Finally! I'm a heavy Lion user in pub games! Now he actually looks like an evil big cat!
Big update on the test server.
Added 3~ new tutorials for new players! Awesome, off to play it now.
AND
Dota 1's 6.78c parity update is here.
Update Notes - July 1, 2013
TUTORIAL
- Enabled Mechanics II, Laning I, and Laning II.
- Added Limited Hero mode for playing with bots and matchmaking.
UI
- Added panel for displaying and removing pending guild invitations.
- The International: Fixed not being able to request your ticket information by clicking on the ticket stub on the top bar.
- The International: Fixed bug that prevented the confirmation email to be sent after consuming an event ticket.
VISUALS
- Updated Lion's head.
- Fixed a bug where character items could sometimes show up incorrectly to third parties if the data couldn't be obtained from the owner. Most often seen on items like Pudge's hook.
- Fixed refraction based effects showing up in some character previews where they should not.
AUDIO
- Fixed Death music bug.
COMMUNITY
- Implemented more lenient algorithm for communication bans that takes into account how many games are played.
- Reset communication ban lengths if a player has not been banned in two weeks.
- Reset all existing communication bans as part of the recent algorithm changes.
GAMEPLAY
- Alchemist: Chemical Rage bonus HP reduced from 300/600/900 to 250/500/750
- Batrider: Flamebreak cooldown increased from 11 to 14
- Gyrocopter: Attack range reduced from 375 to 365
- Io: Tether movement bonus decreased from 20% to 17%
- Lifestealer: Rage cooldown increased from 15 to 17 seconds
- Treant Protector: Living Armor damage block instances from 7 to 4/5/6/7
- Team 2 now bans second instead of first in Ban Phase #2. (All other phases and orders are the same)
Ban Phase #1 No Changes [Team A/B/A/B]
Pick Phase #1 No Changes [Team A/B/B/A]
Ban Phase #2: Changed [From Team B/A/B/A to Team A/B/A/B]
Pick Phase #2: No Changes [Team B/A/B/A]
Ban Phase #3: No Changes [Team B/A]
Pick Phase #3: No Changes [Team B/A]
Lion finally looks appropriately evil (per his lore), rather than some random fat troll.
Another lifestealer nerf?
Also, I thought the old Lion looked better.
Played a few games last night and queued as 5... wow, lost every game. =(
I have a question, is there a hatchet in this game? Or an item that allows a melee to use it to hit a creep from far away every 30 seconds or so? I only ask because I was forced to mid after buying items on Sand King, and that was annoying. Good thing I was against a Devo and despite picking my stun level 1, I ended up dominating him anyway.
There's Quelling Blade which is the HoN-equivalent of Hatchet.
It doesn't have the ranged attack. But it chops down trees to juke.
I had to look up wtf 'Devo' is. That's Pudge. Sand King owns Pudge mid due to Caustic Finale (Pudge can't even approach the wave). I don't know why you need Hatchet in SK vs Pudge.
That being said, Stout Shield is amazing if you're melee facing a ranged enemy. Poor Man's Shield is outright OP if you're agility hero. You absorb damage like no tomorrow.
Oh, I didn't need a quelling blade in that game, I just wanted to know what it was called. Can you not target creeps with it? Does it add a bit extra damage to creeps? I can't see the link at work, so I can't check myself. =(
I wasn't planning on going mid, so I leveled stun first and not Caustic Finale. I was planning on roaming, but they decided I should mid instead. =( I really would prefer a hatchet, shield, and some tree eaters, but that isn't what I bought. =(
Were you playing against comps or directly against other players? If you're new, I'd recommend playing the "co-op versus bot" matches until you're level 15-20'ish (set the bot setting to "unfair"). It will give you time to test out the items, etc. without having players screaming at you (well they may still scream, but generally they don't care as much as a versus match against other people).
It will also give you a chance to practice your last hitting / deny hits, etc.. I played the "co-op versus bots" until I was familiar enough with all of the items that I had most of the builds memorized, and just started back into the versus modes.
I was directly against other players. I played a lot of Dota and HoN, so I am fairly caught up on mechanics. The item and hero names are still a bit strange, but I know most of them. Some items I used the Dota name in HoN (like BKB, Blink Dagger, Basher) because I was used to that and the new name was easier.
That's what I tried initially too; I had played some HoN, some LoL, and played DOTA for a few years back in my Warcraft3 days, but a lot had changed in between when I had played versus the current DOTA2 version, so I had my "breaking in" period chiefly against AI to practice animation cancelling, last hitting, item builds on different heroes, etc..
I found the "Unfair" difficulty setting was good to practice some base item builds to experiment around with, and the AI actually performs last hits / deny hits pretty decently (especially laning against Sniper - trying to last hit is a pain).
The funny part is that once I got used to the basics, playing against actual players made me realize that the bots on Unfair was actually better at last hitting / denying than some players I went against with 100+ games. So far even though I only have 7 wins I actually was better than some of the players with 100-200 games, probably from my past experience with DOTA from ages ago. It sounds like you have a ton of experience from those other games though, so jumping in with both feet may be the better approach in your case.
The hardest part of learning DotA 2 for anyone that played HoN/DotA is learning what all the spell effects look like now.
Yeah, pretty much. I really dislike the Dota 2 art style though. =(
hey Zeze what happened items aura's which we used to see in early stages of dota 2, i used 2 love shiva's aura. they were removed bcoz of copyright issues???
Nice! That's what makes this crazy game a crack.
I remember one amazing Dota game I played no less than 5 years ago. I still remember it.
I was Pit Lord (Abyssal Underlord in Dota 2) and it was one of those 80+ min games with big swings. All of our rax were down (Mega creeps) and we only razed 1 of theirs. 3 of my allies died and our throne was about to be ran over with 982734 mega creeps and 5 heroes.
It was pretty much over and we all GG'd. But right when my allies respawned, I used my ultimate as the last ditch effort. Pit Lord's ultimate is AOE Boots of Travel. Five of us suddenly showed up right at their throne and we just outright destroyed it- with OUR throne barely surviving with 130~ hp. They were all like wtf.
That game I realized how important positioning is in Dota. It's not just about gold, items, or exp.
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Nyx is ridiculously strong. He's overbuffed and still OP in pubs (finally slowed down in pro scene). He has the HIGHEST base regen in the game- 10 times more than others.
You can feel how OP this is when you're trading hits at level 1-5 aggressively without a care. The enemy reels from it hard by constantly eating heal, while Nyx just shrugs it back to HP in no time. There's a saying in Reddit- if you random Nyx with random gold... it's like cheating.
Good info on Nyx, didn't realize that!
I was just watching a crazy match:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OZ7HKhHV-oU#t=650s
People are saying this is "classic Chinese DOTA" play; it's strange watching the entire team basically support the one hero. Watching the humongous number of kills the anti mage has just a few minutes into the game really boggled my mind.
when i stated dota 2 i played on Eu servers for 1st 800 games after that i started playing on sg servers bcoz i get almost half ping there.
there is lot of difference b/t how western dota(America and eu) and asian dota.
E1 when u watch competitive dota u see this a lot.
in eu games there are more tactical pushes and ganks, whereas in asian games its like gank gank gank like crazy dogs.
so say at 15 mins in eu teams score will be like 8-14 and 5 towers, whereas in asia its like 15-22 and 2 towers,
buy ticket for asian tournaments was fun bcoz of so many kills people gets lots of drops.
another difference is that in sg u will see lots of supports farming specially if they go mid solo.
like lion-lina farming 4 daggers instead of supporting.
i hardly saw this in eu.
supports 1st priority is chick/warding there.