[LiquidParty] DotA2 Learning Group ^.^ - Page 36

On June 10 2013 23:40 r.Evo wrote:
Godammit Yango, I'm gone for 4 days and you start being productive.

e: Should figure out what exactly to do with this. Nowadays if someone from this subforum comes over to Dota 2 it's much less personal since... well, most guys simply aren't active over here anymore. Not sure if we should turn it into something more official for people who intend to swap or do something different.

If you're someone who is currently mostly active in the League sub but would be interested in learning Dota with a couple more guys from here, yell please. We don't know if you exist at the moment. :3

On June 11 2013 00:50 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Just got a random beta key, I might have to learn DotA >.>
...Damn

On June 09 2013 06:05 TheYango wrote:
Tip #1: DON'T WORRY SO MUCH

A lot of LoL players coming to DotA who try to come in watching pro-games end up overwhelming themselves and turning themselves off from the game by approaching it wrong. They worry about little shit like pulling creeps, etc. when honestly at the beginning those things don't matter.

Think back to when you were level 1-10, first learning LoL. Think about all the things that you would later come to learn/care about, but didn't matter to you in the first 10 levels. 2-1-2 lanes, no jungler? No big deal. Buff control, dragons? What's that? Even lane control wasn't something most people were doing in their first game of LoL, and seeing as you're going into DotA understanding the basics of that, you're already ahead of the game!

The most important thing to remember is just to have fun. Kill things, get gold, kill more things, have fun. Playing with new players, I often get those players that ask every 2 seconds "what should I be doing?" You're not going to know what you should be doing 100% of the time. Hell, I still don't know what I should be doing a lot of the time. The important thing is to just take it one step at a time, figure things out little by little, and make sure you don't kill the fun for yourself.

Tip #2: Learn what things do

This is a MOBA, just like every other one. If you want to go anywhere, you have to know what everything does. The skills, the items, etc. It's a daunting task, but it's the same one you went through learning LoL, so it shouldn't be one that's foreign to you. Take it one step at a time, keep an open mind, and just learn the heroes one by one.

Tip #3: Play some Bots

Seriously, the bots in DotA are actually pretty damn good. From having coached new players through bot games and through starting fresh smurfs to play with friends, I can say this: if you can outlane the Hard bot mid, you will win mid lane for quite a while in games against real players.

Obviously people don't enjoy playing against bots all day, but at the very least, I'd play a couple games just to gauge yourself and see where you stand. It'll also let you try a hero and get used to their skills and animations (animations is a big one that people have to get used to when they play a new hero in DotA--or even an experienced player playing a hero he hasn't played in a long time).

This also helps a lot toward #2. Players will pick pretty much anything and everything, so it's pretty hard for you to learn things when the other 9 heroes are different every single game. The bot pool's size right now is not so big as to be overwhelming, but big enough that someone playing the bots a couple times will know what's going on with the heroes he's facing after a while.

Tip #4: Hero Choice

I will come straight out and say the heroes that most people recommend for newbies flat out suck. The problem is that everyone's recommendation for heroes are "What hero can they play so that they won't feed so I can win with them?" This is unfortunately not the same as "What hero can they play where they will have the most fun?" or "What hero will they learn the most playing?" Tidehunter? Venomancer? Lich? These heroes are BORING AS SHIT. Lich just denies all day, harasses with 1 spell. When he gets to teamfights, you pre-buff everyone with the spell you can put on autocast, and then you literally cast TWO spells and your job is done. I'd have an awful impression of DotA if that was my first hero. Tidehunter has 3 spells in teamfights which are all pretty impactful so that's kind of cool but early game is even more boring for that hero cuz he does almost nothing in lane.

The heroes I recommend for new players are heroes that kill things, and that can do it the whole game. Carries really suck for this, right up front. That's pretty much going to be your #1 thing to learn when you start the game--what can I kill and what can kill me? You want heroes that can kill things, that don't need to farm too hard to do so, and who can keep killing things the whole game, which means supports with high damage and straightforward disables. This is also good because for LoL players it very quickly acquaints them to the idea that supports actually do damage, and are not just CC-bots.

There's also some deathly aversion to putting new players on skillshot heroes which actually makes no goddamn sense to me. Skillshots aren't going to be a foreign concept to people coming in with experience from another MOBA. Even if they are somewhat fresh, having a mechanical task that has immediate visible impact when you do it well is good positive feedback for a new player. When they hit a 3 person Leshrac stun, they know they did good and it feels good for them as a player. Correctly using point-and-click abilities actually gives less positive feedback because until you know the actual value of the heroes you're hitting realy well, stunning that giant green guy or that big stone guy don't feel all that different to you.

Brief list of heroes I think fit under this category: VS, Crystal Maiden, Lina, Ogre Magi, Leshrac

Heroes that are not as good to start, but act as a good bridge to playing something other than support (particularly mid): Shadow Shaman, Lion, Windrunner

The intro heroes I listed all have 2+ nukes starting from low levels, which means they can just kill people from the get-go. You learn what you can and can't kill, what can and can't kill you. Once you've played these heroes, it's actually a really natural progression to start playing mid using the same set of heroes (well not all of them, but of the above heroes Lina, SS, Leshrac, Lion, and Windrunner are all great mids for pub games). You know how to gank, how to harass in lane, you know what you can kill. Going into mid from that knowledge only *really* needs lasthitting, and that you can practice on your own. You'll find that you get a ton of kill opportunities on mid players that don't know their limits, and once you get into the flow of getting runes, you learn how to gank. That sort of opens up your ability to play everything, because once you get a sense of the overall flow of the game, carries, off-laners, junglers, etc. all start to make sense to you. THEN all the little things you chose to ignore at the beginning (pulling creeps, ward spots, etc.) all make sense within the context of everything else that happens in the game.

Tip #5: Killing Things

DotA is a game about killing things. It seems pretty obvious, but it's something that people will forget/take for granted sometimes, especially coming from LoL. You can kill things more easily than in LoL, and you also die more easily. It's quite easy to get caught up on the latter point and forget about the former--and then a few weeks down the line, you've got yourself in a rut because you're playing super safe, not exploring the limits of your hero, and not progressing as a player. This is especially a worry for support players--given how many opportunities there are to do things as a support early game--it becomes quite disappointing when all you do is just stack and pull and do nothing useful for your team. I can think of at least a couple people I've coached starting out on this game that unfortunately are stuck in that kind of hole right now.

These things are true in LoL as well, and someone who's played LoL for months/years by now will have consciously become aware of his shortcomings over a long period of time--but coming into a new game, it's quite easy to forget the basic mindset that you learned from those years (especially with everyone telling you how different it is).

Will add more, but if i text-wall too hard I don't know if people will read it.

On June 18 2013 13:59 caelym wrote:
What's the chat etiquette in dota? I just played a game where people just ran around aimlessly, and we ended up split pushing down bottom base tower by accident. So I started typing things like group middle or gank this phantom assassin, etc and got no response. No one else tried to type or coordinate anything either. It feels really weird especially considering how large the map is.

On June 18 2013 13:59 caelym wrote:
What's the chat etiquette in dota? I just played a game where people just ran around aimlessly, and we ended up split pushing down bottom base tower by accident. So I started typing things like group middle or gank this phantom assassin, etc and got no response. No one else tried to type or coordinate anything either. It feels really weird especially considering how large the map is.

On June 18 2013 13:59 caelym wrote:
What's the chat etiquette in dota? I just played a game where people just ran around aimlessly, and we ended up split pushing down bottom base tower by accident. So I started typing things like group middle or gank this phantom assassin, etc and got no response. No one else tried to type or coordinate anything either. It feels really weird especially considering how large the map is.