Actually, reds have stated multiple times that their goal is to create an interesting overall play experience over "omg this skillz so unique"
Well yeah, that's what they say publicly, but in my personal opinion, stealing skills from a bunch of heroes you already have and putting them on a new one isn't interesting or an improvement, it just makes the old heroes obsolete. I think their FIRST goal is to make money, then everything else after that. Let's not mince words here, Riot could EASILY sustain itself with just skin sales alone, even if they made all champions and rune pages free to the public. They choose not to even though their 2 main competitors have because they're greedy and they know they can get away with it.
oh, and Dota doesn't have any room to talk; see Luna, the sivir clone with ANOTHER point-and-click stun Q).
I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but Luna was out YEARS before League of Legends was even announced. It's a relatively old DotA hero.
Volibear could arguably be considered Garen+Singed+Mundo, but doing so 100% ignores that you put those 3 in a single kit and you get something that plays completely differently from any one.
And also makes them all obsolete in the process, hence the consequent buffs to the latter 3 in recent months.
They've also acknowledged top lane is kinda screwed up in design and have plans to fix that once Season 2 finals are over.
The lanes in general are screwed up in design, it's boring and it's the same combinations every time. Tanky DPS top, AP Carry mid, AD Carry and Support bot, and jungler. How is that interesting? It's so boring and formulaic it makes me want to die just thinking about it. I don't see how changing the top lane is going to fix that. Hell, even HoN which is (in my opinion) vastly inferior to DotA has more interesting and varied lane combos than that.
Kat wasn't remade because she is underpowered in a solo lane; she was remade because she's an assassin that's overly dependent on pressing Q everytime it's off cooldown in lane to harass, and a snowbally assassin that in theory should be able to get by without her high-risk-reward ult but in reality is pretty gimped if someone interrupts it.
This doesn't change the fact that Katarina was, by far, one of the most powerful solo laners in the game until she started being replaced by better version of herself, and better laners. Miss Fortune was the first one, being a ranged champion who was similar to Kat but pretty much superior in every way.
Garen is getting a remake (not just or mainly buffs) because he is actually worse as far as the top lane problems go than most current top laners (must stomp lane and snowball or is irrelevant, because of horrid scaling and needing to itemize for too much at once).
Once again because of the massive power inflation from constantly releasing new and better champions, who are just better versions of original content, heroes that were once some of the best in the game are now having to be remade.
More champions have had to be remade in the 2-3 years of LoL than in the 9-10 years of DotA, what does that say about the quality of the game and the balancing?
Also, 70% of champions are picked and/or banned reasonably frequently in competitive play. Sooooo...
I'm pretty sure the number is even higher than that in DotA.
Dragonus - GUISE, I DISCOVERED SPELL SCALING (i actually kinda wanna try this once they bring him to dota 2)
Dragonus is unique in that his spell damage scales with his Intelligence. This isn't completely unique, Silencer's auto-attack damage already scaled with Intelligence. And please, don't even talk about plagiarism or copying, 75% or more of League's spells are taken directly from DotA lol. For DotA, this is a new mechanic, and even if League had never been created, it probably would have come along eventually since IceFrog is always looking for interesting new things to do.
Xin (great name btw) - Ult is puck orb on charge system more-or-less, Yi alpha strike, spellshield (SO UNIQUE), and press-this-button-to-snare.
You don't understand how the ultimate works lol, it's nothing like Puck's Orb. Ember Spirit gets 3 charges for his ultimate, which he can release at his leisure to a given location. When he releases a charge, it releases a fire remnant at a target location, which then sits there for 45 seconds before it disappears. At any time, Xin can cast his ultimate and dash between all the stationary Fire Remnants, exploding them for aoe damage as he passes through them, and ending up at the one you targeted.
This is much cooler than any League mechanics I can think of. It allows for interesting chase, escape, and map control, as well as excellent mobility for a carry hero.
Also, Yi's Alpha strike was already copied off Juggernaught's Ultimate, it's practically the same thing, it just doesn't do as much damage, and has a much shorter cooldown. Spellshield is not like Sivir's spellshield either, it blocks a set amount of magic damage and increases your DPS in the meantime. It makes him a powerful anti-caster carry. Finally, his snare hits 2 random targets, so it's not a press-to-snare, you should position yourself to where your enemies aren't near creeps, otherwise your snares might be wasted.
This hero concept is so much more interesting, diverse, and unique than any League concept I've heard of lately.
Tresdin - Eh, not bad either, though it does look like Icefrog borrowed some mechanics and swapped out the effects of the mechanics though. Also, who thought Duel was a good idea?
Duel is a great idea, it makes him a powerful anti-carry tank/support. It opens up new options and team compositions, and a powerful counter to many heroes.
The answer for Dota? No. Icefrog will put in whatever mechanics he pleases, playerbase be darned. If it works in a super-high-level competitive environment, and doesn't share (on the surface) mechanics with anything existing, it goes in.
You don't balance for pub games, you balance for high level play. It makes no sense to balance for the worst players. In Chess, there is a common strategy in which, in 3 moves, you can defeat a noob opponent with your queen. Should we nerf the Queen in the early game of Chess so that noobs don't get owned by a cheesy strategy? In Starcraft 2, Marine + Bunker rushing or Helion rushing is really hard and cheesy for noobs to deal with, they lose to it often. Should we nerf these strategies and ruin their viability in competitive play, or should we
ask new players to get better at the game?
It wouldn't surprise me if League balanced for the pub level, it would explain why their high-level games are such a snoozefest and a bore. They're more concerned with keeping the bads happy than making a game that's exciting to play and watch at the highest levels. If that's what they want to do, that's fine with me.
I feel its somewhat important to note that dota2 is almost a direct port of dota1, which had to do a lot of things with wc3 mechanics. If they werent focusing so much on porting stuff directly, they could do things that league does. Its kinda difficult to make stuff unique when you are worrying about using the spells wc3 does.
The WC3 engine could do pretty much everything the Riot Engine can do, sans possibly vector targeting (not that important tbh). Not all of the mechanics in DotA 2 existed in DotA 1, but most of them stand outside of the game (such as the reconnect feature). DotA's problem was never that it didn't have unique or original content, it's that it was on an old and outdated engine that needed to be upgraded. DotA 2's content is much more unique and exciting than League's. Like I said before, DotA has pretty much all the skills that exist in League, plus many more that they would never add (mana burn, spell steal, damage based on movement, throwing allies and enemies, having 10 skills on 1 hero, etc.).
For instance, I havent seen a single on-next autoattack reset thing, like.. darius, garen, jax, leona, poppy, renekton, (rengar), sivir, talon, trundle, tf, vayne, volibear, wukong, xin, yorick.
You're splitting hairs over an autoattack reset ability? How is that a good mechanic for the game? What does it add that's so spectacular? Oh, I get to attack again? I mean it just seems like it takes skill away but allowing the player to ignore their autoattack timings, then just hit a button whenever they want to get a last hit or a kill. I don't see what this mechanic adds.
Now that I think about it, I would say that Dota and League or sorta sideways moves in terms of diversity - You'll never see anything really cool involving pets or stuff in Dota(Orianna, Yorick though he could be better, Mordekaiser, Lulu and Pix, Zyra)
DotA 2 has pets...Syllabear and Lycan are two of the most powerful heroes in competitive play, they are both banned basically every game. Syllabear's pet is so powerful that it can have 6 items and it has a snare that holds people in place for 3 seconds. Also, I think "pet heroes" in DotA are much more interesting because they can steal pets from the jungle and steal pets from each other. Enchantress and Chen, 2 heroes that use Jungle pets are also some of the most powerful in the game, and are often picked or banned. DotA also has another class of hero that doesn't even exist in league: Heroes that use illusions. Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight, Morphling, Terroblade, Naga Siren and more are all heroes who have "pets" that are clones of themselves, which open up a whole new style of gameplay that basically doesn't exist in League of Legends.
