Dota 2 News
The International 2016 Cosplay Competition
Announcing The International 2016 Cosplay Competition, featuring a $15,000 prize pool up for grabs during the year’s premiere Dota 2 tournament at KeyArena.
Dota 2 Community
PSA: Picking techies isn't allowed - by MiracleFanGay
Thanks Valve for this great reporting system! You pick techies and your teammates will insta report you. If you win your enemies will report you. If you lose and there was someone in your team who didn't report you already, they gonna report you now.
Thx now I have 5 wins lowpriority for playing techies 3 times with 3 wins, without saying a word in the game.
Spirit breaker is so awesome - by VarinOmega
So I'm kinda new to this game and since I dislike playing vs bots I decide to play normals which instead results in afks and mean words. My friend told me to play a hero that gives 0 fucks and does whatever the hell he wants.
He told me to play Spirit Breaker. I knew about him from posting here a while back but I wanted to try other things first.
I have no idea what I was doing but I would target a hero across the map and have fun charging right at them. It's too bad I don't do more damage.
But from my 1 game I would press Q, hit them, then run away as fast as possible. It is so funny.
My favorite is the stealth item so you get ganked by an invisible cow.
10/10 best hero in the game
6.2k MMR Guide to Macro Level Decision Making Part 3: Win Conditions - by supbreh1
Part 1: Intro, Micro vs Macro
Part 2: Framework for Hero Analysis
Part 2 established a Macro framework for analyzing heroes and used 2 case studies to examine how a hero’s strength or weakness in a single, specific category (eg, Sven’s Cooldown Reliance) can shape a team’s optimal game strategy.
Part 3 builds on this framework by introducing Win Conditions. At the risk of sounding extremely pedantic, Win Conditions theory dictates that a team that aligns its strategy with its team composition, while adjusting for opponent’s team composition, maximizes its odds of victory. It is important to note that Win Conditions are not absolute and evolve over the course of a game due to individual skill, psychological outplays, and random chance. Variance in these factors is higher in pub games, therefore the winningest players remain flexible enough to constantly re-analyze, problem solve, and adjust their individual and team strategy throughout the game.
Win Conditions describe the ways that your team can realistically win the game. For example, a team with core heroes that require multiple items in order to effectively fight is probably best served by a conservative, defensive gameplan. They should look to secure early game farm, ward their farming zones, and delay the enemy team’s progress (limit deaths, slow down tower pushes, split push as much as possible). They should only attempt to flip the pressure once their key items are complete. It’s simple to evaluate the strengths of your lineup, but more difficult to use them to effectively guide in game decisions.
Here is an outline of the decision making calculus that should be ongoing throughout the game:
Windows of opportunity can be based around crucial abilities/cooldowns, key items, or are positional in nature.
- Evaluate status quo.
- Is the current situation more suitable to our long term goals, or the enemy’s?
- If not, what windows of opportunity can I take advantage of to catch up?
- Can I do anything tactically to create a net positive outcome in the short term?
It’s important to be able to identify and exploit these opportunities when they appear organically, but you will begin to realize that skilled players consistently contrive them. An average player may understand that it’s important to apply pressure while enemy Global Silence is down, but a skilled player might actively bait the spell out by ganking a key target or initiating a skirmish in which your team only partially commits to the engagement. Even short cooldowns can be exploited as a mini-window. When ganking a Puck mid in the early game, wait for him to use Orb to farm/harass before initiating and your odds of success increase dramatically. An average team might identify the opportunity to take Roshan when they see multiple enemy heroes pushing top lane. A skilled team consistently split pushes top lane to pressure the tower and force an enemy response, then takes Roshan once teleports are expended. Good players can read situations correctly and react accordingly, but great players create the situations to begin with, and are consequently a step ahead at all times.
Your tactical decisions should be framed around creating windows of opportunities that allow you to claim objectives that are in line with your Win Conditions.
Let’s look at my recent Lion game as a case study. It's a ~5k average game, so there will be plenty of errors, but overall decent team cohesion: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2487090167
Radiant Team: LC, WR, Brood, BH, Lion
Dire Team: Sven, Medusa, BB, VS, Chen
Let’s think about some general, macro level strengths of each lineup.
Radiant has a tri-core lineup, each is self sufficient and capable of soloing a lane. High pickoff potential, especially once LC (or Lion) has a gap closing item. High split push potential from Brood and WR. Very low cooldown reliance, high mobility -- can engage and reengage with Webs, Blink Daggers, and Track. Lacks AoE disables and teamfight control.
Dire team’s tri-core lineup features Sven and Medusa who both scale well into the late game. Multiple wave clearheroes to cope with Broodmother (Cleave, Split Shot/Snake, Quill Spray). Can abuse Dire rosh advantage with God’s Strength and Wave of Terror. 3 extremely tanky cores synergize well with support defensive capabilities (Swap, Test of Faith). Heavily Cooldown Reliant (God’s Str, Stone Gaze, Hand of God).
Now let’s think about each team’s general Win Conditions and gameplan.
Radiant Win Conditions: Come out of early game with an economy advantage, or even. Gain a mid game lead by finding openings for pickoffs or drawn out skirmishes that will abuse track gold bonuses and accrue Duel damage. Leverage lead to take perimeter towers and minimize available farming space for Sven and Medusa. Use map control to claim Roshan or turn a pickoff into a high ground push.
Dire Win Conditions: Secure early farm on Sven and Medusa. Contain Brood. In the mid game, minimize Track and Duel deaths. Be ready to split push any time Radiant groups up. Abuse Dire Roshan advantage whenever possible. Once core items are acquired (especially BKB on Sven), smoke or defend objectives as a team. Continue to farm until your cores hit critical mass and can comfortably fight 5v5, then flip the pressure.
If you begin to think in these terms, itemization will also become much more clear. An item typically creates a window of opportunity for your team, or closes one for the enemy. How can Radiant find Duel and Track kills in the mid game? Using Blink Daggers from LC and Lion. How can Radiant ensure the success of mid game skirmishes and tower pushes? Bounty Hunter may opt for Guardian Greaves or a force staff to kite Sven. If Radiant makes a mistake, do we have failsafes for the late game? What do we do when Sven gets BKB? Windrunner may transition from Aghs directly to Daedalus, while Brood can work towards an Abyssal Blade. These decisions do not take place in a vacuum and should consider your allies’ and enemies’ items. For example, LC hedged his value by choosing Shadowblade over Blink. He still gains a slight boost to his gap closing ability, but also works towards a BB counter as he can upgrade to Silver Edge. He knows my Blink Dagger on Lion will help him find his Duel targets. Similarly, the value of a Brood Butterfly or LC Halberd is diminished by WR's existence, which predicts enemy MKB pickups.
An interesting exercise might be to review your games and break them down in a similar fashion. As that analytical process becomes more intuitive, I think you'll see some improvements with your instincts and individual decision making. Please watch this game yourself in order to form your own conclusions about where mistakes were made and how teams could have played differently. I’ll begin Part 4 with my own thoughts on that game and where I believed the key inflection points were.
Part 4 will be a tangential post on Mindgames.
PSA: New Community Challenge does not count heroes without legs! - by kellithean
New challenge does not count heroes without legs, for ease here's a simple list of heroes without legs:
1. Puck
2. Morphling
3. Wisp
4. Gyrocopter
5. Naga Siren
6. SkyWrath
7. Oracle
8. Razor
9. Venomancer
10. Viper
11. Lich
12. Enigma
13. Death Prophet
14. Medusa
15. Ancient Apparation
16. Outworld Devourer
17. Visage
18. Winter Wyvern
19. ShadowFiend
20. Lina
21. Pheonix
EDIT: added lina, SF, phoenix to no-legs list
Dota 2: The game that keeps on giving - by shakawkaw000
I don't know about you guys, but I'm really pleased and excited with all the content that Valve has provided.
Almost every week we get something new and exciting. Today we completed another one of the community challenges and all of the compendium owners received 3 of Lina's amazing balls to play with. A short while ago the Immortal Treasure 2 was realised. New Legion Commander challenge path was released not too long ago as well, in addition to 3 great challenge paths which lead to awesome sets.
Valve is really pulling out all the stops to keep the community happy and I'm so glad about that. Not to mention the plethora of tournaments we can watch. Good job, Valve! Keep it up guys.
To the guy/team of valve working on the AI of the bots, a huge thank you! - by Lousymoose
As a guy who mostly watches Dota2 or plays vs bots, the new tweaks and changes to the bots are just great, bot games have never been this hard.
Sven, jugg, wk, dk, venge is just a beast right now, and many more have changed drastically.
Thank you so much for making Bot games great again.
Let's talk about Diretide 2016 - by catchycactus
So we know Valve has basically relegated special game modes to the arcade and that helps but if we want a chance to make Diretide 2016 something special, we need to start talking about it now.
Economy - Everyone knows Dota's economy is kind of in ruin. Items are worth very little or very much and there isn't a lot of inbetween. I believe this is a big reason Valve is so adverse to adding anything more because they are more concerned with regulating the economy by constantly putting out new Hatpendiums to introduce new, value-able, items.
Inventory Purge - What I think we need is a purge on a massive scale. Make Diretide 2016 involve scrapping items from your inventory and receiving more modern prizes. This would make a lot of older items that the market is flooded with instantly increase in price and reduce the amount floating around on the market.
Logistics - My idea for how this would work is pretty simple, when you start a game of diretide, you can put items from your inventory up as tribute. These items are instantly destroyed and turn into a wager. Your team's total wager is combined into a number and you will be rewarded if you win based on your contribution. If the enemy team does not meet your wager you will get a guaranteed wager equaling the difference.
Wagering Details - A maximum wager per player in a game could be 100. Each common item is worth 2 points, uncommon 5 and rare 10. Immortals are worth 50. Adding a genuine, frozen, ect modifier could add 2 additional points to the total to give people a small boost for doing previous events.
Killing Rosh Your individual wager could also effect your potential prize from how much damage your group was able to do to rosh at the end. The logistics of that could be pretty simple too. Separate damage amounts into tiers, if a team did X ( Low amount of damage) damage to rosh they get t1 and their wager is unchanged. If they did Y ( a fair amount of damage ) damage to rosh they get t2 and their wager is doubled. If they did Z (nearly perfect amount of damage) damage to rosh they get t3 and their wager is tripled.
I think if we make valve aware of how much Diretide can fill the post Ti void, they might be willing to give us our coveted event and help improve the economy at the same time.
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Thanks Gaben!
Dunkfest 2016
i'm done playing with RNGesus till the next century
This is it boys
Lucky Matumbaman
Peruvians learning english isn't the answer to quality games
When you get lucky against Pudge
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Never give up
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Bulldog baiting
"The Last Castle" Axe comic fully voice-acted
Pre-game anime from AdFinem
Draskyl turns into old Jewish woman
Armlet toggles in the trench
Beyond the Production Value - BibleThump SO CUTE
Fluff's 6 Support Hero Recommendations for any Pub
VP.NS Dota tricks: huge Necrophos aghs bug
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