indiefinch

@scarace360 said:

You know what I've been fighting this battle for years playing Dota and i gave the fuck up. Just report them and move on. Yelling at your screen or some guy over the internet just makes you look bad.

This is the best advice. If you are a person who has a hard time ignoring the trolls, put them on mute and continue about your business. Once someone starts yelling at their teammates and calling everyone else trash, they are not going to go "Oh you know what, I was wrong. Nice game team you guys are awesome!"

@Christoffer: Oh yeah you will be able to enjoy it. Just don't let the ragers get to you, put them on ignore. Then if you continue to watch streams / read guides...it will make it easier to figure things out. The problem I think most people have is they go into it thinking they are good at video games and will dominate at Dota quickly. You can play 1000 hours, yet still be considered a low tier player...not many games are like that.

The thing I would suggest if you are only able to play a few games a week, find a few heros that you think look cool / have a ton of fun with...then play them. If you try to random or play a new guy every game, you will be overwhelmed and not have much fun. But by focusing on a few different heroes you can use those few games each week to become the best that you can at that specific guy.

This sounds like it could be great fun, count me in.

Steam ID: Indiefinch (Finch in dota)

Server: US W

Skill: Experienced

Role: 2 and 3 are my main, however can play the other roles decently if the team needs it.

@JoeyRavn: Yeah, I hate to be the bearer of bad news...but it isn't really a game you just kinda "wing it." Just take an hour and read up on the game. I made a separate post that has a link to the best guide, suggested heros...then people discussing other various tips. If you don't want to utilize that stuff, that is fine, but expect a bumpy road.

@Xeirus said:

@IndieFinch said:

@Xeirus: It will be free and you will have access to every hero. They are still doing the "Early Access Bundle" where you can purchase some items and an invite. The hero pool is close to complete as well as most bugs are ironed out. The major things keeping it still in beta is server capacity and the tutorial. Tutorial text just started popping up about a month ago, so I doubt we will see it until Feb or March of 2013. Once the tutorial is released, I suspect that is when they will make it free to play proper. If they did it before then, a ton of people would download it and feel lost / confused.

So I re-downloaded it from my previous invite and played a while last night. Here are my thoughts and/or questions:

1. Why does double-clicking not purchase an item but right-clicking does?
2. How do you "deny"? I wasn't able to target my own creeps.
3. It's really hard to tell champions apart from creeps sometimes
4. How do you break through the forest? At one point I saw trees collapse and new paths opened.
5. What's the deal with the secret shop, why does it exist? It seems incredibly pointless.
6. Why does clicking on some items show you the purchase hierarchy and some it just makes you use the item, it's rather confusing and annoying.

I'm sure I have more, but that's what I came across on my first few play throughs

1. Just how the shop works, would have to ask Valve. Left click shows you what the item can be made into while right click purchases it.

2. You attack your own creeps by clicking A + click, as if you were giving an attack move command. Creep health needs to be below 50%, Tower health below 10%, and allied hero health below 10% and they are effected by a DoT (Venomancer gale, Doom..etc) By denying a creep or hero, you deny the enemy gold and a significant less portion of experience. If you deny a tower, the other team is awarded only 100 gold rather then the usual 200 gold.

3. You will learn the heros over time, just like when you first started League.

4. Tango's are a healing item that consumes a tree to get yourself a minor health regen (Similar to a health pot in LoL). If you get attacked, the healing still continues. If you use a Healing Potion or a Clarity and you get attacked, the regen effect ends. The item Quelling Blade allows you to cut down a tree every 5 seconds, in addition is gives you bonus attack damage vs creeps. (+31% melee, +12% ranged). You can use this to carve paths to gank behind their tower, break down trees in the jungle to double pull camps, or cut holes in trees to make places to hide with the line of sight. Hero abilities also destroy trees, such as Beastmaster Axes and Broodmother Web.

5. Secret shops are extremely important. Side shops contain items that you generally pick up early on in the game. Such as scroll of teleportation, boots, quelling blade / stout shield, orb of venom, ring of health..etc. The goal here is to promote in lane aggression / lane control. If you buy one of those items from the main shop, you have to send in the courier...if you can purchase it there you get it instantly. But then you get to a point where if you have more lane presence, you can zone out your opponent and prevent him from using the shop. The other secret shop in near the ancients contains components to some of the top tier items. Items such as Sacred Relic and Demons Edge are required for big end game items. It becomes a point of control to where if your team is applying pressure and has the appropriate amount of wards out, you can effectivly prevent your opponent from reaching the shop. Then on the flipside, if you are being pressured and need to get to that item...you have to take in risk vs reward. If you go for it, you could get picked off...or if you send the courier it could die. Each shop rewards teams with greater map awareness / control.

6. I am not quite sure what you mean. If you right click any item in your inventory, you can click "Show in Shop" and it opens it in the shop to see what it can be build / broken down into. Left click on an item in your inventory will activate it...things such as BKB, Armlet..etc. If you left click something in the shop, it will show the hierarchy in which it can be built into.

Hope this helps.

@Xeirus: It will be free and you will have access to every hero. They are still doing the "Early Access Bundle" where you can purchase some items and an invite. The hero pool is close to complete as well as most bugs are ironed out. The major things keeping it still in beta is server capacity and the tutorial. Tutorial text just started popping up about a month ago, so I doubt we will see it until Feb or March of 2013. Once the tutorial is released, I suspect that is when they will make it free to play proper. If they did it before then, a ton of people would download it and feel lost / confused.

@Terramagi: Really? I am loving it. It is a a fun mindless game to play and watch a whole bunch of chaos happen. Nothing better then seeing a big team fight happen on ice while everyone is sliding all over. I feel like Valve knocked it out of the park with this one.

@CatsAkimbo: I think that would be fine in its own game. That is what League of Legends did and they are very successful at it. They removed things like denies, tree destruction, courier, no teleport scrolls, high ground sight, high ground miss chance, day / night cycle...etc. They they made things like here is a "Tank" a "AP Carry a "Jungler" then set specific roles for the meta game based on map layout. How you send 2 heros bot, Support + AD carry because it is close to Dragon which you want to control. But all of these things are a massive part of Dota, removing them is teaching players a fully different game.

A functional tutorial should be able to initiate those new to the game into how it works. The best way to learn all this stuff is trial by fire, dive right in and learn it as you play.

@Ben_H: He is a really fun hero, I love him. Most people are afraid of him because you need to effectively control both him and his bear. As far as jungling, you are better off with some of the others Drizzle mentioned. Lone Druid is one of the strongest laning heros in the game, I would even say top 5. So jungling him is a big waste of his potential. Just grab an Orb of Venom on the bear early on and no one will touch you. Can get free farm and a Radiance on the bear by 15-18 min then you just kite with druid and send your bear to kill everything.

Honestly, it is all about enjoying the game. If you are enjoying him, then dive right in. The reason I suggest people to start with easier heros is because I have had a few friends start with heros like Night Stalker, Drow, Anti Mage...then get 0 items and be useless all game. Then after a few games they say the game isn't fun and quit playing.

@Cronus42 said:

@MAGZine: Sorry, misunderstood your comment as: be super cereal or don't play at all. You are right to a point that the further you get the more serious people will expect you to be. That being said, if you play with a stack of friends, all random with stupid builds is probably the most loss heavy fun I've had playing the game. There is room for mindless fun, just not really in solo queuing. That music thing is BS though, watch a stream or two, most pros listen to music when they play outside of competition,

Agreed. There is a time and place for being serious. Form a team and queue for captains mode, set up inhouses, or join one of the many invite only top tier leagues. But if you are just queuing for All Pick and messing around, there is no need to get all serious. Some of the most fun I have had is a few weeks back we all bought Necro book and had 5 sets of level 3 Necro units tearing stuff up. I am all for playing serious and playing with a team in tournaments, but solo queuing is not the way to go to be serious.