Author Topic: Moba balance comparison, please comment  (Read 205639 times)

Offline tigersfan

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #240 on: November 22, 2013, 10:42:01 pm »
Freya isn't a slouch in team fights, but she's not unstoppable either.

Actually, the ability of hers that Fox didn't mention (her banish) might arguably be one of her best team fight abilities. It basically just lifts another player and takes them out of the fight for a few seconds. It doesn't do any damage, but, it stops them from doing any either.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #241 on: November 23, 2013, 10:13:15 pm »
Freya isn't a slouch in team fights, but she's not unstoppable either.

Actually, the ability of hers that Fox didn't mention (her banish) might arguably be one of her best team fight abilities. It basically just lifts another player and takes them out of the fight for a few seconds. It doesn't do any damage, but, it stops them from doing any either.
It also makes them immune to any new sources of damage. A bad Banish can be the worst thing to ever happen in a teamfight :P I've Had SO many Ao Kuang ults dodged just because a friendly Freya thought it was a great time to Banish half the enemy team :P
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #242 on: December 20, 2013, 01:46:11 pm »
I just got reading this thread and you were discussing how to deny farm for carries in LoL and Dota. Now, I haven't played those two anywhere NEAR enough to actually speak about them, so I'll just tell you how Smite does it.
 
In Smite, last hitting isn't the end all be all of farming. Last hitting does provide you with extra gold, but the gold spooling is high enough that you can stay competitive even if you don't last hit all the time. You cannot deny creeps.
 
So, to deny someone farm in Smite, you have to either win your lane (push them back to their tower by having better poke/harass or better clear than them) or kill the carry. If you have a good support with you, that it very possible at all stages of the game. Carries are incredibly squishy and very vulnerable to CC. For instance, Sobek (tank) can use Charge Prey which is a dash that ends up flinging his target (provided he hits) back to where he started his dash. If he's laned up with say Artemis (ranged Carry), she can then drop a trap (root) at the location, leading to their carry being way out of position AND rooted long enough to bursted down by Artemis. Even better if the carry poked anyone of them and also has minion aggro.
 
Now, the thing is that the only way to deny farm is to push your enemy out of the lane, either by killing them (forcing them to respawn and run/teleport back) or by pushing them back inside their tower perimeter. If a minion gets hit by a tower (hit, not killed) NO ONE will get gold from it. Ever. So if you force your opponent inside his turret area, he is forced to lose gold from the tower hits.
 
That's how SMITE works, and I feel it's rather elegant. It puts more focus on actual lane brawling, poking and harassing, rather than playing "Farmville" with minions. Of course you have to farm, naturally, but it's less dominant than say LoL or DotA where lasthitting is pretty much mandatory and you should STFU and GTFO if you can't lasthit :P
 
Incidently, it's that huge focus on lasthitting and denying , in combination with the controls and perspective, that makes me unable to enjoy LoL and DotA.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2013, 01:47:50 pm by Moonshine Fox »
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Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #243 on: December 20, 2013, 07:36:21 pm »
That's how SMITE works, and I feel it's rather elegant. It puts more focus on actual lane brawling, poking and harassing, rather than playing "Farmville" with minions. Of course you have to farm, naturally, but it's less dominant than say LoL or DotA where lasthitting is pretty much mandatory and you should STFU and GTFO if you can't lasthit :P
 
Incidently, it's that huge focus on lasthitting and denying , in combination with the controls and perspective, that makes me unable to enjoy LoL and DotA.


That one's more a problem with Dota than LoL, really.

LoL is pretty similar to Smite in terms of how the whole laning phase ends up feeling.  There's alot of back and forth poking/brawling between you and your lane opponent, in addition to having to farm at the same time, so there's constant excitement.  In addition, you can use skills to farm, and some skills are sorta designed around being used that way even.  And the last-hitting isnt super finnicky like it is in Dota.

Dota's big problem is that the focus on it is a bit too extreme.  The laning phase most of the time is ENTIRELY last-hitting, with little else going on unless a gank attempt happens.  You last hit one creep at a time... ALWAYS only one creep at a time.... and you have to keep this up, because you need a bazillion gold and this is the primary way to get it, you get none if you do not last hit correctly.  There's also the screwy way Dota handles mana balancing.... in pretty much every other moba, you can fire off spells/skills/whatever pretty frequently, just like how you might use special moves in a fighting game.  But in Dota, firing off just ONE can eat 60% of your mana in one go.  So you fire these very infrequently, and using them to farm is downright pointless, it'll only get you killed faster.   So there's little in the way of back-and-forth between you and your lane opponent;  you only strike if you're certain you can get a kill on them right then and there.  So yeah... it's a bit dull compared to the others.   There's also the bizarre fact that Dota... for all of it's proclaimed complexity and difficulty versus LoL and the others.... has an almost complete lack of skillshots in the game;  so most (almost all) spells cannot be dodged once fired.   I like Dota 2 well enough, but this aspect of it IS pretty loopy.

LoL and Smite both do it very well enough, constant brawling and chaos between lane opponents.   I'm finding that Dawngate is doing this one very well also, though I still have much to learn there.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #244 on: December 21, 2013, 07:43:42 pm »
Yay, this thread is active again! <3

Before I begin my response I have to convey that I know almost absolutely nothing about SMITE. I've played thousands of games of HoN, LoL, and DotA, so those are the only 3 ARTS/MOBAs that I can fairly comment on.

In terms of the LoL laning phase being ideal, I'm afraid I'm going to have to heavily disagree there. The laning phase in LoL is the worst of all 3 of the major MOBA games I've tried. This is heavily evidenced by the fact that in professional play, there are usually barely any kills before the 20 minute mark. It is extremely painful to watch. In fact, without the help of the jungler (in high level play), kills rarely happen in the lane at all. To depend on the jungler just to make kills happen is absolutely crazy. That doesn't mean that there isn't some harassment and back-and-forth. Yes, it's true that whoever pushes their opponent to the tower typically has the advantage by virtue of making it harder to last hit. But that is not exciting. It's still a war of last hits. Last hitting is still important in LoL, I was in Gold II (so top 5% of all LoL players) before I got bored and went back to DotA, and it was absolutely imperative that you were ahead of the other carry in creep kills.

The laning phase in LoL is also made boring by extremely formulaic and stagnated metagame. Where in DotA the players can choose from an abundance of different lane combinations, LoL players are pretty much stuck with the typical 1-1-2+jungler.

Even if you chose to go the formulaic carry+support bottom lane route, the amount of options available to the DotA player are astronomically higher.

What can the LoL support player do?
1. Harass the opponent with his autoattacks and spells

There you go. You've completely exhausted the list of what you can realistically do as a support in the laning phase of League of Legends.

What can the DotA support player do?

1. Harass the opponent with his autoattacks and spells.
2. Deny allied creeps.
3. Stack the neutral creep camp.
4. Pull the neutral creep camp.
5. Walk mid and gank.
6. Smoke mid and gank.
7. Teleport mid and gank.
8. Smoke top and gank.
9. Smoke into their jungle and gank.
10. Teleport top and gank.
11. Help your jungler.
12. Secure rune control.
13. Permanently go mid to support.
14. Permanently go top to support.
15. Temporarily go top or mid to stop a heavy push attempt.

All of these options require different amounts of time, strategy, and financial investment to pull off.

Could a LoL support TECHNICALLY gank mid? Yes, but it's unlikely to work. As soon as a support goes missing for that long it's obvious something is fishy, and ganking mid with a support just isn't that effective. Not to mention that you're screwing your carry over by leaving. DotA carries are much more self-reliant and don't need the support with them all the time to succeed. The towers themselves deal much less damage per hit, which makes last hitting under the tower a much more viable option than in LoL, and is sometimes preferred for safety reasons and to free up a hero to go elsewhere.

This is a recurring theme throughout the comparison of DotA and LoL. In DotA, as a player, you simply have so many more options at any given time than does the LoL player. What I gave you was just one example. I could give you tons of examples just like this. That is to say, DotA's superior strategic depth comes from the multitude of options it presents the player at any given time. Your skill as a player doesn't come from the ability to throw a Nidalee Javelin, it comes from the impossible decision of having dozens of equally tempting options available to you, and being forced to decide which one is the most beneficial.

Many LoL players do not understand this because they do not understand DotA. If you come into DotA with the LoL mentality, then it's probably going to seem rather disappointing. If you want to truly appreciate the depth and complexity of DotA, you simply need to think outside the box.

I hate last hitting. I agree with you, it's a crappy mechanic and it shouldn't be a measure of skill. So what do my friends and I do? We avoid it altogether. We create lane combinations that don't need to focus on last hitting to be effective. Lina + Sand King is a classic example. What need for last hitting when you're killing your opponents over and over? Juggernaught + Crystal Maiden is another extremely nasty one. Bristleback + Venomancer will have your opponents on their knees. With lane combinations like this, last hitting is a tertiary concern at best.

One of my girlfriend and my favorite lane combinations is Keeper of the Light + Leshrac. It is absolute tower demolition. Keeper's nuke kills whole creep waves and Leshrac has an ability which can kill towers in about 10 seconds flat (from full health). Once we've destroyed the tower in our lane we don't even worry about the people there anymore, we just go to the next lane and repeat the process. Pretty soon our team has 3,000 extra gold and is 3 towers closer to victory.

All this is to say that you're simply looking at DotA the wrong way. DotA is not *meant* to be played a certain way like LoL is. You aren't forced into a box. The box you create is self-imposed. If you want to create a boring farm lane, that's certainly a possibility. The Warlock + Faceless Void or Silencer + Spectre lanes will always have their advocates. Many people enjoy these kinds of lanes, and I don't think that option should be taken from them. However, that's far from the only possibility. There are so many good "push" and "kill" lanes that it's not even funny. There are literally thousands of lane combinations, all up to your own imagination, that make last hitting an almost negligible concern. And I'm sorry to say, but options like this simply aren't available in LoL. Stuck in the formulaic structure of the game, last hitting will always be important. Double-bruiser bottom lane might be fun in unskilled pubs, but how effective is it really against a carry and support who really know what they're doing?

When attempting to understand the design decisions implemented by the DotA team, you need to think about strategical depth. You're absolutely right, in DotA, you can't spam your abilities willy nilly. You must prepare, calculate, and time them all correctly, especially early on. So let me ask you, what strategy is there in spamming an ability over and over and over again, as soon as it is off cooldown? What timing does it require to keep pressing the same button again and again whenever you can? How does this contribute to the strategical value of the game? How does it make a person a better player?

You answered your own question with those remarks. The irony is that having more expensive spells means more strategical use of them. There is no strategy in simple point and click. The manaless champions in LoL are the epitome of this point. What skill does it require for me to take Katarina mid and spam my spells while gaining last hits and harassing my opponent like there is no tomorrow?

When I first met my girlfriend, she was a terrible LoL player, and she had never played DotA. When I first introduced her to DotA, one of her favorite characters was Vengeful Spirit. Initially, she would spam her stun on enemy heroes at level 1, as soon as they came into range. Within 2 uses of this, her mana was completely depleted, and she was basically useless, and the enemy hero just ate a tango and was full health again. It took me awhile to break the bad habits that LoL had instilled into her. I had to explain that this was no longer about just spamming her spells on enemy heroes whenever possible, but instead carefully waiting for that precise opportunity to strike, and working with your lane mate to secure a well-earned kill. Because in addition to their higher costs, you can't deny that the spells in DotA are also much more lethal as well. You may be able to kill somebody with Draven and Sona after 5 minutes of heavy harassment (unlikely). We can kill you with Lina and Sand King at level 1 if you get out of position. There is no flash to save your ass.

Mechanics like flash just open up a whole can of worms I don't even want to go in to, but suffice it to say that a Summoner Spell that rewards bad positioning which is so important that it's used by over 90% of champions in any given professional game, is beyond reproach.

After nearly 200 games of DotA, my girlfriend is only average at last hitting, but she is still an above average DotA player. Where she lacks in some areas, she makes up with her knowledge of where to be, when to be there, and what to do. As an example, she always carries teleports on her person, which means that she can assist an ally halfway across the map almost instantaneously as long as she is paying attention. Ironically, when she returned to LoL after not having played it for several months, not only was she much better than her friends who used to be equals, but she began to see how limited the game was. She was no longer worrying about whether she could hit her Dark Binding, but instead looking at the overall strategic options as a whole, and in that regard, LoL is decidedly inferior.

All of this comes at a heavy price, of course, and there are many ways in which LoL is undoubtedly superior to DotA. It all depends on what's important to you I guess. There have certainly been times in my life where LoL was more appealing to me, but overall I have preferred DotA more.

In terms of what was said about the laning phase of Smite, I think that's extremely interesting. I think it would all depend on how common or viable the "kill lanes" you speak of were. My biggest concern would be that once one team began winning a lane it would start to snowball uncontrollably. If every last hit is automatically taken by the pushed tower, I can see the losing side falling into an inescapable gold deficit which continued to perpetuate itself. Like I said however, without actually playing the game there's no way for me to know. It certainly sounds like it could be neat.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2013, 08:04:24 am by Wingflier »
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Offline tigersfan

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #245 on: December 22, 2013, 11:17:19 am »
In Smite, the towers on the side lanes are not the same distance apart, in the duo lane, they are farther apart, meaning that there is more room that one team would ahve to push in order to have the tower start denying, and if they sides are at all evenly matched in skill, this is difficult to do consistently. Similarly in the solo lane, if both players know what they are doing, it's hard to keep minions that far pushed for a long period of time even though it's a shorter distance than in the duo lane.

If one side is a great deal more skilled than another, then yeah, that kind of denial can lead to a pretty significant gold defecit, and that can snowball. But, with that level of skill difference, that was bound to happen anyway, most of the time.

Anyway, give Smite a try Wingflyer. You might find you like it. :)

Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #246 on: December 24, 2013, 12:28:06 am »
Yay, this thread is active again! <3

Before I begin my response I have to convey that I know almost absolutely nothing about SMITE. I've played thousands of games of HoN, LoL, and DotA, so those are the only 3 ARTS/MOBAs that I can fairly comment on.

In terms of the LoL laning phase being ideal, I'm afraid I'm going to have to heavily disagree there. The laning phase in LoL is the worst of all 3 of the major MOBA games I've tried. This is heavily evidenced by the fact that in professional play, there are usually barely any kills before the 20 minute mark. It is extremely painful to watch. In fact, without the help of the jungler (in high level play), kills rarely happen in the lane at all. To depend on the jungler just to make kills happen is absolutely crazy. That doesn't mean that there isn't some harassment and back-and-forth. Yes, it's true that whoever pushes their opponent to the tower typically has the advantage by virtue of making it harder to last hit. But that is not exciting. It's still a war of last hits. Last hitting is still important in LoL, I was in Gold II (so top 5% of all LoL players) before I got bored and went back to DotA, and it was absolutely imperative that you were ahead of the other carry in creep kills.

The laning phase in LoL is also made boring by extremely formulaic and stagnated metagame. Where in DotA the players can choose from an abundance of different lane combinations, LoL players are pretty much stuck with the typical 1-1-2+jungler.

Even if you chose to go the formulaic carry+support bottom lane route, the amount of options available to the DotA player are astronomically higher.

What can the LoL support player do?
1. Harass the opponent with his autoattacks and spells

There you go. You've completely exhausted the list of what you can realistically do as a support in the laning phase of League of Legends.

What can the DotA support player do?

1. Harass the opponent with his autoattacks and spells.
2. Deny allied creeps.
3. Stack the neutral creep camp.
4. Pull the neutral creep camp.
5. Walk mid and gank.
6. Smoke mid and gank.
7. Teleport mid and gank.
8. Smoke top and gank.
9. Smoke into their jungle and gank.
10. Teleport top and gank.
11. Help your jungler.
12. Secure rune control.
13. Permanently go mid to support.
14. Permanently go top to support.
15. Temporarily go top or mid to stop a heavy push attempt.

All of these options require different amounts of time, strategy, and financial investment to pull off.

Could a LoL support TECHNICALLY gank mid? Yes, but it's unlikely to work. As soon as a support goes missing for that long it's obvious something is fishy, and ganking mid with a support just isn't that effective. Not to mention that you're screwing your carry over by leaving. DotA carries are much more self-reliant and don't need the support with them all the time to succeed. The towers themselves deal much less damage per hit, which makes last hitting under the tower a much more viable option than in LoL, and is sometimes preferred for safety reasons and to free up a hero to go elsewhere.

This is a recurring theme throughout the comparison of DotA and LoL. In DotA, as a player, you simply have so many more options at any given time than does the LoL player. What I gave you was just one example. I could give you tons of examples just like this. That is to say, DotA's superior strategic depth comes from the multitude of options it presents the player at any given time. Your skill as a player doesn't come from the ability to throw a Nidalee Javelin, it comes from the impossible decision of having dozens of equally tempting options available to you, and being forced to decide which one is the most beneficial.

Many LoL players do not understand this because they do not understand DotA. If you come into DotA with the LoL mentality, then it's probably going to seem rather disappointing. If you want to truly appreciate the depth and complexity of DotA, you simply need to think outside the box.

I hate last hitting. I agree with you, it's a crappy mechanic and it shouldn't be a measure of skill. So what do my friends and I do? We avoid it altogether. We create lane combinations that don't need to focus on last hitting to be effective. Lina + Sand King is a classic example. What need for last hitting when you're killing your opponents over and over? Juggernaught + Crystal Maiden is another extremely nasty one. Bristleback + Venomancer will have your opponents on their knees. With lane combinations like this, last hitting is a tertiary concern at best.

One of my girlfriend and my favorite lane combinations is Keeper of the Light + Leshrac. It is absolute tower demolition. Keeper's nuke kills whole creep waves and Leshrac has an ability which can kill towers in about 10 seconds flat (from full health). Once we've destroyed the tower in our lane we don't even worry about the people there anymore, we just go to the next lane and repeat the process. Pretty soon our team has 3,000 extra gold and is 3 towers closer to victory.

All this is to say that you're simply looking at DotA the wrong way. DotA is not *meant* to be played a certain way like LoL is. You aren't forced into a box. The box you create is self-imposed. If you want to create a boring farm lane, that's certainly a possibility. The Warlock + Faceless Void or Silencer + Spectre lanes will always have their advocates. Many people enjoy these kinds of lanes, and I don't think that option should be taken from them. However, that's far from the only possibility. There are so many good "push" and "kill" lanes that it's not even funny. There are literally thousands of lane combinations, all up to your own imagination, that make last hitting an almost negligible concern. And I'm sorry to say, but options like this simply aren't available in LoL. Stuck in the formulaic structure of the game, last hitting will always be important. Double-bruiser bottom lane might be fun in unskilled pubs, but how effective is it really against a carry and support who really know what they're doing?

When attempting to understand the design decisions implemented by the DotA team, you need to think about strategical depth. You're absolutely right, in DotA, you can't spam your abilities willy nilly. You must prepare, calculate, and time them all correctly, especially early on. So let me ask you, what strategy is there in spamming an ability over and over and over again, as soon as it is off cooldown? What timing does it require to keep pressing the same button again and again whenever you can? How does this contribute to the strategical value of the game? How does it make a person a better player?

You answered your own question with those remarks. The irony is that having more expensive spells means more strategical use of them. There is no strategy in simple point and click. The manaless champions in LoL are the epitome of this point. What skill does it require for me to take Katarina mid and spam my spells while gaining last hits and harassing my opponent like there is no tomorrow?

When I first met my girlfriend, she was a terrible LoL player, and she had never played DotA. When I first introduced her to DotA, one of her favorite characters was Vengeful Spirit. Initially, she would spam her stun on enemy heroes at level 1, as soon as they came into range. Within 2 uses of this, her mana was completely depleted, and she was basically useless, and the enemy hero just ate a tango and was full health again. It took me awhile to break the bad habits that LoL had instilled into her. I had to explain that this was no longer about just spamming her spells on enemy heroes whenever possible, but instead carefully waiting for that precise opportunity to strike, and working with your lane mate to secure a well-earned kill. Because in addition to their higher costs, you can't deny that the spells in DotA are also much more lethal as well. You may be able to kill somebody with Draven and Sona after 5 minutes of heavy harassment (unlikely). We can kill you with Lina and Sand King at level 1 if you get out of position. There is no flash to save your ass.

Mechanics like flash just open up a whole can of worms I don't even want to go in to, but suffice it to say that a Summoner Spell that rewards bad positioning which is so important that it's used by over 90% of champions in any given professional game, is beyond reproach.

After nearly 200 games of DotA, my girlfriend is only average at last hitting, but she is still an above average DotA player. Where she lacks in some areas, she makes up with her knowledge of where to be, when to be there, and what to do. As an example, she always carries teleports on her person, which means that she can assist an ally halfway across the map almost instantaneously as long as she is paying attention. Ironically, when she returned to LoL after not having played it for several months, not only was she much better than her friends who used to be equals, but she began to see how limited the game was. She was no longer worrying about whether she could hit her Dark Binding, but instead looking at the overall strategic options as a whole, and in that regard, LoL is decidedly inferior.

All of this comes at a heavy price, of course, and there are many ways in which LoL is undoubtedly superior to DotA. It all depends on what's important to you I guess. There have certainly been times in my life where LoL was more appealing to me, but overall I have preferred DotA more.

In terms of what was said about the laning phase of Smite, I think that's extremely interesting. I think it would all depend on how common or viable the "kill lanes" you speak of were. My biggest concern would be that once one team began winning a lane it would start to snowball uncontrollably. If every last hit is automatically taken by the pushed tower, I can see the losing side falling into an inescapable gold deficit which continued to perpetuate itself. Like I said however, without actually playing the game there's no way for me to know. It certainly sounds like it could be neat.

Whoa, whoa.  I'm the one that's supposed to be doing the monstrous text blocks here!   :P


I have to say, I see support a bit differently here.

My problems with Dota's support stuff is as such:

1. The most boring thing a support has to do is also one that takes up a huge amount of time:  Warding.  Seriously, this is DULL.  People can go on and on about "strategic!", but it's still bloody boring.  And it's not all that hard to figure out the best spots for wards, given the situation.  There's little fighting or challenge in doing this;  you could say that the challenge is in potentially running into enemies, but that's usually just instant doom for the support, which doesnt actually provide challenge, as typically you cant really engage in direct combat with them unless they're very underpowered, or they're another single roaming support such as yourself.

2.  Items.  One thing I love about mobas is the depth that all of the equipment provides.  But in Dota especially, this.... isnt really an aspect of supports.  They're going to have very little cash, and chances are, they're blowing it on wards, over and over and over. Aside from just being really uninteresting, it doesnt truly give much chance to dive into the equipment system.  And even when you do have money, often it goes towards the same support-tastic items each time, for pretty much any support.  There's a couple of extremely specific exceptions, but this tends to be true overall.  In *every* other moba I have tried, this issue is dramatically lessened, as you dont need to spend that extreme amount of gold on wards. You still NEED wards, but it doesnt have the ridiculous focus that it has in Dota.  Particularly in the upcoming Dawngate.... holy hell, I *love* playing support in that. I dont have to buy wards.... EVER.  I have plenty of other more interesting duties that I can choose from instead of that particular uninteresting task.

3. Denying.  Ye gods, this mechanic.... it has always struck me as one of the dumbest concepts in any multiplayer game.  No, I dont give a flying fart how "deep" it is, it's still bloody stupid.   My opponent is causing trouble?  I know!  Let's shoot my own troops in the back of the head! That'll learn him a thing or two!!!   ....bloody stupid.  Not to mention it's not actually difficult OR deep;  it's just timing based, and knowing at least a bit on where you are in terms of being far down the lane or close to the tower.  I've found that this is actually the easiest thing to learn, as it's just last-hitting for supports.

4. Stacking/pulling:  Again, just timing-based.  It's not hard at all to know when to do it, and when the time comes to do it, you simply need to know the timing, which isnt very hard to get down.  Personally I find this one rather dull.

5.  Ganking:  The idea that this cant work in other games very well seems to be a misconception to me.  It's just that it works DIFFERENTLY.  In Dota, you often directly attack the enemy when trying to do this.  In others, it's often best to appear suddenly..... and violently buff your teammate who is already there, and then attack WITH him, preferrably dropping debuffs on the fleeing foe as you get closer, while having the safety of your teammate right there to take some of the heat for you, while you continue to heal/buff.  In theory, your teammate should then be the one that actually gets the kill.

6.  Laning:  This is the one that gets me the most.  Laning in Dota is BORING.  I'm sorry, but it is.  For a support, it mostly consists of dancing around, occaisionally firing a shot to deny (again, bloody stupid)... and that's about it.  You do this until some other duty presents itself.  There's little excitement here, and when combat DOES happen, it's often over in .0000002 seconds, and then it's back to boring.  In the others, the combat is nearly constant, even for the support; I'm constantly firing spells at my opponent, constantly healing and hitting my teammate with buffing effects, or pulling them out of the way of strong enemy spells, I'm constantly working to dodge enemy spells, constantly watching my recharge times on each ability I have, and so on.  There's quite alot to combat in any of these games, so I find it hard to say there's no depth here, and combat in the others just LASTS LONGER, too... no instantly defeating an opponent due to 1 or 2 lucky hits in those, as can happen in Dota.  And Dota's support tasks are simply more spread out, and involving MUCH less actual fighting.  The others typically are more focused around the area that your carry is currently occupying, and there's LOTS of fighting/dodging/running happening there.   And you still have to be paying attention to what is going on elsewhere, for if your presence in another lane could provide some sort of advantage, just like in any of these games.  And combat isnt about ability spam, either.  If I just fire randomly, not paying attention to the timing, order, or when it's a good idea to attack or a bad idea.... I *will* get destroyed.  It's just like in fighting games:  Newer players tend to have this idea that if they just keep spamming powerful specials, they're going to kick ass.... but this is very, very far from the truth, even in very frantic fighters like Guilty Gear.  Someone trying that on me WILL be obliterated with next to no effort.   In these games, I never just spam spells, I'm always watching the situation and only attacking when it's a good idea.  It's still frequent attacking, just like in a fighting game, but that doesnt = spam.   And of course if my opponent should spam randomly.... chances are, I can take them down without much trouble, or easily escape them should they try a direct assault.

7.  Last hitting: Ehhhh.  I agree with you on this one, it's a damn stupid mechanic.  I can understand WHY it's there, in that it makes you pay attention to the creep waves, giving more things to focus on at once during laning, and adds at least a bit of an element of extra skill necessary.  And of course some people also just like timing-based challenges.  I have to say though, I kinda prefer it in other mobas for one extremely simple reason:  You dont HAVE to only use your basic attack to do it.  In Dota, farming with spells is usually a big no-no.  You simply dont have the mana, and cannot fire them very often at all before you run out.  In the others, you CAN do this, and there are some spells that are specifically designed to be very helpful when it comes to last-hitting.  And of course, skillshot types being what they are (which are DRAMATICALLY more common in the other mobas), you have to know when and where to fire amongst the creep waves in order to max out the effect of the spell, creating as little waste as possible.  It does depend on which game you're playing as to just how much of this particular thing you do (Smite in particular seems to allow ALOT of this, constantly, for any role), but I personally find it a good thing.


And understand with all of this, that despite how negative I probably sound, I still do quite like Dota.  When it comes to these games, I seriously have a really, really hard time deciding which I like most. I really just cant say which is my favorite;  I often consider them to just be DIFFERENT from one another, not so much BETTER.  Which I play merely depends on my mood at the time, and what kind of gameplay I feel like doing in them.  For the most part, all of the ones I'm interested in are all superb games.  And I can come up with a negative list like this for ALL of them...  I'm very good at "negative" in general, as a rule.  Yet another reason why I go by "Misery", hah.


Also this topic is very interesting.  Should keep this one going.  There so much STUFF in this genre that makes for great debate.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #247 on: December 24, 2013, 08:25:00 am »
With regards to 1: Supports
I find playing support in Smite to be quite fun. I can either by a support-tank and bodyblock shots, provide debuffs, slows, stuns and whatever to help my lane mate. I'm also mostly responsible for warding, but since I'll often have the "Eye of Providence" active item, I don't need to spend gold on wards, since that item provides a free ward every 60 seconds. Or, I can play a support mage and help my lane mate by weakening minions for last hit/clear, heal my lanemate or protect them during ganks.
 
2: Support gold/gear
Supports in Smite generally pick up two items that help them with gold flow. First off, Midas Boots; These increase the passive gold spool by 50%. Then "Watcher's Gift" which is a starter item that will provide last hit bonus gold to the support if their lane mate last hits anything. It does however make them squishy early game, since they'll be focusing on gold income rather than tank items. It does however not matter much in the long run since they will passively make more gold than most laners.
 
3: Denying
Well yeah, Smite doesn't have denying, so it's not an issue.
 
4: Pulling/stacking
I barely don't even know what this is, but I'll make some guesses. In Smite, you can hit the front minion to make him stagger. If you keep doing that, all minions will eventually be "stacked" together more closely and you can use small-space AOE to take them out. You can also "pull" minions away from a fight by hitting the opposing god, which will aggro minions on you. If you are not in range of their archers atm, all minions will then start to run towards you, ignoring YOUR mininons, giving your minions a chance to get ahead in HP, since they will keep hitting the opposing minions. Generally you don't do this unless you are playing a god that has bad clear early on.
 
5: Ganking
Simple. Generally only done early game by the jungler. Everyone else will simply rotate with their opposing god if they leave lane. The jungler ganks for two reasons: Helping solo and mid lane to push the lane, regardless of whether they are doing good or bad and also because the jungler is generally behind on farm and XP due to less gold/XP available in the jungle. Kills are worth far less in Smite compared to most other MOBAs, so you shouldn't risk too much going after a kill early game. It might not be worth it.
 
6: Laning
It varies HUGELY in Smite whether laning is boring or fun. If you are against a god and a player that is much more skilled/suited than you are, laning can be extremely stressful and even frustrating. If you are against someone of equal skill, it comes down to gods chosen. Midlane Ao Kuang vs Ao Kuang is for instance MINDBOGGINGLY boring as both will generally just sit in their tower and toss tornadoes at minions until the jungler comes along for a gank. Both have superior clear but rather poor gank. Most of the time though, laning is quite fun. Especially in duo lane.
 
7. Last hitting
Well, last hitting provides you with something of 12-13 gold extra in Smite, which is barely anything. So it's quite pointless to focus your attention on. Sure, it DOES give you a slight edge, but if you are lapsing in attention or if you simply don't give a damn, it's not going to cost you the game. The only time last-hitting REALLY MATTERS is when you have a so called "stacking" item that snowballs depending on stacks. Every kill on a minion or god provides a certain amount of stacks until the item is fully stacked, and every stack provides benefits.
 
 
Now, as for LoL and Dota, which are the only other MOBAs I've played, I've already stated I can't stomach the control scheme, the slow gameplay and the perspective. Smite is quick, frantic and generally much more twitch-based than the more slow and tactic gameplay of Dota and LoL. Most people consider this bad. I don't. I love being able to land a perfect skill shot and saving a team mate in a dire moment. (for a short example of a skillshot in Smite, see my Arachne ultimate in the beginning of this video).
 
My main problem with Dota and LoL is probably that both require a crapton of skill to play, but I personally think that the skills required are in the wrong places. Being super proficient with last hitting/denying will make you a better LoL/Dota player, but to me that's just a meh skill to have. It doesn't provide me with any gratification or fun, compared to say, landing a perfect Pillar + Impale skillshot combo with Anhur in Smite (Impale Combo).
« Last Edit: December 24, 2013, 08:38:22 am by Moonshine Fox »
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #248 on: December 24, 2013, 12:33:04 pm »
1. Warding -

It's true that supports in DotA spend quite a bit of time warding.  Once every six minutes (assuming you're perfect, which most of the time isn't possible).  However, I certainly wouldn't call it boring.  My girlfriend (who plays primarily support) has died so many times warding that she gets frustrated when she has to do it.  Warding in DotA is often very dangerous as the ward hotspots are also typically near the runes, which are extremely active areas of the map, especially during the mid-game.  Warding can lead to a sudden and unexpected death.  Good players can even lie in waiting just for a support to come.

You're right though, when a support goes alone, it's typically a death sentence if they get caught out.  That's why you take an escort.  It's something my girlfriend has learned to do.  She asks someone to go with her.  She can even turn a potential gank attempt into a kill.  This is where the strategies and mindgames come in.  The enemy knows you need to ward.  They know having vision of the wards/forest entrances are important.  Do they wait in ambush?  You expect that they will, so you send an escort for your support warder.  Do you use your support as bait to draw out the predator and kill them?  What if the enemy expects a trap and sends multiple heroes to do the job.  What if you expect this and your whole team is waiting just behind the fog?

These are the kinds of mind games that warding often plays in DotA.  Then you also get into counter-warding, counter-counter-warding, smoke ganking (which avoids wards altogether), and everything in-between.  In mid to high level play, it can get complicated; but the team which controls the ward vision has a massive advantage that can't be understated.

I agree that it is a big responsibility on the supports, but that doesn't mean that other people can't help them.  I try to buy wards whenever I can, regardless of what role I play.  I've been on a jungle kick lately, and I usually buy a least a couple set of wards throughout the game.  Especially early on, when I'm still weak, I'd rather have control of where they are placed so that when they attempt to gank me I know well in advance.  Sometimes you can ask for help if you're way behind on items.  Believe it or not, going Hand of Midas on supports has become a popular strategy in professional play lately, and it helps them out tremendously in the long run to buy the things they need, plus also get some luxury items as well.

2. Items -
In general DotA does items much better than does League of Legends.  Perhaps it's the fact that most heroes have multiple build paths, or that a large percentage of the items are activatable, or that there's simply a bigger variety of things to build.  Mostly however, I think it's the way both DotA and LoL handle items.  In LoL, items scale up, while in DotA, items scale down.  This means that in LoL, the farther ahead you get (in farm), the more exponential an advantage you'll have over your opponent.  In DotA it's just the opposite.  The cheaper the item, the more cost effective.  This means that even if an opponent has significantly more farm than you do, your items stand a much better chance of competing with his.  The more he has spent on any particular item, the less it was worth, cost-effectiveness wise.  This allows even supports to buy cheaper items (Urn of Shadows, Medallion of Courage, Magic Wand) that can still make a BIG difference in battle while still being able to afford the mainstream support stuff.

3. Denying -
I'm really pretty neutral on denying.  I could take it or leave it.  I've seen good arguments on both sides.  I highly recommend reading this article about it by [S2]Nome. Against it is certainly the fact that it's a non-intuitive mechanic.  I hate it when games add non-intuitive mechanics for no reason.  Sometimes it's necessary but in this case I feel like it just adds unneeded complexity.  However, there are some positives to it as well.  It raises the skill gap in the laning phase.  In LoL you can harass or last hit.  In DotA, you can harass, last hit, or deny.  You've increased the potential options/skill ceiling by 33% for each player.  It also gives supports something to do, as they are typically expected to deny instead of taking last hits. 

In DotA, some heroes are better at harassing, and some heroes are better at last hitting/denying.  Often, the winner of a lane (say mid lane) comes from a player's ability to deny vs an enemy's ability to kill them.  If a person can deny the "lethal" champion enough, it will cause him to be underleveled/underfarmed to such an extent that he loses quite a bit of his killing power.  Conversely, if the aggressive champion can get ahead on kills, the last-hitter can be put in a very difficult position.

Like I said, it's a frustrating mechanic, but it certainly adds depth to the game, at a cost.  I simply attempt to avoid it by playing lanes/roles that don't require it much to succeed, and there are plenty of those.

4.  Stacking/pulling -
It's not difficult to do, but the strategy appears when the enemy comes to stop you.  People don't like their creep waves being pulled, it robs them of a substantial amount of farm and exp.  They will stop you if they can, which often causes dangerous fights to break out.  Typically though you have the advantage since these fights are close to your tower, and in your jungle.

5.  Ganking -
I didn't say that it doesn't work in other games.  I said it doesn't work in LoL.  As a support, leaving your lane to go gank mid during the laning phase seems extremely unlikely to work.  If the enemy calls their lane it should be extremely obvious what's happening.  Not to mention that every second you leave your carry is guaranteed to hurt you in the long run.  Even if you secure the mid kill, for example, you may have lost even more by the time you get back to the lane. 

In DotA it's so much more viable to gank.  You've got teleports to be at mid or top lane almost instantly.  Can you imagine a support leaving bot lane to help top in LoL?  It's just too insane to consider.  You've also got smoke at your disposal, which literally cloaks you to all enemy vision now, even see-invis wards.  It also gives you a boost of 15% movespeed, and it lasts for 60 seconds.  It only ends once you are very close to an enemy hero or tower.  With a tool like this, you have ganking opportunities that a LoL player couldn't even DREAM of, and it only costs 100 gold.  Not only that, but even if you just walk mid from bottom lane, there's a much higher chance of a successful gank.  Supports are often missing from the lane anyway because they may be pulling, warding, or doing any number of things.  Ability ranges are also much longer in DotA, stuns are more common, and there is no flash.  It's not hard to coordinate a successful gank on mid if you work together, even without paying for a consumable to make it work.

I've had two games recently with two different friends who were playing mid.  My friends are good players so they were successfully dominating the mid lane.  In both games, the enemy team saw that they were a problem, and through a series of coordinated ganks with supports, killed my friends at mid over, and over, and over again until they had lost most their farm and were neutered as hell.  They were effectively camping mid with their supports, waiting for the right opportunity to strike, then taking them down before they got out of hand.  It goes without saying that a mid that gets super ahead in DotA is extremely potent.

I'm not saying this isn't possible in LoL.  It's just with over a thousand games of experience, I've never seen anything like it. Sure, you have the teleport summoner spell, it's just not that viable on supports and has a considerably longer cooldown than in DotA. DotA ganking in general is just more effective.  You have more approach paths (including ones you can make yourself by cutting down trees), more mobility, and more accessibility to every lane.  There is no flash to ruin ganks regularly, and more stuns to set them up correctly if the opponent is out of position.  Tower diving is much, much more viable, which allows for some crazy gank attempts that can sometimes break out into entire teamfights because of scroll of teleport.

6. Laning -
As I said before, if traditional DotA laning bores you, don't do it.  After playing the game for over 10 years, it bores me a bit too as well.  My friends and I rarely do traditional laning anymore.  Most often we create some kind of obnoxious lane combination that "breaks" the game.  (We like to call these "gay lanes", however immature that may be.)  Find a friend that you synergize well with and pick a powerful kill lane.  You say fighting and killing is rare in DotA lanes, but I assure you, with Lina + Sand King, killing is not rare at all.  With CM + Juggernaught you will be killing your opponent(s) over and over again.  Sure, they may leave the lane (or leave the game) because they're tired of dying, but you can't possibly complain about that.  As I said last time, Leshrac + Keeper of the Light is a blast.  We often get complained at because "you're taking two supports bottom lane waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah".  Then when we start melting towers like faces, people change their tune.  In DotA is a game for innovators.  If you try to play traditionally, people who have played more are going to beat you by experience.  Don't play their game, force them to play yours.  Find your group's favorite heroes and make them work together.

I knew that my cousin likes Skywrath Mage, Dazzle, and Bristleback.  Those are 3 of his favorites.  I like Leshrac, Slardar, and Pugna. 

So?  We put them together and were amazed with the results. 

Dazzle and Slardar wasn't difficult to figure out.  It's a combination sometimes even used in competitive play.  Powerful in the lane but even more powerful late game.  Both heroes have anti-armor ultimates.  Combined, they can bring an enemy to -60 armor or more.  This means that, in essence, a carry could feasibly kill an enemy player from full health in one hit.  Both of their ultimates go through magic immunity...

Bristleback + Leshrac has turned out to be the nastiest, most disgusting, most overpowered lane we've ever devised in 10 years.  Early on in the laning phase, Bristlebacks stacking slow makes landing my "skillshot stun" easy, and we can often secure a within the first minute of the game.  The laning phase often snowballs and we can take a tower fairly quickly if necessary.  However, where the combination really shines is during the teamfight phase.  Bristleback is well known as one of the most powerful tanks in the game.  Hit from behind (his bristleback), he takes 40% reduced damage and retaliates with a free spray of quills in a large area.  This in addition to the skill that does the same allows him to spread physical damage in a large area over a large period of time.  Each time an enemy is hit by these quills, they become even more vulnerable to the next, til they get to the point that each new quill is taking an 1/8th of their health or more.  Enter Leshrac, whose Pulse Nova deals hundreds of magical damage in a large area every second as long as he has mana (think Karthus Defile, except much stronger).  Normally Leshrac is vulnerable when using this ability because he's a squishy intelligence hero, but with Bristleback to tank and draw the fire, it becomes much easier.  With the massive amount of magic and physical aoe damage that we're both throwing out, we can kill entire teams in seconds.  2v5, we've done it many times.  We have never lost with this combination.  Our team can be sleeping and we still win.  Nobody ever expects and it never lets up.

Pugna + Skywrath Mage is one of the most hilarious troll lanes EVER.  Both Pugna and Skywrath have an ability which reduces an enemy's magic resistance quite considerably.  They both also have slows.  They both also do a buttload of magic damage.  Basically, you hit 3, pick a target, and watch them die.  Everything melts.  It's the most unorthodox, most unexpected, most hilarious face melting lane we've ever devised.  NOBODY expects it.  It goes against every unwritten rule that DotA players adhere to.  Taking 2 solo mid laners and putting them bot together should end in disaster; and it does - just not for the right team  ;D

You just have to experiment a bit and practice until you find unorthodox lanes that destroy everything and which nobody expects.  That's when laning in DotA becomes a lot of fun.

7. Last hitting -

Like I said, I agree with this.  It's a boring mechanic and has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of grand strategy or critical thinking the rest of the game requires.  I almost look at it as a kind of 'mini-game within the game', because somebody can be completely horrible at it, yet still be good at the rest of the game.  Conversely, someone can be extremely good at last hitting, and horrible at everything else.  It's a skill that doesn't really translate to the rest of the game, but as far as I know, all the popular MOBAs use it. Having said that, removing or reinventing it is not as easy as one would think.  Nome started an interesting discussion about this a few years ago.  At some point, he and his team of designers went about trying dozens of different alternatives to last hitting inside of their own 3rd party MOBA game.  They tried everything.  They tried gold simply dropping on the ground, spreading gold and exp equally among everyone in the lane, creating different resources for different creep, even removing the mechanic entirely.  In the end, no matter what they tried, all the mechanics ended up as inferior to the simple last-hitting mechanic the game was built around.

I believe the next generation of ARTS games are planning to change this formula however.  Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard DotA) and S2's new game Strife are removing or revamping this mechanic completely, from what I've read.  I'll be greatly anticipating both.




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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #249 on: December 24, 2013, 12:52:33 pm »
Oh, as a second things that I thought of when I read your #2 there:
 
Items! Active items in DotA really threw me off. In a game where split-second decisions can make or break you, I find it extremely infuriating to not only have your abilites, but also "random" items have an active component. I much prefer Smite's way of doing it where you have 4 abilites, 1 passive, 2 active slots (where items with an active component go) and 6 passive item slots. That makes it a lot easier to focus.
 
I guess you could play DotA that way, and simply keep two actives in the same keybinds as Smite, but it still seems a bit "messy" to me.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #250 on: December 24, 2013, 01:29:46 pm »
Oh, as a second things that I thought of when I read your #2 there:
 
Items! Active items in DotA really threw me off. In a game where split-second decisions can make or break you, I find it extremely infuriating to not only have your abilites, but also "random" items have an active component. I much prefer Smite's way of doing it where you have 4 abilites, 1 passive, 2 active slots (where items with an active component go) and 6 passive item slots. That makes it a lot easier to focus.
 
I guess you could play DotA that way, and simply keep two actives in the same keybinds as Smite, but it still seems a bit "messy" to me.
Yeah it gets confusing sometimes.  I've had up to 6 active items...sadly I only have hotkeys for 5 of them.  It can become overwhelming.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #251 on: December 25, 2013, 02:08:29 am »
1. Warding -

It's true that supports in DotA spend quite a bit of time warding.  Once every six minutes (assuming you're perfect, which most of the time isn't possible).  However, I certainly wouldn't call it boring.  My girlfriend (who plays primarily support) has died so many times warding that she gets frustrated when she has to do it.  Warding in DotA is often very dangerous as the ward hotspots are also typically near the runes, which are extremely active areas of the map, especially during the mid-game.  Warding can lead to a sudden and unexpected death.  Good players can even lie in waiting just for a support to come.

You're right though, when a support goes alone, it's typically a death sentence if they get caught out.  That's why you take an escort.  It's something my girlfriend has learned to do.  She asks someone to go with her.  She can even turn a potential gank attempt into a kill.  This is where the strategies and mindgames come in.  The enemy knows you need to ward.  They know having vision of the wards/forest entrances are important.  Do they wait in ambush?  You expect that they will, so you send an escort for your support warder.  Do you use your support as bait to draw out the predator and kill them?  What if the enemy expects a trap and sends multiple heroes to do the job.  What if you expect this and your whole team is waiting just behind the fog?

These are the kinds of mind games that warding often plays in DotA.  Then you also get into counter-warding, counter-counter-warding, smoke ganking (which avoids wards altogether), and everything in-between.  In mid to high level play, it can get complicated; but the team which controls the ward vision has a massive advantage that can't be understated.

I agree that it is a big responsibility on the supports, but that doesn't mean that other people can't help them.  I try to buy wards whenever I can, regardless of what role I play.  I've been on a jungle kick lately, and I usually buy a least a couple set of wards throughout the game.  Especially early on, when I'm still weak, I'd rather have control of where they are placed so that when they attempt to gank me I know well in advance.  Sometimes you can ask for help if you're way behind on items.  Believe it or not, going Hand of Midas on supports has become a popular strategy in professional play lately, and it helps them out tremendously in the long run to buy the things they need, plus also get some luxury items as well.

2. Items -
In general DotA does items much better than does League of Legends.  Perhaps it's the fact that most heroes have multiple build paths, or that a large percentage of the items are activatable, or that there's simply a bigger variety of things to build.  Mostly however, I think it's the way both DotA and LoL handle items.  In LoL, items scale up, while in DotA, items scale down.  This means that in LoL, the farther ahead you get (in farm), the more exponential an advantage you'll have over your opponent.  In DotA it's just the opposite.  The cheaper the item, the more cost effective.  This means that even if an opponent has significantly more farm than you do, your items stand a much better chance of competing with his.  The more he has spent on any particular item, the less it was worth, cost-effectiveness wise.  This allows even supports to buy cheaper items (Urn of Shadows, Medallion of Courage, Magic Wand) that can still make a BIG difference in battle while still being able to afford the mainstream support stuff.

3. Denying -
I'm really pretty neutral on denying.  I could take it or leave it.  I've seen good arguments on both sides.  I highly recommend reading this article about it by [S2]Nome. Against it is certainly the fact that it's a non-intuitive mechanic.  I hate it when games add non-intuitive mechanics for no reason.  Sometimes it's necessary but in this case I feel like it just adds unneeded complexity.  However, there are some positives to it as well.  It raises the skill gap in the laning phase.  In LoL you can harass or last hit.  In DotA, you can harass, last hit, or deny.  You've increased the potential options/skill ceiling by 33% for each player.  It also gives supports something to do, as they are typically expected to deny instead of taking last hits. 

In DotA, some heroes are better at harassing, and some heroes are better at last hitting/denying.  Often, the winner of a lane (say mid lane) comes from a player's ability to deny vs an enemy's ability to kill them.  If a person can deny the "lethal" champion enough, it will cause him to be underleveled/underfarmed to such an extent that he loses quite a bit of his killing power.  Conversely, if the aggressive champion can get ahead on kills, the last-hitter can be put in a very difficult position.

Like I said, it's a frustrating mechanic, but it certainly adds depth to the game, at a cost.  I simply attempt to avoid it by playing lanes/roles that don't require it much to succeed, and there are plenty of those.

4.  Stacking/pulling -
It's not difficult to do, but the strategy appears when the enemy comes to stop you.  People don't like their creep waves being pulled, it robs them of a substantial amount of farm and exp.  They will stop you if they can, which often causes dangerous fights to break out.  Typically though you have the advantage since these fights are close to your tower, and in your jungle.

5.  Ganking -
I didn't say that it doesn't work in other games.  I said it doesn't work in LoL.  As a support, leaving your lane to go gank mid during the laning phase seems extremely unlikely to work.  If the enemy calls their lane it should be extremely obvious what's happening.  Not to mention that every second you leave your carry is guaranteed to hurt you in the long run.  Even if you secure the mid kill, for example, you may have lost even more by the time you get back to the lane. 

In DotA it's so much more viable to gank.  You've got teleports to be at mid or top lane almost instantly.  Can you imagine a support leaving bot lane to help top in LoL?  It's just too insane to consider.  You've also got smoke at your disposal, which literally cloaks you to all enemy vision now, even see-invis wards.  It also gives you a boost of 15% movespeed, and it lasts for 60 seconds.  It only ends once you are very close to an enemy hero or tower.  With a tool like this, you have ganking opportunities that a LoL player couldn't even DREAM of, and it only costs 100 gold.  Not only that, but even if you just walk mid from bottom lane, there's a much higher chance of a successful gank.  Supports are often missing from the lane anyway because they may be pulling, warding, or doing any number of things.  Ability ranges are also much longer in DotA, stuns are more common, and there is no flash.  It's not hard to coordinate a successful gank on mid if you work together, even without paying for a consumable to make it work.

I've had two games recently with two different friends who were playing mid.  My friends are good players so they were successfully dominating the mid lane.  In both games, the enemy team saw that they were a problem, and through a series of coordinated ganks with supports, killed my friends at mid over, and over, and over again until they had lost most their farm and were neutered as hell.  They were effectively camping mid with their supports, waiting for the right opportunity to strike, then taking them down before they got out of hand.  It goes without saying that a mid that gets super ahead in DotA is extremely potent.

I'm not saying this isn't possible in LoL.  It's just with over a thousand games of experience, I've never seen anything like it. Sure, you have the teleport summoner spell, it's just not that viable on supports and has a considerably longer cooldown than in DotA. DotA ganking in general is just more effective.  You have more approach paths (including ones you can make yourself by cutting down trees), more mobility, and more accessibility to every lane.  There is no flash to ruin ganks regularly, and more stuns to set them up correctly if the opponent is out of position.  Tower diving is much, much more viable, which allows for some crazy gank attempts that can sometimes break out into entire teamfights because of scroll of teleport.

6. Laning -
As I said before, if traditional DotA laning bores you, don't do it.  After playing the game for over 10 years, it bores me a bit too as well.  My friends and I rarely do traditional laning anymore.  Most often we create some kind of obnoxious lane combination that "breaks" the game.  (We like to call these "gay lanes", however immature that may be.)  Find a friend that you synergize well with and pick a powerful kill lane.  You say fighting and killing is rare in DotA lanes, but I assure you, with Lina + Sand King, killing is not rare at all.  With CM + Juggernaught you will be killing your opponent(s) over and over again.  Sure, they may leave the lane (or leave the game) because they're tired of dying, but you can't possibly complain about that.  As I said last time, Leshrac + Keeper of the Light is a blast.  We often get complained at because "you're taking two supports bottom lane waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah".  Then when we start melting towers like faces, people change their tune.  In DotA is a game for innovators.  If you try to play traditionally, people who have played more are going to beat you by experience.  Don't play their game, force them to play yours.  Find your group's favorite heroes and make them work together.

I knew that my cousin likes Skywrath Mage, Dazzle, and Bristleback.  Those are 3 of his favorites.  I like Leshrac, Slardar, and Pugna. 

So?  We put them together and were amazed with the results. 

Dazzle and Slardar wasn't difficult to figure out.  It's a combination sometimes even used in competitive play.  Powerful in the lane but even more powerful late game.  Both heroes have anti-armor ultimates.  Combined, they can bring an enemy to -60 armor or more.  This means that, in essence, a carry could feasibly kill an enemy player from full health in one hit.  Both of their ultimates go through magic immunity...

Bristleback + Leshrac has turned out to be the nastiest, most disgusting, most overpowered lane we've ever devised in 10 years.  Early on in the laning phase, Bristlebacks stacking slow makes landing my "skillshot stun" easy, and we can often secure a within the first minute of the game.  The laning phase often snowballs and we can take a tower fairly quickly if necessary.  However, where the combination really shines is during the teamfight phase.  Bristleback is well known as one of the most powerful tanks in the game.  Hit from behind (his bristleback), he takes 40% reduced damage and retaliates with a free spray of quills in a large area.  This in addition to the skill that does the same allows him to spread physical damage in a large area over a large period of time.  Each time an enemy is hit by these quills, they become even more vulnerable to the next, til they get to the point that each new quill is taking an 1/8th of their health or more.  Enter Leshrac, whose Pulse Nova deals hundreds of magical damage in a large area every second as long as he has mana (think Karthus Defile, except much stronger).  Normally Leshrac is vulnerable when using this ability because he's a squishy intelligence hero, but with Bristleback to tank and draw the fire, it becomes much easier.  With the massive amount of magic and physical aoe damage that we're both throwing out, we can kill entire teams in seconds.  2v5, we've done it many times.  We have never lost with this combination.  Our team can be sleeping and we still win.  Nobody ever expects and it never lets up.

Pugna + Skywrath Mage is one of the most hilarious troll lanes EVER.  Both Pugna and Skywrath have an ability which reduces an enemy's magic resistance quite considerably.  They both also have slows.  They both also do a buttload of magic damage.  Basically, you hit 3, pick a target, and watch them die.  Everything melts.  It's the most unorthodox, most unexpected, most hilarious face melting lane we've ever devised.  NOBODY expects it.  It goes against every unwritten rule that DotA players adhere to.  Taking 2 solo mid laners and putting them bot together should end in disaster; and it does - just not for the right team  ;D

You just have to experiment a bit and practice until you find unorthodox lanes that destroy everything and which nobody expects.  That's when laning in DotA becomes a lot of fun.

7. Last hitting -

Like I said, I agree with this.  It's a boring mechanic and has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of grand strategy or critical thinking the rest of the game requires.  I almost look at it as a kind of 'mini-game within the game', because somebody can be completely horrible at it, yet still be good at the rest of the game.  Conversely, someone can be extremely good at last hitting, and horrible at everything else.  It's a skill that doesn't really translate to the rest of the game, but as far as I know, all the popular MOBAs use it. Having said that, removing or reinventing it is not as easy as one would think.  Nome started an interesting discussion about this a few years ago.  At some point, he and his team of designers went about trying dozens of different alternatives to last hitting inside of their own 3rd party MOBA game.  They tried everything.  They tried gold simply dropping on the ground, spreading gold and exp equally among everyone in the lane, creating different resources for different creep, even removing the mechanic entirely.  In the end, no matter what they tried, all the mechanics ended up as inferior to the simple last-hitting mechanic the game was built around.

I believe the next generation of ARTS games are planning to change this formula however.  Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard DotA) and S2's new game Strife are removing or revamping this mechanic completely, from what I've read.  I'll be greatly anticipating both.


Time for MORE WORDBLOBS!!!!!!!!


Warding:  Yeah, I understand there's a mild strategic element to it, but.... yeah, to me, still bloody boring.  There's the threat of getting wrecked, but I've never found that it actually adds to the experience, for one reason:  If an enemy should appear who isnt a support, it's always A: instant death or B: just run away.  Actual fighting breaking out would be way more interesting, but the nature of Dota's combat (very infrequently fired skills) usually leaves this as rather unexciting.

Typically, if I"m doing support, I have to buy all of the wards myself.  There's a reason why others dont do it:  Against a team that knows what they're doing, other players buying these is a major detriment.  Why?  Because THEY need all the gold they can get for items, wheras I as a support really rather dont.  If they're buying wards, they're using gold that they really shouldnt be. This can be seen in pro matches quite easily, where there is often one constantly roaming support who is entirely dedicated to this sort of thing much of the time.


Items:  Honestly, I find that the scaling of these in both games is pretty similar in terms of gaining advantage.  If anything, Dota's characters have a higher chance of snowballing than that of LoL, and for one huge reason:  The overly strong, single-hit-wrecks-you spells.  If one of those hits you while a well-fed carry is after you, you *are* dead.  In League, even strong characters need quite a number of hits to kill even weak targets, which leaves the targets at least a few potential options.  Even as a support, I can often use my own spells to escape a powered up carry or ganker, because they cant just insta-wreck me like can be done in Dota. Oh, they can still do it QUICKLY, but not INSTANTLY. League simply requires many more attacks to be done to get a kill than Dota does.  But more than that, I like the way League handles items due to the way spell stats work;  since spell stats can actually be altered by items, this gives you ALOT of options with each character.  Even a character like Soraka, a pure healer, can become a dangerous mid (or dangerous ganker) by equipping the right stuff, as the very nature of her spells changes due to it.  In Dota though, your spells do what they do..... and never change.  They'll always have the exact same stats for each skill level, no matter what.  I've always found this kinda stale. 

Though, those things affect my opinion not as much as I might make them sound.  I think both games do items pretty well in their own ways.

....though sometimes, I REALLY could do without the whole "crafting" idea that both of them use, as my memory is TERRIBLE.  I definitely prefer Smite's method, where items are leveled in the same way as spells, gaining their full effect when you've fully paid them off so that they hit their third level.  All I need to remember is what each does, not what each combines with to make what.  Infinite Crisis does this as well.  Dawngate uses a somewhat similar idea, except that the paths branch alot, starting from only 6 basic items and going into a whole bunch of different things.  Though the number of overall available items is likely to increase by quite a bit by the time that one actually releases; it's still in a pretty early beta form right now.


Denying:  No matter how I look at it, I just cant see any depth to this one.  If the creep is at the proper health level, and you're in position, you do it.   If it isnt, or you arent, you dont.  It never seems to interfere with harassing simply due to harassing being so very minimal in Dota compared to...  well, every other moba I've tried, where it's usually this constant barrage of spells flying back and forth.  In Dota, it's often ranged auto-attack pokes at best (which rarely do all that much damage), with major spells only being fired when a full kill attempt is being made. Particularly with ganking working the way it does;  if you're low on mana because you fired a spell to bother the lane opponent, chances are you now have no defense against gankers, with spells inhaling as much mana as they do. 


Stacking/pulling:  I can only say so much on this one beyond what I've already said.  I myself am still low level, and this aspect simply tends to not at all be necessary in low level matches, particularly if your lane partner doesnt know how it works or how to use it to their advantage, often outright yelling at the support for doing it.  Idiotic, yeah, but.... that's the low queue for ya :p


Ganking:  It works in League well enough, but it depends on your choice of champion, and your build, and just HOW you gank.  Ganks arent insta-death splats like they tend to be in Dota, which means both champions, the one who was already in the lane, and the one coming over to gank, need to work together to make the kill happen.  Ganking actually seems very frequent in LoL, particularly in higher level matches. It's one of those aspects that merely works differently, not so much better or worse.   Even supports can do it if the player knows the character enough, and particularly if they go for certain builds.  The support though is often too busy for this, unless the carry they're with sees a chance to go for it, at which point the support can follow and assist in it.


There's more to say here, but I'm getting overly hungry and losing focus, so I'll save that for later.  Right now, sandwiches must occur, or all is lost!

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #252 on: January 01, 2014, 12:54:31 pm »
Mildly related but my girlfriend made me a DotA plushie of Axe for me for New Years!

http://imgur.com/a/phJiR

It's very nice.
"Inner peace is the void of expectation. It is the absence of our shared desperation to feel a certain way."

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #253 on: January 06, 2014, 10:33:26 am »
Mildly related but my girlfriend made me a DotA plushie of Axe for me for New Years!

http://imgur.com/a/phJiR

It's very nice.
That is quite ridiculously cute. My girlfriend made a similar thing, though she's a painting artist. She painted an Equilibrium of Mankind livre Armageddon from EVE for me ^^
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Moba balance comparison, please comment
« Reply #254 on: January 06, 2014, 03:54:00 pm »
Thanks ;p

I posted the gallery on the DotA reddit page thinking that people would be impressed. Instead people were extremely jealous and butthurt, replying with comments like "that last picture wasn't necessary" and "somebody looks sick". Can you believe it got about twice as many downvotes as upvotes?

I know it sucks to be a single gamer but DAMN.
"Inner peace is the void of expectation. It is the absence of our shared desperation to feel a certain way."