DotA Thoughts

DotA is amazing. It’s absolutely amazing and epic. Anyways… see I had a revalation about DotA a while ago when I was tyring to think of the heroes and define their roles and stuff.

See, my primary mistake I think is trying to use stats to determine role. DoTA has three stats, Intelligence, Agility and Strength. My previous thoughts went something like this: Intel: powerful spells, early game nukers. Agility: late gamers, often called “carries” Strength: Mid game, tanks.

But then I realized that you also had pushers, chasers, killers and support. Then I realized something, my entire premises were wrong. See the problem is that stats do not determine role. Abaddon a strength hero is not a tank, he’s support. The same with Treant. Beastmaster, a strength hero can carry. Bloodseeker (agility) is a weird kind of ganker/carry I would assume. Ogre Magi, a strength hero, is a caster/ganker (though not a good one….) anyways… you get the point: stats do not determine role.

So then, what are the roles? What determines the roles? Ahh that is where things get tricky. I think the best way to explain this is that spells and stat gain determine stuff. For instance, a carry needs good attack speed, high damage, and the ability to farm and escape in order to be effective. Drow gets a lot of damage, but doesn’t have good escape mechanisms or good farming techniques. On the other hand, Naga Siren has 2 disables (one is ulti, but still) and mirror images for escape. Mirror images also do a very good job at farming. Abilities determine role.

But anyways, I’ve also been reevaluating the 3 phases of the game and using various other skills I’ve learned to understand how to build a team. See, before, I assumed you’d want a team makeup something like this: 2 str, 2 agi, 1 intel. One agi should be able to carry.

But… that’s crap, honestly. See in reality you want something like this: 2 support, 2 gankers, 1 carry. Support heroes spend lots of gold building wards, crow, and TPs. They don’t need items to work their spells and abilities, so they can get team stuff (like things listed above). Support heroes “support” the team in team battles as well as protect carries early game. Gankers don’t focus on farming so much as they do waiting for the ideal moment to strike and kill an enemy hero. Again, XP and gold are so important for a good ganker. Finally, carries need to farm, farm farm. They get lots of gold and lots of XP so they can build items and easily defeat 2-3 enemy heroes with little to no help from other players. Carries “carry the team to victory.”

So anyways… as a thought experiment I created a possible team matchup that accounts for the bans inherent in a CM match. The thing about CM matches is your team should be flexible and focus on the players’ skills not the hero pickings. My brother is amazing with most Intel heroes, especially support ones, so you shouldn’t pick a specific hero for him to play so much as you should keep in mind 2-3 possible heroes for him to play with. However, here is a team I think has a pretty good chance of getting played in the café. Now all I need to do is actually get my teammates to let me play as the Captain for one match…

Support: Tormented Soul, Treant Protector
Carry: Beastmaster (really carry/support)
Ganker: Chaos Knight
Initiator: Magnataur

Initiators aren’t something I referenced above, but basically they are another role that is not as important, but still there. Initiators need good AoE spells that give the rest of the team a chance to move in and deal lots of damage. For Magnatur this would require getting Blink, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Boots, Blink, Battefury (or even just perseverance), set.

Possible swaps include Rhasta or CM for Treant, and beastmaster will be swapped for any better carry (Naga Siren, PotM) assuming players/bannings provide.

Dota and God

So I played dota today; first GOOD games I've played in like a month or so.

First game was five on five, me and my friends against some other guys in the cafe. We lost, very badly. the game lasted seventy minutes because they messed around with us (plus we got two really good ganks on them that were amazing) and let us see if we could win with two of our lanes destoryed; we couldn't.

And now, it wasn't completely our fault... they had broodmother and she was FREAKING VICIOUS. In ten minutes she destroyed the 2 mid lane towers. Her creeps owned us. After about twenty minutes into the game I realized that this wouldn't have been a problem if I had picked Pit Lord or my bro had played and picked Lich or some AoE Intel dude (who was practing for his first "concert" with some friends).

Second game was three-on-three. I played Treant Protector, Saad and Derek played Rhasta and Voidwalker repectively. We one that one, though it took us some time. Essentially we one because their carry, Bone Fletcher, was played by Mukit and we all knew how to counter Mukit's Bone Fletcher; late game he just wasn't that big of a threat. Then, we'd combine ultis in late game and people would just DIE. 2 Overgrowths (I had refresher), Chrono, and Serpent War... three heroes dead easily. We had to build up, but it worked out very well.

On a somewhat more important note: the pastor gave an excellent sermon today. Very good sermon. I think two things he mentioned that need to be repeated over and over again: If the Gospel is so important, why do only foreigners follow it? And if the gospel is so important why do Christians only share it with the poor (not entirely true, but I will say the mission organizations here in Dhaka do very little with the Upper Class - its all about the poor).

DotA

So on Friday as normal, I played Dota with my friends. This time I had a really good time. Both games were well balanced and it easily could have gone either way; that’s something that doesn’t happen every game.

First game I played Avernus and let me just say how much I love this hero. He really is a good unit. His passive rocks for chasing, his heal/nuke is good for support and his shield is by far one of the best spells in the game. That and borrowed time is just… epic. 7 seconds with scepter at lvl 16. AMAZING.

Anyways… I won that game. It was interesting. 4v4 and my team had Bone Fletcher, Bounty Hunter and Viper, plus me. Our problem was that in the mid game me being a strength hero, I wanted to push and fight in team battles. But my allies, being the frail agi heroes that they were didn’t. Bounty and Fletcher were all over the map with windwalk and viper (played my Manik) was played in Manik’s usual carry style: slowly, surely creep in the lanes and never stay anywhere too long so that he can’t get ganked.

The second game I played Spirit Breaker, another hero I really like. Its really fun running around the map at 417 MS and bashing people o death. Once again the game was really balanced. My team didn’t have any support hero or real carry, but the opposing team had an axe who played badly (instead of him, viper ended up the tank. Go figure). That being said, in the end my team lost (after 70 minutes of fighting!) because Viper and Omniknight were just too good of a combo. Viper had Khadgar’s Pipe, Omniknight had repel and his ulti and that meant that Viper was pretty much unkillable for much of the team battles. Still I had some pretty amazing moments in that game. I charged axe from my base and killed him before anyone could come for help, that was fun. Then Twice I had amazing battles with Specter. First time we both started at the same amount of health, but he was doing more damage. It was after a team battle so neither of us had much mana. However, I risked that my regen was good enough for me to be able to charge at the last minute. It was close, but when I had about 200hp I killed specter with my charge of darkness.

Second time similar situation. Little mana and low health, except this time Specter was attacking me. I knew I was gonna die, but I hoped that if I turned and attacked I’d manage to get a bash. I didn’t, but I swear if I had gotten 1 bash Specter would have been killed.

Anyways… really awesome time I had. I can tell that I’m improving in DotA, and learning my play style. I play strength heroes, it would appear. I mean, I can play agility heroes and probably should branch out into some Intelligence heroes, but basically I like Strength heroes. Avernus, Nightstalker, Spirit Breaker, Pit Lord, Earthshaker (need to practice with him a bit), Admiral, those are my favorite heroes, all of them are strength heroes.

Anyways… nothing much else going on. I go to Thailand on Wendesday, that should be a fun holiday. I’ll write more later.

Played a Pro

So… yesterday I played DotA as usual, but with one exception: two of the games were played with a DotA pro (whom Jacob called Werewolf… his screen name was ).

Anyways, two games, first one was All Random. I repacked Ogre Magi and proceeded to work with Manik (who played Razor… not amazingly well but he did okay). The two of us faced off against Specter and Phantom Assassin in what was actually a very heavy killfest.

Now, the pro player, werewolf, played Tinker and faced off against Derick (forget who he was playing…). In the words of Derick, werewolf had “constant Double Damage”. I never watched them but I assumed he had a bottle and put wards around the runes and was grabbing them like crazy. The first thing Tinker did was farm travel, and he then proceeded to move around the map killing and pushing like the amazing player he was. Twice he just walked (or TPed) into my lane and killed people. He was amazing.

The thing was, Tinker is an early game nuker/ganker dude. As the game continues he gets worse because, like most Intel heroes his spells just don’t do enough damage late game. So, we were able to push long and hard and pwn them in the long run. Still, it was a good match.

So… the second game was AP. I think I knew from the beginning my team was gonna lose because it was AP. Anyways, we picked Lich, Sandking and Drow and then Werewolf pulled out Invoker. We then picked Naga Siren (cuz Manik is epic with her) and I took Tidehunter because we needed an AoE stunner. We faced off against Treant (Mumu), Jakiro (my bro), Earthshaker (Saad), Invoker (werewolf) and Skeleton King (Marcus… someone I’ve never played with before but appeared to be Derick’s friend).

From the beginning, we were going to lose. There wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it really. Werewolf played Invoker FRIGGIN GOOD. I mean seriously… he knew all 11 (I think 11… not sure) of Invokers spells and on top of that made the most imba build for him. I think his first item was like… heart of tarrsque. He also made Guinsoo and Shiva IIRC.

Oh… and Saad… Saad was a ever evil Earthshaker who built and played his hero perfectly. At least twice he used his blink dagger and ulti combo to get like a double kill.

Anyways… we managed to make the game last seventy-five minutes, but in the end we knew we would win. It was really inevitable.

So… what can I say? Well first off… I felt like I did really horrible in both games. Maybe if I had played a hero I’m more comfortable with, like Nightstalker, Razor, Dark Terror (actually he has a new name but I forget what it is) or Dragon Knight then I would have done better. However, I don’t think it would have mattered that much really because I just died a lot. I couldn’t farm because Invoker would nuke me if I did and I couldn’t kill because I was often the first death in the battles, as a result I had a crap build. It took me the entire game to build one battlefury and one heart. If I had played well I would have managed to get Power Treads, Heart, Battlefury, Satanic and maybe even Buzi or Hyperstone.

So… what does this teach me? It means I need to learn to play Tidehunter better. Play him with a Blink Dagger, actually. I think that might have helped some. Not a lot, but some.

Anyways… it was a good game. If given the chance I’d love to play with the guy again.