Before I start I want to thank everybody for responding in a timely, lengthy, and respectful fashion!
The issue here on your evaluation of LoL is just lack of experience with the game. On Ashe, and ranged carries in general:
Definitely could be, it's been a long time since I've last played. Seems to have changed a lot.
Auto-Attack champions are important end-game in LoL, but you absolutely need the rest of your team to protect and support you. You never get to the point of two-shotting everyone on the enemy team back-to-back in a competitive game.
It's interesting that you should say that, because I commonly see Vayne, Graves, and Kogmaw basically killing people in a few shots, or at least within a couple seconds late game. In other words, I see carries becoming just as powerful in LoL as I do in DotA.
They may not kill TANKS in two shots, but you can't kill a tank in two shots in DotA either, unless your farm is exponentially better than his.
2) Ashe is all about her ult. You either win or lose by it. It is one of the absolutely strongest initiates in the game. But you really need your team ready to go in the instant you use it or you lose most of its power.
Maybe I need to go cooldown reduction then? It seems like it has such a long cooldown. I use magic resist per level blues, and my Masteries are 21/0/9, and don't include any extra cooldown stuff. My item build doesn't really include cooldown reduction either. Is that part of my problem?
4) You absolutely must be able to kite. This is sometimes called orb-walking in DOTA, but it isn't really as much animation-canceling in LoL as in DOTA. But with Q on, alternating Move and Attack-Move to fire arrows behind you on someone chasing is a critical skill, and one you need to be able to do without thinking about it.
Well yeah, you couldn't play Drow if you didn't know how to orb walk and kite.
1) She's really weak early game; one of the worst ranged carries. You need to shut her down then. If you let her get to late game, she's particularly rough. You want to crush her farm and ideally deny her some xp through zoning before she hits 4-5. If you can get a one level lead on her, and keep her CS down she's in a lot of trouble. Unlike Ashe, she doesn't bring anything if she doesn't have a ton of gold.
I see how you shut a carry down in DotA (there is denying, creep pulling, and everytime you kill them they lose a lot of gold), but how do you do it in League? It seems like no matter how hard you try, eventually carries are going to get farmed. I guess you can try to push and end the game quickly, but that doesn't seem like what teams do in League. Vayne is not that bad in a lane. She's got a good built-in escape mechanism, and if she hits you three times she does a shitload of true damage. Paired with a good support, in my experience it's just as easy for her to get first blood as it is for Ashe, and much safer in the process. I could be wrong though.
2) However, she is best against bruisers. If your team isn't all that beefy, a lot of Vanye's potential is wasted and your team can just burst her down.
Haven't really played against a team in League...since well...
ever that wasn't full of tanky DPS. Even the mages often build tanky, and still dish out quite a bit of damage. This just seems like a moot point. Show me a team of Veigar, Ashe, Shaco, Soraka, etc. and I'll grant you that sometimes you aren't facing tanky DPS. Tanky DPS just seems like a staple of League balance, for better or for worse. Heroes like Vayne and Kogmaw will always have their place.
A) Jungle ganks are were all the flow is right now. Lanes can't be aggressive because jungle ganks are so strong and fast. As a result, all the action is controlled by and centered around the jungle. Anyone who doesn't have a super-strong gank can't jungle because then his team puts no pressure on the enemy.
This is one thing that has really bothered me, and one of the things that makes me uneasy about League's balance.
In DotA, there IS no correct lane composition. It doesn't go: 1 bruiser top, 1 AP carry mid, 1 jungle, 2 bot (carry+support). It goes: Whatever the hell your team decides to do. Literally, think of a lane composition, and it's probably been done successfully.
However, I can see the opposing argument which is: That's what makes League so balanced, because there's only 1 lane composition, and everything can be balanced around that.
I suppose that would be a good argument, and then it would just be two different types of balance: Dynamic balance vs. Predictable balance (or something along those lines). DotA balances its game to be emergent, where League balances the game to be stable.
B) You can basically list out the majority of every champions item build at the start of the game. There is a little variety in most games. Nearly every ranged AD is IE+LW+PD+Boots+Angel+Other (often Bloodthirster). Beyond that, you don't really have the ability to buy items situationally. There are a few, like Quicksilver Sash, but even that is nearly on the BKB-level with some players always buying it.
That's another thing that makes me a bit wary too.
In DotA, there is no right item build for heroes. Depending on the hero, your lineup, their lineup, and how the game is going, the item builds can change dramatically from hero to hero. In addition, your friends don't expect you to go a certain build, then get mad at you when you don't. Last night when I was playing League, I picked Amumu for the first time in ages. Back when I used to play him Philosopher Stone was considered one of the worst items in the game, and even Shurelia's Reverie was still just okay compared to some other tank items.
So instead of going for Philo Stone, I went for Heart of Gold->Randuin's Omen instead. When my "friend" in Skype realized I wasn't building Shurelia's, he raged at me for the rest of the game. He couldn't understand
WHY you wouldn't go Shurelia's on Amumu, and kept emphasizing the importance of that 3 second burst of speed or whatever. I kept saying we would be fine without it, but he made it quite clear that we, in fact,
would not be fine without it, and that I needed to get it even though I was currently working on other things. It just seemed like there was this massive implication that you
BUILD Amumu a certain way, or you're failing your team, and that really bothered me. In DotA, there is no ONE way to build a support/tank. You can go Vanguard, Blink Dagger, Blademail, Mekansm, Pipe of Insight, BKB, or whatever, and as long as you're contributing to the team, they usually won't give you a ton of slack. Granted, people LIKE the more team-oriented items such as Pipe of Insight, but still, if you're doing your job well, you probably won't get raged at by your friends.
So even though LoL and DOTA2 are similar, they aren't the same game. There is a ton of difference between the two. Even really small things have a huge impact. Making balance judgements on a game you don't have a ton of experience with is really tough. Just comparing the scope of abilities (range and AOE) between the two games shows an entirely difference philosophy on team fight balance.
This is definitely true, and it's what I suspected it boiled down to. I've played dota since I was 16 years old (9 years ago). I'm so used to the DotA balance that it I'm coming to realize that LoL balance probably isn't that bad, I just don't understand it. That's why I'm having you guys explain it to me a little more so I can understand the game better.
The bottom line is: even with only 10 Hero, there is no perfect balance, and still some people will tell you that the game is balanced exceptionally well.
So are you implying that League's balance is good amongst a small pool of overpowered champions? I really don't see what the connection is here.
For example, Super Smash Brothers Melee is considered to be an extremely well-balanced game, even though less than half the cast are even useful, and even though Sakurai, the designer, literally came out and said, many times, that he purposely tried to make the game casual, and skew the balance away from a competitive aspect. In fact, many of the "skills" that later defined the competitive aspect of Melee, were bugs in the game that players have refined into difficult "techniques". In other words, the balance of the game was a mere
accident. It was never meant to be balanced. The techniques that people use were never meant to be in the game. Is that good balance?
Well, I don't personally think so.
