Moba balance comparison, please comment

[Lancefighter]

I would likely agree.. And counter with - But casters in dota build USEFUL items. Like sheepsticks. Forcestaffs. Cyclone..sticks. Necrobooks. Items that give some sort of utility - After all, a lategame caster's job in dota is to DEFEND THE CARRY.

As opposed to league, where you have 2+ 'carries' on a team.. I dunno. I just dont like it.

[chemical_art]

I would likely agree.. And counter with - But casters in dota build USEFUL items. Like sheepsticks. Forcestaffs. Cyclone..sticks. Necrobooks. Items that give some sort of utility - After all, a lategame caster's job in dota is to DEFEND THE CARRY.

As opposed to league, where you have 2+ 'carries' on a team.. I dunno. I just dont like it.

Very many caster items give items that buff your team or negate the enemy.

Spell vamp, enemy attack speed, enemy magic resistance are three caster items that all support the team. Depending on team comp, they also can carry the item that gives resistances for the team if needed.

[Wingflier]

I'm afraid I agree with Lancefighter here.

Spell mechanics in DotA give casters (Intelligence heroes generally) a much more defined role than AP heroes have in League.  Specifically, they dominate the early game, are still powerful in the mid-game, and taper off in the late game.

In fact, in DotA a full team of 5 casters could win the game if you finish it early enough.  By pushing with your powerful early-game advantage, you can destroy your opponent before they ever gain enough strength to resist you.

And before you go contesting whether or not it's possible to win a DotA game without carries, take a look at these statistics: http://tinyurl.com/8trarks

The most successful number of carries on a team wasn’t one. It wasn’t two, or even five. It was zero. A team with no carries on it at all tended to win 14.1% more than average.

That really defeats the notion coming from inexperienced players that carries in DotA 2 are overpowered I think.

This is the kind of emergent gameplay I was talking about that DotA has and that League of Legends doesn't.  By giving casters a very definitive role of early-game dominance and late-game support, it makes the gameplay much more unique and shifting.  It also makes the early-game a lot more exciting, where LoL early-game is often (but not always) a lot of farming with a couple ganks every now and then, and then late-game is all about team fights.

It's just personal, of course, but I much prefer each hero having an extremely defined role.  I don't like how AP muddles all the roles together.  The only real difference between AD and AP in my experience is that AD usually does it's damage consistently, where AP does it in short bursts.  That's a slight difference, but certainly nowhere near as meaningful as the difference between casters and carries in DotA.

[Hearteater]

Most casters in DOTA would be Support in LoL then.  That is the role you are describing.  When the damage of my abilities isn't relevant and I'm not a tank, I'm support.  Effectively what Ability Power items do is split casters into Support and Burst.  Support casters don't benefit enough from Ability Power to warrant buying it.  Burst casters have get much stronger with Ability Power and so they build that.  They need to have correspondingly less Support-like kits or they are just overpowered Support.  See Morgana was/is right on the edge of this line.

The catch is Auto Attacks scale much harder than Ability Power because of Critical Hits and lack of cooldowns.  This is something Casters can't overcome.  So at the end of the day, between a fully decked Caster and Ranged Carry, the Ranged Carry has a ton more damage potential but the Caster generally wins 1v1 due to burst and the Ranged Carry not really building defense.  So, you shut down the enemy Caster to let your Ranged Carry win the day.

[Lancefighter]

I wrote osme stupidly long reply about casters in dota being op, and then I decided to delete it all, because it boils down to one thing - Casters in dota have UTILITY through ITEM OPTIONS.

Lets look at a caster in league, for example - You build a deathcap. You build a void staff. You maybe build a rylais, you maybe build a dfg.. Neither of those really do anything tbh.

In dota, a caster can build many items. There is an entire shop page for casters. Because I'm lazy, ill copy and paste:
 Force Staff (2350)    Necronomicon (2700)    Eul's Scepter of Divinity (2700)    Dagon (2805)
 Veil of Discord (2650)    Rod of Atos (3100)    Aghanim's Scepter (4200)    Orchid Malevolence (4125)
 Refresher Orb (5300)    Scythe of Vyse (5675)

Each of those is fairly useful on its own - push a hero. Get some minions with awesome abilities. Cyclone someone. Nuke someone. Buff all magic damage in an aoe. Slow someone. Make your ult better. Silence someone. Refresh all of your skills/item. Hex someone. And these arent even ALL of the items a caster could build.. Mek, pipe, shivas also really good.

What do casters in league have for utility? Rylais. ZHonyas. Dfg. Honorable mention to morellos evil tome.  (slow, short invuln, nuke, and healing debuff respectively) Sure, cdr blahblah. Meh.

And then i wrote a slightly not as long reply about items. Meh, ill keep it.

[Wingflier]

I don't think casters in DotA are OP, but I will say this:

They are the backbone of any team. 

You can win without Strength Heroes (initiators/tanks).  You can win without Agility Heroes (carries).  You can't win without Intelligence Heroes (casters/support).

It would be like trying to win a war without infantry.  Infantry are the backbone of any army. 

The difference between DotA and League in that regard is that in DotA, your casters alone can decide the game.  In other words, the caster's role is just as, or more important than the carry's, it just shines at a different point in the game.

In LoL, AP Casters and AD Carries may both be just as useful lategame, but that's why the earlygame of League is often so boring and stagnant.  I think it's much more exciting to have a role that excels at every point of the game, so that the action and dynamic is constantly happening.

That's just my opinion though.

[Lancefighter]

Thats a pretty good point - With ap 'carries' being less strong early game, they dont really want to do anything over sitting in lane farming.

As per wars without infantry - I've been seeing a lot of that in planetside. Apparently people really like getting a conga line of vanguards and rolling out.. And then sitting afk next to capture points they cant take. (only infantry can, and often they are inside buildings).

Did you get a chance to look at any of the ashe replays?

[Wingflier]

I still gotta figure out this replay thing.

[Hearteater]

Casters in LoL are the strongest early game.  The lose a bit of power slowly, and by end game, they are behind auto-attack carries clearly.  They can kill said auto-attack carries, but that's all they can do.  The don't have the damage to take out bruisers or tanks because a full spell cycle won't do the job and they'll die before their cooldowns come back in general (even with max CDR).

Really, the biggest issue is the jungle problem.  Casters in LoL used to roam from mid to top and bot, being a second and very powerful part of play.  In fact, a caster just sitting mid farming would lose the game against an opponent who left lane to gank the side lanes a lot.  Ganking sidelanes was THE reason casters started going mid!  But then jungle got changed*, and jungle ganks got so strong and fast that it isn't safe for casters to gank anymore.  They are forced to stay mid.  This would be one of the things they are trying to address with the S3 jungle changes.

* Jungle mobs got much easier to kill, opening up the jungle to any champion and making jungle clear times incredibly short, especially for any champion with AOE.  Jungle mobs also "store" gold so you don't lose any farm if you don't clear camps immediately.  As a result, several very nasty ganking champions could now jungle, and they aren't penalized for the time they spend ganking because the farm on the jungle mobs just piles up for them to collect later.  The only time they get hurt is if they die trying to gank.  Counter-jungling is sub-optimal because it reduces the pressure on all 3 enemy lanes and results in your jungler falling behind.

[chemical_art]

Casters and carries (mostly) follow different stats for offense and defense.

Casters use AP, cdr, mana, and magic pen and are countered by magic resist.

Carries use AD, attack speed, crits, and armor pen and are countered by armor.

These items are usually very split, particularly with magic resistance and armor. They also have unique items for each resistance that counters in different ways.

Yesterday I had a game where the enemy ended up with 4 players using mostly ap. Early and mid game they dominated. However, toward late game my team started stacking magic resistance exclusively, eventually allowing us to survive their bursts and then counter attack. In contrast, my team had both a very strong carry and caster, and the other players had a mix. As a result, the enemy couldn't focus on one defense (making them miss out on the more specialized and unique defensive items) so over time the balance of power shifted.

[Lancefighter]

Casters in LoL are the strongest early game.  The lose a bit of power slowly, and by end game, they are behind auto-attack carries clearly.  They can kill said auto-attack carries, but that's all they can do.  The don't have the damage to take out bruisers or tanks because a full spell cycle won't do the job and they'll die before their cooldowns come back in general (even with max CDR).

Karthus would like a word with you.

[keith.lamothe]

Casters in LoL are the strongest early game.  The lose a bit of power slowly, and by end game, they are behind auto-attack carries clearly.  They can kill said auto-attack carries, but that's all they can do.  The don't have the damage to take out bruisers or tanks because a full spell cycle won't do the job and they'll die before their cooldowns come back in general (even with max CDR).

Karthus would like a word with you.

This is Karthus we're talking about; if he wanted a word with you it would have already been had, no matter where you were or what you were doing.

[Hearteater]

Casters in LoL are the strongest early game.  The lose a bit of power slowly, and by end game, they are behind auto-attack carries clearly.  They can kill said auto-attack carries, but that's all they can do.  The don't have the damage to take out bruisers or tanks because a full spell cycle won't do the job and they'll die before their cooldowns come back in general (even with max CDR).

Karthus would like a word with you.

Karthus is a bit backwards.  He doesn't wreck carries, they wreck him, but then he dies and he wins anyway.  I'd argue he's too strong at the moment, especially in solo queue.  Specifically his ult scaling.  In teams he just needs to get so close, and with drafting the enemy team has a lot of options for dealing with him (besides just banning him).  Trist and Lee Sin basically rain all over his parade, both able to punt him out of range.

[Lancefighter]

Well, its more that karthus (and to a very similar extent, cassio) scale INCREDIBLY well into the lategame.

And yeah, the whole dieing -> ult thing is pretty annoying. Dota's shadowfiend buff was actually really nice in that regard, and actually is pretty hilarious in a dive or something

[Hearteater]

Karthus, Cass, and Ryze are the three Casters that are closer to carriers.  They are a lot more sustained DPS than burst, although Requiem is pretty insane burst, so it isn't a perfect description.