Dota 2 Discussion (~Boston Majors & Road to TI7~)

[Riddler]

Played a couple of games today for the first time in many years. Two games with 3-4 hardcore feeders on my team and one with an obviously cheating Tinker on the other team.

And then one game where we won in less than 20 minutes and the enemies just stood there and died in the lane.

Good ol' Dota, I don't know why I do this to myself and play solo games.

One thing was different though since last i played, people didn't scream at each other constantly. Not sure whether this is an improvement or not.

 

[Dr1f7]

One thing was different though since last i played, people didn't scream at each other constantly. Not sure whether this is an improvement or not.

guess u weren't playing with me

 

[The_Mask]

If any of you are playing in the NA, and want to party with a scrub, let me know.

 

[smaug]

My dad stopped playing this after the recent patch. After 20000 hours he’s finally quit.

Was this update that shitty and how’s the player base? The_Mask

 

[ind33d]

My dad stopped playing this after the recent patch. After 20000 hours he’s finally quit.

Was this update that shitty and how’s the player base? The_Mask

it's funny because i played a little dota customs and always thought the bigger map was a great idea, but then they added all the other retarded shit too

 

[Great Deceiver]

It's a good update IMO, but the game's population has been dwindling for many years now. Some of those who quit come back for a big patch like this, but in a couple of weeks all that's going to remain are the usual psychos.

I love Dota as a game, I've always loved it. However, playing it is an insufferable experience, even with friends if there's even a minimum skill discrepancy between them.

In addition, I've always felt that ranked solo ladder made everything 10x worse - my favourite time with Dota 2 was before ranked existed, so late 2011 or early 2012. Every time I come back this impression is reinforced. Now I just play regular games about once a week and mute everyone on both teams.

It's a good update because there's a lot of neat/experimental things and it's the first patch in a long time that feels like Icefrog had something to do with it. I like the new map, how perfect vision isn't as prevalent (there's some finesse to the warding game again) and how there's different things you can do to come back that aren't necessarily braindead. The aspect I like the least are the new non-attacking bosses that hand out shards.

I'll probably play very casually for a little while longer until everything's 100% figured out by poopsockers and everyone goes back to raging all the time at even the tiniest deviation from established builds and/or upon first blood. Then I'll stop playing for another couple of years.

 

[Dr1f7]

Now I just play regular games about once a week and mute everyone on both teams.

you're missing out; at least half the fun is being toxic af to all 9 other players. nothing beats pausing the game when you gank, or pinging a teammate's item and calling their mom a hoe etc..
any other game you'd get banned for this shit based valve is one of the last holdouts

 

[Great Deceiver]

Been there, done that.

 

[The_Mask]

My dad stopped playing this after the recent patch. After 20000 hours he’s finally quit.

Was this update that shitty and how’s the player base? The_Mask

Well... I kind of liked it, at first, because it reminded me of the DotA Allstars we had back in 2003/2004, when people used to play shit like Lich mid, because they were just that fucking good with Lich, for example. So... what happened was that a lot of people were using their best hero(es), and trying their best to figure out what the heck is happening.

But then, as it almost always happens, people watch pro-dota, and they think they can do what pro players can do. So Bristleback and Medusa are coming up a lot. A fair amount of the standard "these heroes are good no matter what, because of the pure concept" are making an appearance: Doom, Batrider, a bit of Wisp here and there.

But, in reality, that is not dota's issue. Dota's issue is the decade they didn't have a tutorial set-up. The fact that they tried to make it a slightly longer Turbo game. And the fact that smurfs aren't punished.



The last one being the *most* egregious. No matter your rank, you'll bump into unpunished smurfs, who are actually proud of destroying the game they love, not understanding that their smurfing is actively killing the player-base.


So... the update is ok, I guess. It doesn't treat the diseases dota has. Just some of the symptoms. I don't blame your dad for quitting.

 

[Dr1f7]

My dad stopped playing this after the recent patch. After 20000 hours he’s finally quit.

Was this update that shitty and how’s the player base? The_Mask

The last one being the *most* egregious. No matter your rank, you'll bump into unpunished smurfs, who are actually proud of destroying the game they love, not understanding that their smurfing is actively killing the player-base.

tbf dunking on noobs is hilarious

 

[Absinthe]

I agree with most of what you said Absinthe, and that's a good breakdown of sniper. But on some things I disagree:

Sniper actually touches on what I dislike about new DotA. Carrying as Sniper really is all about understanding how carrying is relative and isolating moments when you are strong and they are weak and doing damage to widen the gap, put them off their game, and snowball before they can close it rather than trying to emerge with your late-game items and right clicking your enemies into oblivion. Sniper can't survive a hard carry farming competition with his lack of scaling. He has to wreck the enemy team and enemy carry before they get farmed and push their progress back enough that the Sniper can continue to outgrow them. But gold/exp/etc growth and comeback gains are much more guaranteed now and earlygame items are weaker, so it's harder to throw the enemy team off their game enough that you can claim a win.

Zeus gets a jump, to remove his only weakness.

Zeus's bigger weaknesses were BKB and Khadgar's Pipe of Insight, but the jump is indeed dumb. It removes positioning considerations from Zeus by letting him jump in and out of position and it conveniently debuffs the nearest hero with massive movespeed and attack speed slows. That's just wrong. Makes me feel like I'd need to burn a BKB charge or a Lotus Orb to effectively gank Zeus if I don't have a silence or disable. They also raised Zeus's base MS from 295 to 315 and he has another +20 ms awaiting him as his level 10 talent. That's also messed up. The addition of invis-revealing to his lightning bolt is also something I'm not really on board with. It diminishes the point of invis wards and makes him a very effective de-warder without any real investment.

Pipe has been an underwhelming item for a while now. I don't think I've seen a lot of pipes built at the last major (if any?) despite Zeus being a semi-popular pick and magic damage being high in general. It's too expensive and doesn't do enough for the price. And the offlaner has mostly become another core anyway, so it's cheaper to just buy another bkb. Another thing was that Zeus used to have mana issues throughout the whole game. Nowadays mana is not a problem. So you can go Zeus support and if he forces a bkb, he did his job already.

At top brackets you're more likely to see a lot of BKBs being used smartly, which is already a good counter to Zeus in addition to all the other shit it's good for. But in a regular game if the enemy team has heavy magic damage going on, a Pipe will do huge things to teamfights, assuming you have the TPs to reliably appear in a teamfight in time. The problem with Pipe is that it's a big investment for a hard counter to magic damage with a health regen bonus that has become much less valuable thanks to free regen of newer versions, and the more magic-heavy the enemy team is, the more extra BKBs on team start to look good, not to mention that pros can tailor their items better to general survival as well as disable and play around Zeus at the right moments. Pipe is what you do when your team has a significant problem with magic damage and isn't deviating enough from their builds or playstyles to fix it.

Windrunner can move and attack during her ult. She could always do that. The only difference was that it was very easy to break ult if you weren't paying attention. Now you can switch targets and shit while retaining ult if you go back to your original target. Honestly, this wasn't a bad change. Razor can also move and attack during his link. Pretty sure he could always do that, ever since he got static link.

No, Razor definitely couldn't attack and move in the past. Windranger aswell. You had to stop to attack.

I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that moving or attacking was disabled or somehow broke those abilities. You're right about those heroes being able to attack while moving now.

Eh, old ult was more of a "lol I don't need items" thing. Between Precision aura and Marksmanship Drow was a pretty hard hitter with good attack speed with zero investment. The new Marksmanship giving bonus agi as a percentage of DR's current agi is pretty odd though, but the big convenience is the new Multishot giving Drow a free AoE ability when previously she had none.

Disagree. The armor ignore is way stronger as a "lol i don't need items thing" than + flat agility. And she still gets bonus agi anyway.

Armor ignore is more relevant later on. Old Marksmanship means Drow becomes a powerhouse early on. In DotA the ability to snowball from earlygame onwards is frequently more valuable. Of course, in new DotA snowballing isn't quite what it used to be, as the game has become much more forgiving with its comeback mechanics, GPM, boosted exp, regen, etc.

IceFrog left somewhere between 2016 - 2017... and you can tell.

Nah, this is still very much his style. People were speculating that he had left because the updates started feeling safe and conservative. This is basically just the sequel to 7.00 when he introduced talents, backpacks, and shrines.

Pretty sure 7.00 is when IceFrog left. In DotA version history, a new major version signifies new leadership. He seems to be back very recently now, but the game is shit nowadays.

 

[Riddler]

The game has been kind of shit since the post ti4 comeback patch, and that is when I suspect icefrog was started to be sidelined, due to these kinds of big, retarded, changes being introduced, which was radically different from how he worked the previous 10 years or so.

The playerbase continued to increase for maybe a year after that but that was mostly momentum, the rot was already there.

All the changes since comeback mechanics have served to homogenise the game. In an effort to make every game enjoyable they've made them all boring because they all play the same and all heroes play the same.

It may be that pro Dota is still varied (I don't really think so) but scrub Dota (<5k mmr maybe) certainly isn't. Strategy no longer exist.

Then there are the other issues people have touch upon here with smurfs and cheaters, but matchmaking itself has been fundamentally broken for quite some time and while it seems to me that this most recent patch works to alleviate this.

Just take a look at this picture of mmr distribution: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comm...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

This issue has existed for years and has destroyed enjoyment of the game far more than smurfs possibly could and I suspect a good amount of the Smurf accusations were just due to a completely broken matchmaking system matching people of completely different skill levels in the same game almost every game.

Even if the recent changes seem to allievtate things it seems to me that a lot of the damage is already done. Many many games still need to played and people rutinely get placed in very inaccurate brackets and need to play a lot of games to be placed accurately, destroying games all along the way (and also having to play in unfun ways to maintain a high win rate) if they bother but most likely they just drift away from the game.

 

[pqt]

Yes IceFrog does not make mistake.

Moved to a big company, got into a relaxed work culture, wife and kids, IRL new hobbies with your new big fat paycheck... You know things can affect your vision.

I don't know him but people talk like they think all the balance mess is not because of IceFrog need a fanboy tag.

 

[luj1]

Great patch. Tbh the game is the best it ever was. Good time to jump back in

If anyone played Dota Imba or similar scenarios, this is what the game has become. Dota on steroids

 

[luj1]

the game's population has been dwindling for many years now

It dwindled for about 20% from the 2016 peak

player no. oscillates between 400k (average) and 800k (peak) compared to 7 years ago (600k average and 1 million peak)

which is not really "dwindling", its doing pretty great for a 12 year old game

CSGO and Dota have been cemented as the 1st and 2nd most active games on Steam for a decade

 

[Lucumo]

Armor ignore is more relevant later on. Old Marksmanship means Drow becomes a powerhouse early on. In DotA the ability to snowball from earlygame onwards is frequently more valuable. Of course, in new DotA snowballing isn't quite what it used to be, as the game has become much more forgiving with its comeback mechanics, GPM, boosted exp, regen, etc.

Ulti used to be +12, +24 and +36 agility, right? At least before they changed it to a percentage to insta-kill creeps.

And yeah, comeback mechanics are awful in every genre, even as a viewer.

If anyone played Dota Imba or similar scenarios, this is what the game has become. Dota on steroids

-wtf

/edit: Also, because it's always been relevant:

 

[Dr1f7]

the only really awful change was re-designing techies. techies used to be such a cool hero and was totally unique to dota but now it's just another basic nuker

 

[Great Deceiver]

Techies was redesigned in 7.31, it's been awhile

 

[Absinthe]

Armor ignore is more relevant later on. Old Marksmanship means Drow becomes a powerhouse early on. In DotA the ability to snowball from earlygame onwards is frequently more valuable. Of course, in new DotA snowballing isn't quite what it used to be, as the game has become much more forgiving with its comeback mechanics, GPM, boosted exp, regen, etc.

Ulti used to be +12, +24 and +36 agility, right? At least before they changed it to a percentage to insta-kill creeps.

Nope. The old version from early 6.50 used to be a flat +15/+30+/45 agi. But before 7.20, it was +40/+60/+80 agi, but it was disabled if there was an enemy hero within 400 units (or halved if there was a hero within that range) since the rework in 6.76 in 2012. So your Drow Ranger just hit level 6 and suddenly has +50 damage (don't forget lvl2 Precision), +40 attack speed, and roughly +6 armor. It was very much an ult designed to make the Drow go "live" as a carry without any real items.

But the percentage chance to insta-kill creeps is actually the older version of Marksmanship, the one that existed from 3.00d until 6.50. Before 3.00 (since Drow was created in 0.60) she also insta-killed creeps, but it was an expensive orb attack you could autocast, like the Frost Arrows that got added much later, without any cooldown, and there was no proc chance involved.

And yeah, comeback mechanics are awful in every genre, even as a viewer.

There's nothing wrong with comeback mechanics in and of themselves. Otherwise it's just a merciless snowball and one team is just waiting to lose for 10-15 minutes (which promotes fountain-hugging cancer), but there is such a thing as too much comeback where you lower the skill ceiling by reducing the ability to effect meaningful change in the game state or force the enemy team off their game plan and make the entire game more boring precisely because it's harder to make a difference now. Not to mention part of the old DotA comeback style was that if you got put off your game, you switched from building expensive lategame items to cheaper, more cost-effective items to close the gap and it usually ensured items had some modicum of versatility (such as damage on support items) so that it was possible to adapt your itemization. But scrubs are bad at that and the new DotA is basically designed for scrubs by scrubs. So the game funnels you into lategame items, nerfs earlygame items, and pigeonholes items more heavily into only being good for specific hero roles (thus punishing you for role-switching or attempting to branch out based on the needs of the game) while accelerating gold and exp gains to guarantee everyone gets their items off.

the only really awful change was re-designing techies. techies used to be such a cool hero and was totally unique to dota but now it's just another basic nuker

That was a noticeably awful change, but far from the only one. You can tell they just hated Techies and finally took it upon themselves to delete the hero from the game with a redesign that made it into something totally different. The only thing they kept of old Techies was the worst version of his land mines ability and they made that trash into his ult.

 

[Lucumo]

Armor ignore is more relevant later on. Old Marksmanship means Drow becomes a powerhouse early on. In DotA the ability to snowball from earlygame onwards is frequently more valuable. Of course, in new DotA snowballing isn't quite what it used to be, as the game has become much more forgiving with its comeback mechanics, GPM, boosted exp, regen, etc.

Ulti used to be +12, +24 and +36 agility, right? At least before they changed it to a percentage to insta-kill creeps.

Nope. The old version from early 6.50 used to be a flat +15/+30+/45 agi. But before 7.20, it was +40/+60/+80 agi, but it was disabled if there was an enemy hero within 400 units (or halved if there was a hero within that range) since the rework in 6.76 in 2012. So your Drow Ranger just hit level 6 and suddenly has +50 damage (don't forget lvl2 Precision), +40 attack speed, and roughly +6 armor. It was very much an ult designed to make the Drow go "live" as a carry without any real items.

But the percentage chance to insta-kill creeps is actually the older version of Marksmanship, the one that existed from 3.00d until 6.50. Before 3.00 (since Drow was created in 0.60) she also insta-killed creeps, but it was an expensive orb attack you could autocast, like the Frost Arrows that got added much later, without any cooldown, and there was no proc chance involved.

And yeah, comeback mechanics are awful in every genre, even as a viewer.

There's nothing wrong with comeback mechanics in and of themselves. Otherwise it's just a merciless snowball and one team is just waiting to lose for 10-15 minutes (which promotes fountain-hugging cancer), but there is such a thing as too much comeback where you lower the skill ceiling by reducing the ability to effect meaningful change in the game state or force the enemy team off their game plan and make the entire game more boring precisely because it's harder to make a difference now. Not to mention part of the old DotA comeback style was that if you got put off your game, you switched from building expensive lategame items to cheaper, more cost-effective items to close the gap and it usually ensured items had some modicum of versatility (such as damage on support items) so that it was possible to adapt your itemization. But scrubs are bad at that and the new DotA is basically designed for scrubs by scrubs. So the game funnels you into lategame items, nerfs earlygame items, and pigeonholes items more heavily into only being good for specific hero roles (thus punishing you for role-switching or attempting to branch out based on the needs of the game) while accelerating gold and exp gains to guarantee everyone gets their items off.

Before your edit, how much older were you talking about? +12/+24/+36 was ~2005/2006, percentage chance to kill was like 2007? Basically like listed here: https://vespenegas.com/dota/heros.html?hero_id=43 (takes a while to load). I did look at that awful DotA 2 fandom website since the old websites seem to all be gone but what's listed there is all messed up and wrong.
I also remember a time when N'aix ulti would make you big, magic-immune and increase your attack speed.

Nah. Comeback mechanics make push line-ups a lot less viable and comeback mechanics make actual comebacks worthless.
Exactly, itemization was a big thing. Initially, I started following builds on forums but soon understood enough that I could adapt on my own. I also basically only played -ar which made builds even more important.

 

[Absinthe]

6.50 was +10/+20/+30. 6.53 until 6.58 was +12/+24/+36. From 6.58 it was +15/+30/+45. For the duration of 6.75 (which lasted 3 weeks in DotA 1 and DotA 2), it was +15/+30/+60. From 6.76 it was +20/+30/+40 and doubled when there is no enemy hero in 375 (later 400) units. From 6.77c onwards, it no longer granted any agility bonus if there was an enemy hero in 375 (later 400) units (so just +40/+60/+80 when enemy heroes are outside 400 range). From 7.20 they reworked it back into a version that instakilled creeps and ignores armor with 20/30/40% proc chance. From 7.23 onwards, the instakill was reworked into bonus damage.

And I beg to differ. There needs to be some way to achieve a comeback or the snowball just results in games being lost early and everyone on the losing side basically giving up or trying to quit. You just can't have the comeback mechanics be so strong that it undermines the ability to achieve real gains and real damage in gamestate.

And yes, itemization was a big thing. You had to be able to adapt not only your items but your playstyle and the abilities you were going for if you wanted to be able to carry the team to victory. I actually became fond of highly adaptable playstyles because it allowed me to switch how I was playing and developing my hero based on how the game was turning out and what my team needed. There were definitely times when I transitioned into carry roles (sometimes into hard carry from hard support, which is not ideal, but when you can tell early on that your carry is a sack of shit and no one else is going to carry either... well, I carried the game to victory) and times when I started supporting hard because I had a team of aggressive glass cannons. There have been games where I built shit like pipe, mek, and vlads just to ensure that my team could plow through the enemy, and that worked well too. And a number of games where I abandoned my team to just go telepusher and take towers and rax faster than the enemy while they are teamfighting against my lousy team. Adaptation is big. Nowadays there's a lot more pigeonholing though.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Build flexibility also has a lot to do with how people perceive the "meta" and how everyone rages if you go a nonstandard route.

Although the game has changed significantly - and I agree that there's a lot more pigeonholing, especially now with these shard dispensers at 20 minutes, I don't think it's "built" around certain predetermined builds. However, there's now this expectation that i.e. position 3 should build tanky aura items and teammates often rage when someone doesn't go that route. Or when a support hero goes for a more damage-oriented build. I think this partly due to the fact that the game was stuck in a deathball push style for too long.

As always, the biggest problem with Dota are the players. Things were much more fun when you could just do your shit without people having a heart attack over it.

 

[Lucumo]

6.50 was +10/+20/+30. 6.53 until 6.58 was +12/+24/+36. From 6.58 it was +15/+30/+45. For the duration of 6.75 (which lasted 3 weeks in DotA 1 and DotA 2), it was +15/+30/+60. From 6.76 it was +20/+30/+40 and doubled when there is no enemy hero in 375 (later 400) units. From 6.77c onwards, it no longer granted any agility bonus if there was an enemy hero in 375 (later 400) units. From 7.20 they reworked it back into a version that instakilled creeps and ignores armor with 20/30/40% proc chance. From 7.23 onwards, the instakill was reworked into bonus damage.

And I beg to differ. There needs to be some way to achieve a comeback or the snowball just results in games being lost early and everyone on the losing side basically giving up or trying to quit. You just can't have the comeback mechanics be so strong that it undermines the ability to achieve real gains and real damage in gamestate.

And yes, itemization was a big thing. You had to be able to adapt not only your items but your playstyle and the abilities you were going for if you wanted to be able to carry the team to victory. I actually became fond of highly adaptable playstyles because it allowed me to switch how I was playing and developing my hero based on how the game was turning out and what my team needed. There were definitely times when I transitioned into carry roles (sometimes into hard carry from hard support, which is not ideal, but when you can tell early on that your carry is a sack of shit and no one else is going to carry either... well, I carried the game to victory) and times when I started supporting hard because I had a team of aggressive glass cannons. There have been games where I built shit like pipe, mek, and vlads just to ensure that my team could plow through the enemy, and that worked well too. And a number of games where I abandoned my team to just go telepusher and take towers and rax faster than the enemy while they are teamfighting against my lousy team. Adaptation is big. Nowadays there's a lot more pigeonholing though.

I looked through old websites via waybackmachine and it seems to be that way. That's weird though because I clearly remember there being changes where creeps would then get some indicator/animation above them when the ultimate proc'ed. Those hero abilities etc apparently really seem to merge together and dates become fuzzy. Like, Smoke of Deceit was introduced in December 2010 and I could have sworn it came out a year or even two earlier. Hm, maybe it's a sign of getting old.

It's a matter of risk/reward. If a pusher teams fails to win/get a big enough advantage, the other team will have the advantage at some point. With comeback mechanics, unless the pusher team won, it will inevitably lose in the end, unless the advantage is gigantic. There is also the issue of power creep/scaling. It didn't use to be that way that you could get gigantic advantages by confining the enemy team to their base. There were some, sure, but not thousands of gold worth (and exp and shards now too).

As always, the biggest problem with Dota are the players. Things were much more fun when you could just do your shit without people having a heart attack over it.

In the good old days people would only complain if you basically griefed with your items or did some stupid laning nonsense (like four players wanting to go safe lane -_-). (Playing badly/feeding excluded, of course.) To be fair, players generally sucked. And the worst players you could just always put on your banlist and kick from your hosted games. Just too bad that creating a new Battle.net account was done in less than a minute...
Ah, complaining about kill-stealing happened a lot too for some reason (mostly unjustified even). Some people really didn't understand the concept of a "team".

 

[Nathir]

Build flexibility also has a lot to do with how people perceive the "meta" and how everyone rages if you go a nonstandard route.

Although the game has changed significantly - and I agree that there's a lot more pigeonholing, especially now with these shard dispensers at 20 minutes, I don't think it's "built" around certain predetermined builds. However, there's now this expectation that i.e. position 3 should build tanky aura items and teammates often rage when someone doesn't go that route. Or when a support hero goes for a more damage-oriented build. I think this partly due to the fact that the game was stuck in a deathball push style for too long.

I think the problem is that today buying the right item matters a lot more than it used to. Damage and gold gain is so high that buying the wrong items means you can't fight properly until you farm another one anyway.

 

[Nathir]

Anyway, tried out the patch, after winning 3 games I got calibrated at 4,2k, which is alright I guess. I actually said to my brother before release, that the patch will add a bunch of random shit all over the map to fight over. It kinda did happen. Bigger map is a good change, the wardspots and vision game are more interesting now, and xp gains make more sense now. Gold gain is still too high and the trend of powercreeping heroes and making them easier didn't stop. The portals should get removed, Tormentors and wisdom runes are alright I guess.

Bkb change is the wierdest change. Bkb was a must buy because of the insane damage and cc, it wasn't broken... Now it still is a must buy anyway. It's just worse, and imo it was an iconic item, changing it like this feels wrong. The way they talked about the stun changes, reminded me of some LoL Dev talk. "Be in control of your hero more!". It doesn't even matter because if you get ganked, everyone has a slow these days. Even AM. And in teamfights you will still die in 1-2 stuns if you don't have teammate that can save you.

All in all, the game is definitely more interesting now, probably better than last patch? But the main problems stay the same. Which is basically that we are playing Turbo mode, disguised as normal mode. Too much damage and mobility, too easy to get gold. It's all about good engages and nuking someone asap or saving them.