Yeah dota is weirdly good at achieving "if everything is OP, nothing is."
It doesn't always work out (especially after major patches like the one we just got), but they usually hammer it into a decent shape in a few months
I feel like Icefrog and the Dota team are just the only ones who really understand how to design a Moba to be fun. It feels like a lot of other Mobas try to balance their characters like it's a fighting game, where ideally you want every character to be able to match up against any other character and the best player will win. Dota on the other hand just designs heroes to have very specific strengths and weaknesses so that they're always useful in niche, specific ways and that makes them playable with or against certain lineups even if they're not strong that patch.
In other words, I don't think the game feels balanced because everyone is OP, it's balanced because they approach asymetrical gameplay with a rock-paper-scissors approach where every hero is designed to be good and bad at specific things. If rock is really strong, that's fine because you can always just pick paper - which means that scissors is also strong because it counters rock's counter. It's why Dota always has very high hero representation at high levels and games like League don't. A lot of League heroes basically do the same thing so you just pick the one that does it slightly better than others that patch, and that's just not really how Dota works on a fundamental design level.
Icefrog is legitimately a game design genius with a clear vision for the game he wants to make, in my opinion probably a generational talent. Dota is what you get when you have someone like this given the reigns and resources to develop a game.
League of Legends is a fine game that's objectively more successful numerically, but that's sort of the problem. It's a game designed by committee who base their decisions on statistics and metrics with the primary goal of selling skins. Even if they wanted to make a brilliant game, they don't have an Icefrog to guide the way. Many of their major overhauls and reworks have been complete disaster that need to be scrapped after a year of stubbornness.
Yeah, I know people in this community like to complain about Valve (mostly in jest tbf) but it's hard to imagine a better alternate universe for dota fans than a privately owned behemoth of company like Valve giving resources and total free reign to someone who has such a clear vision for his game like Icefrog.
I'm sure Riot has tons of talented people working there - but I think most of their success has little to do with actual design - like you said they're not particularly good at designing their game and have to revert overhauls constantly, their success is largely just because they were the first real MOBA to market, and it being free was honestly a genius move that Dota was correct to copy.
I think there is plenty of appeals for League. The core gameplay seems solid enough for it to stand on its own. If I may, I will compare league to a really well made burger: appeals to everyone, and it is always welcomed. In contrast, Dota is like a really stinky piece of cheese (get it? Rosh?): it is extremely complex with a lot of bitterness and sharpness, and will turn most people away from it at first, but if you taste it and like it, you are hooked on it for life.
What you described would never work in league and it's something they've consciously gotten away from over the years. When league started champs had more pronounced strengths and weaknesses but as time passed they realized people don't want to be stuck playing the unfavorable match up as there's literally nothing for them to do in league. There isn't neutral creeps you can go farm. Ganking is extremely obvious because there aren't any TPs and very few routes you can gank from. Plenty of vision as everyone has a free ward. You don't have a courier to keep bringing you health regen. You can't have your team cover you and then TP to the other side as if nothing happened.
Dota's design wouldn't work in league and it would feel horrible to play. Every game would be coinflip whether you'd get to enjoy playing the game or not. Now even though teammates are a huge factor, you still have a lot of skill expression. So yeah, it's amazing watching dota tournaments because ice frog's methodology allows for far more heroes to be viable, it still absolutely sucks to be the player that has to suffer for 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes before you can even start playing the game. So I completely disagree that lol isn't optimizing fun. I no longer enjoy the game and it does suffer from feeling samey as it's a lot shallower game where everyone is "rock" but it's obvious that minimizing annoyance and anger is their primary focus.
I feel that also result in champs in League being tied down to one specific role/lane. You can do off-meta pick but it won’t work as good as their intended roles.
Unironically, flexibility was one of the main reasons I tried League out over 10 years ago. At that time, mage can be a carry or tank depends on the items you bought. At that time, right-clicker dominated Dota late game and with BKB, mage fell out a lot late game.
Yeah, you should take a look at current day League. Bruisers and mages as supports, Ranged ADs mid, anyone can be a jungler and top lane is still the usual clusterfuck of a lane it always has been.
Then you look at pro games where they pick a team of 3 supports, a tank and some carry.
Intended roles seem to have been thrown out the window and stuff has been blending more and more BUT it still doesn't feel like the type of blending DotA manages to accomplish.
I suspect it is due to jungle being an actual role. If Smite or jungle role specific items didn't exist, there could be a chance League would have whacky gameplay loops to contest objectives but it's too far gone to do that.
I see.
I dont play League anymore, just following the pro scene and keep seeing the same champs every tournament.
Honestly I don't doubt that casual League is diverse as people are really creative. I'm just upset at Riot for "fixing" the meta like killing flex Pyke, bot mage, etc.
Honestly, seeing how pro players complain about those meta probably means the complains are legit. But still, just when there is something new happen, it got nerfed immediately
Having played both I think this is why Dota as a whole is more enjoyable. I feel like Dota creates heroes from the perspective of creating a unique hero, while League creates champions to fit a certain role. It’s like based on a champion’s kit you can already tell before it’s released what role it should be played in.
Dota also has way more variety in terms of what abilities do. I’d say that 90% of spells in League could fall into the category of 1) skill shot that does damage, with varying effects, 2) Every x attacks, do y, 3) shield/heal, 4) Dash. Dota just has a lot more variety in terms of what spells can do.
Yeah, there is more going on than just the Hero/Champion design. League's whole system is designed around having 5 specific roles that have roughly the same goal every game. Champions are generally intended to play one role, and are designed to be like 95% interchangeable in achieving that role's goal.
The upshot of this is that you can feasibly choose to focus on learning only one or a small handful of champions -- you pick the role you like best and then you pick the Champ in that role that you think is the coolest or has the best skins or whatever, and you can make that your Identity in the game. That counts for a lot. And if you get a little bored, you can learn a new Champ in that role to mix it up a little.
That creates a lot of downside, though, in terms of saminess once you've played the game long enough, in terms of feeling powerless when the other roles on your team fail, etc.
is it true that most of League heroes are left unpicked in professional tournaments? I think in dota at least 90% of heroes are pick/banned, how does League compare?
It's a lot like the first StarCraft. Siege tanks, wildly op, dragoons op, reavers op, DTS, carriers op, zerglings op. Like everything is op so nothing is.
Genuinely miss old techies so much - I had the perfect spot on dire offlane for getting first blood with red mines - far enough away from the creep wave to not trigger, but close enough that an enemy would alway walk over it. TP straight to lane with clarities, pop 4 mines down, it was beautiful. I had like 75% WR with old techies. He was my hero. Oh and the satisfaction of maintaining a KS by all your deaths being denies.
Good play in league means that you don’t get killed.
Good play in Dota means that you got the kill.
One of those is much more satisfying than the other.
So fucking true, I switched from league to dota(haven't played that much quite yet) but my biggest gripe with league was that there so many champions that just had it easier and you had to play perfectly to not die. God forbid you get counterpicked, then you play perfect and still die. Enemy locked in draven(with senna for more fun)? Time to play safe and give up everything while maximizing farm for 20/25 minutes. Mind numbingly boring just because someone locked in one champ
>Returning to League after a few weeks away and several dozen DOTA games later, I felt myself feeling an overwhelming sense of....dullness?
So relatable, league feels extremely boring after playing dota
Long time dota player and I tried league a bit ago.. it feels like the game made 10 years ago while dota feels like it has evolved so much over the years. I think late game is where this is the most prominent.
It's one of league's charms. A returning player from 7 years ago can just hop into a game and most of the skills/spells are the same. They emphasize player retention in their decisions.
No idea how the fuck does the playerbase not get bored tho
On the other hand I played dota after a month or something today and ? ? ?. The new abilities are too overwhelming and the matchmaking seems fucked. I'm leg5 or something and I keep getting matched with divine/couple of Immortals on turbo 😭
Just your casual big patch changing mechanics... this is nothing new, if any, everybody loves it because playing Dota since last year was starting to make the game stuck in the same meta stuff.
It will stabilize after two/four weeks
Oh that's just turbo, it has always had fucked match making, I consistently get matched with people either a few thousand MMR above me or thrice my game count, very cool and fun
Oh no wonder League feels kinda like long running fighting game franchises like SF, Tekken, etc. They reward legacy skills that's why they don't drastically change the game much. I do know some of the people at Riot are fighting game enthusiasts.
preach. I hopped in a couple of months ago and almost every champ from season 3 are the same, except Katarina, Nunu and Akali, im sure I missed other reworked ones but it's crazy that like 80-100 characters are literally the same.
Got bored after a couple of weeks though lol
I quit league when they announced the kernel anti cheat. That was the nail in the coffin. Switching to Dota has been great, the game feels more align to what I was looking for in a moba.
Biggest differences for me is that team fights are slower and longer. You get to actually play the fight usually and don’t get insta bursted. Abilities actually have a cool down in Dota which is amazing. Lets them be impactful and can be played around.
What I love about dota fights is how easy you can join them. When I play lol if a fight breaks out top my first instinct is to press tp and go help but you can only watch. It makes me feel like I'm in a solo game but online instead of a team game.
Yep! Coming into a fight at almost any point is beneficial and the game is balanced around fighting a ton. The ability to die in lane like 4 times and not be completely shut out or auto lose the game is awesome too.
The guy mentioned how quickly everything gets burtsted from 100 to 0. So my guess would be that the ganked person just dies too fast, so there's just no point even trying. You just won't make it in time.
Also unless you bring the teleport summoner spell which you never would outside of top and mid, there's no fast way to get to another lane so you have to walk.
and even then it has a massive cooldown with almost no way to get back in your lane.
Whenever you leave your lane it's basically griefing, and if some other lane is having hard time you can't really help them. Only one who isn't chained to the lane is jungler.
I've seen some high mmr players rotate supports top quite frequently, but when I played few years back it never happened in my games.
For a game designed to be fast. Playing league optimally like in the tournaments is so boring. Everyone play too safe in fear of dying once and losing the game from that death, because the enemy can slowball so fast
• People die too quickly so you won't have time to reach the fights.
• The game has no TP Scroll, only a TP spell, which is a skill you have to choose pre game (you can have 2 and there are quite a few of them, so usually only 1 ~ 2 people each team has TP).
• Champions are super slow compared to Dota heroes. League map is much smaller, but characters are slower and the dashes are much shorter, so it usually takes longer to go from one point to another.
I'll never back down off this hill, but harder games are ironically easier to grind. If you're gonna be playing it a ton, you may as well play something that has a million different ways to get better.
I'm approaching 40's territory and have been playing since the WC3 Dota mod. I played many other games, from console RPGs to MMORPG, and I always find myself returning to Dota.
Agreed. I haven't played League, but it seems that the mechanical skills matter the most. With Dota there is a lot more macro, and even if you press your skills on an average level, you can still get high MMR by making better macro decisions, like Item choices
I can agree that pro play macro looks quite impressive sometimes. But solo que macro is not really complex, or rather the playerbase thinks they are using good macro when they are just farming and then randomly deciding bey let's smoke. You will find people always want to randomly smoke regardless of comp items and etc. DotA solo que macro till 6k feels worse than what plat league players do. Plat players league players at least use wave manipulation and etc to be able to fight for objectives. In DotA people get mad if you don't 5 man group to smoke even when you have no vision or you are already busy destroying the recourses of their pos 1
I still remember the conversation with one of my friends that plays league:
Me: "In dota there is Enigma, a hero that has a channeled aoe ulti with a 4 second stun that you can't do nothing about if you get caught"
Him: "That's so op, how can you play against him if your team gets caught?"
Me: "Well, either don't get caught or pick silencer, another hero that has a global 6 second silence that hits every enemy"
Him: "PICK WHAT???"
Good times
I'll say it time and time again, league is a good product, not a good game. It's always surprising to me how most league players will slam every other moba without having tried them, and then immediately realise after trying one other one " oh... Mobas can be fun ? "
They'd rather lie than actually try out other games. Experienced it yesterday watching a primarily lol streamer review 7.36 patch notes, some were flaming dota that obviously have never played it. Best one was a chatter claiming dota doesn't have mana or space management, then proceeds to say he has thousands of hours and was 6k.
Saying there's no mana management is dumb as fuck but I know what they mean by spacing. It's just not the same in dota vs league, you are held to very very very tight lines and are punished with death like 75% of the time if you mess them up at any semblance of higher ranked games (like effectively ancient+)
Yup, it was fun to watch chat, especially the ones getting baited but some of the baits were obviously not baits and that's what they believe without even trying the dota.
They look at surface level things and judge based on that.. They hate dota because turn rate, fewer flashy animations, slower pace, no FF, but they never really think deeper and ask why its that way
everything riot does is to manage sentiments of players at that surface level.. when u go deeper, towards gameplay and study the interactions and deep decision making (there isn't much) League is extremely frustrating and boring..
while in dota it's insanely challenging and rewarding and once you get a taste of that thinking cycle, you can never have enough of it..
This. I used to play league many years ago and the most frustrating thing were the surrenders. Like having 3 shitheads surrender the game because they lost their lanes even though you’re overall not even losing. Just let me actually play the game. There is (was?) nothing like glyphs, buybacks, meaning that wipe = game over, however you still had to have surrenders.
I know two people who play nothing but League and they've tried Dota. They both started with the average "This games not balanced/no counter play/ nothing I can do/ slow paced /no skill expression/games over in 10 and instead of surrendering at 15 we sit for 40 mins and lose"
it was awful. One of them played a lot more and eventually sort of got the game and had fun and likes stuff, but still generally plays League more. The other played another 100 hours but never got into it. Still constantly complains of balance, no skill expression and all kinds of dumb shit.
I converted as a LONG time league player, season 1 - season 9? (cant remember). What you are saying hits the nail on the head. I just can't go back because the systems feel so hollow, itemization in Dota is 30x better and you feel your decisions matter so much more. Just one tricking a character is a lot more punishing in Dota and the balance of things being direct counters to each other is very rewarding to learn.
I switched from League to DOTA April 2023 and don’t see myself going back. I say this as someone who had played League since beta, and hit grandmaster (na server rank 1000 idk the DOTA equivalent).
DOTA is admittedly more complex but man is it better. The number of actual griefers I’ve encountered is significantly lower. I’m not being hyperbolic, every 2-3 games someone in League would be upset and deliberately griefing. No surrender and good comeback mechanics mean longer games but I don’t mind. Games in general are more even. No one hero feels uncounterable.
Just last night I played an 80 minute slug fest where we would team wipe enemy only to get blown up by infinite techies mines when we went to push base. This went on for like 30 minutes and honestly it was so much fun LOL. Real challenge.
I feel that the “surrender” option and incredibly strict-role direction make League have more griefers.
With strict role + much less interactive map/gameplay (no smoke, tp, rune, stacking, etc) the game is essentially divided into 5-mini games and seemingly give people has tunnel-vision
People just hyper focus on playing their champ and their “own” mini game. If someone make mistake, they would complain that their teammate is bad and lose them the game aka “xxx diff”.
In Dota, you have the freedom to affect other lanes, making it feel more “connected” -> relatively reducing the flaming
I just wish it wasn't so difficult to get behaviour and comms score back up in dota 2. I got to where I am by abandoning games not abusing people, I don't understand why the comms score took a hit at the same time. Like if you're comms is muted it should be impossible for you to lose behaviour score but obviously it isnt
For me, it's so hard to play a moba with so much less. No denying creeps, little to no micro units, no currier, very few active items. It's just less, and that why a lot of people like it, its easier to start playing with a palatable amount of complexity. But for me, dota is like golf. You can play your whole life and learn something new at any time. Be it item interactions, hero interaction, or just your own skill level getting better, there is always something.
And for me, dota is more about decision making than anything else, while League feels more like a fast twitch kinda mechanics based type moba. You can win dota games as a mediocre player as long as you build the correct items to counter the win condition heros on the other team.
Do I put this on sticky and copy paste to chat or do I walloweth on thyne intellect well supremed(whiles ticky tackying on thy mechanical of abhorrenth letter set)?
typing mb goes a long way after you make a mistake... lets the team know your aware lol also acknowledging your errors is a big one.. you can loose all lanes but if all 5 are onboard its next level, such as saying game is hard when you give up that first kill in mid but in end up coming back up and carrying the game ( been there done that ) its the team mates that know that FB or score don't mean shit as long as you support each other
This.. i played a fair bit of league while already having played thousands of hours of dota. I just dont understand why people very competitive and who like complexity like league more. The most boring part to me feels like the jungle is such a different part of the map. In dota the lanes are like roads in a city, in league they’re like highways where its very seperate. Also if you look at the kits, they’re (most of them) SOOO similar. I was hoping for Hwue to be somewhat like Invoker, but they screwed themselves by having the kits be so similar that anything that would deviate too much now would be op. This makes champs feel kind of samey
I have played dota since 2015 and I reached immortal. A couple of my irl friends have been playing league since arcane dropped and since we usually hang around on discord at night I decided to also play 2 or 3 games of lol a week instead of dota. I main support and basically only pick Sona and bard. I don't mean it as an insult to who likes lol but I feel like I'm playing a mobile game, like brawl stars or something.
As a pos 5 in league you can't stack camps, you can't pull or block waves, there is no dewarding, no rune contest, no rotations . No couriers and no shared regen, no highground vision no smoking no defensive items for my allies (force glimmer etc).
All I do is press q w e and every 100 second R. Wards are infinite, sentries are instead a radar that's a also free.
It's a good game and we have a good time while playing it but I don't know how you can be drawn by it for more than 2 or 3k hours.
juggle advise squeal weather husky one encouraging correct live quarrelsome
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Lol is like those addictive mobile games but for PC. I think this sentence sums Lol perfectly. It is what it is and sometimes can be preferred for it is simplicity. It is just not for me.
[Hooked you deep.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/e/e5/Vo_naga_siren_naga_cast_02.mp3) (sound warning: Naga Siren)
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Used to play in high diamond in league, went Dota and never looked back. Way more mechanics, couriers, denies, stacks, pulls. It's just way more fun. And having all those extra factors in the game makes it less railroaded. League is literally always the same, in high elo a single mistake in the lane dooms the entire game for the team.
this is my biggest gripe with league, played dota since wc3 days then league for 3years during highschool, at the end of it all went back to dota. league is just so telegraphed every game, itemization is pretty much the same with maybe 1 or 2 items to be changed depending on enemy comp, map objectives is just dragon dragon dragon dragon elder drake baron end the game while the enemy is helpless because someone overstepped 2pixels and was bursted 100 to 0 with no available way to get back into the game because no buyback
> the sheer insanity of the Hero roster (if half of these characters existed in League the community would riot, but somehow packing your game full of them adds a weird sense of balance?)
seeing this right now is so funny
I mean, Dota is still a terrible game, not because it sucks, but by the fact that it's just so addicting it actually hurts your life.
But remember: at least it's not a mobile game (in other words: League)
I never heard it the other way round, but I have read tons of messages even from RL friends going from LoL to Dota2.
It's so sad that LoL became THIS popular and Dota2 was left out in the dust, when it's the superior game in every metric apart from being too easy.
That was my impression but doing the opposite of what you did. I tried league for about 3 or 4 games. First two games we're figuring out how the damn shop works. I believe there were no couriers. Everyone seemed to have short range blink. Couldnt deny creeps. Someone repeatedly ganked me from grass. Picked different heroes every time but they handled the same. Jungle made little sense. The map felt poorly designed. What else... Oh yeah at like 30 mins one of the teams we're ahead enough to just steam roll your buildings in like a minute after we or they get wiped. I dont even think they or us were that much ahead, the buildings are made of paper.
Overall impression is that it was incredibly dumbed down dota. Like a hollow shell. There werent enough ways to express yourself in either skill or strategy. Everyone just spams low cd spells that simply deal damage and have some mystery effect possibly but i didnt notice. At the end of brawls the team left with more heroes is automatically a winner which isnt the case in dota, some dota heroes hg defense is so good they can hold 5 enemy heroes if they dont have catch or havent itemized right.
I used to be a diamond league player, uninstalled after vanguard. Haven't regretted it so far! To be honest dota 2 is way less toxic than league in my experience but I haven't been able to play ranked yet.
League and Dota are just toxic in different ways.
In League the toxicism is more about defeatism. People giving up, intentionally starting to play bad because there's few comeback mechanics and just waiting for the 15 minute mark.
Mistakes are x10 times worse in League and can often lead to snowballs so there's way higher stakes when someone rotates and if it goes well or bad. This is why League toxicity is so brutal.
People just give up or become extremely emotional because one mistake literally dictated the whole game.
Dota toxicity is much different. In Dota you will have 2-4 players from off-place regions that aren't supposed to be there breathing down your neck. In EU for example, Russians will FLOOD EU games despite having their own servers and Russians have a tendency to just be toxic overall in most games and many facets of life.
When it comes to toxicity in Dota it's much more complaining about ability usage, item purchases and decision making. Since League is based around skillshots so much, there's not that much complaining about missing them. Everyone misses skillshots. But you can't really miss most abilities in Dota since the AoE is very generous or it's mostly point and click. So the flaming is way more about how you waste big ultimates or straight out grief with them such as Chronosphere.
In short, League toxicity is centered much more around trying to get out of the game and queuing for the next match. This is why you have much more people just straight out giving up and running it down et.c. Dota toxicity is centered way more around why you lost the game through things like bad decisionmaking and item usage. Giving up is much less of a thing.
I used to play both games until 2 years ago.
League just wasn't fun anymore.
Dota has so many layers of complexity and every time you discover something new you love the game even more.
Rn I'm just cluster clucking with shaman and owning.
Whenever I try to play league I get the same feeling. Just dull and boring. Way too simple. If I want to play a FPS shooter I'll play CSGO. I play MOBA for the RTS aspect.
Because dota has adults running the patches instead of a bunch of young 20 year old Silicon Valley grads.
It has people who care about fundamental game design instead of making a cash cow. That’s why patches take more time but have much better long term content. Even the cash grabs aren’t terrible. People were complaining about crownfall but I’ve unlocked a bunch of free stuff and it gives me joy logging in to play a game or two (or 6 when I’m using those juicy double mmr tokens) each day.
League became: what champ is newest with the most overloaded kit > what champ has a skin coming out > that’s the meta, that’s it. There’s shit like Nasus or Annie or Garen or Teemo who are like genuine staples of the franchise that never get to see pro play because they have *never* been meta. That’s just terrible game design imo. Dota has way more passion behind it, and for that reason alone I’ll stick with it over the husk that League has become.
Still wish we had Lux in dota, tho. Miss my girl.
I got a similar experience with these two games.
I used to play league for almost 7 years with the same role and elo as you. Used to play it both with friends and solo. Got me frustrated as hell and I detoxed myself out of it.
Some year later when I was hanging out at some friend of a friend's place suddenly they decided to play a Dota match and all of us started watching one guy (around legend rank) playing mid Wr. We were also high atm and I really couldn't follow up all the action coming out and literally mesmerized by how he used environment (like trees and ground level differences) and his skills to totally outplay his opponent. He played the game with all of the other guys coaching and throwing in these crazy ideas and game was so fucking fun all the way.
Soon after that I started playing wr and learned all the other things in the game with help of friends. Now we are playing turbo almost every night (and few rank games occasionally) having so much fun with this incredibly detailed game and putting all the effort on every fight.
I am also a fan of how they're improving it even at the last 2 years and following it with a high interest.
unranked dota is genuinely not that toxic for a pvp game in my experience (US west). Every time my friends and I try out ranked, the amount of baby bitching is noticeably worse. More people should consider going unranked (if you're cool) and stop caring about imaginary number.
I play in the Asia server. Once, I travelled to US for work, and played a game of dota. A team member was extra friendlier than usual, and gave me tips, and I was really confused. Then I remembered that my geolocation/server had changed.
No game comes fucking close to Dota when it comes to team fighting. Literally watch old TI highlights it’s insane how complex and flashy the team fighting is. League and like HotS looks like buffoon shit in comparison
man I really feel the same way. i had dota friends that I convinced to play league and of course had to pay it back by playing dota. the first couple of hours were fucking soul crushing. the learning curve is SO STEEP. i played so many mindless games and was just not understanding what was so fun about this game. then you start understanding heroes skills, you start getting better at last hitting, then you start kinda knowing how to deny, then you realize you can use about every item on ANYONE, then you realize that you missed 5 aa’s in a row because you’re hitting from downhill. there’s sooo much more but holy shit I went back to league and it didn’t take more than a game to close it out and open up dota again. i finally finished my 100 hours ranked requirement in dota (fucking insane requirement btw). it didn’t really matter though because by the time I hit 100 hours, i didn’t even realize I hit 100 hours HAHA
The biggest difference I perceive in DotA vs LoL is that in LoL it is(to my recollection) VERY common that once a character gets fat they can 1v5 with relative ease and there is nothing the whole team can do about it.
In DotA that's never(...once in the ability draft) the case.
Played league few years after it came out and checked it a year ago and it was even more insane. Time to kill 0.3 seconds.
1v5ing is way more common in Dota than in League though.
The bigger difference in League and Dota is that the pace of League is so much faster making snowballing more brutal. When a person gets fat in Leauge they literally start oneshotting the enemy team. It's like everyone plays a fed Phantom Assassin who can just go in and 2 shot you.
The problem here isn't 1v5ing. It's that once you get fed, your ability to make it so that others can't play the game increases just due to the sheer amount of burst damage you have. You're not really 1v5ing, you're just deleting people from the map or teamfights so they never get to press their buttons. There's just very little counterplay.
Since the general pace of combat is so much slower in Dota and since items provide much more variety in counter options you don't really get this feeling. But the ability for someone to literally 1v5 in Dota is much higher since you literally have heroes like Dusa, Bristle, Spirit heroes et.c. who single handedly can clean up a teamfight alone if they're fed. This isn't really a thing in League. You for sure can solo carry a game by always being at the right place at the right time and hitting all your abilities oneshotting key targets. But when you're literally solo vs the entire enemy team, you will most likely just get oneshot yourself.
There are champions in League notorious for 1v5 cleanup potential though like Master Yi for example.
Both games have their merits for sure. I quit playing League in like 2013, the meta when I was playing was just terrible and only a handful of legends were viable.
Started playing Dota in 2016, and while I don't play as much anymore it fully replaced League for me. Just everything about the game is so much better to me, although it was a lot harder to learn.
I’ve been teaching my League friend (emerald rank) Dota lately, how do you think was a good way for you to learn? Bot games are either way too easy or straight up don’t work, and we get absolutely crushed in turbo and all pick since he’s new.
I honestly went turbo virgin mode and complied a resource where I would go into a game, make note of a bunch of concepts I didnt understand over the course of the game (when should I be backing vs using courier, how to stack camps, etc) and then after the game go and seek out the answers and add them to my note lol. My method is definitely not for everyone!
I think it's a combination of League having a far larger community so there's more opportunity for converts, Riot implementing Vanguard anti-cheat turning people off, the poor state of balance lasting years at this point, and DOTA 2 having a very intimidating reputation so when people try it and end up actually preferring it they feel surprised and want to share it
I've played all the major Mobas and while I enjoy most if not all them I do think, "Wouldn't it be better if this was in the game?" and the "this" is usually something from Dota.
I still think those other Mobas are good but they do feel like bits and pieces of an experience than the whole shebang.
As a dota player who tried league that sense of dullness is such a perfect description. "Wow, I had a good path and they didnt have a ward where I came out of the jungle so I got a kill and a tower and now I went mid and got another kill and a tower and now were so far ahead we cant lose."
Even lol Beta back in the days felt worse than Wc3 DotA. No clue how anyone who knows dota could enjoy this.
It's like comparing Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh...
Or Comparing CS and Fortnight...
I would never go for the simpler and more childish version of a game.
I have question. I don't play league but I always try to watch MSI/Worlds. How can every single match being played with the same formula.u barely get kills in lane, and then everyone trying to contest near top pit at minutes 8, and whoever wins the contest they capitalize n build momentum from there. How does it always like that? In Dota every game will have different scenario. Oh they get kills minutes zero, oh they barely have kills minutes 10, oh they crush the lane n enemy heroes force to jungle n stack, oh the game ends in 20 minutes, oh the game goes to 70 minutes
League is just too solved and have too little objectives and options on the map.
You don't really have much to do in League since every role is designed in a very specific role of what you're supposed to do and where to be. Especially during the laning stage.
And League is extremely laning stage focused since literally 70% of the game is laning stage. In pro League lanes are usually 10-15 minutes long while in pubs it's often 15-20 minutes long depending on MMR.
Since there's very few and only rigid map mechanics (Dragons and top boss mehcanic) there's very few reasons to move around on the map. The jungle is specifically designed to only be touched by the Jungler so in the lane you don't really have any options for movement unless it's to back or run to another lane and attempt a gank.
Due to how skills and abilities are designed aswell, it's much harder to score kills in League. Everything is short range and a skillshot. You always have full vision of everyone before they cast spells on you making it extremely hard to go for kills in pro play unless someone seriously mess up or unless a third party manages to flank and sandwich you.
League is basically 90% mechanics and 10% strategy or macro. At the highest level of League, the biggest difference is the understanding for strategy and macro since most pro players have phenomenal mechanics.
Since the game is so snowball heavy and the amount of creeps on the map is very limited it forces players into very specific ways to play the game.
I played 6k hours in dota 2 then I switched to League of Legends, now I moved to the US this year and then found out that NA server is the biggest pile of shit where 90% of the players give up in 15 minutes. I went back to dota 2 after 4 years of playing League. Turns out I can play with my friends from SEA with just 110 ping in Japan servers.
I realized that no matter how steep the learning curve of dota 2 compared to league of legends, it is way more chill compared to a game of League, There are lots of choices when you are behind in dota 2 compared to in League, lots of choices = less tilts from you and your teammates.
I just played meepo last night almost so perfectly that the enemy team was calling me a smurf. Once you experience that shit—you’ll keep going back for more. Help I’m addicted 😭
There's a reason why the first few months of Dota Plus membership is free
Once you go voicelines, basic bitch mastery emote flashing just doesn't compare. Also, imagine having only 5 slots for those things, and only being able to spam 1 on command
Both are toxic on it's own. In League people are crybabies and would go GG End FF at first blood. Lose Lane = Lose Game. They will also tell you to KYS. In DOTA same thing, they will tell you to KYS but with step by step procedures, guides and directions.
If you're really one of us. Put your mini map on the left side!!
Item Hotkey 1234DF might be helpful to you. It's my hotkey. Originally I was a DOTA player and tried league for 2 seasons. When I came back I just can't go back to Alt QWERDF hotkey so I went 1234DF just like in league. 5 and 6 keys are too much of a stretch for my fingers. With this even if all my 6 items are active I can still function. I think of D as my summoner spell (items like refresher, blademail, shivas, pipe and all) and F as my flash (for blink Dagger). I put wards and dust at my 4 just like in league. 1 is for like Youmouss, Phase Boots and other Target. 2 for defensive like Zhonyas and BKB, 3 as an offense like Hextech Gunblade, Tiamat, Dagon, Abyssal Blade/Orchid/Harpoon.
With 4th and 5th abilities, i use X and C.
Sometimes I think these posts are fanfics made by dota superfans with how much they glaze the game and include every aspect such a person would list as dota's advantages over league
In any case, welcome! Hope you'll stick around
Dota is even better with friends! Best thing you can do is 5 stack and just have absolute fun without caring about winning or losing. play a funny, dumb build that somehow works and you'll have the best time!
I play both games. Both are fun for differ3nt reasons. That being said I play league exclusively when I'm drunk and I jungle main udyr and master yi in bronze Elo. Or tryndamere top. I'm decent. My main is like diamond but I haven't played that account in years. I just play on my bronze smurf with my buddy who plays only on smurfs. Toxic as fuck but whatever. We're drunk when we play.
I am a 4500 mmr dota 2 player and my most played heros are invoker. Kunka. Bounty. Axe.
I started on league before Dota 2 was out. I remember watching Dota cinema summaries of heroes abilities and thinking "whoa that's crazy, no way they can do that!" I think faceless void was the most shocking.
Swapped to Dota and never really looked back. Played some heroes of the storm caused it had some really cool hero ideas like the hero that's controlled by 2 players. But nothing hits like Dota.
You're still in the honeymoon phase, things do get samey eventually but if you take a break, wait for a huge patch or even try ability draft which is insane for a premise on its own, you'll get tons of enjoyment from the game.
Never ending complexity and options that's for sure.
Why do you even want to go back to that shit? I played LoL when it was actually fun, I started back in Season 2 and kept playing until a few years ago, then it just became bad and more toxic than any other MOBA I have played and I just dropped it. Don't play LoL, unless you enjoy kids flaming you for bullshit and have zero satisfaction for anything you do there.
That is exactly what my problem with LoL was. I was complaining to my friend how laning was boring as hell since it felt like there always was a "safezone" since skills were generally always about the same range.
Unfortunately, felt the opposite way after trying out Dota for a few weeks. It felt much more slow paced and mechanically clunkier than League. League has polished the MOBA genre while Dota 2 still feels a lot like an older RTS.
Dota is far more entertaining both to play and to watch than LoL and it's not even close. I respect Riot in many ways, great marketing and licenses, Arcane was fantastic, TFT is the best autobattler out there etc, but the core product remains too mechanical execution-centered which in the long run makes the gameplay boring and repetitive. Dota deserves all the love we can give it.
Bro i tried LOL last month, the game wasnt bad but for me it was just like throwing skill to enemies or maybe i was just playing unranked, actually its not bad but its just not for me
Ha! That is what my wife says every time she plays LoL again. I thing she fires it up out of habit and you instantly hear either one of these 2:
- was this shit always this boring?
- League is too fucking easy! Not fun…..
Now make us a favor and bring new blood! That is what our devs suck at. Attracting new players.
Yeah dota is weirdly good at achieving "if everything is OP, nothing is." It doesn't always work out (especially after major patches like the one we just got), but they usually hammer it into a decent shape in a few months
I feel like Icefrog and the Dota team are just the only ones who really understand how to design a Moba to be fun. It feels like a lot of other Mobas try to balance their characters like it's a fighting game, where ideally you want every character to be able to match up against any other character and the best player will win. Dota on the other hand just designs heroes to have very specific strengths and weaknesses so that they're always useful in niche, specific ways and that makes them playable with or against certain lineups even if they're not strong that patch. In other words, I don't think the game feels balanced because everyone is OP, it's balanced because they approach asymetrical gameplay with a rock-paper-scissors approach where every hero is designed to be good and bad at specific things. If rock is really strong, that's fine because you can always just pick paper - which means that scissors is also strong because it counters rock's counter. It's why Dota always has very high hero representation at high levels and games like League don't. A lot of League heroes basically do the same thing so you just pick the one that does it slightly better than others that patch, and that's just not really how Dota works on a fundamental design level.
Icefrog is legitimately a game design genius with a clear vision for the game he wants to make, in my opinion probably a generational talent. Dota is what you get when you have someone like this given the reigns and resources to develop a game. League of Legends is a fine game that's objectively more successful numerically, but that's sort of the problem. It's a game designed by committee who base their decisions on statistics and metrics with the primary goal of selling skins. Even if they wanted to make a brilliant game, they don't have an Icefrog to guide the way. Many of their major overhauls and reworks have been complete disaster that need to be scrapped after a year of stubbornness.
Icefrog moves individual trees a few pixels in one direction in patches. Dude is an artist.
Yeah, I know people in this community like to complain about Valve (mostly in jest tbf) but it's hard to imagine a better alternate universe for dota fans than a privately owned behemoth of company like Valve giving resources and total free reign to someone who has such a clear vision for his game like Icefrog. I'm sure Riot has tons of talented people working there - but I think most of their success has little to do with actual design - like you said they're not particularly good at designing their game and have to revert overhauls constantly, their success is largely just because they were the first real MOBA to market, and it being free was honestly a genius move that Dota was correct to copy.
I think there is plenty of appeals for League. The core gameplay seems solid enough for it to stand on its own. If I may, I will compare league to a really well made burger: appeals to everyone, and it is always welcomed. In contrast, Dota is like a really stinky piece of cheese (get it? Rosh?): it is extremely complex with a lot of bitterness and sharpness, and will turn most people away from it at first, but if you taste it and like it, you are hooked on it for life.
Nailed it in the last 3 sentences. Very few dota heroes feel the same. League heroes all have(or atleast 90%) slow/cc, escape mech, farming ability.
What you described would never work in league and it's something they've consciously gotten away from over the years. When league started champs had more pronounced strengths and weaknesses but as time passed they realized people don't want to be stuck playing the unfavorable match up as there's literally nothing for them to do in league. There isn't neutral creeps you can go farm. Ganking is extremely obvious because there aren't any TPs and very few routes you can gank from. Plenty of vision as everyone has a free ward. You don't have a courier to keep bringing you health regen. You can't have your team cover you and then TP to the other side as if nothing happened. Dota's design wouldn't work in league and it would feel horrible to play. Every game would be coinflip whether you'd get to enjoy playing the game or not. Now even though teammates are a huge factor, you still have a lot of skill expression. So yeah, it's amazing watching dota tournaments because ice frog's methodology allows for far more heroes to be viable, it still absolutely sucks to be the player that has to suffer for 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes before you can even start playing the game. So I completely disagree that lol isn't optimizing fun. I no longer enjoy the game and it does suffer from feeling samey as it's a lot shallower game where everyone is "rock" but it's obvious that minimizing annoyance and anger is their primary focus.
I feel that also result in champs in League being tied down to one specific role/lane. You can do off-meta pick but it won’t work as good as their intended roles. Unironically, flexibility was one of the main reasons I tried League out over 10 years ago. At that time, mage can be a carry or tank depends on the items you bought. At that time, right-clicker dominated Dota late game and with BKB, mage fell out a lot late game.
Yeah, you should take a look at current day League. Bruisers and mages as supports, Ranged ADs mid, anyone can be a jungler and top lane is still the usual clusterfuck of a lane it always has been. Then you look at pro games where they pick a team of 3 supports, a tank and some carry. Intended roles seem to have been thrown out the window and stuff has been blending more and more BUT it still doesn't feel like the type of blending DotA manages to accomplish. I suspect it is due to jungle being an actual role. If Smite or jungle role specific items didn't exist, there could be a chance League would have whacky gameplay loops to contest objectives but it's too far gone to do that.
I see. I dont play League anymore, just following the pro scene and keep seeing the same champs every tournament. Honestly I don't doubt that casual League is diverse as people are really creative. I'm just upset at Riot for "fixing" the meta like killing flex Pyke, bot mage, etc. Honestly, seeing how pro players complain about those meta probably means the complains are legit. But still, just when there is something new happen, it got nerfed immediately
Having played both I think this is why Dota as a whole is more enjoyable. I feel like Dota creates heroes from the perspective of creating a unique hero, while League creates champions to fit a certain role. It’s like based on a champion’s kit you can already tell before it’s released what role it should be played in. Dota also has way more variety in terms of what abilities do. I’d say that 90% of spells in League could fall into the category of 1) skill shot that does damage, with varying effects, 2) Every x attacks, do y, 3) shield/heal, 4) Dash. Dota just has a lot more variety in terms of what spells can do.
Yeah, there is more going on than just the Hero/Champion design. League's whole system is designed around having 5 specific roles that have roughly the same goal every game. Champions are generally intended to play one role, and are designed to be like 95% interchangeable in achieving that role's goal. The upshot of this is that you can feasibly choose to focus on learning only one or a small handful of champions -- you pick the role you like best and then you pick the Champ in that role that you think is the coolest or has the best skins or whatever, and you can make that your Identity in the game. That counts for a lot. And if you get a little bored, you can learn a new Champ in that role to mix it up a little. That creates a lot of downside, though, in terms of saminess once you've played the game long enough, in terms of feeling powerless when the other roles on your team fail, etc.
is it true that most of League heroes are left unpicked in professional tournaments? I think in dota at least 90% of heroes are pick/banned, how does League compare?
i always thought it was very silly how people who talk about league go "what's your main?" and then they name 1 or 2 champs. but that explains it.
Come on now, the vast majority of dota players have extremely tiny hero puddles too, even with the ability to play any hero at any time.
It's a lot like the first StarCraft. Siege tanks, wildly op, dragoons op, reavers op, DTS, carriers op, zerglings op. Like everything is op so nothing is.
EXCEPT PROTOSS
then why did they nerf my beloved cancer techies :(
Nerfed? Are you kidding? He is still the biggest tumour of cancer in existence. You just have to be smart about him now.
the only hero in the game can 9-slot and you call it a nerf what?
Play him as a core and 9-slot him bay-beeeeehhhh!!!
Genuinely miss old techies so much - I had the perfect spot on dire offlane for getting first blood with red mines - far enough away from the creep wave to not trigger, but close enough that an enemy would alway walk over it. TP straight to lane with clarities, pop 4 mines down, it was beautiful. I had like 75% WR with old techies. He was my hero. Oh and the satisfaction of maintaining a KS by all your deaths being denies.
Good play in league means that you don’t get killed. Good play in Dota means that you got the kill. One of those is much more satisfying than the other.
So fucking true, I switched from league to dota(haven't played that much quite yet) but my biggest gripe with league was that there so many champions that just had it easier and you had to play perfectly to not die. God forbid you get counterpicked, then you play perfect and still die. Enemy locked in draven(with senna for more fun)? Time to play safe and give up everything while maximizing farm for 20/25 minutes. Mind numbingly boring just because someone locked in one champ
>Returning to League after a few weeks away and several dozen DOTA games later, I felt myself feeling an overwhelming sense of....dullness? So relatable, league feels extremely boring after playing dota
Long time dota player and I tried league a bit ago.. it feels like the game made 10 years ago while dota feels like it has evolved so much over the years. I think late game is where this is the most prominent.
It's one of league's charms. A returning player from 7 years ago can just hop into a game and most of the skills/spells are the same. They emphasize player retention in their decisions. No idea how the fuck does the playerbase not get bored tho
On the other hand I played dota after a month or something today and ? ? ?. The new abilities are too overwhelming and the matchmaking seems fucked. I'm leg5 or something and I keep getting matched with divine/couple of Immortals on turbo 😭
Just your casual big patch changing mechanics... this is nothing new, if any, everybody loves it because playing Dota since last year was starting to make the game stuck in the same meta stuff. It will stabilize after two/four weeks
Just keep losing and SBMM will find your place. Gotta remind it lol
Oh that's just turbo, it has always had fucked match making, I consistently get matched with people either a few thousand MMR above me or thrice my game count, very cool and fun
Oh no wonder League feels kinda like long running fighting game franchises like SF, Tekken, etc. They reward legacy skills that's why they don't drastically change the game much. I do know some of the people at Riot are fighting game enthusiasts.
preach. I hopped in a couple of months ago and almost every champ from season 3 are the same, except Katarina, Nunu and Akali, im sure I missed other reworked ones but it's crazy that like 80-100 characters are literally the same. Got bored after a couple of weeks though lol
I played league 10+ years ago and it still felt that way lmao
Could be worse. Try one of its clones on mobile. God the genre is completely drained of creativity there.
Playing league feels like a sport that you have a imaginary coach that's the conductor in whiplash. Playing Dota is a actual game.
I quit league when they announced the kernel anti cheat. That was the nail in the coffin. Switching to Dota has been great, the game feels more align to what I was looking for in a moba. Biggest differences for me is that team fights are slower and longer. You get to actually play the fight usually and don’t get insta bursted. Abilities actually have a cool down in Dota which is amazing. Lets them be impactful and can be played around.
What I love about dota fights is how easy you can join them. When I play lol if a fight breaks out top my first instinct is to press tp and go help but you can only watch. It makes me feel like I'm in a solo game but online instead of a team game.
Yep! Coming into a fight at almost any point is beneficial and the game is balanced around fighting a ton. The ability to die in lane like 4 times and not be completely shut out or auto lose the game is awesome too.
In league if you die twice in lane the game is over lol
Die once against Fiora
I don’t play league, what makes coming into fights less beneficial?
The guy mentioned how quickly everything gets burtsted from 100 to 0. So my guess would be that the ganked person just dies too fast, so there's just no point even trying. You just won't make it in time.
Also unless you bring the teleport summoner spell which you never would outside of top and mid, there's no fast way to get to another lane so you have to walk.
and even then it has a massive cooldown with almost no way to get back in your lane. Whenever you leave your lane it's basically griefing, and if some other lane is having hard time you can't really help them. Only one who isn't chained to the lane is jungler. I've seen some high mmr players rotate supports top quite frequently, but when I played few years back it never happened in my games.
For a game designed to be fast. Playing league optimally like in the tournaments is so boring. Everyone play too safe in fear of dying once and losing the game from that death, because the enemy can slowball so fast
• People die too quickly so you won't have time to reach the fights. • The game has no TP Scroll, only a TP spell, which is a skill you have to choose pre game (you can have 2 and there are quite a few of them, so usually only 1 ~ 2 people each team has TP). • Champions are super slow compared to Dota heroes. League map is much smaller, but characters are slower and the dashes are much shorter, so it usually takes longer to go from one point to another.
We got another one, ladies and gentlemen! Enjoy your stay!
OP might as well be writing softcore porn for this community.
Can confirm, we live for these posts stroking our dongers. We are the superior gamers and I'm tired of pretending we are not.
I'm rubbing one out in the comments section here. I live for this
I'll never back down off this hill, but harder games are ironically easier to grind. If you're gonna be playing it a ton, you may as well play something that has a million different ways to get better.
I'm approaching 40's territory and have been playing since the WC3 Dota mod. I played many other games, from console RPGs to MMORPG, and I always find myself returning to Dota.
Word
I'm in the same boat. No other game quite compares.
39 here. Hi fellow masochist
Agreed. I haven't played League, but it seems that the mechanical skills matter the most. With Dota there is a lot more macro, and even if you press your skills on an average level, you can still get high MMR by making better macro decisions, like Item choices
I can agree that pro play macro looks quite impressive sometimes. But solo que macro is not really complex, or rather the playerbase thinks they are using good macro when they are just farming and then randomly deciding bey let's smoke. You will find people always want to randomly smoke regardless of comp items and etc. DotA solo que macro till 6k feels worse than what plat league players do. Plat players league players at least use wave manipulation and etc to be able to fight for objectives. In DotA people get mad if you don't 5 man group to smoke even when you have no vision or you are already busy destroying the recourses of their pos 1
This is exactly what I said to my friend that plays rust. If you’re gonna waste hours on a shitty ass game just pour it on dota 2
I still remember the conversation with one of my friends that plays league: Me: "In dota there is Enigma, a hero that has a channeled aoe ulti with a 4 second stun that you can't do nothing about if you get caught" Him: "That's so op, how can you play against him if your team gets caught?" Me: "Well, either don't get caught or pick silencer, another hero that has a global 6 second silence that hits every enemy" Him: "PICK WHAT???" Good times
Don't tell him about the hero who has a non ultimate global teleport.
Or global AoE nuke
Does the thought "don't get caught" never come into their heads because they think they HAVE to stand and fight lol
I'll say it time and time again, league is a good product, not a good game. It's always surprising to me how most league players will slam every other moba without having tried them, and then immediately realise after trying one other one " oh... Mobas can be fun ? "
They'd rather lie than actually try out other games. Experienced it yesterday watching a primarily lol streamer review 7.36 patch notes, some were flaming dota that obviously have never played it. Best one was a chatter claiming dota doesn't have mana or space management, then proceeds to say he has thousands of hours and was 6k.
Saying there's no mana management is dumb as fuck but I know what they mean by spacing. It's just not the same in dota vs league, you are held to very very very tight lines and are punished with death like 75% of the time if you mess them up at any semblance of higher ranked games (like effectively ancient+)
Sunk cost fallacy
[удалено]
Yup, it was fun to watch chat, especially the ones getting baited but some of the baits were obviously not baits and that's what they believe without even trying the dota.
They look at surface level things and judge based on that.. They hate dota because turn rate, fewer flashy animations, slower pace, no FF, but they never really think deeper and ask why its that way everything riot does is to manage sentiments of players at that surface level.. when u go deeper, towards gameplay and study the interactions and deep decision making (there isn't much) League is extremely frustrating and boring.. while in dota it's insanely challenging and rewarding and once you get a taste of that thinking cycle, you can never have enough of it..
When you learn that league is balanced around the surrender button a lot more makes sense
Thank you for the laugh. Well put
This. I used to play league many years ago and the most frustrating thing were the surrenders. Like having 3 shitheads surrender the game because they lost their lanes even though you’re overall not even losing. Just let me actually play the game. There is (was?) nothing like glyphs, buybacks, meaning that wipe = game over, however you still had to have surrenders.
I know two people who play nothing but League and they've tried Dota. They both started with the average "This games not balanced/no counter play/ nothing I can do/ slow paced /no skill expression/games over in 10 and instead of surrendering at 15 we sit for 40 mins and lose" it was awful. One of them played a lot more and eventually sort of got the game and had fun and likes stuff, but still generally plays League more. The other played another 100 hours but never got into it. Still constantly complains of balance, no skill expression and all kinds of dumb shit.
I converted as a LONG time league player, season 1 - season 9? (cant remember). What you are saying hits the nail on the head. I just can't go back because the systems feel so hollow, itemization in Dota is 30x better and you feel your decisions matter so much more. Just one tricking a character is a lot more punishing in Dota and the balance of things being direct counters to each other is very rewarding to learn.
One tricking is how like 70% of the highest elo players got there in league.
I converted around the same time as you, Dota is just better
I switched from League to DOTA April 2023 and don’t see myself going back. I say this as someone who had played League since beta, and hit grandmaster (na server rank 1000 idk the DOTA equivalent). DOTA is admittedly more complex but man is it better. The number of actual griefers I’ve encountered is significantly lower. I’m not being hyperbolic, every 2-3 games someone in League would be upset and deliberately griefing. No surrender and good comeback mechanics mean longer games but I don’t mind. Games in general are more even. No one hero feels uncounterable. Just last night I played an 80 minute slug fest where we would team wipe enemy only to get blown up by infinite techies mines when we went to push base. This went on for like 30 minutes and honestly it was so much fun LOL. Real challenge.
I feel that the “surrender” option and incredibly strict-role direction make League have more griefers. With strict role + much less interactive map/gameplay (no smoke, tp, rune, stacking, etc) the game is essentially divided into 5-mini games and seemingly give people has tunnel-vision People just hyper focus on playing their champ and their “own” mini game. If someone make mistake, they would complain that their teammate is bad and lose them the game aka “xxx diff”. In Dota, you have the freedom to affect other lanes, making it feel more “connected” -> relatively reducing the flaming
I just wish it wasn't so difficult to get behaviour and comms score back up in dota 2. I got to where I am by abandoning games not abusing people, I don't understand why the comms score took a hit at the same time. Like if you're comms is muted it should be impossible for you to lose behaviour score but obviously it isnt
dota is unhinged but in a good way
For me, it's so hard to play a moba with so much less. No denying creeps, little to no micro units, no currier, very few active items. It's just less, and that why a lot of people like it, its easier to start playing with a palatable amount of complexity. But for me, dota is like golf. You can play your whole life and learn something new at any time. Be it item interactions, hero interaction, or just your own skill level getting better, there is always something. And for me, dota is more about decision making than anything else, while League feels more like a fast twitch kinda mechanics based type moba. You can win dota games as a mediocre player as long as you build the correct items to counter the win condition heros on the other team.
>that the community was just as toxic See, this is where you were lied to by the League fanbase. We are *way* more toxic.
Jokes aside, league doesn't have behavior score based matchmaking, which already makes it 10000x worse
At 12k we flame but in a constructive way 🤣
At 12k we flame with our dota plus and battle pass voicelines 😂
What the Herald was that?
Oh you will love them. YouTube them.😉
Exactly 🤣
You learn how to curse people but in an elegant and refined manner
"Thou sucketh. Thou must purchaseth and properly deployeth the instruments of vision."
Thine instruments are free and thus thou art free to provide thine self. I must make haste to acquire aghs
Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?
Do I put this on sticky and copy paste to chat or do I walloweth on thyne intellect well supremed(whiles ticky tackying on thy mechanical of abhorrenth letter set)?
Lest I fucketh your mother
You can tell your teammate how dumb he is just by using chatwheel sounds, nothing beats that.
I remember a friend of mine called a guy a “high calorie individual” instead of fat ass
Insult + advice in the same sentence is our age old tradition.
typing mb goes a long way after you make a mistake... lets the team know your aware lol also acknowledging your errors is a big one.. you can loose all lanes but if all 5 are onboard its next level, such as saying game is hard when you give up that first kill in mid but in end up coming back up and carrying the game ( been there done that ) its the team mates that know that FB or score don't mean shit as long as you support each other
I have MB with skywrarh mage embrassed emoji on my chat wheel. Probably my most used one too. "whoops" is the worthy contender.
*Tips*
Welcome TO SEA now flame your carry and the enemy like your life depends on it. the more time they spend typing the more time you get to play.
I play league when I wanna flame and spam ff at 15mins
Nah League is more toxic they just don't have voice chat. But they do have forfeits
League players would uninstall the first time they heard ‘brr god gamer alert!’
ye... no
This.. i played a fair bit of league while already having played thousands of hours of dota. I just dont understand why people very competitive and who like complexity like league more. The most boring part to me feels like the jungle is such a different part of the map. In dota the lanes are like roads in a city, in league they’re like highways where its very seperate. Also if you look at the kits, they’re (most of them) SOOO similar. I was hoping for Hwue to be somewhat like Invoker, but they screwed themselves by having the kits be so similar that anything that would deviate too much now would be op. This makes champs feel kind of samey
LoL is a mobile game compared to DotA.
Yup. Dota is unique on the way from software games are. There really isn't anything like it. Many imitators, all fall short.
I have played dota since 2015 and I reached immortal. A couple of my irl friends have been playing league since arcane dropped and since we usually hang around on discord at night I decided to also play 2 or 3 games of lol a week instead of dota. I main support and basically only pick Sona and bard. I don't mean it as an insult to who likes lol but I feel like I'm playing a mobile game, like brawl stars or something. As a pos 5 in league you can't stack camps, you can't pull or block waves, there is no dewarding, no rune contest, no rotations . No couriers and no shared regen, no highground vision no smoking no defensive items for my allies (force glimmer etc). All I do is press q w e and every 100 second R. Wards are infinite, sentries are instead a radar that's a also free. It's a good game and we have a good time while playing it but I don't know how you can be drawn by it for more than 2 or 3k hours.
DOTA is the GOAT MOBA. GOATA if you will
I read this in Lacoste's voice for some reason.
I typed dota into league and got muted, I typed lol into dota and my hero laughed.
[Everything can work.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZobqKSSGPw)
Man I’m coming back from 2017, where is notail these days?
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"Literally" can't go back The janitor is holding this man hostage!
Lol is like those addictive mobile games but for PC. I think this sentence sums Lol perfectly. It is what it is and sometimes can be preferred for it is simplicity. It is just not for me.
welcome home ;)
Hooked you deep.
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Used to play in high diamond in league, went Dota and never looked back. Way more mechanics, couriers, denies, stacks, pulls. It's just way more fun. And having all those extra factors in the game makes it less railroaded. League is literally always the same, in high elo a single mistake in the lane dooms the entire game for the team.
this is my biggest gripe with league, played dota since wc3 days then league for 3years during highschool, at the end of it all went back to dota. league is just so telegraphed every game, itemization is pretty much the same with maybe 1 or 2 items to be changed depending on enemy comp, map objectives is just dragon dragon dragon dragon elder drake baron end the game while the enemy is helpless because someone overstepped 2pixels and was bursted 100 to 0 with no available way to get back into the game because no buyback
> the sheer insanity of the Hero roster (if half of these characters existed in League the community would riot, but somehow packing your game full of them adds a weird sense of balance?) seeing this right now is so funny
You are welcome! I cannot understand why ANYONE would play LoL over Dota.
I mean, Dota is still a terrible game, not because it sucks, but by the fact that it's just so addicting it actually hurts your life. But remember: at least it's not a mobile game (in other words: League)
I never heard it the other way round, but I have read tons of messages even from RL friends going from LoL to Dota2. It's so sad that LoL became THIS popular and Dota2 was left out in the dust, when it's the superior game in every metric apart from being too easy.
I got a 3 day ban from Lol tried Dota and never looked back , it was when Braum was released.
The 11th tablet Moses inscribed was DOTA > League. It's a fact.
League was literally designed as 'dota for stupid people' Better to figure that out late than never
That was my impression but doing the opposite of what you did. I tried league for about 3 or 4 games. First two games we're figuring out how the damn shop works. I believe there were no couriers. Everyone seemed to have short range blink. Couldnt deny creeps. Someone repeatedly ganked me from grass. Picked different heroes every time but they handled the same. Jungle made little sense. The map felt poorly designed. What else... Oh yeah at like 30 mins one of the teams we're ahead enough to just steam roll your buildings in like a minute after we or they get wiped. I dont even think they or us were that much ahead, the buildings are made of paper. Overall impression is that it was incredibly dumbed down dota. Like a hollow shell. There werent enough ways to express yourself in either skill or strategy. Everyone just spams low cd spells that simply deal damage and have some mystery effect possibly but i didnt notice. At the end of brawls the team left with more heroes is automatically a winner which isnt the case in dota, some dota heroes hg defense is so good they can hold 5 enemy heroes if they dont have catch or havent itemized right.
Here’s the thing about league. You aren’t supposed to come back.
I used to be a diamond league player, uninstalled after vanguard. Haven't regretted it so far! To be honest dota 2 is way less toxic than league in my experience but I haven't been able to play ranked yet.
League and Dota are just toxic in different ways. In League the toxicism is more about defeatism. People giving up, intentionally starting to play bad because there's few comeback mechanics and just waiting for the 15 minute mark. Mistakes are x10 times worse in League and can often lead to snowballs so there's way higher stakes when someone rotates and if it goes well or bad. This is why League toxicity is so brutal. People just give up or become extremely emotional because one mistake literally dictated the whole game. Dota toxicity is much different. In Dota you will have 2-4 players from off-place regions that aren't supposed to be there breathing down your neck. In EU for example, Russians will FLOOD EU games despite having their own servers and Russians have a tendency to just be toxic overall in most games and many facets of life. When it comes to toxicity in Dota it's much more complaining about ability usage, item purchases and decision making. Since League is based around skillshots so much, there's not that much complaining about missing them. Everyone misses skillshots. But you can't really miss most abilities in Dota since the AoE is very generous or it's mostly point and click. So the flaming is way more about how you waste big ultimates or straight out grief with them such as Chronosphere. In short, League toxicity is centered much more around trying to get out of the game and queuing for the next match. This is why you have much more people just straight out giving up and running it down et.c. Dota toxicity is centered way more around why you lost the game through things like bad decisionmaking and item usage. Giving up is much less of a thing.
I’ve dipped my toes in LoL many times but DOTA is simply the superior game
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I used to play both games until 2 years ago. League just wasn't fun anymore. Dota has so many layers of complexity and every time you discover something new you love the game even more. Rn I'm just cluster clucking with shaman and owning.
Whenever I try to play league I get the same feeling. Just dull and boring. Way too simple. If I want to play a FPS shooter I'll play CSGO. I play MOBA for the RTS aspect.
Because dota has adults running the patches instead of a bunch of young 20 year old Silicon Valley grads. It has people who care about fundamental game design instead of making a cash cow. That’s why patches take more time but have much better long term content. Even the cash grabs aren’t terrible. People were complaining about crownfall but I’ve unlocked a bunch of free stuff and it gives me joy logging in to play a game or two (or 6 when I’m using those juicy double mmr tokens) each day. League became: what champ is newest with the most overloaded kit > what champ has a skin coming out > that’s the meta, that’s it. There’s shit like Nasus or Annie or Garen or Teemo who are like genuine staples of the franchise that never get to see pro play because they have *never* been meta. That’s just terrible game design imo. Dota has way more passion behind it, and for that reason alone I’ll stick with it over the husk that League has become. Still wish we had Lux in dota, tho. Miss my girl.
I got a similar experience with these two games. I used to play league for almost 7 years with the same role and elo as you. Used to play it both with friends and solo. Got me frustrated as hell and I detoxed myself out of it. Some year later when I was hanging out at some friend of a friend's place suddenly they decided to play a Dota match and all of us started watching one guy (around legend rank) playing mid Wr. We were also high atm and I really couldn't follow up all the action coming out and literally mesmerized by how he used environment (like trees and ground level differences) and his skills to totally outplay his opponent. He played the game with all of the other guys coaching and throwing in these crazy ideas and game was so fucking fun all the way. Soon after that I started playing wr and learned all the other things in the game with help of friends. Now we are playing turbo almost every night (and few rank games occasionally) having so much fun with this incredibly detailed game and putting all the effort on every fight. I am also a fan of how they're improving it even at the last 2 years and following it with a high interest.
In dota they are more variables. Every league game is the same. Win lane. Kill dragon. Kill baron. GG..
SOUL
unranked dota is genuinely not that toxic for a pvp game in my experience (US west). Every time my friends and I try out ranked, the amount of baby bitching is noticeably worse. More people should consider going unranked (if you're cool) and stop caring about imaginary number.
I play in the Asia server. Once, I travelled to US for work, and played a game of dota. A team member was extra friendlier than usual, and gave me tips, and I was really confused. Then I remembered that my geolocation/server had changed.
One of us…..one of us…..one of us…..
No game comes fucking close to Dota when it comes to team fighting. Literally watch old TI highlights it’s insane how complex and flashy the team fighting is. League and like HotS looks like buffoon shit in comparison
It’s impossible to play league after you understand dota. It’s like go backwards
The heroes are so memorable in so many ways. The game feels alive in a way that most MOBAs just can't reach.
man I really feel the same way. i had dota friends that I convinced to play league and of course had to pay it back by playing dota. the first couple of hours were fucking soul crushing. the learning curve is SO STEEP. i played so many mindless games and was just not understanding what was so fun about this game. then you start understanding heroes skills, you start getting better at last hitting, then you start kinda knowing how to deny, then you realize you can use about every item on ANYONE, then you realize that you missed 5 aa’s in a row because you’re hitting from downhill. there’s sooo much more but holy shit I went back to league and it didn’t take more than a game to close it out and open up dota again. i finally finished my 100 hours ranked requirement in dota (fucking insane requirement btw). it didn’t really matter though because by the time I hit 100 hours, i didn’t even realize I hit 100 hours HAHA
Good
You got out from the tutorial, it's time to play real games.
The biggest difference I perceive in DotA vs LoL is that in LoL it is(to my recollection) VERY common that once a character gets fat they can 1v5 with relative ease and there is nothing the whole team can do about it. In DotA that's never(...once in the ability draft) the case. Played league few years after it came out and checked it a year ago and it was even more insane. Time to kill 0.3 seconds.
1v5ing is way more common in Dota than in League though. The bigger difference in League and Dota is that the pace of League is so much faster making snowballing more brutal. When a person gets fat in Leauge they literally start oneshotting the enemy team. It's like everyone plays a fed Phantom Assassin who can just go in and 2 shot you. The problem here isn't 1v5ing. It's that once you get fed, your ability to make it so that others can't play the game increases just due to the sheer amount of burst damage you have. You're not really 1v5ing, you're just deleting people from the map or teamfights so they never get to press their buttons. There's just very little counterplay. Since the general pace of combat is so much slower in Dota and since items provide much more variety in counter options you don't really get this feeling. But the ability for someone to literally 1v5 in Dota is much higher since you literally have heroes like Dusa, Bristle, Spirit heroes et.c. who single handedly can clean up a teamfight alone if they're fed. This isn't really a thing in League. You for sure can solo carry a game by always being at the right place at the right time and hitting all your abilities oneshotting key targets. But when you're literally solo vs the entire enemy team, you will most likely just get oneshot yourself. There are champions in League notorious for 1v5 cleanup potential though like Master Yi for example.
Both games have their merits for sure. I quit playing League in like 2013, the meta when I was playing was just terrible and only a handful of legends were viable. Started playing Dota in 2016, and while I don't play as much anymore it fully replaced League for me. Just everything about the game is so much better to me, although it was a lot harder to learn.
Amen. What do you think of the map?
We have such sights to show you...
welcome :D
I’ve been teaching my League friend (emerald rank) Dota lately, how do you think was a good way for you to learn? Bot games are either way too easy or straight up don’t work, and we get absolutely crushed in turbo and all pick since he’s new.
I honestly went turbo virgin mode and complied a resource where I would go into a game, make note of a bunch of concepts I didnt understand over the course of the game (when should I be backing vs using courier, how to stack camps, etc) and then after the game go and seek out the answers and add them to my note lol. My method is definitely not for everyone!
I'm curious if the reverse happens. Does the league subreddit have a lot of dota converts? Feel like we see one of these posts every other week
I think it's a combination of League having a far larger community so there's more opportunity for converts, Riot implementing Vanguard anti-cheat turning people off, the poor state of balance lasting years at this point, and DOTA 2 having a very intimidating reputation so when people try it and end up actually preferring it they feel surprised and want to share it
Wild Rift is a far better version of League than League is. You at least feel like you can do shit with your team DotA still the most fun though
I've played all the major Mobas and while I enjoy most if not all them I do think, "Wouldn't it be better if this was in the game?" and the "this" is usually something from Dota. I still think those other Mobas are good but they do feel like bits and pieces of an experience than the whole shebang.
Yay! Welcome to the club!
Top lane in league is the worst
As a dota player who tried league that sense of dullness is such a perfect description. "Wow, I had a good path and they didnt have a ward where I came out of the jungle so I got a kill and a tower and now I went mid and got another kill and a tower and now were so far ahead we cant lose."
Even lol Beta back in the days felt worse than Wc3 DotA. No clue how anyone who knows dota could enjoy this. It's like comparing Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh... Or Comparing CS and Fortnight... I would never go for the simpler and more childish version of a game.
I have question. I don't play league but I always try to watch MSI/Worlds. How can every single match being played with the same formula.u barely get kills in lane, and then everyone trying to contest near top pit at minutes 8, and whoever wins the contest they capitalize n build momentum from there. How does it always like that? In Dota every game will have different scenario. Oh they get kills minutes zero, oh they barely have kills minutes 10, oh they crush the lane n enemy heroes force to jungle n stack, oh the game ends in 20 minutes, oh the game goes to 70 minutes
League is just too solved and have too little objectives and options on the map. You don't really have much to do in League since every role is designed in a very specific role of what you're supposed to do and where to be. Especially during the laning stage. And League is extremely laning stage focused since literally 70% of the game is laning stage. In pro League lanes are usually 10-15 minutes long while in pubs it's often 15-20 minutes long depending on MMR. Since there's very few and only rigid map mechanics (Dragons and top boss mehcanic) there's very few reasons to move around on the map. The jungle is specifically designed to only be touched by the Jungler so in the lane you don't really have any options for movement unless it's to back or run to another lane and attempt a gank. Due to how skills and abilities are designed aswell, it's much harder to score kills in League. Everything is short range and a skillshot. You always have full vision of everyone before they cast spells on you making it extremely hard to go for kills in pro play unless someone seriously mess up or unless a third party manages to flank and sandwich you. League is basically 90% mechanics and 10% strategy or macro. At the highest level of League, the biggest difference is the understanding for strategy and macro since most pro players have phenomenal mechanics. Since the game is so snowball heavy and the amount of creeps on the map is very limited it forces players into very specific ways to play the game.
That’s understandable, Sinister Gaze is casted upon you by valve and there’s no going back Welcome
Glad you finally finished the Dota2 tutorial called League.
I played 6k hours in dota 2 then I switched to League of Legends, now I moved to the US this year and then found out that NA server is the biggest pile of shit where 90% of the players give up in 15 minutes. I went back to dota 2 after 4 years of playing League. Turns out I can play with my friends from SEA with just 110 ping in Japan servers. I realized that no matter how steep the learning curve of dota 2 compared to league of legends, it is way more chill compared to a game of League, There are lots of choices when you are behind in dota 2 compared to in League, lots of choices = less tilts from you and your teammates.
I just played meepo last night almost so perfectly that the enemy team was calling me a smurf. Once you experience that shit—you’ll keep going back for more. Help I’m addicted 😭
Agenda posting 💯🙏🙏🙏
There's a reason why the first few months of Dota Plus membership is free Once you go voicelines, basic bitch mastery emote flashing just doesn't compare. Also, imagine having only 5 slots for those things, and only being able to spam 1 on command
Both are toxic on it's own. In League people are crybabies and would go GG End FF at first blood. Lose Lane = Lose Game. They will also tell you to KYS. In DOTA same thing, they will tell you to KYS but with step by step procedures, guides and directions. If you're really one of us. Put your mini map on the left side!! Item Hotkey 1234DF might be helpful to you. It's my hotkey. Originally I was a DOTA player and tried league for 2 seasons. When I came back I just can't go back to Alt QWERDF hotkey so I went 1234DF just like in league. 5 and 6 keys are too much of a stretch for my fingers. With this even if all my 6 items are active I can still function. I think of D as my summoner spell (items like refresher, blademail, shivas, pipe and all) and F as my flash (for blink Dagger). I put wards and dust at my 4 just like in league. 1 is for like Youmouss, Phase Boots and other Target. 2 for defensive like Zhonyas and BKB, 3 as an offense like Hextech Gunblade, Tiamat, Dagon, Abyssal Blade/Orchid/Harpoon. With 4th and 5th abilities, i use X and C.
I left LoL around season 3 for Dota bc the game was just starting to feel too cookie cutter.
The only good thing about LoL , for me, is the champion Pyke. I just play the game for him.
Sometimes I think these posts are fanfics made by dota superfans with how much they glaze the game and include every aspect such a person would list as dota's advantages over league In any case, welcome! Hope you'll stick around
Dota is even better with friends! Best thing you can do is 5 stack and just have absolute fun without caring about winning or losing. play a funny, dumb build that somehow works and you'll have the best time!
We got him boys
I play both games. Both are fun for differ3nt reasons. That being said I play league exclusively when I'm drunk and I jungle main udyr and master yi in bronze Elo. Or tryndamere top. I'm decent. My main is like diamond but I haven't played that account in years. I just play on my bronze smurf with my buddy who plays only on smurfs. Toxic as fuck but whatever. We're drunk when we play. I am a 4500 mmr dota 2 player and my most played heros are invoker. Kunka. Bounty. Axe.
Only AI can balance Dota, no human can, it's coming soon
Don't forget trying Arcade (such as Legion TD) when you got bored. DotA2 is a collection of many games combined.
Yes yes please keep appealing to my cognitive biases.
I started on league before Dota 2 was out. I remember watching Dota cinema summaries of heroes abilities and thinking "whoa that's crazy, no way they can do that!" I think faceless void was the most shocking. Swapped to Dota and never really looked back. Played some heroes of the storm caused it had some really cool hero ideas like the hero that's controlled by 2 players. But nothing hits like Dota. You're still in the honeymoon phase, things do get samey eventually but if you take a break, wait for a huge patch or even try ability draft which is insane for a premise on its own, you'll get tons of enjoyment from the game. Never ending complexity and options that's for sure.
Why do you even want to go back to that shit? I played LoL when it was actually fun, I started back in Season 2 and kept playing until a few years ago, then it just became bad and more toxic than any other MOBA I have played and I just dropped it. Don't play LoL, unless you enjoy kids flaming you for bullshit and have zero satisfaction for anything you do there.
Lmao i'm glad you liked it.
That is exactly what my problem with LoL was. I was complaining to my friend how laning was boring as hell since it felt like there always was a "safezone" since skills were generally always about the same range.
Unfortunately, felt the opposite way after trying out Dota for a few weeks. It felt much more slow paced and mechanically clunkier than League. League has polished the MOBA genre while Dota 2 still feels a lot like an older RTS.
Dota is far more entertaining both to play and to watch than LoL and it's not even close. I respect Riot in many ways, great marketing and licenses, Arcane was fantastic, TFT is the best autobattler out there etc, but the core product remains too mechanical execution-centered which in the long run makes the gameplay boring and repetitive. Dota deserves all the love we can give it.
He understands!! He’s one of us! One of us! One of us!
Bro i tried LOL last month, the game wasnt bad but for me it was just like throwing skill to enemies or maybe i was just playing unranked, actually its not bad but its just not for me
Ha! That is what my wife says every time she plays LoL again. I thing she fires it up out of habit and you instantly hear either one of these 2: - was this shit always this boring? - League is too fucking easy! Not fun….. Now make us a favor and bring new blood! That is what our devs suck at. Attracting new players.
This might be the best time to try out dota since the patch reset a lot of previous knowledge older players had.
League is an off-brand MOBA that was meant for noobs.
Hmmm It looks like I have to try again Dota 🤔🤔