By Andrew “Riser” Bronze of Complexity Gaming
Just thought I’d share a few of my thoughts as I continue to transition from HoN to DotA 2, where the support heroes don’t just buy wards the whole game and actually do more stuff. I don’t know if HoN is different now as I don’t follow it anymore, but when I played on coL for HoN it was rare to see anything but a dual lane middle with an initiator + hard support, short lane solo, jungler, and long lane solo. The jungler was almost on par with the initiator in terms of farm priority, and could easily carry the game as well as anyone. Meanwhile, the 5 position support was almost always relegated to buying wards the whole game and jumped for joy if they even brushed up against the 200 GPM mark when the game was over. Not so in DotA 2. There are just so many high-impact heroes in the game for every single role. I don’t know if this goes to DotA 2’s balancing philosophy which is usually buff crappy heroes and slightly change the popular ones, but wow can any hero at ANY role play such an integral part in a DotA 2 game. You just get so much more gold – passively – and I’m pretty sure from objectives/kills as well.
I mean, sure you saw Zfreek making big plays in sG, but that was without any items. Imagine Zak with items – dear lord. HoN players who transition to DotA 2 just look at their gold after they get some kills and live in a teamfight and go, “WTF, I just got 2 levels and 2000 gold – brb midas!”
On to other things, I think our progress in DotA 2 is at an acceptable level. There was a spurt where we got some great wins against established teams, but have seem to plateau’d a little in the last few weeks. I’d mostly attribute this to just lack of game mechanics/knowledge. Cloud 9, and especially EG lately are simply outplaying people in teamfights. Sure they can run some crazy drafts, especially with Universe being like the best player ever and crushing people with Jakiro and Alchemist offlanes – but in the end they have fantastic resource control and mechanics/execution in teamfights. Most of EG’s wins at TI4 were all past 50 minutes. They just spread out around the map, took good fights and outfarmed and outplayed their opponents and eventually won. If we can get a higher level of execution in teamfights and resource control, especially in the laning phase, we have a shot at becoming a very good team.
Anyway, food for thought from resident mediocre DotA 2 support player. To anyone who is reading this and enjoys watching DotA 2/coLDOTA, thanks for your support and taking the time to read some ramblings.
Follow Andrew on twitter @coL_Riser