: I started playing Dota 2 with the explicit goal of learning the MOBA genre. I had messed around with Dota clones in BW, WC3, and SC2 UMS maps, but only on a casual basis. I had always thought that a game that had only one map where you only control a single unit and where the computer controlled most things could never be a strategic game. I had filed it away with money maps and monster hunter maps as “things you play when you’re burnt out on 1v1.” But when I was watching TI2 I could tell that there was much more to the game than I had realized, and I ended up constantly spamming the ESFI Skype channel with questions about mechanics and the metagame. I found that I enjoyed watching despite being almost totally ignorant about the genre. So, since League was obviously becoming a huge force in the esports scene, and since I get 95% of my esports enjoyment from knowing the ins and outs of the matches as I watch, I decided that I had to throw myself into Dota to further my sports education.
I tend to be a very cerebral game player, and I am always looking for new insights and perspectives. As a result, the way I have played Dota 2 is a bit strange. In general, I have played heroes in chunks of four or five, learning each of them for 20 games and then moving on. It can be frustrating since I stick with a hero no matter how angry they make me and I leave every hero behind no matter how much I like them. But I have found that I learn things much quicker when I focus the scope like this.
I have a very flat "heroes played" graph.
As I have gone through slumps or tilts or plateaus, I have taken breaks to try synthesize all the little tidbits I have learned into some sort of cohesive whole. Otherwise I find that I have to learn the same lessons over and over again as bad habits keep reappearing and I continuously lose hold of the threads that all need to grasp in order to secure something in my mind. Since I had all these notes I figure I might as well put them somewhere in case my random flailings and niave thoughts might amuse people. Ideally I will catch up with the present and provide realtime updates so I will have a log of my progress.
TL;DR Started playing Dota 2, my first Moba, about 5 months ago and was really bad. I play hero-by-hero for ~20 games each and take notes along the way. Here are those notes one chunk at a time.
Update 7/7: Chapter Five finally up! Props to Nalmissra for pointing out that I had totally called the Bloodstone update, proving that Icefrog definitely reads this blog.
Just to show how much of a noob I was at the start, I am including my brief and tragic time spent playing Lycan. My ESFI pals had agreed to hold my hand through a couple games, so they just sent me into the jungle with Lycan, figuring that at least I wouldn’t just feed. I remember in my very first game I spent the first ten minutes trying to farm the hard camp, running back and forth to the fountain to regen before someone pointed out that the different camps had different difficulties. Whoops. Then I blindly ran around the jungle for the rest of the game, constantly tabbing out to google “Dota 2 jungling guides” and “Dota 2 Jungle Noob Basics” before I figured out that the little triangles were where the camps spawned and that they spawned on the :00s. Yes, I knew THAT little. I was so embarrassed at how badly I did that I spent a good 15 bot games just figuring out the mechanics of jungling. Then I played a few matchmaking games, was horrible, and rage quit the game for six months. + Show Spoiler [My Secret Shame] +
I'M SO SORRY. I KNOW BETTER NOW.
This was taken before the performance bar change, which means I was that bad even compared to other players at my skill level, which was was "just installed Dota 2."
The Beginning: Treant Protector
So my very first hero was.... Treant. I played with my ESFI pals again 6-months later and, remembering my previous performance, they told me to play Treant and just focus on healing heroes and towers. We lost, and I soon realized that playing in a group meant that I was playing against people with WAY higher MMR’s than me. That first game I got 6 last hits and 0 denies ALL GAME. And I was actually trying. The next lowest was 52-3, and the top was 214-9. Obviously I was completely out of my league, so I jumped into the solo queue.
Somehow I hadn't gotten better by not playing for 6 months.
Solo queue went about as one would expect. In my first game the leading CS on my team was 50-0 and there were just 3 total denies all game by both sides, so at least I felt like I had a chance. Still, I was bad. Really, really, really, bad. My aggregate k/d for my first ten games was a whopping 17-93-43. My first win was due to an AFK Nyx on the other team at lvl 5, and I still managed to die 16 times. Still, I was learning a lot so I didn’t get disheartened.
Of course, I had no idea at that time that Treant is one of the most derided heroes in the game. There are so many odd things about him that make him a very atypical first hero. He has the absolute worst BAT in the game, the highest starting damage, the second highest strength gain, a global targeted spell, invisibility that persists through abilities, and a very odd ultimate. All of these things ended up strongly shaping my early Dota habits because I decided to play Treant for fifty. Straight. Games. I sometimes think I must be in the top few percentiles of players in terms of Treant games, because who else would subject themselves to that?
But seriously, why isn't mek "core" on Treant by default?
The reason I did this was I figured that if I “mastered” (ha) one hero it would help me work on my fundamentals, which is usually the best way to get better at something quickly. But because I chose Treant, the results were mixed at best. Below is a list of the things I feel like I got out of my Treant Period.
Good:
Global healing really got me in the habit of being map aware.
Having such a big but conceptually simple ult allowed me to think a lot about initiation. Instead of worrying about the blink-in or positioning I got to really focus on the core question: will we win this fight, and why? Because I was often invisible, it gave me a time to judge and consider my team's position, and through many trials and many errors I started to get a sense of the types of things that turn team-fights around.
Playing such a hard support simplified things by removing the question of items for the most part. It is easy to overlook this once you get into it, but the sheer depth of the shop is a huge obstacle for a new player to overcome. As you can see above, I literally got the Dota-2 recommended items 40+ games in a row. I remember I was so proud when I discovered soul ring, which was was the first item I built that strayed from the shop sidebar.
Bad:
The slow attack speed really set me back in last hitting. Combined with the fact that Treant is about as hard of a support as they get, I got very little useful practice in creep score.
The high base damage combined with the invisibility made it way too easy to play lane support. I always had an easy out and an easy in. I hit for so much and I could tank so much damage that it was usually my opponents that had to back off first. These factors combined to make me way overestimate my ability to sustain in a lane later on.
Also, playing such a “joke” hero, even at low MMR, caused lots of bad feelings among my unfortunate teammates. I often got accused of trolling or feeding, but in fact I was just bad, and that was a little bit demoralizing.
By the 50 game mark I was pretty burnt out on Treant. Still, I was determined to play him until I got the (old) performance bar to a 3, which ended up being almost 60 games. Finally it was time to branch out. Here is where I formulated the strategy I have stuck to up until this point. Fifty games was way too much, but I did like learning a hero fairly deeply. I decided I would play heroes in chunks so that I could learn heroes well but still have a bit of variety and flexibility. Remember, by this point I still had never used a stun, farmed a lane, bought a single ward (they scared me), used a nuke, pulled/stacked a creep camp, bought phase boots, or even thought about item selection, so I had a ton more to learn.
Wow that Treant Protector play :p, I usually just random when I get All Pick (queue for AR and AP). Personally I think it's better to learn the game that way, play everything and usually pick a hero for a few games if I like that one. (Veno for me at start, or QoP later)
On April 01 2013 06:48 Itsmedudeman wrote: I'm all for playing heroes over and over to learn them, but treant is one of the most useless heroes to learn.
Ha, I know that now. Hopefully with the play he has gotten recently that will change though!
On April 01 2013 06:48 Itsmedudeman wrote: I'm all for playing heroes over and over to learn them, but treant is one of the most useless heroes to learn.
The 7 instance of 80 damage block on a 15s is pretty sick for early engagements. It's why empire was winning with him, people were focusing on the living armor target.
Wow.. you went from lycan, to treant... to fucking visage? Why didn't any of your ESFI friends just tell you to babysit support as lich? It's easy as crap, helps your lane massively even if you suck just by using sacrifice, and teaches you pretty much all there is to be a good support. Hell, without even being good at the game, you have the potential to carry games as lich in shit-tier MMR simply because he's so good for how easy he is to play.
Visage, on the other hand, is ridiculously hard to play well.
I feel for you, I started my DotA 2 career (my first DotA game) playing mostly with a friend that had 1500 HoN games played and very high MMR in DotA 2.
So I obviously just fed although not as much as you haha, and my kda on dotabuff reflects that on the heroes I played a lot back then. Now 400 games later I actually manage to carry these games at times when he has rough games.
Can't believe you managed to mass that much games on such a unflexible hero like Treant though.
Why u no play Phantom Lancer, his illusions are blue too I think picking a role to master (like carry or support) is more efficient and fun than massing 50 games with one hero though.
On April 01 2013 08:32 boon2537 wrote: Why u no play Phantom Lancer, his illusions are blue too I think picking a role to master (like carry or support) is more efficient and fun than massing 50 games with one hero though.
Booooo.
It's true though. The problem was that I was really SO new at the game that I really wasn't even sure what the roles were or why they existed. At this point I still hadn't realized that the lanes were asymmetrical, and I still hadn't discovered the side shop.
After two "batches" of heroes with varying roles, though, I eventually settled on support, and right now I am about 3/4 of the way through learning them with about 12 left. After that, I don't really know what I'll do.
Very interesting blog. I, myself, am trying to improve at Dota. Some advice I could give: -learn all the "theory" of the game (ie. pull timings, why you would pull, blocking pull camps with wards, how long it takes for roshan to respawn, etc) -play it safe (ie. it's more important to live than it is to score a kill. Dont be a hero and dive for the kill. Just stay back and go for those guaranteed kills/assists) -when you pick a hero, know your role within the team. -every time you die, think about why you died. Did I rush into a group of enemies when my teammates were behind me? Was my positioning bad? Should I have tried to juke instead of clicking at my fountain? It's thoughts like these that compound to build up your expertise and allow you to be a better player. -learn to last hit/farm. sometimes watching a high level replay of medusa or someone from her pov can help you understand why she gets 300 CS during the game while you only get 50. take a page out of her book. -if you have no idea what items to pick, the top rated in-client guide is a good beacon to go by until you get a more proper feel for the items as well as skill builds. but remember that item "builds" are not set in stone - you may have to diverge depending on the situation.(ex. if your team is losing/turtling, dont try to farm a relic and maybe settle for something smaller) -just continue to play. and understand that improvement takes time
Good luck. Im not the best player myself so take this advice with a grain of salt. but don't give up on the game. Dota is a very rewarding game. when you get a rampage, it's gonna be all worth it
best advice I can give is : whenever you feel that you are too slow and sloppy, remember that all comes with experience, most of these known players don't have above average reflexes at all, they just know which are the likely moves and outcomes of a battle. I felt proud for my skills in dota (MMR high enough to face merlini stacks, and dodge them :D) and despite that, I am having a hard time* in the mid tier (gold) of a game that is known for being "way easier than dota" aka lol because I just don't know anything about the game.
I admire people who love treant as a hero^^ i think everyone of the veterans was once in love with that hero.
My 'advice/suggestion/opinion' after reading your admirable blog, mate, maybe try to take the game less serious so you can enjoy the game in as many aspects as possible (play different roles/heroes or same hero with different roles). Dota is not a single player game but rather a very complicate team work (you know that by now) so learning the game with many aspects altogether at the same time is the quickest way to improve the game play.
Anyway, so glad you enjoy the game ^^ and keep the passion up!!
On April 02 2013 06:46 BurningSera wrote: I admire people who love treant as a hero^^ i think everyone of the veterans was once in love with that hero.
How can you not love a walking radi holder that can't die since nobody bought detection? (Most people have improved past this enemy level, sad MM.)
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7fAFlc5.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/coUr20N.png?1)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b9Hoezk.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DaKJdWy.png)
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good luck with your blue period! ^^
