body blocking them). Even against stunned, stationary targets.
The drawback of playing like this is that you're putting yourself in an aggressive, exposed position. It's basically an attack stance. That's why you'll not always see players do it when all they want to do is get in a harassment shot, cancel a clarity or bottle charge or whatever. By moving up all the time, they're moving toward the danger and away from their creeps, tower, allies, whatever (and possibly even moving into range of the target's spells). You have to know that you can get in those attacks safely, and when to back off before a line has been crossed. Even in a real fight, the support probably doesn't want to be aggressively chasing down a hero that could turn and kick their teeth in, unless they're winning the fight, or need to get their attention or something.
The other orb walking, as has been said, is using manually cast orb-effect attacks to bypass creep aggro. But it is also often used in conjunction with the stutter step, especially for heroes with slows. It works even better for them, because aggressively positioning will allow them to get more attacks in, and also constantly slow the target. If they simply right-clicked from range with their orb they would have to keep running up before each new attack, and the target might even have a chance to escape the orb slow before another is applied.
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As for how dota 2 does its skill queuing, there's a fair bit of jumping around early on. It's not quite a smurf bracket, but if a player does exceptionally well in a low-skill game they can be tested in higher skill games. At least that's what evidence suggested before all of that became completely opaque. What seems to happen (and this has been tested with higher skill players using smurf accounts) is that it will keep jumping the player up the skill levels until they stop dominating so hard, and then ease back and settle in.
All that matters is it tracking your hidden MMR until you get high enough level to start ranked matches.
So while I only have a sample of 1 game, Visage is a fucking great techies counter. Buy an early gem, cackle maniacally as you destroy nests from complete safety.
At what point is it okay to start playing matches online? I've been playing a bunch of bot matches this weekend and found a couple of characters that are fun (and a few more I didn't like at all) and it'd be nice to play with some other people. Is the matchmaking set up to pair me with other inexperienced people or am I going to ruin someone's game and get shouted at?
Matchmaking will pair you with equally clueless people. If you want to be extra sure you can also do the tutorials and that has a limited hero mode that will have nothing but people playing their first few games.
And if anyone ever shouts at you, or is rude, or you just don't like em for whatever reason then click the little icon on the top bar that looks like a list, and then click the red circle button by their name to mute that player.
Is there a smurf queue for Dota2? I know how to cs and orbwalk from LoL, but have played ~5-10 games of Dota ever (last weekend), and after the first few, it started matching me with people who (talk as if they) have played well more than 5-10 games. I'm in a weird spot where my mechanics are okay (for a noob), but my game knowledge is nonexistent and I can't recognize any characters or have any idea what they do.
Also in a weird spot where I can't practice the game because the whole point of me playing is to find a MOBA where my bff and I play at approximately the same level...
I've found a quick way to check what characters do is here. I'll often alt-tab to it in the pick stage when I see an enemy hero I don't know too well.
You also mentioned struggling with build decisions: you can use guides in your early games - the option is to the top left just right of the up-menu-arrow. Looks like a book. Then you click the small arrow to the top right of that tab and you'll see a whole bunch of player-made guides with ability and item lists to follow. It definitely takes the pressure off understanding the game early when you have someone just telling you how to build your character and you can focus on the actual playing and learning. A lot of the guides even explain why you buy or skill what you buy or skill if you mouse over the abilities and items they mention.
Another good resource for build and skill selection is dotabuff.com/. It'll show you the most popular items for a hero. Popular =/= right in all cases, but it's a good start that can't actually lead you astray to begin with.
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Some fun picks and really impressive performances. In particular, the Shadow Fiend play by Sumail in EG vs VG was dominant. He did the hip new thing by getting Euls -> Mek before any damage items. 100+ CS ten minutes in to the game.
Eternal Envy's draft in the C9 game was pretty fun too. Troll + Sniper is just mean.
That EG v VG game was also interesting for a Lone Druid pick that did well and the fact that EG went with 4 sets of tranquil boots.
It depends on the lineup your up against, with the constant heals that Fear was up against with Jugg/WD a Radiance wouldn't work very well. Bulldog was also building mael some games.
But with the Bear now having mana, going for mjor probably works better for most games as you can use static charge.
@ 11EST (25 minutes from now) we have:
iG vs VG
C9 vs Secret
HGT v Big God
iG vs VS is probably going to be some pretty good Dota, but I'm going to be watching C9 v Secret.
It was showing up a lot in NEL games that Merlini was playing last week, I think a lot of pro teams are really toying with the hero now. And it sure seemed viable in those games. Still..fuck that hero, it needs to go away.
Naw man, they needed all that space Techies created, and randomly killing CM in their jungle was so clutch. Plus, they got more gold for each kill because Techies' feeding evened out the gold distribution! Pro-level strats, man.
The thing with techies is that it hard to judge his impact in pro games. A lot of what you get out of him in the pro scene is making your opponents constantly double think about every path the walk down. And all the free vision you get from mines.
Its not about so much about planting a trap and waiting all game to get one kill like pubs.
Shit, I was meaning to stay on the ball with this, and watch these games live, but I've had other things on my mind this week. I'll just have to play catchup tonight.
This is true, but Randle is pretty much right, Techies didn't accomplish a whole lot that game.
One thing to take away from the Techies play is when he threw bombs up on the ward locations, they granted a lot more vision than I expected. I only saw him do it once, though. QoP's de-warding tactics were also pretty interesting to see.
Rubick cliffing people is one of may most favorite things to watch:
Even better when the rubick sticks around for a while waiting for the tp out and does it again.
That is hilarious and horrible at the same time. Holy shit.
Granted, it's just a bunch of Bo1's and that lends to a lot of variance, but given that it's being held in Shanghai and clearly set up to showcase the Eastern teams, it's got to be worrisome for the tourney organizers.
My money is on secret, but my heart's with NaVi: XBOCT has been playing out of his mind this tournament. Third highest GPM overall this tournament, behind only Arteezy and Burning. Despite their day one blowout they've looked pretty strong the past couple of days.
3DS friend code: 4811-7214-5053
Matchmaking will pair you with equally clueless people. If you want to be extra sure you can also do the tutorials and that has a limited hero mode that will have nothing but people playing their first few games.
And if anyone ever shouts at you, or is rude, or you just don't like em for whatever reason then click the little icon on the top bar that looks like a list, and then click the red circle button by their name to mute that player.
I had totally forgotten that that was in the training part, thank you. It went well!
3DS friend code: 4811-7214-5053
Is there a smurf queue for Dota2? I know how to cs and orbwalk from LoL, but have played ~5-10 games of Dota ever (last weekend), and after the first few, it started matching me with people who (talk as if they) have played well more than 5-10 games. I'm in a weird spot where my mechanics are okay (for a noob), but my game knowledge is nonexistent and I can't recognize any characters or have any idea what they do.
Also in a weird spot where I can't practice the game because the whole point of me playing is to find a MOBA where my bff and I play at approximately the same level...
Ah, I've been instalocking Viper, cause I main ADC in League so I figure the closest equivalent is a ranged Agility carry. Not even sure what to build; I've been getting some combination of like Power boots and Yasha and Daedalus and Butterfly and a defensive item? But again, I've only played about 4 games as him and 10 games ever...
I set queues to both limited heros and normal All Pick, and I just let it put me into whichever one is faster. Maybe I should limit it to limited heros and accept that the queue time is longer.
The basic idea with Viper's item build is Power Treads -> Mekanism -> Aghs. Viper is naturally really tanky and Mek will make it so you don't die ever. His ult has a 12 second cooldown with Aghs. 12 seconds. It's probably the best Aghs upgrade in the entire game. And then after that you can build the standard affair of agility items with all the gold you'll get from being able to ult every 12 seconds.
I don't know if you can tell but I really hate playing against Viper.
But if you're looking for a league-ish ADC carry Sniper is a pretty good place to start. He's basically Caitlyn but because this isn't LoL, he doesn't have an escape/gap closer or shield. So you have to be much more careful about positioning. He makes up for his lack of escapes with insane range though.
Viper actually plays a lot like a top lane bruiser in league would. He benefits greatly from being tanky and his passives + orb sort of eliminate the need to prioritize damage items. He's almost always played mid because he benefits greatly from levels, is almost impossible to beat in the lane, and is a potent ganker. Eventually if you keep playing him your team is going to assume you're going mid, so keep that in mind during pick.
Er. I never actually understood what is meant by "orb". What does it mean that Viper has one?
Oh huh, I had no idea people played Viper in a bruiser-y way; I figured he was supposed to be a glass cannon. Interesting.
Viper can't really be a glass cannon because he doesn't have burst, he has sustained damage with his orb and passives. And speaking of that, an orb is an ability that you can activate to in some way modify your auto-attack, usually costing some amount of mana per attack--for example, Viper's Q, which adds the poison+slow to his autoattack (another common example is Drow Ranger's Q, which is cheaper but just a slow). If you right-click it it's set to autocast, meaning it'll automatically apply it to your autoattacks for as long as you have the mana to sustain it, or you can just click Q and click the enemy to do it once (doing it manually has the benefit of counting as a spell, so you don't aggro creeps that way).
Orb-walking is different between LoL and DotA, I think--it's not just animation cancelling, it's specifically about these orb abilities. Since they cast as spells instead of autoattacks, you can animation cancel way earlier with them and it'll automatically cancel the animation at the right time for you because of how spells work. So basically Viper and Drow Ranger are stupidly good at chasing people down since their ability that gives their autos a slow also lets them chase faster than anyone else.
Orbs are attack modifiers, the name comes back from the wc3 days. In the case of Viper he has a Unique attack modifer in his poison attack. because it is a Uam it does not stack with other uams, so you can't say use a desolator or skadi on him and posion attack at the same time.
the importance also comes in that if you manually use the skill instead of auto-casting it, it then counts as a spell rather then an auto-attack. Creeps/towers will turn on you and attack if you auto-attack near them but not if you use spells, so you can use them to get in attacks without getting agro and allowing you to harass freely.
A couple of notes from a newb who's been learning this himself that can help clarify:
1. UAM is 'unique attack modifier'. Some abilities (most orbs and some passive auto-attack modifiers, like Anti-Mage's mana burn) are these, and some abilities granted by items are these--it'll have a note in the tooltip saying if it is. You can't have two UAMs active at once, so Desolator, which gives a UAM that reduces enemy armor when you attack them, won't work if Viper has his Q active.
2. Specifically, Towers will immediately target you if you attack an enemy hero in their range. They may or may not if you're just hitting creeps or the tower itself. Manually casting the orb on a hero will let you hit them without getting creep/tower aggro, so that's useful for harassing.
(Sidenote that some UAMs do stack--specifically, the items Orb of Venom and its upgrade Eye of Skadi have a slow UAM which also works with the items that give you lifesteal. Maelstrom and Mjollnir give you a UAM that has a random chance to proc chaining magical damage on autos, but is only a UAM when it procs--so a Viper can have a Maelstrom and keep using his Q, it's just that the one attack where Maelstrom procs won't have his Q on it, because one UAM overrode the other.)
Aaah Dota, where every hard rule has like 10 exceptions.
Towers don't immediately switch targets. They queue an aggro list. You are safe to right-click someone under a tower as long as it's already targeting something else. As soon as its target dies or goes out of range, it will switch to the next target on the list, which would be a hero unit right-clicking withing range.
The exception of course, is that a tower will lose hero aggro if that hero targets a friendly units (and there is another, higher priority, target in the tower's range).
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Orb walking is usually referring to 2 distinct (but related) mechanics.
The first is simple animation cancelling. This is what RTS players (particularly SC players) know it is. They usually call it stutter stepping these days, and I'm pretty sure that's what they call it in LoL as well. Thing is, in LoL and SC, stutter stepping is pretty easy, and a standard and natural way of kiting, because the units have no turn rates. They can retreat and attack instantly. You can't do that in dota 2 because of the turn rates--in the time it takes to back up, turn around, and then attack, they're already on you again, and you may as well have stood still. It has no defensive benefit at all, outside of extreme cases like Drow Ranger's 60% movespeed slow Frost Arrows (and even then).
Not to say that animation cancelling isn't a necessary and important skill. However, its primary use is offensive, not defensive, and is used by both melee and ranged heroes (whether they have an orb attack or not). It's a somewhat common belief that animation cancelling allows a hero to attack faster, which is completely untrue. What it does allow them to do is get more attacks in through better positioning. By attacking, cancelling the backswing, moving in the direction the target wants to retreat to, and then attack again as soon as the cooldown is over, a hero can get many more hits in than they would if they just stood in place and right-clicked, or right-clicked and followed from behind the target (even if the attacker has higher move speed). Especially early game, where the cooldown between attacks is at least 1 second, being able to constantly move up on the target allows a few more hits before they can get away. You will see good players do this even with melee heroes (you never want to just run in and attack them from the back when you could be moving around them and body blocking them). Even against stunned, stationary targets.
The drawback of playing like this is that you're putting yourself in an aggressive, exposed position. It's basically an attack stance. That's why you'll not always see players do it when all they want to do is get in a harassment shot, cancel a clarity or bottle charge or whatever. By moving up all the time, they're moving toward the danger and away from their creeps, tower, allies, whatever (and possibly even moving into range of the target's spells). You have to know that you can get in those attacks safely, and when to back off before a line has been crossed. Even in a real fight, the support probably doesn't want to be aggressively chasing down a hero that could turn and kick their teeth in, unless they're winning the fight, or need to get their attention or something.
The other orb walking, as has been said, is using manually cast orb-effect attacks to bypass creep aggro. But it is also often used in conjunction with the stutter step, especially for heroes with slows. It works even better for them, because aggressively positioning will allow them to get more attacks in, and also constantly slow the target. If they simply right-clicked from range with their orb they would have to keep running up before each new attack, and the target might even have a chance to escape the orb slow before another is applied.
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As for how dota 2 does its skill queuing, there's a fair bit of jumping around early on. It's not quite a smurf bracket, but if a player does exceptionally well in a low-skill game they can be tested in higher skill games. At least that's what evidence suggested before all of that became completely opaque. What seems to happen (and this has been tested with higher skill players using smurf accounts) is that it will keep jumping the player up the skill levels until they stop dominating so hard, and then ease back and settle in.
All that matters is it tracking your hidden MMR until you get high enough level to start ranked matches.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
I've found a quick way to check what characters do is here. I'll often alt-tab to it in the pick stage when I see an enemy hero I don't know too well.
You also mentioned struggling with build decisions: you can use guides in your early games - the option is to the top left just right of the up-menu-arrow. Looks like a book. Then you click the small arrow to the top right of that tab and you'll see a whole bunch of player-made guides with ability and item lists to follow. It definitely takes the pressure off understanding the game early when you have someone just telling you how to build your character and you can focus on the actual playing and learning. A lot of the guides even explain why you buy or skill what you buy or skill if you mouse over the abilities and items they mention.
Another good resource for build and skill selection is dotabuff.com/. It'll show you the most popular items for a hero. Popular =/= right in all cases, but it's a good start that can't actually lead you astray to begin with.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
First time I've ever had two rampages in a single game, as Meepo of all people. Finished 21-1-5:
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1206243280
C9 vs LGD DAC Group stage
Game is for 8th/9th effectively, so it does matter a bit.
It's a bit long, so maybe start from 60:00 or so.
The ending is fantastic.