DOTA 2 Catch-all

It's too bad more from LoL didn't come over, I had a very big pool of very talented players, but they are sticking to that it seems.

I think wards are under tools?

Happytime Harry wrote:
casktapper wrote:
Happytime Harry wrote:

I would be interested in the DP hair, and if i could somehow persuade you to trade a ward :)

Would you trade your spare Jugg healing ward for the DP hair? Just trying to pick something you have multiples of.

Most of those wards were purchased in moment of weakness, so I don't think I ready to trade any of them yet.

Done. I was going to buy a ward, but for the life of me I can't find them in the store haha. Tips on that, and I would buy my own since I haven't had one drop.

They are just a few pages down on the equipment page. After the polycount stuff. I thought they'd been yanked myself a few weeks ago and after I found them again I impulse bought.

Honestly anything in my inventory, doubles or not, are up for grabs if it isn't a hero I play. I am looking for stuff for my most played heroes, so feel free to browse. I have next to nothing for Skeleton King, Disruptor, and PL.

Most played can be found here: https://dotabuff.com/players/43558337

Happytime Harry wrote:

It's too bad more from LoL didn't come over, I had a very big pool of very talented players, but they are sticking to that it seems.

Maybe when it launches officially. I think this is going to launch huge and once the casual numbers are there, more of the competitive scene will switch.

Nice Faceless-ing last night cask! Sorry if I blathered a bit.

And the game before that. I guess I'm just used to playing with our regular group -- didn't notice that our mid was waay lower level than the rest of us.

Atomicvideohead wrote:

Nice Faceless-ing last night cask! Sorry if I blathered a bit.

And the game before that. I guess I'm just used to playing with our regular group -- didn't notice that our mid was waay lower level than the rest of us.

Ya, and I had a super off night. I talked to cask a little after the game about chronosphere. I can't think of another more risk/reward ult that will have your teammates yell at you if you misplace it by even a few units.

Atomicvideohead wrote:

Nice Faceless-ing last night cask! Sorry if I blathered a bit.

And the game before that. I guess I'm just used to playing with our regular group -- didn't notice that our mid was waay lower level than the rest of us.

Thanks. After supporting the first two matches, it was nice to go carry. And it seemed to be what we needed to fill things.

Never worry about giving suggestions. I take those pretty much in stride. I just ask that you don't get too annoyed if I don't take all that advice automatically. As for the quelling blade, I found I was able to get most last hits when I was in position, so I don't necessarily like picking up QB in those situations. His base damage is decent and I found his attack animation and movement very comfortable. And I ended up maxing backtrack first instead of time lock just because I was harassed so much in lane. Prior to buying the BKB, I really did have a couple situations where it would have been useful, but after I had it, I rarely needed it. Thanks for the deso suggestion, it was the definitely the right choice at the time and I think that really helped push us over the edge after a few bad teamfights.

I got a couple decent chronos off, but there were a couple horrendous ones. I can't believe I dropped that one on top of the singing naga. I really was just seeing the opportunity to get 3 or 4 of them at once and was thinking that naga would stop the song when she saw the chrono. Which Harry probably would have had I not hit him with it as well.

---

As for the previous game, video, I will confess that I don't react very well to the more complaint oriented direction you sometimes use when you get frustrated. Things like "I guess no one cares about the fed Spectre" doesn't prod me into action. I tend mostly to ignore things like that, though I shouldn't always. I'd respond better to a proposed plan of action. You don't have to be the team leader to offer suggestions. I know that I probably get the same way sometimes (and plenty of others do as well), but I know that particular frame of mind has kept us from getting back into games that we could have won.

They got what they wanted, either we lost early bottom tower, or spectre got some pretty easy farm. These things happen unfortunately, and thats why he was very adamant in your faceless game that we try to pull of the same strategy. It is an absolute ideal situation if you can distract their entire team with 3-4 (usually pushers/counter pushers), while your carry gets a few minutes of free farm. In some games , as a carry, you can be like 0-0-1 15 minutes into the game with 100+ CS, and your team hasn't died, which puts you way ahead. Which is also why the bfury is so important in games like that, it turns you into a farming machine.

The quelling blade isn't just for the last hits --- it stacks with the B-fury comment. It just speeds up the farm when you've moved past last hitting to straight up destroying.

I'm not really sure about how I should handle the spectre situation in the future. I'll try to think of how to handle it in the future.

I just know, that if you've put 4 people in a lane, and you're not taking towers, then somethings gone wrong, strategically. It seems to be the most come strat eff up in the intermediate level.

I tend not to take leader stance unless I'm mid, or it's captains mode and I'm captain. I'll try to be more up on the plate as it were. At least in 5 mans.

It's not on you in that case for the most part, it's up to the team to weigh the tower vs farm, and we did a poor job of it. You were vocal about it, and I guess with an actual "captain" to make an executive decision, it snowballed out of control. It was also our first game with those 2, and we didn't know that they would be so receptive to listening to us. I have no problem taking a leadership role, as far as making decisions like, if we want to handle it like that. We had sh*t matchups that game too.

Can I get an invite to the group?

http://steamcommunity.com/id/garden_...

I've never played a MOBA / LOMA / DOTA-clone / whatever-this-genre-is-called. Frankly, hearing how newb-unfriendly the LoL and HoN communitied supposedly are has made me hesitant to try, but I was gifted a DOTA 2 beta key during the Winter Sale, and want to give it a shot.

I did fire this up the other day, and was momentarily excited to see the Learn tab, then annoyed when it was a codex rather than a tutorial bot match. It still looks like a good resource, but not yet and not what I was looking for.

Sounds like Sunday comp-stomp is where I should start.

According to Steam I’ve put over 50 hours into this game already. It’s been very engrossing. I’m still working on my goal of playing with every character, but there are so many! Even after 50+ hours I still have 31 characters left to play.

Spoiler:

Earthshaker
Clockwerk
Dragon Knight
Kunkka
Huskar
Wisp
Pudge
Tidehunter

Morphling
Sniper
Juggernaut
Templar Assassin
Spectre
Razor
Bloodseeker
Nyx Assassin
Meepo
Slark
Medusa
Windrunner

Zeus
Silencer
Ogre Magi
Lich
NecroLyte
Dark Seer
Lion
Queen of Pain
Batrider
Death Prophet
Outworld Destroyer

Garden Ninja wrote:

Can I get an invite to the group?

http://steamcommunity.com/id/garden_...

I've never played a MOBA / LOMA / DOTA-clone / whatever-this-genre-is-called. Frankly, hearing how newb-unfriendly the LoL and HoN communitied supposedly are has made me hesitant to try, but I was gifted a DOTA 2 beta key during the Winter Sale, and want to give it a shot.

I did fire this up the other day, and was momentarily excited to see the Learn tab, then annoyed when it was a codex rather than a tutorial bot match. It still looks like a good resource, but not yet and not what I was looking for.

Sounds like Sunday comp-stomp is where I should start.

I'll point you to a post I made earlier in this thread with some starting points for the new Dota 2 player: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...

Unfortunately Valve hasn't finished the tutorial mode yet, so the only option for new players is starting their own lobbies filled with bots. But, that combined with a little research can help get you off to a good start.

Also, if you message me (or probably cask though I dont want to volunteer), we'll gladly walk you through the basics, to 2nd level stuff.

Looking up games that have been cast by peeps like XV rouge (on youtube), can be entertaining and enlightening.

Maybe I'll get my act together and do a break down of a couple of our games.

Or one of yours if you're curious as to what's going wrong.

Not that I'm some sort of sage.

We should do a rotating leader thing, amongst the willing. And decided ahead of time. That way we have someone watching the map, making sure we don't get out strat'd.

DanyBoy wrote:

According to Steam I’ve put over 50 hours into this game already. It’s been very engrossing. I’m still working on my goal of playing with every character, but there are so many! Even after 50+ hours I still have 31 characters left to play.

After 500 hours (ok, some of that was idling or watching matches) and nearly 400 matches, I still have 25 heroes I've never played in a pub match. Mostly they are (or were) popular, overplayed heroes that I didn't have a lot of interest in playing, and so far when I've pushed myself to knock some names off that list, I haven't enjoyed the heroes too much. Though void was fun yesterday.

edit: Note that the XVRogueGaming tutorial videos and pubs that videohead mentions are linked to in the primer post I linked to above.

In addition to the tutorials, when you feel you have an understanding of the mechanics, watching professionally played, professionally broadcasted games might help you. If you start watching it and are totally lost you probably aren't ready for them yet, but after a certain point seeing really good play and habits can only steer you in the right direction.

Over the many years (at this point its gotta be over 3k matches since DoTA's infancy) I have played every hero, but I will fall into about 10-15 which I most enjoy, and are most proficient at, so don't feel you have to master them all, 2-3 per role is more than enough.

Happytime Harry wrote:

In addition to the tutorials, when you feel you have an understanding of the mechanics, watching professionally played, professionally broadcasted games might help you. If you start watching it and are totally lost you probably aren't ready for them yet, but after a certain point seeing really good play and habits can only steer you in the right direction.

This is great advice. But I might recommend some professionally broadcast pub matches as an entertaining way to watch a match, but also offering constructive criticism for choices from beginner players. XVRogueGaming's pub series: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and Purge's: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... are probably two of the best of these that I've found.

Also, I'm always willing to offer some coaching time to new players who might be interested.

Also, for anyone who is interested in the patch this week, I'll paste the notes below. Highlights include a new hero (Troll Warlord), All Random more, Least Played being upped to top 40 heroes disabled (from 20) and disabling public access to your match history.

- 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).

casktapper wrote:

I'll point you to a post I made earlier in this thread with some starting points for the new Dota 2 player: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...

That looks super useful. Thanks. Could that be added to the OP? I know I'll want to look at those links later, and they'll be easier to find that way.

I'm so glad All Random exists again.

Garden Ninja wrote:
casktapper wrote:

I'll point you to a post I made earlier in this thread with some starting points for the new Dota 2 player: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...

That looks super useful. Thanks. Could that be added to the OP? I know I'll want to look at those links later, and they'll be easier to find that way.

Done.

Atomicvideohead wrote:
Garden Ninja wrote:
casktapper wrote:

I'll point you to a post I made earlier in this thread with some starting points for the new Dota 2 player: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...

That looks super useful. Thanks. Could that be added to the OP? I know I'll want to look at those links later, and they'll be easier to find that way.

Done.

Sweet. Thanks!

H to the ickle wrote:

I'm so glad All Random exists again.

And troll warlord, a week of pubstomping for him.

I just realized that many people may not know about Cyborg Matt's patch breakdown each week, so I thought I'd share the link.

I plan on being on from about 530-930 ET tonight, tomorrow im in boston for the bruins so i wont be on at all, but I'll be looking for games tonight, we'll see if the patch hits, it wasn't in this morning.

I'll be on tonight as well. But, I probably won't make it home until 6pm or later. I'd love to get a 5-man going.

I'll be off sculpting somewhere. Good luck!

IMAGE(http://25.media.tumblr.com/046bc79c86fc7088067e05fcc95259bd/tumblr_mghog5HxUW1r8llkuo1_400.jpg)

I've got to say that after a couple of largely frustrating weeks of Dota, last week was an extremely pleasant change. Going 4-0 helped, but in every match, the pubbies we ended up playing with all spoke/understood English, the majority had microphones and wanted to talk and all of them had at least a basic competence with the game. I think I commended every single person I played with.

Also, dotabuff launched their DBR ratings today. It looks like is similar to an ELO rating based on match history. Currently it is only visible for yourself and the top 50 players. I'm sitting just barely in the Gold tier with 1219, which puts me in the 53rd percentile, which makes me feel a little bit better about having a 48.94% winning percentage. Dotabuff also launched their Plus service at $6/month. The new features are interesting and I use the site pretty much every day. I may try it for a month and see if it's worth it.

edit: Well, it looks like the Valve privacy lock down had a bigger effect than dotabuff thought it would: https://dotabuff.com/pages/2013-01-2.... It's too bad because I feel that dotabuff was being pretty respectful in the way they were approaching these changes.

dotabuff.com wrote:

TLDR:
- We screwed up, are full of regret, and sorry.
- Valve caught us off guard with privacy changes.
- Dotabuff may have to shutdown.
- Private as a default setting is really really bad
- Huge update released. Go check it out.

1635 Platinum, 91% percentile

First 600 games checkpoint.

It's funny to me that in the DoTA2 client, it says i'm like a 2/5 skill with bounty hunter...

IMAGE(http://s7.postimage.org/slsmf5kfv/dotabuff.jpg)

Well now I'm damn curious. Gimme a minute.

Haha, I'm in the 48th percentile(1181). Silver. Figured I'd be a bit higher, but I guess not. Room for improvement I guess.

I wonder how I should let this effect me. I know I spend time on larks from time to time or going full pub. Hmmm. Will the ranks ruin the fun of Dota? Should I jus stick to the heroes I know I can destroy with? Maybe that's why Valve is considering shutting down the info sharing with dotabuff.

Nice Harry, Cask!