[MOBA] Dota 2 Introduction (with A Giveaway)

Funk

Well-Known Member
Member from long ago...
Hi, with the recent influx of Dota 2 invites being handed out to all the current beta players for us spread all the Dota love all over the place (ew.) I thought it prudent to maybe post an introduction topic of sorts to get some people thinking about migrating from other games, people who have already and are brand new, and people who have no idea what a Dota is or why people like it. This post isn't meant to flame people who like League more, by all means if you like it more play it!

Step one: Read this, http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck#.UJnV68XA92A

Step two: Watch this,

Step three: Get into the game with bots and friends, and choose the hero that looks the coolest. But if you want some suggested heroes I will break it down into my personal favorite starter heroes. Of course I'm still a bit of a noob myself, so feel free to ignore any of this advice and insta-lock Meepo. Go ahead, I dare you.

Good Beginner Heroes: Skeleton King, Lich, Tidehunter, Shadow Shaman, Lion, Ogre Magi (my personal favorite), Vengeful Spirit, Viper, Venomancer, and Jakiro. All of these but one are support heroes but they are a great place to start.

Step four: Notice the differences between other games and Dota. One of the major differences that League players tend to have is feeling the need to farm as non-carry heroes. This is a result of a few things but I'll break it down as simple as I can. Points as followed.

A: No scaling spell damage: There is no scaling spell damage in the game, there is no ability power. Spells all do the same damage all the time unless modified by amounts of skill points, enemy magic resistance or a special item such as Aghanims Scepter (increases the potency on most ultimates) or Veil of Discord (increases magical damage taken.)

What does this mean? Well it means that as long as support characters have levels, they can be just as effective even if all they have are boots and a ward. Tidehunter's ultimate will still wreck you regardless of what items he is holding. Of course, supports -can- be good with items, and some of them require certain items to really get going. This of course leads into my next point about spells and stuns.

B: Spells will fucking kill you: The spells in Dota aren't like the ones in League, they tend to a) Cost a lot of mana and b) Do fuck tons of damage or stun you for a long time, or have some other weird effect. Most stuns are anywhere from 1-3 seconds, and some even going up to FOUR seconds. It means you will have to pay attention to your positioning a lot more than you would in League because it is much more likely to be chainstunned into death and depending on the heroes it might not take that many to kill you. Figure out what the enemy can do and adjust your positioning and tactics to it. When your killed by something or someone, read the death log, maybe play that hero after the game to learn what they are capable of. Of course once it gets to late game and heroes are higher level, with higher HP pools, spells tend to drop off in terms of burst damage. However even if they can't burst you down as easily, their stuns still work so support heroes remain absolutely relevant all game. Here's the next contrast.

C: Ganks actually work: I'll just list the reasons why Dota ganks actually work compared to League.
1. No flash
2. High spell damage or chainstuns result in death.
3. Special runes that spawn every two minutes that can make you invisible, hasted, do double damage, etc help you gank
4. Towers do threatening amounts of damage, but not insanely so like in League. You can actually tank a decent amount of shots, and a large amounts if your a strength hero or bought HP items.
5. No flash.

D: Counter ganks actually work: You can buy an item called a Town Portal Scroll, or TP for short. It lets you teleport to any friendly structure in the game (towers and your base) for a small amount of mana, and with a slight channel. That means even if the enemy arrives at the bottom lane with four heroes to gank two of you, if your teammates are fast enough they can TP in and turn it around. This is -very- common and it makes the early game so much more fun to play because it is actually easy and worthwhile to help and move around the map, especially if you are a ganking hero. Unless you are the main carry, don't afk farm for 30 minutes. Get some basic levels, then go do stuff!

E: TP and Donkeys: Like I mentioned before, the TP scroll is super, some might even say super duper important. You can buy them at side shops (the side lanes have one each) and like I said, it allows you to teleport to any ally building. The reason why this isnt OP is because you cannot recall back to base with a special button like in League. But how do you get your items without taking the long trek back to base, and TPs have a 60 second cooldown.

The answer is donkeys, buy a courier. You can buy items from the shop at any time and assuming you arent in range of the side shop, it will put it in your stash. Press a few hotkeys and booya, the donkey is delivering your cargo to you. But be careful! The donkey can be killed by the enemy, and he's worth a lot of gold, and if he dies you cant access your stuff til he respawns. It sucks, dont let your donkey get killed.

F: You can control more than one unit: Yep, you read that right. Find the hotkey that auto-selects and swings the camera back to your hero and remember it, cause if you click on the courier, you now are controlling him and not your hero. I think it is F1 by default or you can double-press the spacebar. Some examples of things you can control besides yourself include, spawned illusions either from an ability you or an ally has or the rune, dominated creeps. These are neutral creeps which you control, some of them even have active abilities you can press like a stun or a slow! Items like Helm of the Dominator or heroes like Chen or Enchantress are solely based around creep control. And then theres Meepo, he's a hero whom spawns actual clones (not illusions) of himself, and they share experience and gold. If he's jungling with two clones and in lane with the other one you get ALL of that experience! Crazy huh? Downside is if one of them dies all of you die, damn..that stinks. Meepo is fun though :) Special shoutout to Broodmother and Nature's Prophet who can spawn their own units that need micro'ing.

G: Items actually do things: There are -way- more items with active abilities in Dota than in League, and most of them do very cool things like restore a chunk of health to you and your allies, turn a man into a pig, spawn hell creatures that you can micro, trap people (or yourself! Trust me its useful!) in a cyclone. Every pair of boots aside from the basic ones all have an activated ability, and they all are useful in their own ways. Get used to pressing more than your ability keys, I would recommend changing your item use keys to something familiar. If you want to get really crazy with active items, pick Tinker. He can reset the cooldowns on all of his abilities AND items (with certain exceptions) over and over as long as he has the mana.

H: Oh god..I can't type anymore.


Ok that is enough examples, theres tons more but I think those are some major ones to notice. The point is that Dota is League with the training wheels off, it might be painful and you might crash but hey..you got to be a big boy someday :)

THE FIRST PERSON TO POST THE WORDS "HUMPERDINKLE" WILL receive a Dota invite, intended for people who dont have it and want to try it. Don't be a jerk and ask for one if you have it already :)

Other Dota players, feel free to expand or add stuff I missed, which I'm sure I did. Also if you are playing and don't know what to build on a hero, try http://www.dota2alttab.com/ for some quick and easy guides, remember they are not the ONLY ways to build a hero. Most heroes are flexible and can do many things with many items, you can experiment...just realize it might be terrible :p
 
HUMPER- Nevermind, already have one.

Things to add:
1. With heros to learn, learn venomancer. Just do it. Venomancer (Or 'Veno' for short) is a strong all-around support hero that fits into almost every lineup. Seriously. He's good everywhere. His skillset is varied and unique and gives you a sense for how different abilities work in DOTA. Here's an explanation of what Venomancer does and a guide of how to play him (On a videos note, that channel, DotaCinema is a great source for videos that show what heroes do).

2. If you want some coaching and don't mind random bantering, hit me up on Steam, I've played for over a year and I can break down confusing bits for you.
 
Perfect timing for me. I just decided last week that I should start to play this game. The only MOBA experiance I have is SMNC, which probably doesn't count. So far I've lost a bot match and I have no idea what I'm doing (see below). I'll go through this guide later today and i think I have both of you on steam, maybe I'll try to hop in a game with one of you sometime.

i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing.jpg
 
Oh yah, DOTA 2's Bots are brutally difficult, anything past passive is way to hard to be starting with since even they easy bots are better than your average Pub squad.
 

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