sproutella

I actually listened to this stream at work yesterday, it was pretty great. It was him and that roguestar fella talking in circles for an hour+. The only real info he has is that there are federal investigations regarding gamergate threats (duh), that there may have been hoaxes (very vague), and there is some sort of FTC investigation into publications. All he talked about was the existence of investigations re these matters, info you can apparently request from the govt via the freedom of information act. And then he talked about how everyone needs to chill even though he's dropping incomplete info that people are going to run with. Roguestar would interrupt him periodically to tell everyone that this isn't conspiracy bs, that the feds were coming for ya, and to call Ian Miles Cheong a nazi. It was really one of the weirdest things I've ever had the pleasure of dropping in on. Also this brilliant bit of cognitive dissonance in response to this article. In which they find out that the author of an article critical of the relationship between tech/gaming enthusiast press and the companies (author focuses on major companies, not indies) they cover goes to xoxo (gasp) and is not sympathetic to their crusade.

Yup the codename stuff is by far the most scary thing (mostly because it's adopted by the so called moderate crowd). Like if you want to look like crazy people so far up your own ass... mission accomplished? The attempts to whitewash their underlying feelings are just the most brain scrambling thing.

I believe you get a sniper cosmetic for each training mission you complete. As far as chickening out, I'd say make sure you feel comfortable with a hero/lord in co-op bot matches before entering competitive games. Don't be too afraid though, people love to complain about other players, even if they are the ones messing up worse than you. You could be having a great game and making smart choices, and still get pinged by the guy who just died diving an enemy past their t3 towers. Just mute and move on if it affects you too much.

Skywrath's Q scales with int. I want to run a carry skywrath. Pls pub captain it's legit. Trust me.

Played this game for about 30 mins at this past year's PAX East. Enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a Rogue, and the theme fits the gameplay (moving through the area turn by turn) in that sense. Positives I remember (this is a little less than half a year ago) lots of meaningful decisions, satisfied that room clearing dungeon crawler itch while feeling very tactical. Negatives was the UI, there was a ton a info to process and it wasn't immediately clear where all of it came from, or where I would need to go in the menu to activate an ability or use a resource. MotN had a fantastic UI so I have no fear of it being great in the final product. I'll definitely check it out when its a real game, and I'm sure the UI stuff will be cleaned up (more centralized representation of some of the information)/ more comprehensible in a different context (in my house and not at a convention). Would love to hear from Early accessers how it is coming along.

Yeah It's either someone demands mid as soon as they load in, or people avoid it like the plague and I'm forced mid as Phantom Lancer (hint that didn't go too well for my team). And then of course there are the games where someone demands mid 10 secs after creeps spawn when there is already someone mid. Although I've actually had a decent time asking for it nicely at the beginning and people not minding.

Yeah solo pusher is probably not the best way of describing him he isnt a true split pusher, but you underrate his pushing capacity. He doesn't need to escape as well as other pushers b/c of his range (he can hit towers from out of sight i think) and with a deso and a creep wave he can dink it a few times from range, fire shrapnel on top of the tower and just leave if there is enough people missing. That alone will take a good chunk of damage. As long as enemies are on the map he can just repeat this to take outer towers.

It makes his solo pushing much more effective, It's nice as an early item when he can ping towers and let the creeps do even more work. I don't think its "core" because if you feel you won't be able to push effectively early its better to build mjoll/mael as that gives farming+dmg.

My first taste was as lich, porting into the tier one middle tower where two enemies were pushing right next to each other, and just dropping my ulti on em. Oh so satisfying, something about the bounces man...

Yeah I think that game is the extreme of rat dota. However, the average pub player/ twitch chatter would probably call it rat dota whenever a furion takes a tower instead of joining a teamfight right away. I wasn't using the term offensively when I first mentioned it, Like I said I have an affinity for the playstyle especially when playing without a stack. I think it is generally used negatively by most people because it can be frustrating to play against, and some think it a boring style to watch when spectating. It's obviously a legit strategy because it wins games, this is a game about killing buildings not necessarily the people protecting them. I'm in no way surprised that people respond to the strategy so negatively though, think about your average pub player. They care about getting kills, getting cool items, about "feeling Epic" by the end of the game. No one wants to come out ahead in a teamfight, and realize you actually came out behind because you lost a racks during it (forgetting of course that it was a strategically poor fight to take and no one was carrying a tp scroll). I don't think it's really an 'alpha male mentality', but rather those people not wanting to accept that this game is still very much a strategy game on many levels, and not purely defined by your twitch skills (the integration of the two aspects makes the game so great in my opinion). In regard to people calling it out when spectating it's for similar reasons, that twitch teamfight skills (something Alliance had it spades at TI3 btw) should be the decider of games and not strategic choices. Beyond that teamfights are generally more exciting than the times when another team is trying to counter a split push (I still find this fun to watch, not everyones cup of tea). Although base-races are a product of the second which in my opinion are the most exciting events in comp dota. Valve would/could never ban pros from competitive Dota, they don't own the players/tournaments like Riot does (contractually). RTZ and EE still get put in low prio queue like the rest of the flaming/abandoning masses, they could get their steam banned (not sure if this is ever a punishment?). If they were REALLLY bad (like really racist or something) in games on on stream (or their pub game voice/text chat was made public) they would get kicked out by their teams first (worse publicity for them than valve). Valve could pressure a team to drop a player(saying they wont invite x team to TI4 b/c x player is toxic), but it would never come to that b/c the team would always react to public outcry 1st.

Congrats! You discovered split-pushing aka rat dota! Do this enough and you might get some nasty post game messages from enemy players! Now you just have to learn Nature's Prophet and Phantom Lancer to fully embrace the rat! It works really well in disorganized pub games where decisions aren't well coordinated. For real though I really enjoy Lords that can operate more autonomously in a useful way, having to always be around pub teammates can be frustrating when no one is communicating. Playing with these solo pusher types lets you play matches where you get to make 'higher' level decisions, instead of trying to predict whether your void teammate is going to chrono you in a team fight. btw If you actually want some measure of what your doing check out dotabuff, they list Tower Damage stats.