DOTA 2

Zaphid_sl said:

Merlini casting D2L, 3DMax vs nthhttp://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/Merlini

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He was told he isn't allowed to cast that game anymore.

I don't care that much, but his stream quality is way better than the other streams.

And he is checking every single thing in the game, constantly. He doesn't miss stuff and is still able to keep talking.

So is it common for people to just go afk? I haven't done any real games yet, just bot matches. Co-op and closed. Noticed during co-op matches people just sit in the respawn area and cast spells.
Are they basically "rep" farming? That shit's annoying.

Since co-op games don't really matter, yeah. It is kind of a testing ground so you can't fully expect people to go all out.

It isn't like that in real games or you get reported.

Does getting reported actually do anything? I've reported probably 50+ people for doing various stupid things. Once I got a message from Valve when I started playing that said something to the effect of "Hey btw we actually punished someone that you reported recently!" which makes me think that this is the only time my reports have actually mattered.

Sutekh_sl said:

Welcome to every dota2 game I've ever played.

Our Kunka complains from level 1, calls GG before the game starts because he doesn't like lanes, 5 mans bot, tells the other team when I rosh so they come kill me (can't see because he's on ignore), Wisp spam TP's me in to the other team's base. Best part, all completely unprovoked. Hadn't said a thing, was just farming the jungle on ursa.

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I couldn't believe the 3 man bot w/ free farm top for us (fat carry KotL, oh man). There are a million reasons that game went poorly, but you were not one of them, lol. Him and wisp were bad though, very odd game that one. I just wanted it to end but they kept defending our pushes and my team wouldn't team push. Pretty terrible way to waste 30 minutes.

Nostrovia_sl said:

Managed to play a little bit yesterday and noticed quite quickly that some characters in early game are just annoyingly weak but become basically gods later in the game.
I haven't tried too many heroes yet but is it best to play every hero and get used to their play style and build? or pick a choice few and master them?

I really like the game and hope I can put more hours into it in the future as my work schedule allows. Being on graves pretty much murders game time for me.
Been watching videos of matches during down time at work. Only playing against bots for now till I can get some more time into it, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Seems pretty straight forward, little bit of a learning curve as far as builds/gear/math goes.

My biggest question is what I asked earlier.

Is it best to play every hero and get used to their play style and build or pick a choice few and master them?

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Play them all, get a feel for how they are strong/weak and youll be much better off fighting them. Know your enemy, know their burst potential, their mana pools, their escapes etc

DeLLy_sl said:

the game was going the direction of me having a diffusal and radiance in under 20 minutes until they got gem and made me and BH useless.

...

Edit 2: At 10 mins I had a Magic Wand, Ring of Aquila, Power Treads, 700+ gold. I get a kill shortly after.

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Radiance and Diffusal is 8450 gold. So you were going to have over 750 gpm from minute 10 to 20?

Jessper_sl said:

I couldn't believe the 3 man bot w/ free farm top for us (fat carry KotL, oh man). There are a million reasons that game went poorly, but you were not one of them, lol. Him and wisp were bad though, very odd game that one. I just wanted it to end but they kept defending our pushes and my team wouldn't team push. Pretty terrible way to waste 30 minutes.

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The worst part is, normally, as you can imagine. I'm kind of a douche to people. That game I literally had not said a single word.

Elerion_sl said:

Radiance and Diffusal is 8450 gold. So you were going to have over 750 gpm from minute 10 to 20?

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We did have a BH and I could 2-4 shot most of their squishy team after a spirit lance. I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility, but yeah maybe another 5 minutes just to be safe. Haha.

DeLLy_sl said:

Edit: Oh and his buddy who laned with me, stood up for him saying my farm was shit and I was slow. Good thing bro code doesn't let your friend know that he single handedly lost us that game and maybe give future tips on how to give a game away.

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Friends will always defend their friends, and no one will ever admit they are wrong about anything. As true in Dota as it is anywhere. You can actually sniff out a 3-4 stack pretty well when someone's argument gets so retarded and tenuous and confidently-stated that they must know they have the backing of the majority of the team.

I had a game the other night where the 2nd and 4th player had really similar names, so I knew it was at least a three stack. I didn't want to get stuck playing support for some giant stack, so I quickly called mid and picked Zeus (this was Least Played mode). The four others proceeded to pick Pudge, Death Prophet, Weaver, and Void. Nice synergy boys. The Pudge (I wasn't sure if he was stacked with the other three) tried to go mid, I said, hey man, I called mid immediately at character select, and he went top.

I did fine, didn't gank quite as much as I should've, because a) others kept fucking with the courier when I tried to bottle crow b) the lanes were always pushed badly for us and c) I probably spammed my Q too much last hitting, but whatever, I got my bottle, boots, and ult up quickly, was involved in 8 of the 9 kills our team got, and did 15k damage while the rest of the team did 17k total. I was 2-3-6 and we lost 28-9. As the game gets out of control, the Pudge (who is about 0-8-1 at this point) asks me why I wanted to play mid, and I said because I picked Zeus and Zeus is a mid hero. The Death Prophet chimes in that I did nothing with it, I say, look, I don't want to get into it with you guys (hadn't really said anything other than helpful info like MIA calls and shit), I did what I could this game. The DP is like "No hero is purely a mid hero." I say, "You guys are a four stack, right? At least let me know what I'm arguing against. " And it's just silence. The Pudge starts making more snide comments later, I look at his profile and see that Drow Ranger is his most played hero. I really wish I had looked him up on Dotabuff during the game:

https://dotabuff.com/players/50077794/heroes

1/3rd of his games are with Drow Ranger and he has 63% winrate, then he has a bunch of games on Spirit Breaker (another pubstomper) at 66%, and his winrate on virtually all other heroes is horrible and he's overall at 8 games under .500. He's 0-6 lifetime on Pudge.

"Hey Pudge, maybe you should go back to Drow Ranger bro." Recite his stats to him. Spell out in plain English how far out of his league he is and how bloated his MMR is from playing one ezmode OP hero over and over. "Least Played mode is not for you." Deep down his friends would've known I was speaking some truth. If only I had checked Dotabuff!

Anyway, mostly just a rant here, but you're never going to win an argument in a Dota game. It doesn't matter how wrong they are, they're not going to change their mind even a tiny bit.

I've found that utilizing the mute feature is the single best thing you can do to improve your dota2 playing experience.

Can't believe how mad people are getting over DBR

If you played HoN you should have no trouble believing it. Visible PSR made that community even worse than the Dota community, which says something. Players would flame the everliving crap out of people with 20 lower PSR and bully them into playing support. People would insta-leave games if they got lower PSR players on their team. On the occasions where the PSR differences were actually large, it also gave away unnecessary information pre-game about who to pressure for easy kills.

Granted, as long as it's not integrated in the client, we're still a while from that shitfest, but I doubt it will take long before a DBR overlay gets modded in.

Once you get to character select don't you get a leave if you leave the game? So unless you have time to check all 4 teammates while people load then you're stuck with it.

It isn't like HoN where there are lobbies and people singled other people out from even playing their games. I don't care if someone thinks I'm an asshat once the game starts, because I assume everyone is until I see otherwise.

I fail to see how judging your teammates before the game improves your playing experience, really. If anything, Dota is even less by the book than any other clone, comebacks and weird lanes happen constantly, there isn't really set meta for solo queue, with one important caveat: You have to want to make it work.

Update Notes - January 23, 2013
- Added Troll Warlord!
- Added All Random to matchmaking!
- Added tournament calendar view to the Watch tab!

GAMEPLAY
- The pathfinder now ignores obstructions that are due to units that are not visible to the pathing unit.
- Crystal Maiden: Fixed Freezing Field channeling ending if you get purged.
- Dazzle: Fixed Poison Touch slow and stun applying if BKB was used after it had been applied.
- Drow: Fixed Drow Illusions carrying the double bonus from Marksmanship
- Keeper of the Light: Fixed Chakra being castable on magic immune allies.
- Keeper of the Light: Fixed Manta dispelling Mana Leak.
- Lifestealer: Fixed Rage not removing certain buffs that BKB does (Empower, Haste, etc).
- Medusa: Fixed Mana Shield happening after Stout/Vanguard damage block rather than before.
- Meepo: Fixed Poof considering dead illusions as valid destinations.
- Morphling: Fixed Replicate dying if Morphling dies with Aegis.
- Timbersaw: Fixed Whirling Death sometimes taking too long to cast when used with Timber Chain.
- Timbersaw: Fixed Chakram cast time behavior.
- Visage: Fixed Attack and Defense type on level 3 Familiars.
- Warlock: Fixed Aghanim Warlock Golems not doing enough damage.
- Fixed MKB dealing bonus damage to towers.
- Fixed ground courier being able to block lanes and surround Roshan.
- Fixed being able to lifesteal more life than the target has.
- Fixed Diffusal Blade cooldown being 12 seconds instead of 8.

UI
- Added Practice vs Bots option in the Play menu.
- Added a privacy setting in the UI so that players can specify whether they want to allow external 3rd party websites to be able to access their match history (defaulted to private).
- Least Played mode now eliminates each players' top 40 played heroes, up from 20.
- Added completion cost to shop item tooltips, displayed if the player has one or more components.
- Added tooltips to the shop category buttons.
- Fixed the Repick option disappearing too soon.
- Fixed bug where buffs would sometimes display an incorrect duration sweep.
- Bringing up the combat log will now hide the killcam.
- Fixed bug where sometimes spectators would, when inspecting a player, not see thier cosmetic items.
- Fixed bug where Dota 2 would not track changes in the Windows default audio device.
- When spectating a game in directed, hero chase, or player view, the mouse will no longer be locked to the window.

STORE
- Added new item sets for Lone Druid and Necrolyte.

BOTS
- Added Necrolyte bot.
- Added Witch Doctor bot.
- Sven will no longer War Cry when doing a casual retreat.
- Fixed Viper bot not harassing with his unique attack modifier.
- Fixed bug in Sandstorm avoidance that always made bots maximalliy avoid it.
- Adjusted the values so that bots are more willing to tanking creeps at high health/tankability ratings.
- Bots now take into account cleaving when determining what neutral camps they're willing to farm.
- Death Prophet bot will now use Carrion Swarm more when laning.
- Fixed bug that would cause bots to fountain-dive sometimes.

WORKSHOP
- Added a "Show Low-Res Model" checkbox that toggles between showing the low & high resolution LODs for imported models when in Loadout camera view.
- Now automatically switches to showing low-res models in the Day/Night camera views, and high-res models in the Portrait camera view (since that's how they're used by the game).
- Fixed "Other" submission type displaying a "failed to find content file" when submitting.
- Fixed Preview not resetting background properly when moving from Portrait to Day/Night view.
- Fixed Preview losing hero rotation when going to and from Portrait view.
- Fixed a case where the Add Wearable slot buttons didn't work for some slots on some heroes (like Sven).

The patch that killed dotabuff rating

Damn, take that DBR.

Is Troll a niche hero like other recent additions?

ALL RANDOM OMGERDS.

So happy.

Edit: Looking at all the notes, this was a damn good patch. Fixing the DBR outrage, Least Played mode, All Random finally added, new hero, plus lots more.

Its good to know I can still get excited about Dota patches.

Edit 2: Even more excited about this pathing "fix". Might take a little getting used to but still good.