DOTA 2: Thanks volvo

[Pikarya]

You'll need both to play DotA 6.73b

Also for those still wanting in;

http://www.playdota.com/news/dota-2-beta-key-draw

GL

[Askari0]

My brother called in a favor from a friend of his who works at Valve in order to get me an invite (No, he can't get any more. He was barely able to get me one.) and so far I'm loving it. I enjoy LoL, but -hate- HoN, but I feel Dota is a good bridge between the two of them so far.

I'm learning Zeus and trying to learn another melee carry. I'm tempted to go with Faceless Void, any suggestions for starting out with him?

[Slapper]

mask of madness

and learning to not use your ulti over teammates

[Julian]

You'll need both to play DotA 6.73b

Also for those still wanting in;

http://www.playdota.com/news/dota-2-beta-key-draw

GL

Requires having an account, so.... useless for me. :/

[Maguspk]

Quite the contrary, you have to learn how to ult your teammates and KS kills on Faceless Void. Pubstomping ftw.

[BlackMoomba]

http://adamcbeamish.com/defenders

Some nice DotA wallpapers I found from a guy doing em on reddit.

[Demosthenes]

Requires having an account, so.... useless for me. :/

LOL! Clearly not interested in attempting to get keys.

[Pikarya]

Requires having an account, so.... useless for me. :/

Huh?

[Arkanna]

The beta key draw requires that you have a forum account that existed before the draw was announced; ie, you cannot make a forum account now and hope to get a key.

[Demosthenes]

The beta key draw requires that you have a forum account that existed before the draw was announced; ie, you cannot make a forum account now and hope to get a key.

Ahh got it. I didn't read into that. I've had an account for ages.

[kisada]

My brother called in a favor from a friend of his who works at Valve in order to get me an invite (No, he can't get any more. He was barely able to get me one.) and so far I'm loving it. I enjoy LoL, but -hate- HoN, but I feel Dota is a good bridge between the two of them so far.

I'm learning Zeus and trying to learn another melee carry. I'm tempted to go with Faceless Void, any suggestions for starting out with him?

early game you farm. if your team asks you to help out, just keep farming. ignore their cries for assistance.

middle game you farm. if your team asks you to gank or push, just keep farming. ignore their anger and derision for not doing anything.

late game you beast everyone and win. revel because you played void properly and your team won because (in spite) of you.

[Gredival]

early game you farm. if your team asks you to help out, just keep farming. ignore their cries for assistance.

middle game you farm. if your team asks you to gank or push, just keep farming. ignore their anger and derision for not doing anything.

late game you beast everyone and win. revel because you played void properly and your team won because (in spite) of you.

Pretty much this. Your job as Faceless is to be a farmer and pray that the other team doesn't farm your team too much that your 30+ minute late game appearance is derailed by a much stronger carry on their end.

Generally end game potential trades off with early game to mid game utility. Usually, it's far better to have the latter because competent opponents will push early and capitalize on their advantage because they know you are going to suck ass until you get about 7000 gold.

If you have to learn a melee carry, I suggest Broodmother. She makes an appearance in nearly half of all pro matches for a reason. STR semi-carries are also a good idea. Heroes that can initiate and tank, as well as stun, help your team out a lot more. Sven, Skeleton King, Chaos Knight, Slardar all have excellent late-game DPS scaling with good team fight utility earlier on.

But I really suggest going with ranged AGI heroes. There is far more stable advantages to be gained by being excellent at deny and lane control than being excellent at one-man-showboats after 40 minutes.

[Vandole]

i think this was my best viper i've ever played.

Spoiler: show

manta was being sent to me via courier at the end :[[[[[[[

[Tyr]

Just played my first game of dota on battle.net (inhouse though) --

I'll say, given that I've only seen a couple youtube videos, a friend play twice, and practice against the computer a couple times...I'd say I fared pretty well.

But holy god this game is way too deep. How the hell am I supposed to catch up to people who have been playing for years!?

And I can't do melee worth crap.

[Kaylia]

Just played my first game of dota on battle.net (inhouse though) --

I'll say, given that I've only seen a couple youtube videos, a friend play twice, and practice against the computer a couple times...I'd say I fared pretty well.

But holy god this game is way too deep. How the hell am I supposed to catch up to people who have been playing for years!?

And I can't do melee worth crap.

It's really not that deep, even if it can be confusing at first (unless you seriously play as a team). The worst part is figuring out what items you want to get, but a quick online search will get you some decent build usually (or you can just copy whoever is doing good with your hero). You will eventually learn how to adapt your build to certain situation, but 99% of the time, you will be fine with something standard

Learning what every characters can do is a bit of a pain since there is so many , but playing a lot will do that and you will get there faster than you think. Just have to endure all the trash talk whenever you get killed by something you did not know, but after 20 games or so, you should be fine.

Then there is many things that are useful it know like landing the finishing blow on creeps for the gold, denying allied units and towers to prevent the other side from getting the kill, watching the minimap and playing safely (avoid getting ganked), but in most cases, it won't make a significant difference.

[Rivero]

Actually Dota 1 is pretty deep. It has lots of small nitpicks and weird bugs that are due to the old WC3 engine. Hopefully with Dota 2 it'll be mostly resolved and it won't get in the way.

[kisada]

with the bajillion or so heroes dota 1 has, i can see how learning the nuances on top of nuances would take ages.

hopefully you can grab a dota 2 invite and try out their practice mode. until then just keep trucking along. also, imo, watch replays of high level matches and players. i'm not sure what's out there nowadays for dota 1, but being able to watch through the eyes of better players really helps immensely. you get to see how they skill, how they level, and how they micro. for dota 2 you can watch some videos with commentary on joindota.com in the vod section. they would help some since they explain a fair bit and do some analysis. however, you don't get to control the camera since they're just videos, and the analysis tends to be of the more advanced type.

gl.

[Kaylia]

Actually Dota 1 is pretty deep. It has lots of small nitpicks and weird bugs that are due to the old WC3 engine. Hopefully with Dota 2 it'll be mostly resolved and it won't get in the way.

There is, but they won't make or break most of your matches. Dying a single time to stupidity is probably going to be more harmful than that.

[Maguspk]

DotA is definitely one of the easier games to master theoretically, it is not very intense just requires lots of games played and good friends or research to learn item builds for heroes. The game itself has a pretty low skill ceiling once you know the basics. The difficulty lies in the fact that you need to believe in 4 other people to play as well as you think you can play. What might make one think DotA is super deep is the fact that they drop you in medias res and there isn't really a tutorial or a gradual spill of knowledge, it's more like a broken floodgate.

[Tyr]

Thanks for the pointers gentlemen.

I've replaced my lunchtime tv episode with dota youtube vids...