Moba balance comparison, please comment

[Wingflier]

Concerning Blizzard's MOBA, I haven't heard much about it for awhile.

Last I heard, they are adding a ton of new mechanics to the game. For example, the addition of "Siege heroes", which is a new role specifically designed to outrange towers completely and take them down from afar. I can only assume this class doesn't fare as well in combat. There's also an interesting new mechanic in that many of the neutral creep camps (such as Roshan or Baron) when defeated begin to fight for you, at least temporarily until they die. I think this could be an exciting addition as well, making "jungling" a little more exciting and eventful, and maybe having entire team fights break out over the neutral camp zones. And of course, an entire roster of heroes based on the Blizzard Legends is nothing to scoff at, but then again, I also see some potential problems with that. I don't really care how powerful Tyrande from the Warcraft III campaign is, she's not going to be taking down Diablo himself single-handedly. Then again, last I checked Diablo isn't even in the roster anymore (maybe because of that) so perhaps it won't be a problem.

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes_of_the_Storm

[Wingflier]

By the way, new DotA event: http://www.dota2.com/newbloom/day1/

I'm unsure what all that means, seems like a bunch of bullsh*t to me, but I'm excited to learn more either way

[Mánagarmr]

Anubis is also neat. I was surprised how he could kill someone from full to zero in one combo. I didn't expect that kind of lethality in SMITE. One of the main complaints of LoL players is that DotA is too lethal, in that a single hero can kill you from full to dead even early on, where in LoL this is much more difficult without the help of teammates (especially with mechanics like Flash). It's nice to see that SMITE made it possible to do this. His squishiness and lack of escape mechanism seems to be the balancing mechanism for this guy, pretty awesome.

Here's a typical example of Anubis using only his stun and his ultimate. No additional abilities. The target isn't full (she's at about 60%), but just look at the damage output. It's insane.


Anubis youtube timelink

To further push that into insanity I can say that he's at lvl 10, half the level cap and only has two finished items and rank 2 of his ultimate. Neith, the target, is level 11, yet just vaporizes.


Another example of Anubis in action. First off, he stuns Poseidon at a distance in order to catch up. Then uses his 1 on an injured Bacchus nearby, killing him. As he's pulling out, he spots a fight behind him, drops his 3 on the ground, and stuns the enemy Anubis inside it forcing him to take lethal damage.


Anubis second clip

Chang'e sounds cool as well. Jack-of-all trades, master of none? I also like her ult, the wide, positionally-based stun that is more effective the more people you hit. Sounds like a great initiation ability or a way to turn teamfights around dramatically. I also like how you say she "dances" in and out of battle. I guess I'd have to play the game to actually understand that but it sounds cool.

It's more a matter of how she moves (her move animations are very "dancy") and how her abilities give her a speedboost, allowing her to literally dash in and out of combat. It's beautiful when performed correctly to be honest ^^ But she's not really a jack-of-all-trades. She's primarily a damage mage and initiator but with a token heal. She can also apply a -50% healing debuff on the enemy, so she's somewhere inbetween pure nuke mage and support mage.

Concerning Pugna, Nether Ward isn't particularly broken in the lane, in fact it's usually not even used there. Unlike in LoL (or SMITE it sounds like), a player doesn't typically need to use spells in the lane to survive or do well. A person can last hit simply using their autoattack and still rack up a lot of gold and denies. Spells can sometimes be using for clearing or harassing the enemy, but are not generally necessary for killing minions of you are good at last hitting. In addition, Nether Ward has a period of time between when it ends and when the cooldown comes off, that it no longer exists. (Maybe 15 seconds?) So the opponent can simply use their spells during this time. Also, it becomes much more powerful each level, it's not nearly as strong at level 1 as it would be level 4. Typically, you're much better off leveling your nuke early on for pushing or harassing purposes, or to guard against a heavy push lineup. His aoe nuke is simply an amazing ability.

Ah, I see. In Smite you generally use 1, maybe 2 abilities on every wave in order to clear it faster than your opponent. That way you are free to poke and harass the lane opponent without worrying about counterattacks from minions. Minions will otherwise automatically aggro you if you damage the opposing god in their presense, as will towers. If you are unfortunate enough to be laned up against someone with insanely better clear you simply have to play intelligently. Keep the minions between you and them in order to block any attempts at pokes, and even sometimes try to make them damage you lighlty in order for your minions to help you. Agni, for instance, can dash in a straight line, leaving a flame trail after himself. It can be beneficial to step through the flame trail, taking one tick of damage, in order for your minions to pursue him. You don't stand around and wait for minions to damage eachother enough so that you can last hit them. That usually leads to you being bullied out of lane quickly. So it's far more fast-paced that both LoL and DotA.

Kali sounds really interesting, I like her style. "All or nothing" is often one of my favorite design philosophies. It sounds like the player using Kali has to be really careful early on, only engaging when they know they have an advantage, or when they have a powerful ally helping them. However, if she can make it to the mid-late game, she can wreck people in the right situation. I'm not sure how to feel about the random "Marked for Death" mechanic, but it would probably be too powerful if you could choose your target for it. Actually I think I really like that. She's basically got Tryndamere's ult from LoL, which is fine I guess, it's a pretty common ability in all 3 games appearing in various ways. Very cool.

She's the very epitome of an assassin. She has a jump, a stun, a bleed and can become immortal for a short period of time. She's excellent for ganking, even at lower levels provided she picks her targets and situations. Much like Loki she must carefully plan her attacks or she will find herself stunned out of her ultimate, or even outrun. Loki is another favourite of mine and the only god so far that I've taken to Rank 10 "Legendary". (Ranks are just epeen. It shows that you have played them A LOT and allows you to purchase the Legendary skin which is black and gold. It will also display your stats on the loading screen card).

I definitely have a lot more respect for SMITE after I read about some of its heroes and design philosophies.

I'm glad you do! It's different than most MOBAs for sure, and not everyone likes the changes to the gameplay and flow. But I certainly do. The higher pace keeps me interested and willing to improve.

[Mánagarmr]

Holy cow, its art style looks just like League of Legends.

Yeah.  That's something I've noticed about pretty much ALL of the mobas I've seen up to this point.  They all have that sort of art style.  Except that LoL's overall look tends to come out being much "darker", if that makes sense, than any of the others.

The only exception might be Infinite Crisis, which looks a bit different..... but also looks a bit bland.  To me, anyway.

Ahem, SMITE disagress with that statement.

[Misery]

By the way, new DotA event: http://www.dota2.com/newbloom/day1/

I'm unsure what all that means, seems like a bunch of bullsh*t to me, but I'm excited to learn more either way

I'm never going to understand why they do these.

I'd love to see MORE ACTUAL MODES in this game, really.  As in, ones that stick around and arent just weird events. 

Though what I'd like to see even more is an unranked mode, really.   But that's a whole other rant.

[Wingflier]

Though what I'd like to see even more is an unranked mode, really.   But that's a whole other rant.

I don't really understand this complaint. Regular matchmaking itself is "unranked", at least in the sense that nobody can see your rating. It just tries to pair you up with similarly skilled people for a fairly casual game.

You also have the option of setting up "custom games" with your friends against bots or other people you know. Obviously doing this tends to make more uneven games but the option still exists for "skirmishes" or whatnot. I can't see why one would want to the ability to create "public" custom games outside of the matchmaking algorithm as all it would do is inevitably lead to team-stacking and imbalanced games.

I agree I wish they'd add more game modes. However, I think one difference between the DotA design team and LoL team is that if they make a new mode, they'd probably want all the heroes to be relatively balanced in that mode too. Otherwise, they'd have to rebalance every hero for an entirely new mode which is pretty silly truth be told. Looking at LoL's Dominion or Twisted Treeline, you can see what happens when you take an existing pool of heroes designed for a 5v5 map and attempt to redesign the map without redesigning the heroes. It's fun casually, but what you end up with is a really imbalanced set of heroes and underpowered set of ones as well, with plenty in-between. I know IceFrog is very concerned with hero balance, and with a company that puts so much money into competitive events and advertising, he well should be. The result speak volumes, a pool of over 100 heroes and yet they are all relatively balanced with one another. Nothing hero out at me as blatantly OP or obviously underpowered. That's quite an impressive achievement, even if it comes at the cost of new modes.

[Misery]

Though what I'd like to see even more is an unranked mode, really.   But that's a whole other rant.

I don't really understand this complaint. Regular matchmaking itself is "unranked", at least in the sense that nobody can see your rating. It just tries to pair you up with similarly skilled people for a fairly casual game.

You also have the option of setting up "custom games" with your friends against bots or other people you know. Obviously doing this tends to make more uneven games but the option still exists for "skirmishes" or whatnot. I can't see why one would want to the ability to create "public" custom games outside of the matchmaking algorithm as all it would do is inevitably lead to team-stacking and imbalanced games.

I agree I wish they'd add more game modes. However, I think one difference between the DotA design team and LoL team is that if they make a new mode, they'd probably want all the heroes to be relatively balanced in that mode too. Otherwise, they'd have to rebalance every hero for an entirely new mode which is pretty silly truth be told. Looking at LoL's Dominion or Twisted Treeline, you can see what happens when you take an existing pool of heroes designed for a 5v5 map and attempt to redesign the map without redesigning the heroes. It's fun casually, but what you end up with is a really imbalanced set of heroes and underpowered set of ones as well, with plenty in-between. I know IceFrog is very concerned with hero balance, and with a company that puts so much money into competitive events and advertising, he well should be. The result speak volumes, a pool of over 100 heroes and yet they are all relatively balanced with one another. Nothing hero out at me as blatantly OP or obviously underpowered. That's quite an impressive achievement, even if it comes at the cost of new modes.

The problem with whole ranked/unranked thing as I see it is that people still seem to treat that mode as an ranked mode.  It's the ONLY mode, so what ranking there is.... hidden or otherwise.... is something that many players care about way too much.   It creates alot more vitriol within matches if someone thinks that you doing something wrong will screw up their "ranking".  With other games, the pointless-anger level tends to be heavily diluted in the actual unranked mode, simply because of the differentiation between the two.  Players are more free to experiment or just have fun and not take it super damn seriously all the time because it's not affecting their "real" ranking.  I like Dota but right now, it absolutely outdoes all of the others in terms of just how much pointless screaming there is within matches.  Even LoL cant match it there, and that's really saying something.  Not that LoL's community is very GOOD mind you.  Good grief no.  But Dota's is EVEN ANGRIER. And more insane.  Though that one's kinda relative....

As for other modes, frankly, I dont think they need to worry quite as much about balance as that.  One way or another, the main 3 lane map would be unaffected by this.  The core reason for additional modes isnt to create a new competetive atmosphere, but is instead to give the players something else to do, and something that can act as a bit of a diversion.   Smite's Arena or ARAM modes, for example.  Nobody is going to take those TOO seriously, but they're lots of fun, and are a pleasant change from doing the main map 3-billionty times in a row.  They dont HAVE to be super-competetive.  The game has it's already excellent main mode for that.  Heck, that's one thing I really like about Smite, is that it has all of these additional modes beyond that one.  I cant think of another moba that has as many as that one does.  Yet none of this is detrimental to the main one at all.

Not to mention.... considering the developers, I cant imagine that any additional mode that they come up with for the game that isnt just one of these weird "event" modes would be anything OTHER than great.  That developer does not disappoint.


Today though I have been told by a friend about something new that IS coming, some sort of.... ability draft mode?  I'm not entirely clear on all of the little details, but it sounds completely hilarious.  It's not a different map, but it's still something that sounds pretty damn awesome. A step in the right direction, in my view.  I eagerly await the chance to try it out.

[Mánagarmr]

And that's why I love the fact that Smite has separate League and casual games. ^^

[Wingflier]

So tomorrow, DotA is adding 2 new heroes and a new mode (random ability draft).

Terrorblade, one of the most interesting heroes from DotA 1 (in my opinion). He's a carry/jungler/pusher whose ult switches the life percentage between the target and himself. So if they have 100% health and you have 25% health, you swap that. Yeah, it's as awesome as it sounds.

Also Phoenix, a hero I've never played (added after I stopped playing DotA 1). He's a Strength nuker/initiator who uses life as a resource instead of mana. His reckless use of his own life brings him ever closer to the point of self-destruction, upon which (after using his ultimate) he turns into a Sun that burns all the enemies in a wide AoE then, if not destroyed in time, explodes into life, stunning everybody in the same huge radius and coming back full force.

Random ability draft is a casual mode where a random hero is selected for each player, then all the players in the game take turns choosing from all 40 abilities that the 10 heroes once owned, in sequence. HILARIOUS.

New items. Lots of balance changes. New ability to click on a skill that's on cooldown and alert allies if you're ready to use it, how much time is left on it, if you have enough mana to cast it, etc. (In other words, a quick non-verbal way to warn or hint to your allies what you're about to do).

However, by far the most AWESOME change this patch, is the ability to jump into any replay at any point now, and make it a live action game. That's right, you can turn your favorite Na'Vi vs. iG game into a reality and actually start playing it with your friends at any point. Doing this not only allows you to finish the game, completely changing the outcome of the original of the match, but also creates a NEW replay for the game that you created from the old one. Then you can replay the match that you replayed from the replay...replay replay replay. Inception anybody?

Beat that League.

[Cyborg]

I have zero urge to reinstall dota. Being able to jump into the middle of boredom is still boredom, no?

[Wingflier]

I have zero urge to reinstall dota. Being able to jump into the middle of boredom is still boredom, no?

No. I'm utterly insulted by this statement. Clearly, it's boredom².

[Aklyon]

However, by far the most AWESOME change this patch, is the ability to jump into any replay at any point now, and make it a live action game. That's right, you can turn your favorite Na'Vi vs. iG game into a reality and actually start playing it with your friends at any point. Doing this not only allows you to finish the game, completely changing the outcome of the original of the match, but also creates a NEW replay for the game that you created from the old one. Then you can replay the match that you replayed from the replay...replay replay replay. Inception anybody?

Beat that League.

Not to rain on your parade, but Starcraft II added that feature before Dota did, but instead I'd have zero idea of whats going on mid-game dota instead of an idea and slow rts reactions.

[Wingflier]

Dude, you guys have to come and try "Ability Draft" mode. It should basically be called "create your own hero mode". It's the most fun you can have with your pants on.

Everyone starts out with a randomed hero. Then the screen is filled with 40 ability, including 30 regular skills and 10 ultimates from (what seems to be) 10 more randomed heroes. Then, everyone goes in a sequence picking skills until everyone has 4 skills...then the game starts.



It may not sound that fun, but I'm telling you, some skill sets were NEVER meant to be put together hahahahaha. Your ability to win is more or less based on how creative you can be, and how well you can adapt to the skill set that you have chosen.

For example, in this match, I've chosen the ultimate "Duel", which forces myself and an opponent to fight each other to the death using only our auto attacks for 5 seconds (or until someone is victorious). It also gives the winner 14 bonus damage permanently. On top of this, I've taken 2 passive skills which make my auto attacks extremely deadly, and then a 4th skill that allows me to blink into combat, attacking very quickly for a short period of time. In other words, I am a single target harbinger of death. With enough farm, I can basically kill anybody in the duration of my ult.

[tigersfan]

I can see the appeal of that mode, but, ultimately, it's still DOTA2, and it doesn't fix any of the problems I have with it. (like the insane focus on last hits)

[Wingflier]

I can see the appeal of that mode, but, ultimately, it's still DOTA2, and it doesn't fix any of the problems I have with it. (like the insane focus on last hits)

The importance of last-hitting really depends on which role you play. Supports are expected not to take last hits from their carry. Roamers go around the map early-mid game looking for opportunities to help their lanes secure a kill. Junglers don't have to worry about last hits because nobody is competing with them.

My cousin and best friend has been playing for about as long as I have (10 years), and he's still terrible at last hitting. However, he stays pretty decent at the game by being proficient in other aspects of the game.

We also make "kill lanes" of heroes that excel at killing other heroes, and in that sense we're not really as concerned about last hits as eliminating the other heroes over and over again until the lane snowballs out of control.

Last hits certainly are important to the game, and many people enjoy that aspect of it (my friend basically plays farm DotA for the first 30 minutes, then comes "into" the game so huge that nobody can stop him). However, I'd say you can still be a pretty decent player without it.