DOTA 2

Delly

Trakanon Raider
3,010
671
Sounds like you play with mega-scrubs 24/7.
He just started recently so most likely he does, don't let his "all knowing" knowledge fool you.

Also, I realize that Slark had a ton of bugs and what not, but I argued he was an amazing ganker and semi carry and now he is being picked up a ton. So fuck you naysayers (which was nearly EVERYBODY but Pyros) who just use cookie cutter heroes or whatever NaVi is using that week. I will admit I never thought of using Shadow Blade on him but its great for ganking on him.

Edit: Though that might have been in November/December when all hell was breaking loose on Foh.
 

bayr_sl

shitlord
715
0
It really reinforces how much of an echo chamber of bad opinions dota 2 dicussion can be. 2 weeks ago people would talk shit if you picked slark in a pub, even if you stomped because he's basically the best hero in the game for pub stomping. People said the same thing about gyro and PL post 4.2
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
It really reinforces how much of an echo chamber of bad opinions dota 2 dicussion can be. 2 weeks ago people would talk shit if you picked slark in a pub, even if you stomped because he's basically the best hero in the game for pub stomping. People said the same thing about gyro and PL post 4.2
Yeah, I try to stay away from questioning decision of the pros, simply because judging the state of the game is much harder. I can tell when one side in SC2 is fucked, but here it is much more complicated. It wasn't that long ago we had people crying about cancer lancer here non-stop, where is he now ?

The award for best pubstomper goes to Nyx IMO, if you don't get shut down at 6 and get a few kills to make dagon, you can kill a support every minute or two for free.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,319
2,424
Yeah, I try to stay away from questioning decision of the pros, simply because judging the state of the game is much harder. I can tell when one side in SC2 is fucked, but here it is much more complicated. It wasn't that long ago we had people crying about cancer lancer here non-stop, where is he now ?

The award for best pubstomper goes to Nyx IMO, if you don't get shut down at 6 and get a few kills to make dagon, you can kill a support every minute or two for free.
Hmm Tinker dagon, if you win mid, tends to rape pubs so hard cause you can't push anywhere due to march, all your lanes end up being pushed and he can kill anyone in 1vs1 as well as instantly gib supports with rockets+laser+dagon. Nyx is like a much weaker version compared to Tinker imo. Do need quite a lot more skill to play tinker well and he's a lot more gankable early game too plus needs a bit longer to become fully efficient since you need bot, soulring, bottle and dagon, and then you definitely want another item with int on it so you have some mana.

Anyway we saw in g2 mouz vs iccup that slark can also do nothing at times, and he doesn't necessarily win his lanes either. Panda had no trouble outfarming and outganking him and he wasn't threatened at any point really. Granted I'm not a fan of the darkpact max when 1vs1 unless you need the pushing power, pounce is such a better spell due to the cooldown reduction especially if you want to early gank, but eh.

As for cancerlancer, I don't think he's gone entirely but unless he gets a really insane start, he does take a bit to come in use vs naix who just eats people from lvl 3 onward and gyro who does more with less. Also kotl bans and as usual just people moving away from a trend for whatever reason. I mean, wasn't that long ago that Sven was the most OP shit in the existence. He got a slight nerf(1less sec on warcry and 5% less dmg on his cleave) and now he's entirely gone. Or that furion that's coming back super strong but wasn't picked for months a while ago, Luna disapearing, SD coming back and so on. Sometimes it's due to meta change and sometimes people just prefer going for different heroes to do the same thing.
 

Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
<Gold Donor>
15,726
14,463
Does the Ban mechanic play in to this more than anything? From watching the past couple of weeks it seems like that alone shifts power and usefulness of Heroes within the meta game, almost more than any 1 sec ability nerf, etc... Maybe I'm reading way too much in to the meta game from tournament play, but the ability to sideline the most powerful character immediately makes the less power more functional by necessity. Most powerful here would mean multiple things from FOTM builds, an individuals skill with a certain Hero, or a teams ability to integrate a certain Hero in to strategy. No idea how this applies to non ladder matches, but as an outsider observer it seems like a nice mechanic. Would be hilarious in MvC if you could ban before picks.
 

Penance

Silver Baronet of the Realm
7,927
11,940
I love the trends in this game. I also love the cries for nerfs. I guarantee you Bristle is going to start trending eventually. Naysayers abound fuck off

EDIT: Also I love whoever was casting on GD studios who said the west mostly plays the draft, where the east plays the team. Made me think a lot about how the best teams will pick what they are confortable with. We saw it in TI2 with the Naga/DS wombo combo. Navi said no fucks were given.
 

Jozu

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,986
6,295
He just started recently so most likely he does, don't let his "all knowing" knowledge fool you.

Also, I realize that Slark had a ton of bugs and what not, but I argued he was an amazing ganker and semi carry and now he is being picked up a ton. So fuck you naysayers (which was nearly EVERYBODY but Pyros) who just use cookie cutter heroes or whatever NaVi is using that week. I will admit I never thought of using Shadow Blade on him but its great for ganking on him.

Edit: Though that might have been in November/December when all hell was breaking loose on Foh.
When have I ever claimed to be "all knowing"? Im pretty sure before almost EVERY post that I make in this thread is prefaced with, "I suck and play in low tier BUT".....

Im sorry Im not a pro or play against highly skilled players EVERY match. I simply queue up a game and play what the fuck they give me. Besides, this game is trending toward new blood, as more and more people are starting to catch on. Execpt there are always those elite gaming fags who HAVE to knock you down a peg just because. I dont give a fuck if a play scrubs, was just sharing something funny.

And I would rather play Tinker 10 times out of 10 than play an annoying/quality Viper or Riki in pubs.
 

Delly

Trakanon Raider
3,010
671
When have I ever claimed to be "all knowing"? Im pretty sure before almost EVERY post that I make in this thread is prefaced with, "I suck and play in low tier BUT".....

Im sorry Im not a pro or play against highly skilled players EVERY match. I simply queue up a game and play what the fuck they give me. Besides, this game is trending toward new blood, as more and more people are starting to catch on. Execpt there are always those elite gaming fags who HAVE to knock you down a peg just because. I dont give a fuck if a play scrubs, was just sharing something funny.

And I would rather play Tinker 10 times out of 10 than play an annoying/quality Viper or Riki in pubs.
No offense was meant, just stating that you don't have as much experience as some people here, but you make statements that seem as 'fact' like the DK statement on the last page. Sure its all just opinions really, but just remember that when you post. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else, in fact I know a lot of people on this board better than me, so I'm not trying to be elitist, just helping people who read posts and go "Oh this Jozu guy really knows his stuff I need to follow his every word".

Wait until you get into higher brackets, because a good Tinker can be much nastier than a Viper or Riki.
 

Burren

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,619
6,267
When have I ever claimed to be "all knowing"? Im pretty sure before almost EVERY post that I make in this thread is prefaced with, "I suck and play in low tier BUT".....

Im sorry Im not a pro or play against highly skilled players EVERY match. I simply queue up a game and play what the fuck they give me. Besides, this game is trending toward new blood, as more and more people are starting to catch on. Execpt there are always those elite gaming fags who HAVE to knock you down a peg just because. I dont give a fuck if a play scrubs, was just sharing something funny.

And I would rather play Tinker 10 times out of 10 than play an annoying/quality Viper or Riki in pubs.
Don't let it get to you man. I wasn't even being serious with my comment. I mean, yes you are playing with baddies, but so what, you're having fun, right? We all started there too.

As for the SF thing; he will get face-raped by many, many carries. His power is mid game where the innate damage comes into play and his farm is decent. But, given time he would lose to Void, Naix, PL, Spec etc.

Regarding the meta comments; it's all a good thing and if it didn't shift as often as it does, we would be bored to high hell, as I'm sure the pros would too.
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
Inventing and play testing new strategies and hero combinations takes a shitload of time. We're talking tens of hours of theorizing and hundreds of hours to work out the kinks, for something that might not even be that good. Most pros would rather (and probably rightly so) practice the most played and proven combinations until they know them like the back of their hand. It's just natural.

The "problem" is what the community takes away from that. Most people believe heroes X, Y and Z are shit because they aren't played competitively. In some cases it may be true, but more often it has little to do with hero strength, and more to do with lack of effort testing it at the highest level.

Once in a while someone innovates and creates a new FOTM combination. This always leads to cries for nerfs, but in most cases it just takes the pro scene a couple of months to slowly learn how to draft and play against it, and it fades away again.

The Dota metagame takes longer to reach equilibrium than most other progaming scenes, because new strategies can only really be successful when a whole team decides to spend time perfecting them. Before this has been done enough to approach equilibrium, a new patch arrives which shakes things up again. Solo gaming scenes like Starcraft and MTG allow any medium-high level adventurous player to work these things out solo, which means shifts can occur much more quickly.
 

Dandain

Trakanon Raider
2,092
917
Jozu: I don't mind your posts, personally I think its the most important part of dota and league to be honest, that people find it fun in some way regardless of their absolute game skill.

In the Vhigh bracket, no game would go on so long that a single hero could wrack up a kill line of 45-3. For the most part things change into a bit of an honor code, where you don't get near as much kill farming and just regular delayed farming. Low skill games often last an hour because people have fun getting 6 slots while the opposing team just sits in the base or barely outside and dies for an extra 30 minutes. Games just get ended more consistently when they can be ended as opposed to the whim of the winning team. Hero compositions get a bit more strict, but are still pretty flexible, unless one team is super try hard comp and the other is bad luck random. Anyways keep posting, you're insight into the part of the game I can never go back to =).
 

Sutekh

Blackwing Lair Raider
7,489
107
Just doesn't want to play professionally I'd imagine, he's talked about how really didn't like the lifestyle back when he used to play on a team. He was doing try outs for Absolute Legends for a while but decided to step down instead of taking their invite, the team manager for aL said he didn't take it because of practice hours being fucked up (aL = Euro, Merlini = Chicago) and he might try and get a job. But that was like 4 months ago.
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Just doesn't want to play professionally I'd imagine, he's talked about how really didn't like the lifestyle back when he used to play on a team. He was doing try outs for Absolute Legends for a while but decided to step down instead of taking their invite, the team manager for aL said he didn't take it because of practice hours being fucked up (aL = Euro, Merlini = Chicago) and he might try and get a job. But that was like 4 months ago.
Well, if he wants an US team, there's really nothing right now, Quantic's new roster lasted like an hour ...

He seems to be better fit for some analytical casting more than anything else, he is easy to listen to and has all the knowledge required
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,319
2,424
After refusing he actually changed his mind but aL was full so they didn't take him, but he actually felt like joining at a point fairly recently, maybe in preparation of TI3.

As for DK he's picked all the time tbh, I don't think he was ever a great lategame carry in a game I've seen, he did alright, did some decent sustained aoe damage and shit but he was never like "omg this guy is completely carrying his team" like you can see an AM, void or PL do in late/super late game. In fact I've seen plenty of very well farmed DK enter lategame and be completely worthless(partly due to item choices, he has a lot of viable items and you can definitely build completely wrong stuff), waste all the farm and sometimes lose the game because the farm was on DK instead of a more impactful hero.

The reliance on his ultimate, the lack of damage increase other than a fairly small splash, the lack of an effective defensive mechanism against burst damage, all of this imo makes him a very average hero. A good 2, a terrible 1, works well in multicore setups involving magnus or darkseer. That's how I see him at least and I don't really see myself changing opinion because I've seen DK being played for months/years and it's always been this way. He's never been bad, but he's never been great either.