This has been my go-to thread all week. Keep playing!

@galiant: Thanks for the support.

@fiyenyaa: They build Dagon on Necrophos?

That's messed up.

Thanks for the tips - it's invaluable to have them as how else would someone else starting know this stuff? You need to know what to ask before you can ask it.

@jazz said:

@galiant: Thanks for the support.

@fiyenyaa: They build Dagon on Necrophos?

That's messed up.

Thanks for the tips - it's invaluable to have them as how else would someone else starting know this stuff? You need to know what to ask before you can ask it.

Once you know the basics of what each role does and generally how to play it, you'll start making item->hero and hero->role / hero->lane connections yourself. When you're able to make those item choices in-game on the fly based on their team comp, how the team fights are going, and your own farm relative to the rest of your team's, you'll be able to say you know Dota. I ran Rod of Atos on Doombringer for years and would always get a 'nice build Doom' because it's something most people never would've thought of. Different items are better suited to different heroes, even within the same role. Being able to know enough to make the right call and then making it and winning because of it is one of the most satisfying moments possible. The bad news is that it'll take you several hundred more games before you're able to do that. But don't fret; keep it up! Everybody didn't get this good at Dota overnight; people have been playing for over a decade.

@jazz: Really been enjoying your journey with this!

It's been interesting to see how your thought process has gone.

Once you have the lvl 1 item, you buy a recipe (same one works for all levels like dagon or necro) and it automatically upgrades the item and gives full charges for diffusal.

@hs21: So you just buy the same thing twice?

@slag: Thanks for the support.

@ajamafalous: Yup, spoiler for this week - learning my role and how to last hit on demand. Thanks for the comment

@jazz

I'd recommend not jungling until you hit level 20 with your account, because of runes and masteries. You probably CAN jungle but it will be tedious and slow.

Amumu is currently free and he is a good beginner level jungler, if you wanna try it again.

On Fiora: Most of the time she goes top lane aka "melee bruiser" lane, though you could pick her into a AD mid laner if you think you can do it. You can probably jungle with her it is just that those "Carry junglers" need to get fed (either via farm or by getting kills) in order to do something come late game.

@jazz Good to see you still soldiering on with both games, it's fun to see a journey a lot of us in the thread once made documented by yourself.

On the Kayle too squishy to be a melee champ she's played aggressively in windows where her she can activate her E to attack from range, you almost never want to be actually using the melee attack unless just last hitting. Pop your Q on the enemy to slow them, pop your E to start tearing them down if your E drops before they die you back out again and wait for E. As you said Attack speed is king for her with a smattering of Ability Power.

If you're in mid lane and find yourself running out of mana particularly against another ap carry you can go Chalice to keep a healthy mana pool and then from there either upgrade into grail or just look for other core items like roa / zhonya's / spell pen.

As TBK said you won't get too much out of jungling before you can build up runes (tier 1 runes are awful and you shouldn't buy them, if you stick it out only buy tier 3 runes) and masteries and in bot games the real jungling role isn't stretched with having no invades, no reaction to ganks, no counter ganks etc.

Would you be amenable to posting stats at some point? That could be an interesting data point.

@extomar: Sure..uhh..how do I do that?

@freshbandito: I'll give Kayle another go, I just wasn't feeling it.

@tbk: uhh..no. Fiora can just do her thing. I think I'll wait for a while before diving into jungling again. Thanks for the tips.

I don't think you need to get bogged down reporting numbers all of the time but occasionally churn out:

• How much time played.
• Most successful hero/champion/vegetable/mineral/whatever.
• Win/loss over the period

And combinations there of. And for sure it isn't to criticize but to see how deep and crazy you've dived. :)

Dotabuff.com is a nice (and importantly) third party tool to do that data mining automatically if you have public profile turned on. I don't know if LoL has a similar system.

@jazz: If you're not feeling a character you should probably carry on trying new ones rather than using that time to reinforce a bad feeling retrying ones that didn't grab you out of the gate. Stick to champs you find fun and you'll have fun, find your flavour.

on the stats front there's a Share stats button after you end the match in League (not sure if it's there in bot games) that should create a url with all the games stats you'd be able to link in the thread for matches you found fun.

@extomar: I put the parchment day/time played in a couple of days ago - hopefully you can see that? I've also added some links of week 2's post.

So yeah - week 2 day 1 is a go.

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/blog/learning-by-comparison-lol-vs-dota2-week-2/106503/

@freshbandito: Yup, found it - it's in the Week 2 post (shameless plug)

@jazz: Diffusal requires items plus a recipe to build the new item. Buying the recipe again will upgrade it to lvl 2 and you don't need to build the diffusal again. You're only paying for the recipe to upgrade, not the other component items.

@hs21: ..ah. Just the recipe then. That's..confusing. Anyway we've moved on to week 2..

@jazz: Naw man, the recipe's just the ticket to upgrade. All upgradeable items are upgraded by buying a recipe, the recipe for that item always costs the same no matter what level of upgrade. It's the same throughout brah.

Yes, seriously. I've never understood this gripe. Dragon Knight is a knight that turns into a dragon, so when people mentions Dragon Knight I instantly recall not only the character design of the hero but also his abilities. If he was called something like Dennis, unless I played him all the time, I'd always have to ask "which one is he again?" as is the case every time I try out LoL.

Jinx, Jax, Lux, Zed, Zac, Sion... What? Who?

@sharkethic: Yeah, no..We'll have to disagree on that. I see what you're saying but I don't have any problem with remembering what those guys you list do. I think it shows a lack of imagination - but that's just me.

Thanks for reading.

Well, every single hero in Dota except for IO has a name (Dragon Knight's name is Davion), so I'd say it's by design. Also, coming up with a name like Brewmaster, Terrorblade or Keeper Of The Light seems way more imaginative than coming up with Viktor, Diana or Elise.

But yeah, agree to disagree;)