[LiquidParty] DotA2 Learning Group ^.^ - Page 39

IV. Dota is exciting.

I played League for a long time. I played long enough ago to have played AD carry mid when it was standard (gogo LoL hipster status!), but also played AP carry mid, ADC bot, Jungle while Olaf was king of the jungle, and support because I knew what a good support looked like. I got to a point, though, that a lot of League players get to. Half my games were exactly twenty minutes long, some of those depressing onesided stomps where my 0/8 mid heimerdinger is constructing a population sign in our fountain, or others pentakill cockblocks where I'm 50cs and 3 kills ahead, but deprived the rest of my game because my opponents are allowed to opt out of their punishment for poor play. Sometimes, we'd flirt with 25 minute games, where it wasn't -really- solidified until we lost that last teamfight and a tower in the process. About one in ten games was actually a nailbitingly close game where I could try predict the outcome after 15 minutes of play, but do so with no confidence whatsoever. Those games were awesome.

Dota has its shit games too. The difference here is... well, we just finished talking about the differences. There is no surrender (we didn't talk about that), and the potentially extreme power of Dota heroes means that there is quite possibly a single hero on your team that you originally didn't expect to win you the game, but now four members of your team are nailbitinly huddled at your tier 3 towers to defend against their incoming push while your hero Furion with a shadowblade safely pushes their top lane. Or when your top barracks are down, but your position 5 is stacking the ancient camp while the other three heroes act as mobile wards for your position 1 ultracarry medusa farms bottom lane and jungle in an effort to collect a Divine Rapier to add to her Linkin's sphere, Satanic, and Manta style so you can win one final teamfight and go base 'em.

It's exciting, and what makes it exciting is that as long as your allies can communicate and are willing to cooperate, NO game is lost. You don't get the feeling you will in League where you're playing support and you discover that your ADC actually has the lasthitting skills of a sack of dead rodents... you know, that sinking feeling where you hang your head in shame and type “Surrender at 20” in all chat, because you -know- that there's no accounting for incompetence on the part of your carry?

In Dota, if that happens, you just start fucking taking farm, announce to your team that your Antimage is actually the worst at farming, tell him to play cautiously, farm the jungle and do not build farming items because the game will NOT last the 2 hours it would take him to get 6 slotted. Basically, you promote yourself from a position 5 to a position 3, demote him from a position 1 to a position 3, and carry on with life. OBVIOUSLY be VERY VERY SURE you know what the fuck you're talking about, because demoting an antimage to position 3 is kinda like telling your ADC to build warmogs in League... except slightly more viable. That said, I've literally had a game where I, as the position 5 Crystal Maiden only pulling and stacking at appropriate times and otherwise babysitting an AntiMage, accidentally outfarmed the AntiMage 61 CS to 58 in a 32 minute game. That's -brutal-.

So there's always something you can be doing in Dota, and if you lose, it is because there were things you could have been doing, but did not do, EVEN in cases where your mid feeds 3 kills inside 12 minutes. Dota is fascinating, and a game isn't lost until your buildings are dead.