DOTA2 or LoL?

[Trippy Turtle]

I much prefer DOTA because it is easier to get into, you don't need to pay for half the heroes or spend years unlocking them and the fights seem more intense.
On of the main differences is DOTA has much better graphics on everything except the heroes which still look a little better in my opinion. Also at the moment Dota has no outstandingly overpowered characters, unlike LoL which is basically first to pick Darius wins.
I can gift you a free Dota invite if you want.

 

[Naeras]

I am surprised no one has mentioned this yet. League of Legends is slowly breaking the mould of traditional MOBA game play, offering different game modes than the traditional 5v5 tri-lane. Some of these are the 3v3 duo lane map, 5v5 large single lane map (usually played as all randomly selected heroes) and the awesomely fun 5v5 Dominion (capture and hold 5 points on a map). You do not see this in Dota 2, which in my opinion is a little limiting and disappointing. There is so much more that you could do with the genre (CTF? Coop survival against waves? King of the Hill?) than just the traditional 5v5 tri-lane everyone seems obsessed with. I am glad Riot Games are taking a different approach and evolving/experimenting with the genre.

I can think of about five different useful lane-setups from the top of my head in addition to trilanes in Dota 2(2-1-2, 1-1-2-jungle, 2-2-1, 1-1-1+roamers, 2+2+jungle, etc). As for LoL, they only have a single one: 1-1-2-jungle. To make it even worse, the roles of each lane is almost completely set in stone.

The other game modes in LoL are fun, though. But nobody ever bothered to really get into them more than a game or two once in a while, it seems, which explains why nobody is mentioning them. Still, more maps is good, and I'd love to see Dota 2 play with more maps than the one that's been used since... 2005?

As of writing this, League of Legends also has some handy tutorials for newbies to get started with, as well as AI support for all 4 game modes. Dota 2 has AI opponents as well, but for a newbie it will all still seem pretty confusing. While LoL's 10 free heroes a week system may seem like a drawback, it is also probably good that a newbie learn the ropes on a limited hero set, facing the same limited hero set instead of encountering new champions every game and getting owned. It is also a free game, so expecting the full hero list from the start is being selfish and entitled.

That last sentence is a load of bull. HoN gets by just fine with having all heroes for free, and instead offers a game mode with a limited amount of heroes. As for Dota 2, the game is still in beta, so we'll have to see how they go when that's finished, but I'm fairly certain they'll just offer everything for free. In terms of that, the two other games flat-out offer a better service. Pointing that out isn't entitlement.

LoL is certainly easier to get into, though, which is a big selling point. However, the fact is that other players can have a distinct advantage over me because they've played the game for longer or spent more money on it, as they'll either have a stat advantage(not usually a big deal), or the ability to draft better than me due to picking orders and, more importantly, counterpicking(has lost me several games. i.e. BIG deal).

League of Legend's Judicial and Honor systems that allow the community to critique the negative/positive acts of players also goes a long way into controlling the vibes that the community exhibits. Dota 2's equivalent doesn't really work the same way.

Agreed.

While I have only played Dota 2 for a small amount, the learning curve in that game for a complete MOBA rookie would be horrific. It is very complex, but complexity should never be mistaken as difficulty. The skill ceiling in both games is roughly the same. Dota 2 is an excellent game, but my vote for the moment has to land with LoL. It is a game that is better designed for people learning the genre and having different types of fun.

Dota 2 gives you more options in terms of almost anything you do in the game, and is more technically demanding to play. The last one isn't a selling point in itself, but the first one is the main reason why I prefer Dota 2 to LoL, and why I consider that game to have a higher skill-cap than LoL. The higher execution-ceiling also contributes to that, but the first is the most important one.

Finally, the traditionalist "I am a Dota vet and Dota 2 is the best MOBA because its based off the first and best MOBA. Every other MOBA is crap" mentality can be very off-putting for anyone with any sense of rationality, mainly because it speaks volumes of choice-supportive bias. Don't be one of those people.

Those people are dumb.

 

[WoW Killer]

But seriously I hated that game mostly because they took away one of the most strategically important parts of Dota Games: Fog Of War when controlling your character. With SMITE it's just "Oh there he is I can see him from infinity away so he really can't do shit to me unless someone comes from behind AH SHIT!." The 3rd Person Perspective has done nothing to really improve the game, and all it did was make ganks both much more predictable and far harder to counter.

I'm not totally sure what you mean by that, as I've not seen much of the other games (just the odd videos). In SMITE you can't see enemies unless someone on your team, your minions, your towers or your wards have line of sight of them. Is this done differently in LoL/DotA?

The 3rd person view has to be understood along with other changes and design decisions. The basic idea was to simplify the meta-game and overall strategy a bit and then add in more of a skill element to the combat (e.g. no targeting). Ganking wise, you have to consider that someone getting the jump on you doesn't mean you're going to die; they need to actually hit you with their abilities, which isn't guaranteed. Also consider that the minions and towers are especially powerful early on, and if you can retreat a short distance you're normally safe. It's usually only if you're caught out of position that you can get ganked (e.g. someone like Ao Kuang playing mid usually goes for a heavy early push, which makes him susceptible to flanks from left and right). It all just reinforces the need to call missings of course (the VGS from Tribes helps out; incidentally I thought that wheel system they've got in DotA 2 looked fantastic).

A more general point; I dislike the sheer number of heroes these games end up having. SMITEs still young so it's fine right now, but I get the feeling it's going to go the same way as LoL and have a new god every couple of weeks or something. As of right now, there's 28 gods, and I feel like I have a reasonable idea of what they all do and how to deal with them (e.g. dealing with Agni is very different to dealing with He Bo). It's probably fine if you follow a game constantly as you've only got one new tool set to learn at a time. But over time it's just another obstacle stopping new players from learning the game. Unfortunately that's the business model they're working with, and they probably wouldn't be able to fund the game without constant new releases like that.

 

[Naeras]

Also at the moment Dota has no outstandingly overpowered characters, unlike LoL which is basically first to pick Darius wins.

Darius isn't really OP. He's just the perfect pubstomper, provided he doesn't get counterpicked.

..sorry, I just needed to point that out. :<

 

[Larcenist]

Also at the moment Dota has no outstandingly overpowered characters, unlike LoL which is basically first to pick Darius wins.

Darius isn't really OP. He's just the perfect pubstomper, provided he doesn't get counterpicked.

..sorry, I just needed to point that out. :<

This isn't even a very good example of an "overpowered" champion. I've stated in previous posts that I find stealth a stupid mechanic generally (with the exception of that team stealth item in DotA which is an amazing usage of the stealth mechanic) and that since there is no blink dagger in LoL you only have a long cooldown summoner Flash for blinks, which makes teleport/dash champions stand out (generally). LoL has very few champions utilizing stealth, but they do have ONE champion that, in a public match, can kill his jungle without being there while stealing his enemy jungler's buffs. He has a teleport ability that gives him stealth and he can singlehandedly snowball every single lane out of control by just existing. Yeah, if you want an "overpowered" champion (in the public game sense), use Shaco as your model.

Edit:

Except that Shaco falls off immensly, rendering him useless as soon as teamfights start happening.

If you're having trouble with Shaco, ward and don't in the first ten minutes. Congratulations, the game is now 5v4.

Yeah but that is why he is, and I tried to stress this in my post (maybe not enough), a perfect example of a pubstomper. Mid lane will blame the support unconditionally for dying to Shaco because he will not buy wards himself. If you have a semi-decent premade there will be no real pubstompers in the game (Evelynn is the very same thing though I do not know how she is post-patch now which is why I chose Shaco as an example instead).

 

[Aircross]

LoL no contest, dota2 is basically just plain old dota with better graphics where LoL made an effect to improve the concept. LoL is currently the most played game in the world and thats for a very good reason.

Gotta agree with this statement, I don't actually play either game anymore but LoL felt like an evolution (Not a perfect evolution, mind, it still has it's own issues) where DOTA 2 simply ported the game flaws and all without any attempt to improve gameplay beyond graphical changes.

There is an improvement on the gameplay. Because IceFrog is no longer limited by the WCIII engine, he can do more things. These big changes that improve the gameplay include:
1. Rubick can steal ALL active spells.
2. You can bash and crit while using Phase Boot's active components.
3. The orb effect of Maelstrom and Mjollnir can now stack with other orb effects if they do not proc.
4. Pudge can now hook enemies to your fountain thanks to Chen!

As for these perceived "game flaws..."

...there are reasons for them to be there.

Turning Speed: Balance reasons. Imagine you're chasing Pudge and then he instantly turns around and hooks you. With turning speed you can see when he is about to turn around to try to hook you and then take the measures needed to avoid the hook.

Attack Animation: Balance reasons. Each hero has different attack animations. Melee heroes tend to have better attack animations than ranged heroes. This allows melee heroes to last hit against ranged heroes.

Casting Animation: Balance reasons. There are heroes with very powerful abilities that would be broken if they are instantly casted. Examples include: Earthshaker's Fissure and Leshrac's Split Earth, Diabolic Edict, and Lightning Storm.

This so called "Burden of Knowledge:" By not limiting what he can do at the fear of player backlash (within reason), IceFrog has allowed himself to create very powerful and interesting heroes.

-You have Invoker, who is very versatile since he can cast up to ten spells (but he is very limited in the early game).
-Rubick, who can steal the enemy's spells and turn their magic against them.
-Meepo, who can create up to four clones of himself with each clone being able to use abilities separately (but not items separately.)
-Ancient Apparition, who can launch a hug ball of ice that stops any sort of healing and regeneration. The debuff also instantly kills the enemy if their current hp:max hp ratio falls under a certain ratio.

Int heroes do not scale (with a few exceptions): This is one factor that gives DotA\Dota 2 a lot of depth. Because abilities in the game do not scale (few exceptions) you get an extremely pronounced classification of early game, mid game, and late game heroes. Early game heroes are more powerful early game, mid game heroes are more powerful mid game, and late game heroes are more powerful late game. This diversity allows for multiple viable strategies.

-Early Push: A team comprised of powerful early game pushers. Their goal is to end the game as soon as possible by pushing to the ancient as fast as possible. This tactic is very powerful against team line ups who are relying on their carry to get farmed. The downside of this tactic is that if you fail to win the game under 20 minutes, your team's power will fall off and the enemy will be more powerful.

-Death Ball: A team comprised of very powerful gankers and disablers. Their goal is to gank the enemy team as much as possible so that that their enemy cannot get their farm and experience. The interesting aspect about death ball is that the carries, who usually come online later when they have their farm, on a death ball team tend to be active team players (they gank with the team.) The downside with death ball is that if you roam around for too long without getting kills, the enemy will have a level advantage due to the fact that the other lanes are untouched while you are focused on ganking one lane.

-Four Protect One: A team comprised of one hyper carry and four heroes with good defensive buffs and disables. Their goal is to occupy the entire enemy team so that their hyper carry can free farm for about 30 minutes. If they succeed, then their hyper carry can pretty much finish the game by himself/herself. The downside is that if they cannot prevent their hyper carry from being ganked, then they will not have the late game power.

There are more viable strategies than the three listed above.

RNG: Randomness in Dota 2 make the game exciting. To help make the game not too random, Dota 2 uses Pseudo Random Distribution. PRD is there to help ensure that a random event would happen while decreasing the chances for streaks. The item, Monkey King Bar, is used to negate any kind of miss chance or dodging. Good players will be able to predict the chance of something working out in their favor and adapt on the fly according on the outcome of a random ability.

Also, I must talk about Dota 2's snowballing vs. LoL's snowballing. Dota 2 doesn't snowball as hard as LoL, contrary to popular belief. Why? Let's look at two things.

1. Everything in LoL scales while very few abilities in Dota 2 scale. Feed a Queen of Pain 4 kills and Scream of Pain is not going to do any more damage than what it's hard coded to do, and Scream of Pain's cooldown never changes. Feed an AP mid 4 kills and their abilities will be hitting harder and more frequent thanks to Ability Power, Cool Down Reduction, and Magic Penetration.

2. The stat per gold ratio for items in DotA decreases as item tier increases while stat per gold ratio for items in LoL increases as item tier increases.

Read this: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34288821&postcount=4011

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Some people were talking about denying and I just wanted to add this.
Denying isn't only good to prevent your enemy from getting gold and exp. Zoning is more effective in that aspect. Denying has also another really important use. To control the creep equilibrium. With good and planed denying, you can keep the creeps from moving from 1 spot. If you're good, with some denying and someone pulling the neutral creeps, you can keep the creeps constantly right outside your towers range and farm safely.

Also, if someone needs an Doto2 invite, just tell me the e-mail to send to. I have 11 extra invites.

 

[Aircross]

Some people were talking about denying and I just wanted to add this.
Denying isn't only good to prevent your enemy from getting gold and exp. Zoning is more effective in that aspect. Denying has also another really important use. To control the creep equilibrium. With good and planed denying, you can keep the creeps from moving from 1 spot. If you're good, with some denying and someone pulling the neutral creeps, you can keep the creeps constantly right outside your towers range and farm safely.

Ah! How could I forget to mention denying and creep equilibrium!!! XD

Yes, the ability to deny your creeps allows you to directly control your lane's creep equilibrium. If you are good enough, you can even move the creep equilibrium towards your own tower to make it harder for the enemy to last hit.

 

[Larcenist]

Some people were talking about denying and I just wanted to add this.
Denying isn't only good to prevent your enemy from getting gold and exp. Zoning is more effective in that aspect. Denying has also another really important use. To control the creep equilibrium. With good and planed denying, you can keep the creeps from moving from 1 spot. If you're good, with some denying and someone pulling the neutral creeps, you can keep the creeps constantly right outside your towers range and farm safely.

We do this in LoL by forcing recalls/getting kills and then shoving the lane so that big creep waves die under their tower for denied gold/experience as well as a lane reset if done right, so this argument can be used as an advantage for both games.

I do feel on the other hand that IceFrog has the possibilities of making the most versatile pool out of the games since his creativity never ceases to amaze me. I don't think anything will ever be quite as fun as when Invoker was released for DotA 1 (if you survived the "loading Invoker resources") with people trying to invoke the right abilities in a pinch all the time only to fail miserably.

I can't remember when I stopped playing DotA really (I think it was sometime shortly after the AA release) so I don't know a whole lot of later heroes, but if you really like to do big solo plays I feel that it will happen more in DotA public games than LoL since the latter quickly turns into a team effort where one person really can't carry very well by himself. Also DotA has Chen which is one of the most amazing heroes ever.

 

[George Learmonth]

Ok, so having a fair amount of experience in both I think I can comment on what each games pros/cons are
-LoL is easier to get into for beginners as it is a lot simpler, with much less versatile characters.
-Dota 2 has a much more pleasing Aesthetic (at least for me)
-Dota 2 Has much more depth in terms of both skills and heroes, making it harder to learn, but more satisfying to master.
-LoL has a less satisfying free to play system, and could be considered inbalanced because of runes/masteries.

I would recommend LoL to start with, and learn basic mechanics until you're around lvl 10, then switch to Dota for the more advanced mechanics and strategic thinking.

Also, did I mention that Dota 2 has a hero with around 14 abilities?
Depth folks, its what makes good strategy games.

 

[Denamic]

Ok, so having a fair amount of experience in both I think I can comment on what each games pros/cons are
-LoL is easier to get into for beginners as it is a lot simpler, with much less versatile characters.
-Dota 2 has a much more pleasing Aesthetic (at least for me)
-Dota 2 Has much more depth in terms of both skills and heroes, making it harder to learn, but more satisfying to master.
-LoL has a less satisfying free to play system, and could be considered inbalanced because of runes/masteries.

I would recommend LoL to start with, and learn basic mechanics until you're around lvl 10, then switch to Dota for the more advanced mechanics and strategic thinking.

Also, did I mention that Dota 2 has a hero with around 14 abilities?
Depth folks, its what makes good strategy games.

Yeah, invoker has a shitload of spells on top of his invocation passives, but Rubick can use almost every single active spell in the game. Though he can only steal one of them at a time, this still makes him incredibly unpredictable. "Careful, I think Rubick stole my Hook, so he might- OH SHIT, BLACK HOLE!" It's also fun stealing Morhpling's strength morph, because the stat change is permanent, even after you die. You could be the tankiest guy on your team. Could also steal Enigmas' eidolons or something and jungle if you want to.

 

[Uszi]

DOTA2 is less granular, more like playing an extremely crippled version of the World of Warcraft arenas. Since the characters and roles aren't as clearly defined there's much less of the move/countermove dynamic and, at least at the moment, the lame snowballing effect where trying something new at the beginning of the match completely screws your entire team for the entire game is much, much worse.

How is DotA like WoW Arenas? Surely it's not because characters and roles aren't clearly defined, considering that the WoW Arenas use a character class system (i.e., warrior, rogue, mage etc).

As far as trying things new: Nonsense. You can do, and can be rewarded for, all sorts of new stuff. It's just that if you do something that doesn't work you will hurt your team, and knowing what will work and what will not is simply a matter of game sense. This is no different then "trying something new" by building AP Gangplank in LoL or AD Raka.

I think the snowball of failure is worth noting, maybe. It's true that LoL coddles failed play styles more than DotA, especially since you don't lose gold on death in LoL, and you give comparatively less experience and gold to your enemies every time you die.

Basically, wait until DOTA's been out a few months and they've gone through some balancing cycles before playing it, would be my advice. Meanwhile LoL is free and actually a complete game that has a good grasp on what it's doing already, so you might as well try it if you're curious.

The game has been finely balanced for years, especially since Dota 2 imported everything whole sale from WC3 DotA. Ice Frog generally avoids huge balance patches, anyway. Riot likes to do these big overhaul patches where a lot of stuff changes, whereas Ice Frog patches frequently and tweaks values by very small increments until the game gets where it needs to be. The number of hero reworks in DotA compared to Champion reworks in LoL is fairly small too.

LoL is free in name only: You only have 10 champions to choose from (out of 110), and you only get to play those 10 for a couple of weeks tops before you would need to buy them in order to keep playing them. When you hit level 30, you need tier 3 runes, and these become quite expensive, and it's damned hard to farm the IP for them if you're committed to playing LoL as a Free game. In comparison, Dota 2 is also free. You do not pay to buy power (i.e., runes) the only things that are up for sale are cosmetic changes ala Team Fortress 2. However, you have the whole pantheon of 95 heroes to mess around with as soon as you log on.

Both LoL and DotA have an equally good "grasp on what it's doing." I don't see how LoL has a better grasp than DotA.

 

[Uszi]

Also at the moment Dota has no outstandingly overpowered characters, unlike LoL which is basically first to pick Darius wins.

Darius isn't really OP. He's just the perfect pubstomper, provided he doesn't get counterpicked.

..sorry, I just needed to point that out. :<

Agree: just about any ranged top shuts Darius down, and when he hits 6 you don't stand next to him when he has 5 stacks of his passive on you. If he's whooping you, call for ganks. Jungle is supposed to be ganking the solo top harder than the dual bot, anyway.

I;d say the moment team fights happen is the moment Shaco truly shines. At that point you wanna farm and farm and farm and farm, split pushing all the while this is happening. even if you don't get massively fed from the start, if you farm enough, Shaco turns into a pretty nasty hyper carry provided the game lasts long enough.

This is kind of a problem I have with LoL, there's no problem in the game that heavy farming does not address.

I feel like Shaco is always going to be more an an anti-carry than a true carry, since his kit revolves around waiting for your teammates to pick a fight, then popping out of invisibility behind the enemy Ashe or Cait or whatever, for sexy sneak attack criticals of desolation.

 

[Sunrider]

If you just want my opinion as a sort of vote, DOTA 2. I love LoL, it's a shitload of fun, but it just doesn't compare. It's not even a contest. DOTA 2 > *.

 

[pspman45]

Just wanna clarify one thing here. If you hit the Control button during hero selection in Dota 2 you'll get the grid instead of the cards (yeah, I don't know why Valve defaulted the selection to cards...)

ok thank you, this will make my DotA 2 experience much better, as the 60 seconds of hero select in blind pick will no longer be as hectic

 

[blazearmoru]

@Naeras

I've seen a team almost pull off a 0/1/3/jungle in a tournament.

@Aircross

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34288821&postcount=4011 this guy explains it pretty nicely. By the way, have you ever come across people who said "DotA snowballs too hard to stop because if you die, you lose gold" and I'm like... Didn't you just present a way to stop snowballing? *facepalm*.