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Sean

Dota Today 9: The Dazzle In Question

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on the note of important things to teach someone in the first 20 matches i think Orbs is pretty interesting.

 

it was a mechanic held over from WC3 when you would find a *Blank* elemental modifier in the map and it would boost your hero unit's attack & put on a burn, slow, dot, etc modifier.

 

 

 

i think DOTA2 has done a good job explaining how orbs work, but making sure they dont interact adversely is difficult language to understand; skadi + deso + vamp...but Vlads isnt an orb & lightning procs independently.

 

also, some of the "easier" heros also have "Attack Orbs" (Drow, Viper, clinks, etc) that can be used for Orb Walking (old dota1 jargon) where the creeps wont attack you if you manually cast the spell...but if its auto cast and you right click they will agro

 

 

its weird, and a minor epiphany when you figure out how to do it & easily first blood someone with a good frost arrow chase

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I'm sure that we'll talk about this on the next cast, but Sean and I got the Dota Today team together and played a few matches!

 

I really want to have a discussion about casuals vs. pros and how Captain's Mode is like the most difficult puzzle game on the planet. But as Famous Vanaman says "you're burnin cast!" :D!

 

Honestly the best part about team play for me is that it unlocks the surrender feature. If someone on your team types a "gg" in chat, it enables a 10s countdown that ends with a concession. This is exactly what happens in the pro scene anyway - I believe that players are smart enough to know when a game is a hopeless stomp. The snowbally nature of Dota makes it so that there are times when a comeback is truly impossible.

 

We used it in a couple of our games and it was great to end the misery and queue up again! So good. Def improved my Dota experience a lot!

 

Reyturner - I want to respect your position but I it just seems so harsh! Taking away the possibility of hats from the team that is getting completely wrecked and just wants a relief from the next 20 minutes of awfulness? Yikes!

 

In my opinion, the high highs of Dota do not come from stomps while the low lows do come from stomps. Adding surrender raises the floor for everyone and does nothing to the ceiling. The high highs still comes from those close matches that you just barely pull out, and the low lows are truncated because you can "gg go next", swiftly ending the suffering while congratulating the enemy team with a crushing victory.

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Someone ping me when the surrender button conversation has run itself out.

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My aggravation from people dumping their spaghetti after 15 minutes in HoN has made me grumpy, and I'm not for stomps or griefing.

I just can't envision a surrender system that only eliminates the bad without hurting the late game or snuffing the already faint flame of the out of nowhere come back (the highest high IMHO). I'll chalk it up to a lack of imagination.

I surrender the argument (no hats for me).

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Reyturner - That's an excellent point that the unlikely comeback is the highest high! I agree with that part of it. It would be a bummer to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater. But man... I get fountain-dived about 50 times more than I experience the dope comeback. Just sayin. :D

 

We can stop talking about this now and all be bros. I'll give Vanaman the all clear. :D!

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Dota 2 Moments is my favorite Dota 2 youtube series. That's a good one.

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I am jealous of your team games!  I've heard some middle schoolers at the school I work at mention DOTA as they walk by my office... That'd be creepy to play with a bunch of 12 year olds, though, right?

 

I am excited to try out All Random (they mentioned it on Ep8, I think?), as it sounds a lot less stressful since no one can be expected to playing to their strengths.  I'm terrified of playing mid or a carry, so this might be the best way to fail publicly without feeling guilty.

 

I'm booting onto the mac side of my laptop more now to get some music work done... Anyone running the mac version lately? I remember when they first released it every time I would get into a match, the moment my character was about to attack its first creep it would crash.

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glad to see the cast back and more powerful then ever !

 

inspired by the newbie advice segment I present

TIPS&TRICKS:

 

ch.1 bottle

 

The humble bottle is a surprisingly complex creature when you gaze past the translucent exterior. You can capture runes for later use, which has the side effect of refilling your bottle, adding an interesting element of rune control to the game. Bottled runes last 2 minutes before automatically expiring, and multiple runes can be active at the same time. A hasted double damage [anything] is one of the most terrifying lords in the game.

 

but did you know: The fountain heals you by placing a substantial regen buff on you, which has a timer and thus lingers for a second or two after leaving. The bottle refill mechanic uses this buff to determine if you are in the fountain, meaning you can drink from your bottle with free refills until the buff fades.

 

teleport to a tower, drink from a bottle and cast some spells -- the lingering fountain buff will regen your mana + refill your bottle, essentially giving you free spells. So efficient! 

 

if you are planning to teleport to a tower near someone with a bottle, have them immediately hand it to you (or drop it near the tower to be picked up). The bottle is wonton, and will refill if it senses the fountain buff on whomever currently holds it.

 

 

(you can even get fancy, combining several mechanical quirks to refill your bottle at a moments notice:)

 

 

the bottle heal is dispelled if you take damage. However! This is only physical damage.There is actually a minimum magic damage threshold of 20. Some abilities - such as the first 3 levels of pudge's rot, level 1 bladefury and darkseer's ion shell - do too small ticks of damage to cancel it.*

 

Other abilities, such as bloodseeker's rupture or urn of shadows do damage via a HP removal mechanic and don't actually cause 'damage' -- meaning you can bottle through them as well.*

 

*healing salve uses the same mechanics

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Hey guys, I've been following from the beginning and am really happy to see two episodes back to back!

 

Now that Dota Today is back are you guys planning on reviving the Lord's Guild? It would be a great place to play with some readers and remove a little of the randomness of teammates. I've played with some idle thumb readers and it was a good time, but the guild is looking really thin these days.

 

 

Also some easy info to digest as a support for stacking and pulling.

 

To stack the creeps attack at the 53 second mark and then run away from the camp until the creeps stop chasing you.

 

Lane creeps spawn every 30 seconds. To pull jungle creeps to attack the lane creeps, attack the jungle creeps on the 15ish second mark or the 45ish second mark and run to the lane creeps. 

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Hats are for closers.

I was planning on reading this whole thread to catch up on the discussion that's been going on, but saw this and didn't need to read any further because my day was made.

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Played a team game today with a 'friend of a friend' on the team who ended up feeding so hard the game was essentially lost ten minutes in. Lucky for me, one person on our team was so disgusted he abandoned right away so the rest of us only had to wait for five minutes to exit without penalty. Though I seriously can't think of a clearer example of the need for a surrender option.

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When you say the game was lost do you mean the other team was up by 10 kills by 10 minutes, or do you mean the other team was up by 30 kills and most of your towers by 10 minutes? Because I would agree that in one of those cases the game is probably lost.

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When you say the game was lost do you mean the other team was up by 10 kills by 10 minutes, or do you mean the other team was up by 30 kills and most of your towers by 10 minutes? Because I would agree that in one of those cases the game is probably lost.

In one of those cases, the game is probably lost. In the other of those cases, the game is DEFINITELY lost!

 

BOOM SKIDOO

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I wouldn't call a game where you're down 10 or so kills by 10 minutes probably lost. So many games change significantly once a team gets level 6 on their supports and/or the first big item on their cores. I've certainly been on both sides of games like that plenty of times. If it's impossible to leave your base then yeah, you can't really do much, but if you can farm your jungle and then try to smoke and either get a pick off or initiate a team fight a lot of games are very salvageable.

Edit: really don't want to keep this argument going since I'm pretty sure this is an agree to disagree type of issue for most of us, but I felt the need to post because I always try and stay positive like my buddy Jason Nesmith.

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I'm just being silly. I'd never give up with a 10-kill deficit. Hell I think I've even won a game with a 30-kill deficit. (I feel like I'm using "deficit" incorrectly here. Tell me if I'm using it incorrectly!)

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I mean one of the players was intentionally feeding the other team. He even took wards meant for someone else and didn't place them. Since there's no kick mechanic in Dota 2 either, we were stuck with a hero actively working against us. What would be the point of playing that game out for an hour or whatever? That's not fun. That's not even a challenge. It's just misery.

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Can we see the pic in the office with that sweet shield? tried to track it down on twitter but was unsuccessfully haha

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I mean one of the players was intentionally feeding the other team. He even took wards meant for someone else and didn't place them. Since there's no kick mechanic in Dota 2 either, we were stuck with a hero actively working against us. What would be the point of playing that game out for an hour or whatever? That's not fun. That's not even a challenge. It's just misery.

Yeah in games like that I almost wish there were a vote kick like in WC3/HoN and bots would take over like L4D. I say almost because in those games vote kick is mostly used to kick whoever gives up first blood.

I definitely hate people who just intentionally ruin games, I even have a hotkey set up spamming Q for when people try to feed couriers.

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I felt like the start of this episode sounded a bit like a trial against Sean, especially when Brad called him Mr. Vanaman.  My brain was so busy with the thought of "The Crown vs Lord Vanaman" that I missed a lot of the podcast and had to rewind.

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I've played the in-game tutorials and a small number of matches (50 or so?), mostly to see "what this DoTA thing is all about". So, I've only looked at a minimum of the offline guides and tutorials, etc.

 

Reading some of these "newbie tips", I can see that I really still haven't even come close to actually playing DoTA.

 

It probably would've been useful to know that you can use Quelling Blade on Prophet's trees during the Frostivus event.

 

You haven't even mentioned Frostivus on the 'cast. Did you guys play it at all? I'm wondering what people think about the prospect of full-time alternate game modes in DoTA, or if the core has so much complexity, any distractions would just be an annoyance that makes people worse.

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The more you play, the more you realize the vast sweep of player skill. So no matter how good / bad you are, there's always someone much better / worse, and you're usually playing against them / have them as your team.

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