Sorry to be nitpicky, but warding is a thing in LoL. All other points are valid. I'll be sticking to my nooblord LoL though. If I'm not finding DotA 2 fun after 32 hours, I think there's a problem.Yosharian said:
DotA vs LoL...which is better?
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Don't get defensive, most of the normal dota players understand the appeal of LOL, i mean i've been playing dota for 8 years and now i cba to switch back from LOL. But we have to be frank here, dota is far more complex in almost every way possible. That said, lol is great funCracker3011 said:
Well that does make the thread because Rammus is the best sentient armadillo. even if DOTA2 had one I think it would only be...ok.Zepherus14 said:Here's my logic in this subject.
Does DOTA2 have a giant sentient Armadillo? No... [footnote]Actually I have no idea, if it does then wow, someone copied someone here. The world just isn't big enough for two giant sentient armadillos...[/footnote]
Does LoL have a giant sentient Armadillo? Yes!
Thus LoL is the better game![footnote]Honestly I've only ever played LoL. I'm not hardcore enough to want to try to switch over since LoL fills my need for MOBAs with the limited time I do have. Thus I have no say on which is better than the other, other than I enjoy LoL for its giant sentient armadillo killing machine. Who is Rammus. Who is awesome
Why? Ward battling is pretty much all supports do in LoL besides team fights after the laning phase is over, since they don't farm. Even in the laning phase they do it. And the other lanes all ward as well. Why would it be more complicated in DotA? You have normal wards, you have wards that see stealthed things(like other wards) and and elixir which allows you to see stealthed things(like wards), as well as a 60 second ward if you take it from the mastery tree. In what way is this easier than DotA's warding? Wards make or break games in higher-ranked games. Yeah, when you start the game and even when you reach level 30 and are playing ranked games in really low divisions warding doesn't mean much because people have really poor map awareness and they rarely see enemies even if they walk through a ward's vision range. But when playing at a higher skill level wards are extremely important and vision is not an easy thing to accomplish, and the supports that manage it are ,sadly, not recognized enough by their team.Yosharian said:
I have personally only played DotA, both WC3 and 2, but I have many friends who play both.
For a noob player, LoL will be easier.
In LoL you apparently have faster attack animations. This makes it easier to last-hit creeps and get gold, whereas in DotA you need to know your character's attack speed, and time it right to get the last hit. I've had friends talk about "Only" getting 60 last hits in the first 8 minutes, whilst in DotA that is counted as phenomenal. This is also because denying is that much easier if you attack slightly faster than your opponent, as in a battle of the animations you'll always win.
Then the creeps are apparently pushovers. You can stand there and tank them if you want at relatively low levels [From what I've been told]. In DotA, this is a bad idea. You try to tank creeps below lvl 12, and you're asking to be ganked. Even lvl 12-16 your still putting yourself at risk.
Abilities in LoL I'm told have relatively low cooldowns and mana costs. There are a number of heroes with 'innate' abilities that you can just spam, and use in place of your autoattack that's how cheap they are. In DotA, no. Early game you'll be lucky to get 4 spells off in a row without running out of mana. Late game it isn't as much of a problem, but you've got to worry about cooldowns and the fact that each spell will use at least 1/6 of your mana most of the time. Spamming spells is not an option.
On the flipside, DotA has fewer "Skillshots" than LoL, where the player aims in a direction, fires the skill, and it flies in the direction and hits stuff on the way. Most stuff in DotA is targeted, and will home to its target.
My friend who for some reason always plays support, despite being a pro AD Carry, prefers support in DotA. In LoL he complains that the ults are too weak, and not all that useful. They're decent, but the ults for support in DotA blow them out of the water. Witch Doctor as an example, with his ward of death that perfectly combos with his bouncing stun grenade.
I'm not sure what systems LoL has, however DotA has a ranked build tutor. You select the tool and it will show you the top ranked builds for your character. Select a build, and it will tell you which abilities to get in which order, change the ability description to one of when you should use them, tell you your starting items, early items, core items, late game items, situational items and anything else to help you on your way.
The community on DotA, thus far, has been quite good. I play the Australian servers 'cause, conveniently enough, I'm an Aussie, and most of the time the worst thing I've come across is someone who has no idea how to play [To the extent of not using any of their abilities and merely autoattacking creeps all game until my friend and I just started telling him what to cast, where and when. "E, me, now" - ect. There was one bunch who weren't gracious victors, however we kicked their ass next round so... yeah.
One thing that DotA has that makes the game though... The SHOPKEEPERS QUIZ. Seriously. You'll rage when you get let into a game in DotA. You'll have wanted the search to have kept searching so you could play more shopkeepers. Shopkeepers is the game, the MobA side is just there as training to learn all the items. Once you do, you will get beyond godlike sprees in the shopkeeper quiz.
No, seriously, that thing is amazing. For no reason at all it is possibly the single most entertaining thing I've played recently, even if it is only selecting which items make up a recipe.
For a noob player, LoL will be easier.
In LoL you apparently have faster attack animations. This makes it easier to last-hit creeps and get gold, whereas in DotA you need to know your character's attack speed, and time it right to get the last hit. I've had friends talk about "Only" getting 60 last hits in the first 8 minutes, whilst in DotA that is counted as phenomenal. This is also because denying is that much easier if you attack slightly faster than your opponent, as in a battle of the animations you'll always win.
Then the creeps are apparently pushovers. You can stand there and tank them if you want at relatively low levels [From what I've been told]. In DotA, this is a bad idea. You try to tank creeps below lvl 12, and you're asking to be ganked. Even lvl 12-16 your still putting yourself at risk.
Abilities in LoL I'm told have relatively low cooldowns and mana costs. There are a number of heroes with 'innate' abilities that you can just spam, and use in place of your autoattack that's how cheap they are. In DotA, no. Early game you'll be lucky to get 4 spells off in a row without running out of mana. Late game it isn't as much of a problem, but you've got to worry about cooldowns and the fact that each spell will use at least 1/6 of your mana most of the time. Spamming spells is not an option.
On the flipside, DotA has fewer "Skillshots" than LoL, where the player aims in a direction, fires the skill, and it flies in the direction and hits stuff on the way. Most stuff in DotA is targeted, and will home to its target.
My friend who for some reason always plays support, despite being a pro AD Carry, prefers support in DotA. In LoL he complains that the ults are too weak, and not all that useful. They're decent, but the ults for support in DotA blow them out of the water. Witch Doctor as an example, with his ward of death that perfectly combos with his bouncing stun grenade.
I'm not sure what systems LoL has, however DotA has a ranked build tutor. You select the tool and it will show you the top ranked builds for your character. Select a build, and it will tell you which abilities to get in which order, change the ability description to one of when you should use them, tell you your starting items, early items, core items, late game items, situational items and anything else to help you on your way.
The community on DotA, thus far, has been quite good. I play the Australian servers 'cause, conveniently enough, I'm an Aussie, and most of the time the worst thing I've come across is someone who has no idea how to play [To the extent of not using any of their abilities and merely autoattacking creeps all game until my friend and I just started telling him what to cast, where and when. "E, me, now" - ect. There was one bunch who weren't gracious victors, however we kicked their ass next round so... yeah.
One thing that DotA has that makes the game though... The SHOPKEEPERS QUIZ. Seriously. You'll rage when you get let into a game in DotA. You'll have wanted the search to have kept searching so you could play more shopkeepers. Shopkeepers is the game, the MobA side is just there as training to learn all the items. Once you do, you will get beyond godlike sprees in the shopkeeper quiz.
No, seriously, that thing is amazing. For no reason at all it is possibly the single most entertaining thing I've played recently, even if it is only selecting which items make up a recipe.
I think they too different in terms of mechanics to be compared, while at the core they the same as a genre, I think LoL and Dota bring different strategies to the table. However my preferred one of the two is LoL for the probably the most important aspect of a Moba, I simply prefer the characters and the design of them.
I`m going to have to disagree with this for two reasons. First, while the skill ceiling may be higher in Dota 2, it`s no harder a game to pick up and start playing than LoL. And it doesn't take very long to get the hang of the basics and start playing a lot of characters at least somewhat competently.Pandalink said:
Second, and this is the most important bit, no game that locks 90+ percent of its characters behind a paid barrier will ever be as accessible as a game that makes everything available up front. You can argue doing so makes initial character selection more difficult, but it's bull. It takes no real effort to pick one and stick with it to learn the basics, then branch out. And it's unbelievably easy to search for characters who specialize in the sort of play styles you learn that you enjoy. And you won't pay a dime and risk wasting money trying new characters. That is key. Any game that requires you to pay absurd amounts of money, or do absurd amounts of grinding in order to find the best character for you is the exact opposite of accessible.
Because wards block jungle camps from spawning, so to stop tri lanes, or even duo lanes from stacking the hard camp to pull the lane back you can aggressively ward it so it can't spawn forcing everyone on the lane to share xp. There are other things like stock timers where you can't buy as many wards as you an afford as they go out of stock for a while and vision gets a bit more complicated with the height of cliffs and whatnot but the main reason it's more complicated is because it's factored heavily into jungling and countering defensive trilaning.Mitzeh said:
More important is arguable, as they're needed in every game of both games, but it gets more complicated when you need to prioritise with your team where they go as they can't be everywhere along with jungle blocking.
I have never played LoL, but I can easy sell any crap DOTA 2 gives me on the steam market to increase my steam wallet so I think I'll go with that.
I play and support LoL, however, have you considered signing up for the Infinite Crisis beta? It's a DC Multiverse MOBA, and definitely looks worth a try.
They are totally different kinds of MOBA...
Dota's heroes and items are much more specialized. Some heroes only got 1 active ability compared to the color clusterfuck team fights of LoL.
Personally I prefer dota. Mainly because I have hard time looking at the art style of LoL and I am REFUSE to pay for heroes in competitive game!
When I have all heroes to choose from regardless what my level is or who my team-mates are gives much mroe flexibility.
But I have to admit, in DotA you need to learn shit ton of things, basic mechanics that would give even the most jaded mathematician a flowchart orgasm. There are lot of things and I got 600+ hours in the game (online - not counting bot practice and all sort of playing done while servers been offline or I been offline) and I still need to learn new things every match and every patch.
Try both of them out and see which you like more.
There is no objective answer to this.
Dota's heroes and items are much more specialized. Some heroes only got 1 active ability compared to the color clusterfuck team fights of LoL.
Personally I prefer dota. Mainly because I have hard time looking at the art style of LoL and I am REFUSE to pay for heroes in competitive game!
When I have all heroes to choose from regardless what my level is or who my team-mates are gives much mroe flexibility.
But I have to admit, in DotA you need to learn shit ton of things, basic mechanics that would give even the most jaded mathematician a flowchart orgasm. There are lot of things and I got 600+ hours in the game (online - not counting bot practice and all sort of playing done while servers been offline or I been offline) and I still need to learn new things every match and every patch.
Try both of them out and see which you like more.
There is no objective answer to this.
Frankly my dear (had to use this, it was my captcha), wards matter a lot in LoL. I have won multiple matches in Platinum and higher divisions because our team warded the map and removed any vision that the enemy team had. And I don't really think their vision is small, plus they are usually placeed in bushes so you can see who is in them, so yeah, their placement is obvious most of the time, but for a good reason. True, lane interaction goes only as far as keeping that lane safe from ganks. But blocking camps with minions isn't honestly a mechanic that I would appreciate in a game. Never liked how creeps and jungle mobs act in DotA.Yosharian said:
Baron Nashor can be extremely important mid/late game.
I'll give you that invisibility detection isn't that big of a thing in LoL since few champions use stealth, but seeing enemy wards so you can take out their vision is very important. And as far as the ward restriction goes, I can't really comment on that one. Both ways work nicely, like Dawngate's 1 ward per player idea, they each suit their game better.
Anyway, I'll end with this, I don't really want to get into a LoL vs DotA battle since I thing both games are great in their own way.
To answer the OP's question: Honestly, as a lot of people have said, go for the one that most of your friends play, it's a lot more fun playing with people you know. If they don't play any, why not try both out a bit, they are free after all. Play a few games of each to see which one suits you better, maybe watch a stream or two on twitch to see how the high-level play is.
To me they both have redeeming qualities. DotA is by far more in depth and character specific, not to mention itmeiation that allows for by far more flexibility than LoL. Adding in denying and pulling/stacking and so forth it really makes for a significantly more difficult game to execute. LoL on the other hand seems to have a much more changing meta game, and the ease of playing it, as compared to DotA, let's you as the player focus more on the basics, rather than who is building mek, how many denies you have or how many creep camps you can stack.
Both have their merits, but i think at the moment i prefer DotA, but both are really valid choises. Though the community seems to be by far shittier in LoL. Every damn game i catch flak for not doing everything right, ofthen by players who are worse than me. The same happens in DotA as well, but generally i find there is less whine there.
Also i have to give it to DotA when it comes to transactions since you get all the heroes from the get go. No more saving IP or purchasing heroes
Both have their merits, but i think at the moment i prefer DotA, but both are really valid choises. Though the community seems to be by far shittier in LoL. Every damn game i catch flak for not doing everything right, ofthen by players who are worse than me. The same happens in DotA as well, but generally i find there is less whine there.
Also i have to give it to DotA when it comes to transactions since you get all the heroes from the get go. No more saving IP or purchasing heroes
some people like DotA 2, some people like LoL
I played LoL first, so when DotA 2 came out, I wasn't all that interested in learning what every champion does again, so I continued to play League
I'm sure DotA 2 is perfectly good and all, but I just stuck with what was familiar
I played LoL first, so when DotA 2 came out, I wasn't all that interested in learning what every champion does again, so I continued to play League
I'm sure DotA 2 is perfectly good and all, but I just stuck with what was familiar
They are different enough that any X is better than Y statement is bullshit. It's all down to personal preference.
Also saying that Dota 2 is deeper is also bullshit. Dota 2 has a much steeper learning curve and is more complex, but in the end, at a very high level of play, both have their subtleties and are very complex games. League is more steamlined. I'd compare it to Starcraft in that regard: Fairly simple mechanics (compared to Dota) that still manage to generate extremely deep and diverse gameplay.
As mentioned above, Dota 2 is undeniably more complex: Champion abilites can become very diverse and weird indeed, and the same goes for items. Scaling is also kinda wierd in Dota, while League has much more straightforward system. Again, however, I must stress the fact that LoL does NOT lack depth compared to Dota. It just has more streamlined design (inb4 fanboy rage, here's a fact: the original DoTA maps were designed by amateurs in a freaking map editor. The mechanics are messy. Get over it). Some people appreciate the complexity, some people appreciate the relative simplicity. In the end, both games have the same depth.
Character gameplay-wise, LoL tends to have more consistent action, with a greater focus on using abilities to harass and a prevalence of "skillshots" - abilities that you have to aim and can be dodged, while Dota is pretty much the opposite: Abilities are most often passive or targeted, and usually quite expensive to the point that you have to use them frugally. It creates a different resource management dynamic, coupled with the more powerful regen items. Both games have resource management gameplay, it's just quite different.
Dota also tends to be much more snowball-y and much more punishing. Personally I prefer LoL over Dota for this very reason: You can get yourself out of shit more often in LoL if you are good enough than you can in Dota, which creates far more exciting gameplay. You can pull off much more exciting plays in LoL simply because getting insta-nuked in .5 seconds or in a single stunlock is nowhere near as frequent as it is in Dota. Lots of people prefer Dota for the same reason. Again, it's down to preference.
League also generally avoid so called "anti-fun" mechanics like losing gold when you die, very long CC, creep denial and others. In fact, the prevalence of skill shots is very much for this reason: It's more fun for BOTH players when you can aim and dodge a lot of abilities.
I also think that LoL has cleaner visual design (though Dota has far better aesthetics). Generally speaking, it's easier for a newbie to figure out what's going on in LoL than it is in Dota.
Communities are pretty much the same. Both improve as you reach higher tiers of play, both are pretty fowl in general, and especially so at lower tiers of play.
Dota has by far the superior game client and business model. You get everything that is relevant to gameplay for free, from the start (which for new players is a bit of a disadvantage, but it's a major advantage in mid to long term). While you can unlock everything that is relevant to gameplay without money in League, it does take a while. However, due to the nature of the game balance, you don't need to unlock everything to reach very high levels of play.
Also saying that Dota 2 is deeper is also bullshit. Dota 2 has a much steeper learning curve and is more complex, but in the end, at a very high level of play, both have their subtleties and are very complex games. League is more steamlined. I'd compare it to Starcraft in that regard: Fairly simple mechanics (compared to Dota) that still manage to generate extremely deep and diverse gameplay.
As mentioned above, Dota 2 is undeniably more complex: Champion abilites can become very diverse and weird indeed, and the same goes for items. Scaling is also kinda wierd in Dota, while League has much more straightforward system. Again, however, I must stress the fact that LoL does NOT lack depth compared to Dota. It just has more streamlined design (inb4 fanboy rage, here's a fact: the original DoTA maps were designed by amateurs in a freaking map editor. The mechanics are messy. Get over it). Some people appreciate the complexity, some people appreciate the relative simplicity. In the end, both games have the same depth.
Character gameplay-wise, LoL tends to have more consistent action, with a greater focus on using abilities to harass and a prevalence of "skillshots" - abilities that you have to aim and can be dodged, while Dota is pretty much the opposite: Abilities are most often passive or targeted, and usually quite expensive to the point that you have to use them frugally. It creates a different resource management dynamic, coupled with the more powerful regen items. Both games have resource management gameplay, it's just quite different.
Dota also tends to be much more snowball-y and much more punishing. Personally I prefer LoL over Dota for this very reason: You can get yourself out of shit more often in LoL if you are good enough than you can in Dota, which creates far more exciting gameplay. You can pull off much more exciting plays in LoL simply because getting insta-nuked in .5 seconds or in a single stunlock is nowhere near as frequent as it is in Dota. Lots of people prefer Dota for the same reason. Again, it's down to preference.
League also generally avoid so called "anti-fun" mechanics like losing gold when you die, very long CC, creep denial and others. In fact, the prevalence of skill shots is very much for this reason: It's more fun for BOTH players when you can aim and dodge a lot of abilities.
I also think that LoL has cleaner visual design (though Dota has far better aesthetics). Generally speaking, it's easier for a newbie to figure out what's going on in LoL than it is in Dota.
Communities are pretty much the same. Both improve as you reach higher tiers of play, both are pretty fowl in general, and especially so at lower tiers of play.
Dota has by far the superior game client and business model. You get everything that is relevant to gameplay for free, from the start (which for new players is a bit of a disadvantage, but it's a major advantage in mid to long term). While you can unlock everything that is relevant to gameplay without money in League, it does take a while. However, due to the nature of the game balance, you don't need to unlock everything to reach very high levels of play.
I have to agree 100%. Beating the shopkeeper's quiz (as in, getting through all of them with no wrong answers) is one of my proudest gaming achievements. You have no idea how addicting it is unless you try it out.Joccaren said:
What is this craziness? DOTA is veritably brimming with skill-shots. This is hardly unique to LoL. Indeed, the fact LoL telegraphs your skill-shots makes them less "skill shots" and more GTAE's with colored overlays to show where they land.VladG said:
In general I agree with your "simpler doesn't necessarily mean easier" philosophy, and realistically no one in this discussion would reach the skill cap for either game, so the fact DOTA's is higher is somewhat irrelevant, but I cannot comprehend how anyone could play DOTA and come away with the impression the game had no "skill shots".