I think a new thread with all our keys pooled would work better I don't think people who don't play read this thread. Just played Vengeful Spirit, not too impressed. Seems like one of those chars that will make a winning team better but not a drawing team win. I think bloodseeker and others have this strange trait.
She's a bit of an odd one. Everyone's got their own idea of what she's meant to be or is best as but no matter how you play her my opinion is that you need a team willing to work with her. -Her stun's fairly high damage and long duration, but she can't do much with it alone. -Her armor debuff is great, but again works best with someone stronger. -Her aura is good, but being percentage based works best with heroes that have high damage. -Her swap's extremely versatile but isn't always very helpful 1v1. There's a common theme: she needs to be with another hero for full effect. Some people like to overcome this by just making her the carry. Agi heroes lend themselves to it and the damage aura combined with armor debuff makes it possible. But where she really shines in my book is helping a ranged hero in lane (preferrably as part of a ganking strategy) or roaming. That's probably where that feeling of helping a winning team do better comes in. When you're ahead it's easier to act confidently, set up ganks, and initiate team fights knowing everyone's got your back. When you're tied or on the back foot it gets a little touger, there's less room for mistakes, and your team mates have to be aware that there's a VS around, understand what she can do, and be ready to work with her. If you've got a team that can do that she's actually quite powerful when you need to tip the scales. Group ganks in the jungle or on lonely farming carries (particularly late game when most gankers can't 1v1 them anymore) can be much more potent when you've got a VS to swap them into your team, stun them there, and reduce their armor. Definitely a "team" hero both in her abilities and in the communication needed with the other players to be successful.
Venge is an excellent support hero. She doesn't carry well (rubbish stats) but her stun, wave of terror and damage boost all boost the effectiveness of your team, allowing others to carry better. She is item independent in that she doesn't need any item to make her useful or make her skills more effective, she just works great as is. That's another reason she makes a good support, she can buy wards, buy chick, buy gem etc and not negatively affect her usefulness. Of course in non professional games feel free to do what you do, warding obviously helps your team but buy items as you see fit. You may need to act as a backup DPS if your team damage dealers are noobs or w.e. Swap is a good initiation/counter initiation spell. Swap a key hero (carry) into your team to start off late game team fights. If the enemy initiates on a key hero of your own team, swap them out and perhaps sacrifice yourself. Late game most heroes are much more useful than venge, it's all for the greater good In a nutshell, early game lane till level 5 or so and start ganging, provided your lane partner can handle it solo. Run around ganging with teammates all game, always carry tp, join in team fights don't bother farming (your stun is great early but loses damage potential pretty fast so make the most of it). Late game make some magic with swap. That's basically it.
One of my favourites too, got like 70% win rate with him. Spam sacrifice thing in lane, especially if you solo vs dual lane it's just ownage inducing..
He's a solid champ, not really item dependent and even better, he has massive sustain. In a teamfight away from creeps (say jungle gank) Lich just does so much damage it's actually dirty.
Drow Ranger is still OP imo. She begins to peak fairly early and she peaks very high. Having played her I can't match her effectiveness with any other character.
Just take out drow first in team fights and avoid her when you're solo. If she tries to kite you and you're a melee here, you can often just run up to her and kill her pretty quick. She's pretty squishy.
Frost arrows plus a shadow blade makes her very versatile, so unless the melee has a ground AoE or a stun and big burst, she can usually escape and get out of some stick situations.
I'm currently playing low ranked games so most people are too stupid to ward / dust. I realized this as soon as I played with a few higher ranked friends where there was a lot more strategy and ward placement. I've tried to be helpful in the solo queue games when I suggest people buy wards but most people just moan saying they need gold for items.
The rest are pretty crap IMO. The next best thing is league of legends. There's no reason you can't buy those things yourself.
That includes 90% of the time when she was still OP before the nerf. Stastics can be misleading. She is only powerful in games that aren't higher level. So easy to dominate the easier games with her, whereas she is nowhere near that good when players know what they are doing. And yes, all other MOBA's are rate from dire to just not as good. Dota has had years upon years of balancing and depth going on.
How much time have you guys put into the game? It does appeal to me but I'm not sure I have the dedication to put in the hours to actually get to a decent standard. How much time do you think it takes to get to a feel for the game and play at a good level?
Depends very much what exactly you wish to achieve. If you want to get to the level where you can have a fun game, appreciate your own good plays, and know WHY things happened (in other words you get to the point when the abilities of things in the game are known to you and you will not be left utterly dumbfounded as to how you died or something), you can do that after like fifty games. Fifty games from absolute scratch will get you into the fun zone pretty cleanly. May vary, this is just a guess as most people mix bot games with online games (I did a lot) so it may take less games online, etc. Took me a few months of playing at odd times, about 5-10 games a week till I could consistently dominate public games on Battlenet and Garena, and even that wasn't very consistent. Now after some years (not all of which I spent into Dota) and many fun hours watching and analysing professional game casts, I'm at home in high level games and enjoy everything so much more with a deeper understanding of subtle nuances.
I have 800 hours into it so far. Can't really say how long you have to play before you get a solid grasp of the game as I had probably the same amount of time invested into LoL before I switched over to dota 2. Everyone is going to learn at a different rate. If you're not having some fun while you learn then there's not much of a point in playing.
Honestly, it takes a few months. It took me a month or two of on/off league of legends playing to be moderately competent. (As in, I'm versatile enough to spot out builds and adopt for strategy). With DOTA 2 I've been playing for about 18 hours. I still can't get item builds right, but I have a great friend who's been basically mentoring me as we play. It's dependent on the dedication of the player. What i will say though is that DOTA 2 is a rather tough game to get into. The cliff is not only in learning build strategy, but the subtle nuances. Because DOTA 2 has characters with much more interesting varieties of kits compared to League it's a much more complex game. Watch your own and watch other's reviews. It's highly educational.
