Sean

The Idle Thumbs Lords Management Consortium - Dota 2, LoL, other Lords Managers unite

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We played some more party games tonight and vanaman told us the hot scoops from the new progress cast. I went 0-4-4 with doombringer the first game, but redeemed myself with a 10-5-10 slardar second game. Sean did pretty well with treant protector his first time every going like 3/5/5

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According to this Dota 2 stats aggregating site, Treant Protector has the highest win rate of any character in public matchmaking, and yet has been played in less than a third as many matches as the next highest character. Why does no one love Treant when he is clearly so good?

Edit: I do note that Treant has not been out as long as some of the other characters near the top, but even if you switch to "last 3 days" he still has far fewer games than many of them.

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For me his skillset looks fun, but when you play him he isn't very exciting. Also, if there is a stealth character on the team already i won't go for him. Tidehunter fills a similar role, and he is more fun.

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Treant is boring, and those statistics don't really say anything about how good the heroes are. The stats are based on public matchmaking. Since there are no ratings available you can't weed out the low tier games from the high tier games. The stats are pretty worthless outside of stating facts we already know about how the average dota player plays. (Some hints: they don't know how to farm, they don't know how to buy stat items, they don't know how to ward, they don't know how to counter invis heroes and they don't know how to buy teleport scrolls).

The charts found here are a bit more interesting (the newer heroes aren't available there yet): http://stats.dota2.be/stats/heroes/

This is even better: http://dev.dota2.com...ead.php?t=33593 how does a heroes win percentage change with length of the match?

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The charts that show how heroes perform with and against others are definitely interesting, but most of your criticisms aren't relevant to how I want to use the stats. The stats are "based on public matchmaking"; true, so is my play of Dota 2. Since there are no ratings I "can't weed out the low tier games"; true, but then again I play low tier games. The stats are "worthless outside of stating facts we already know about how the average dota player plays"? Well... that might be true, except that I didn't know Treant wins most of his games, and according to these stats the average Dota player doesn't even really play that character. Also, at this point, I probably am the average Dota player, so again these stats are pretty relevant to me since I don't really subscribe to the idea that "we already know" everything about the average players from anecdotal memories with no formal analysis.

The match length versus win rate graphs are totally fascinating though. The ones that either veer upwards or downwards sharply at a sudden point are brilliant, though I can't say I'm surprised Beastmaster's win rate goes through the floor. I honestly can't figure out what he's useful for in most games, which makes the fact that he actually seems semi-popular at the competitive tournament level a very interesting indication of how different that metagame is. Something else worth noting is Axe's win rate actually shows a steady upwards climb with game length, which directly contradicts some of our impressions in this thread of his usefulness late game. Curious as to how that's come to be.

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Beastmaster is good because he can clear out trees to give vision and use his bird for even more vision. You can't get the jump on a good Beastmaster without buying smoke. The 4 second stun from his ultimate ignores magic immunity like BKB, and also has a relatively low cooldown (70 seconds, 45 with aganims). His axes also lets him get some last hits and harass from far away. He can also use axes to stack ancients without leaving the lane. His late game comes from his passive, ult and scouting. The passive will give the carry on his team an edge versus the enemy carry, thus may win him some late games. His passive will in addition buff allied creeps which is very useful together with heroes like Enigma, Chen and Enchantress. Beastmaster is a tier 3 pick, meaning he is a situational counter-pick or a team-specific pick. He requires some level of micro and very good map awareness to be played well which is why he rarely wins in matchmaking.

A guy at Eurogamer and his friends are trying to become a better Lord managers and there is a story being written about it: http://www.eurogamer...rience-part-one

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Quintin Smith is writing ridiculous articles again, hooray!

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Eh, I like Quintin Smith/Quinns.

No no, you misunderstand, that wasn't a "oh boy, fuck that guy" sarcasm thing, I genuinely love his writing.

E: Oops, it actually turns out I'm thinking of Tom Francis, but Iron Quinns is also quite good.

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Tom Francis doesn't like dota.

Disappointing, but somehow unsurprising.

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No no, you misunderstand, that wasn't a "oh boy, fuck that guy" sarcasm thing, I genuinely love his writing.

E: Oops, it actually turns out I'm thinking of Tom Francis, but Iron Quinns is also quite good.

I hate the internet. I was originally even going to write "I can't tell because this is the internet but I'm going to assume you're being sarcastic" as a disclaimer.

Disappointing, but somehow unsurprising.

Agreed.

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I think you meant to say ridonculous then orv. I rather enjoyed that article too. Those bots sure got a thrashing.

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Mission: Get Jake into DOTA. (I sent him that article as step 1).

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Me too. ):

FUN:

Guy picks alchemist as last pick, after we already have a team that can't support another melee carry, let alone the worst one. Other guy, as Omniknight, runs into jungle DESPITE knowing enemy Windrunner picked up a DD and walked into our jungle, feeds first blood. Proceeds to feed for the next twenty five minutes. Alchemist bitches about Omni, despite himself losing his lane. Thanks to the Omni feeding the Windrunner, I (as Void) can't farm for shit. I keep trying to save him. He keeps chasing them? With no health? I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO?

This is why I hate playing with pubs. At least when I'm yelling at my friends for feeding, I know it's just because they fucked up, and not because they're legitimately bad/trolling! And even if they're bad, I know they'll let me actually help them get better!

Summary: Pick alchemist, complain about losing. DOTA TWO.

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Orvidos: folks have been inviting ME! Everyone -- make sure you're in the idlethumbs chat channel in DOTA.

Also -- is there any interest in Thumbs getting a voice server going? I don't know shit about those but I'd be happy to look into one that folks like.

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I think there are already a couple frequented Mumble servers, we'd just have to standardize which one to use.

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Me too. ):

FUN:

Guy picks alchemist as last pick, after we already have a team that can't support another melee carry, let alone the worst one. Other guy, as Omniknight, runs into jungle DESPITE knowing enemy Windrunner picked up a DD and walked into our jungle, feeds first blood. Proceeds to feed for the next twenty five minutes. Alchemist bitches about Omni, despite himself losing his lane. Thanks to the Omni feeding the Windrunner, I (as Void) can't farm for shit. I keep trying to save him. He keeps chasing them? With no health? I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO?

This is why I hate playing with pubs. At least when I'm yelling at my friends for feeding, I know it's just because they fucked up, and not because they're legitimately bad/trolling! And even if they're bad, I know they'll let me actually help them get better!

Summary: Pick alchemist, complain about losing. DOTA TWO.

You haven't lived until you play captain's mode with 4 man premade and get a captain who doesn't speak your language. Who also makes terrible choices.

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You haven't lived until you play captain's mode with 4 man premade and get a captain who doesn't speak your language. Who also makes terrible choices.

I've had that!

But we won despite him because the other team was really bad.

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So i did my first round of item trading last night, traded away a rare juggernaught healing idol for an uncommon full set of axe armor, maybe slightly not in my favor, but i play axe a lot and don't play jugg so it's all good. System errored out once but seems to work well

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My big problem with trading with random people is that a lot of people out there will rant and rave about "Trade uncommons for uncommons!" but are happy to fleece people. Basically the entire TF2/DotA economy is wacky.

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I like TF2 Warehouse.

I'm hoping something similar will pop up for Dota, hopefully linked to this one, so I can trade in all my shit TF2 items and get neat Dota 2 items!

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