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S1 Ep10: Dota 2
73 Plays7 years ago
Oh geez, it's the Dota 2 episode. We knew it was going to happen someday.
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Credits:
Intro music: Heroes Within by Daniel Sadowski. SirActionSlacks voice clip in the intro.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dota 2 and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Radiant Team Pick. The Oracle sees all. A new chapter in my black grimoire. But isn't it good as six trins? Protectors, the Undying Wake. We are but a simple servant.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello everybody, this is Jake and welcome to another episode of the soapstone I'm joined as always by my co-host Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? You always assume I'm gonna be here. Yeah, but god damn it. You're right. I just call into the abyss and I hope there's a voice to respond, right? I'm doing pretty well
00:01:07
Speaker
If you were to summon me some type of ritual, what would it be? Can you at least mention one item that you would use to summon me? Some sort of fancy ingredient. I don't know if it would be like saffron or something like that. Maybe... See, the problem is it's an ingredient I wouldn't know about. That's the key. Okay, so you're going off the cooking aspect then. Yeah, ghost pepper. I think it would at least involve a ghost pepper. It's definitely spooky. And pepper. I like it.
Basic Mechanics and Hero Dynamics
00:01:34
Speaker
but anyways tonight we are going to be talking about a game we are vaguely familiar with i think both of us having played probably a couple thousand hours individually yeah yeah dota 2 dota 2 which is not defense of the ancients it's actually just dota actually just dota at this point
00:01:55
Speaker
There's a better rank to it. Yeah. But Dota 2 is a MOBA, some would say. Some others would say ARTS. Those people are wrong and salty, but mostly a MOBA. What would you say is the definitive features of Dota 2? What makes a game? What makes a game? We already had that episode, so we can't fall back on that.
00:02:23
Speaker
I would say Dota 2 as a mobile, you have to have a pretty wide variety of heroes to choose from. Each of them have to have unique abilities. Every time you do a game, it has to be fresh. You can't really have progression in between games. It's all like in the game, you start out in ground zero, you work your way up to the top.
00:02:46
Speaker
And you have a couple of different lanes set up so you can diversify where your heroes are going and who's fighting who. And you also need some degree of neutral camps in the jungle. So maybe you're having a tough time in lane fighting somebody. You can get experience and
Gameplay Elements and Strategies
00:03:02
Speaker
money elsewhere.
00:03:02
Speaker
You have your own creeps in this case that are going to go off and fight like the opponent's creeps. They're kind of just like these weaker monsters. You get some like gold and experience for either being around when they die for experience or for getting the last hit for gold.
00:03:19
Speaker
And then with experience, you can gain levels, upgrade your abilities. And with money, you can buy items that will kind of benefit your character and enhance or pair well with some of your abilities. Right. So you're kind of the high level concept here is you're clashing with these usually an asymmetrical team. It doesn't always have to be in Dota. It does. Yeah. But
00:03:44
Speaker
You're clashing against them, trying to get more powerful, take them out, focus on pushing in on the opponent's towers, which are kind of just these stationary emplacements that hold back these creep waves that are coming at them periodically, and the goal is to get all the way to the enemy base and destroy their ancient, which wins you the game. That's the only way to win the game, sort of.
00:04:06
Speaker
Conceding which is not having them all rage quit. Yes, which is which is the way to concede in Dota All right enough this boring stuff let's talk about I mean we've played it like you said a shit ton of time Several thousand hours each. I should maybe together. We probably have around 5,000 probably a pilot's license. I think
00:04:29
Speaker
I still not consider myself qualified, but get off my lawn Diocopter license So what would you say is one of your go-to heroes? So the most recent one is really easy Probably my favorite hero is a support character called Oracle.
Oracle and Venomancer: Support Heroes
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay, and Kind of the way support tell me more
00:04:54
Speaker
about this or never heard. Yeah. Uh, so his name's narrative, uh, his abilities are kind of all based around, uh, kind of like dual purpose things. So usually in a MOBA, you have like a couple of spells and then like an ultimate ability and you unlock your ultimate ability after getting a couple levels. And, uh, Oracle's all based or he's based around, um, dealing a lot of burst damage, but, uh, the same ability that like does damage can also heal.
00:05:25
Speaker
After the damage is dealt and his other abilities allow him to kind of like remove one aspect of that so he either Doesn't deal damage to the opponent or maybe he doesn't heal them, right? So the the goal is to heal your teammates and hurt your enemies Which doesn't always work out and sometimes the opposite is the case Jake I play the game and I'm lost
00:05:47
Speaker
essentially the way that his skills work is one of them is kind of a Debilitating ability. He'll charge up He it's a channeled ability unlocks him in place roots in there on the ground. They can't run away His other ability will make them immune to the damage from most of the spells But it also makes it so the target can't attack So you hit your ally with that and they were planning on going in maybe they have a bad time his next ability does a bunch of burst damage which the previous one would block and
00:06:16
Speaker
and then follows up with a heal over time. So you can use that to save your allies in some situations, or you could finish an enemy off with that burst damage. And then his final ability, False Promise, is his ultimate which basically allows an ally to, or yourself, to resist death, basically, for the duration of it.
00:06:38
Speaker
You can't die over the duration and then when it expires you take all of the damage you would have taken for being hit and all of the healing you received gets doubled and Sometimes you survive sometimes you don't but at the very least you could stick around in the fight a bit longer
00:06:54
Speaker
So you might want to use it on somebody else who's good at dealing damage in a fight to say, hey, I know you're kind of fucked, but do what you can with the time that you have. I got you like seven seconds on the clock. Yeah. And I try to make that like call when I use it on an ally too. I'll say.
00:07:10
Speaker
Sorry, man. You're taking so much damage. There's no way I can save you now. Get them. Or I'll say, hey, run away. I think I can actually save you here. But I try to make that decision for them because they're not going to know how much health I was healing them for.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't usually pay attention to the amount of effects on me in the fight. I just try and do one thing and focus down and do it to the best of my ability. So that's probably like, that's one of my favorite characters to play, somebody who's like a nuker support, somebody who can help the team in the early game and let other people focus on, you know, getting really strong and carrying the game later. Right. But I also like being self-sufficient.
00:07:54
Speaker
and capable of sort of fighting my own battles and so that's why I really like Oracle. What would you say one of your favorite characters would be?
00:08:04
Speaker
Well, if we're talking in the support family, I will try and cheat in Venomancer, who played in a lot of different roles. Some people play him as a support, yeah. I play him as a very greedy position four, meaning I'm not trying to prioritize getting all that money and experience, but I want to help roam around and get kills. Right. And right here, position four would mean the fourth in priority to get farm or gold, right?
00:08:33
Speaker
So Venomancer is a poison-based character, so a lot of his abilities will be putting poison and damage over time and slows on people. His first being a ranged ability called Venomous Gale. For every target it hits, it deals some magic damage over time and slows them for the duration. So it's a really good engage to go on somebody, get some damage, and keep your enemy kind of not getting away too far. He also has a passive ability
00:09:02
Speaker
on his W, where his right clicks will deal additional magic damage and a slow over time. So you can keep refreshing that stack. Right, so just getting hit by your normal attacks is gonna wear him down over time. But that will also stack with the other poison from the venomous gale. So now you have two sources of slow and two sources of damage over time. Yeah, I see where this is going. It stacks all his abilities. He also has a thing called a plague ward.
00:09:28
Speaker
that he can cast at range, it will give some vision, and it will auto-attack enemies that are nearby. It's like a small, like, turret almost, kind of, right in a way. Yeah, it's like a little snake fixture, if you will. But once you have that passive leveled, your little wards will also keep the poison on people for, like, half damage and duration. So you really want to keep bullying people in lane, which is fun.
00:09:53
Speaker
Which is kind of like harassing them a lot trying to push them out of the lane so you get uncontested experience in gold, right? Yep.
00:10:00
Speaker
And then his ultimate poison Nova is this really big radial ability, which is another poison over time. But sadly that ability itself though, it does a lot of damage over time. Cause I think it lasts for about, I'd say 12 seconds and it keeps taking each second. Yeah. It will not actually kill anybody. It will just bring them down to one health. Right. But that's where it ties in with your passive.
00:10:26
Speaker
Because that'll just take them over the edge. If they have just like a little bit of a damage over time left on them, your ultimate could then kill him. I don't play a lot of Venomancer. I do know that I think it's only a couple seconds after he uses his ultimate. He usually dies, right? I don't know if that's inherent in the ability or if it's because you just jumped in the middle of everyone. It depends. If you don't put a lot of...
00:10:49
Speaker
Defensive items on him and you just need him to jump into a fight kind of burst his poison load and then die There's still a lot of value in that. Yeah But what I'll try and do is stay range for the most part if I need to I'll jump in pop the ult but then keep trying to Get poison on people but try and keep myself alive at the same time, right?
00:11:11
Speaker
So you also tend to favor more aggressive types of supports than people who are gonna take the fight to the enemy. And sometimes you don't need your team behind you, you're just gonna do it.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah. There are certain characters where it's, it behooves you to be more defensive. You wait for them to engage and then you punish them for it. But for me, I like punishing people constantly, but the ranged poison is a really fun way to do that. So that's really why I like venom answer. Also, you can transition from the lane. Once your wards get to be a higher level and they have more health and more damage.
00:11:48
Speaker
you can go into the jungle, you can get that farm for yourself and experience, and transition to be a more useful fighter later in the
Carries vs. Supports
00:11:57
Speaker
game. So the jungle is... Each side of the map has its own jungle, kind of like split usually into two sections, and that's where a lot of these neutral keeps are, things that you can fight and get gold off of.
00:12:10
Speaker
and like older versions of the game, it was a lot more common to see one player always go there, as you'll see in some other games, but I haven't seen it as often recently. Yeah, as the meta has changed, it's become harder to just start out in the jungle. Usually you want to try and be paired up with somebody in lane, and at a point later, if you're transitioning between lanes, you want to go gank somebody, you can get some farming experience there in the meantime.
00:12:36
Speaker
Because it's a team game. And so if somebody's not pulling their weight, or you have a couple people maybe trying to go to the jungle, then it's a little bit harder. Speaking of team game, though, what's the goal of these supports? What are they working towards here? What would you say a carry that you enjoy playing is? Should I answer the first question? It was supposed to be a transition, Dave. Dang. Oh, my bad shit. That's all right. Hmm.
00:13:07
Speaker
How do supports help carries? And what are carries? So basically supports will help carries by enabling the carry to do what they want to do. And carries early on, they want to get a lot of last hits so that they can get money to get better items. So it'll help them fight later on. Because you want to rely on them to get kills and be the big raid boss of your team. So you want to try and stack camps by
00:13:36
Speaker
I'm not even gonna get in this whole thing. Yeah, it's possible in the game But stack camps so that they can get more jungle farm Yeah, and also you want to set up kills for your carry and you want to bully people out of lane You essentially want to give them the easiest time possible you want to babysit them make sure that they can get their farm their gold their levels and
00:13:59
Speaker
and that's it. You might also put down wards so you can have vision of an area so you'll know if a gank's coming to keep your carry alive. Yeah, and that's really probably the two main goals of supports are mess up the opponent's team, be like the unaccounted-for variable in whatever their plan was when they came into the game, and also to defend your team to make sure that your team can make it there, and they have an easier time getting there.
00:14:28
Speaker
An example of a more defensive support would be someone like Crystal Maiden, who is very slow and most of her abilities are kind of making sure that her friend she's there in lane with doesn't die right. Who's a carry that you would like to play though? If you do find yourself in a situation where you can't pick a support, all of your teams picked supports, who do you take into a fight there?
00:14:52
Speaker
If I'm forced into a carry role, it's not uncommon for me to go Venomancer. I don't know, I don't usually traditionally play carries. But if I'm going on somebody who's gonna be more farm focused,
00:15:10
Speaker
In the past, I have gone Nature's Prophet. Again, this is the trees. It's hard to argue that he's a hard carry, but he's another ranged character. He's definitely a carrier. Yeah, he definitely does get his farm. He can animate trees, which are throughout the map, and use them as separate controlled units to help push lanes. Probably like an RTS. Yeah.
00:15:34
Speaker
You work on your own micro and just keep pushing out all lanes, which is a lot of times what the strategy becomes later on. He also can encircle an enemy in trees, kind of trapping them there. That's terrifying. Yeah. It's really good for ganking and helping secure kills.
00:15:50
Speaker
He also has a global teleport. So just anywhere on the map? It's kind of just a point click adventure at that point. So again, that really helps with moving around the lanes. And if you want to gank people or push out a lane, you can just be there. Right. Just surround yourself with trees and be gone. Trees are gone and so am I.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, he's definitely, he's one of the more mobile types of carries and something that's worth throwing in here in the middle, the Dota has a huge variety of heroes, over 100 heroes at this point.
00:16:23
Speaker
No, it's probably around 130.
Invoker, Alchemist, and Lina: Unique Skills
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And not all of those heroes are suited to every situation. Of course, I have my favorites, you have your favorites, but sometimes the enemy team might just be really, really good against one hero that we like to play. In my case, another character I like to play that's kind of more of a carry is Invoker. And I make no claim of being a good Invoker,
00:16:51
Speaker
but basically his shtick is that he has these like three elements and then you can summon like above your head each of these three elements and you can duplicate them right so you can have two of one one of another three of one type and all of these other combinations and then he turns those into spells and so he has access to like a tremendous amount of spells
00:17:17
Speaker
And usually heroes only get like a couple abilities. And because he's got like all of this variety, he's really fun to play because you can build him in all these different ways, skill him up. But if he finds himself in a situation where the opponent is immune to spells, or perhaps he himself is silenced, which means he can't cast spells,
00:17:39
Speaker
That's not a great situation to be in. So you have to kind of factor your own picks in against what the opponent's picking, right? I'd say that another character, like kind of talking about carries for a second, one that I really do enjoy is Alchemist. Ooh.
00:17:55
Speaker
There's another farm intensive boy right there. Yeah. I really like Alchemist because he's not a complicated hero. Most of his abilities don't matter. The one that does is whenever he's killed some enemies, just neutral, you know, creeps or what have you, he'll start to get this multiplier kind of. He'll get some bonus gold on top of it and it continues to build up as you're putting points in that skill until eventually he's just like harvesting money. He's just dragging all of this money into himself.
00:18:25
Speaker
His other abilities are like AOE damage over time and his ultimate is he gets to attack really fast. It changes his attack animation, so it's like crazy fast. It just like wails on somebody. It's great. But the reason I enjoy him is it's just fun to hear that gold sound, just the clinking of coins, and it's almost constant with him. Unless you lose.
00:18:50
Speaker
I'm glad that your pick is based solely on the sound effects. Hey, it's all about that Pavlovian response. I'm just sitting here drooling on myself, getting thousands and thousands of gold. The trick with alchemist, of course, is burst damage completely destroys him. He doesn't have that much health. So you're saying it'd be bad against someone like Lina, who is a fire mage, and she's just pooping out damage and stuns. Yeah. Okay. She can just jump on him. It's like, what are you gonna do?
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah, she could set up with a light strike array with some magic damage and AOE stun, shoot out the dragon slave for some more line AOE damage, which both of these are going to proc her passive, which increases her movement speed and attack rate for recent spells cast, and then follow up with a lagoona blade for like a 700 damage nuke. Yeah, just lightning striking through right at them. Her ultimate's amazing.
00:19:49
Speaker
She's a really interesting character. She's kind of somebody who does both right. Like you can build her to just be built a lot around her spells. But I see that a lot less now. I mean, I haven't seen her that much recently. Yeah, she's been out of meta for a while for sure. But I think in her most recent iteration, people were getting dragon lance on her to increase her range and they would kind of just have her siege towers.
00:20:12
Speaker
You cast some abilities, get the attack speed up, and you just... Desolator. Really good on her, too. Oh, yeah. Something that'll, like, reduce the armor so you're dealing even more damage. Yeah. Very versatile character. She was actually one of the first characters I kind of got in with. Do you remember... I don't know what that means. Got in with. Started playing the game with, right? I mean, everybody has, like, their first tier where it's like, oh, this person looks interesting. I wonder what their abilities do.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, who was who was uh, one of the first characters you kind of started playing dota two with because you you played earlier, right? Like before yeah back in dota one. I think it was we were playing The work of three mod in like high school for like study halls or classes that we should have been learning in. Yeah But I think thematically one of the first I saw was slardar. Okay. All right, because he's a slitherine which is like Fish person. Yeah, fish person. I was gonna say like kind of like mermaid but kind of not
00:21:08
Speaker
They don't have legs, but they look I'm just gonna say fish people Jake got it, right? Yeah But he has a passive where it's a chance for extra damage and stunning people which I thought was really cool He has an ability that makes him move faster He has a little aoe stun and then his ult gives you a true sight on somebody and reduces their armor So with like true sight you can see them if they're invisible. Yeah, or any other situation like that, right? You just see them, right?
00:21:36
Speaker
And the vision will persist while the duration of the effect is on. So even if they run away, you still see them. I know where you are. And vision's a really big part of the game. Because if you know where your enemy is, you know how to react.
00:21:53
Speaker
So you might think, oh, I'm going to go get this kill. Meanwhile, like there's some people waiting in the bushes, so to speak, who are just trying to bait you into something.
Vision and Unique Abilities
00:22:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Playing with vision is just crazy. And there's a there's a support character who can teleport people across the map.
00:22:09
Speaker
but then the character always has to come back, Io. And everyone knows where he's coming back. And there's some great clips out there of he comes back with an ally and they're in way better shape than everyone expects, because usually he just comes back on his own and he dies to the enemy team, right?
00:22:28
Speaker
But sometimes an ally is there and they're like, nope, we're ready. Go ham and destroy everything. Yeah, his healing is really useful in fights. And he can also sacrifice some of his own health regeneration to essentially give that person bonus damage. Yeah. So he's like a little plus one buddy, a little ball of light. Yeah, he's a little like multiplayer.
00:22:51
Speaker
It's something kind of similar to that because IO plays with health and mana a lot. You said one of your first characters was Slardar. For me, I think one of the first characters I really enjoyed was Keeper of the Light. He's just this old man on a white horse. That's basically it. You make him sound very distinguished. Very forgetful. A lot of characters don't have really cool or interesting personalities. His thing is he likes redheads.
00:23:17
Speaker
But everybody's got side. Yeah. The reason I was really drawn to him as like a starter character is because he had this like burst damage. You can like channel a wave of light and throw it out, which is great. It takes a lot of mana, though, like a lot of abilities and do to do. And as I was getting used to this, I was like, I'm always out of mana. How in the world am I going to find a solution? He gives himself mana. He can give mana to himself or to an ally. He's kind of this like mana battery, right?
00:23:44
Speaker
And I was like, why would I play someone else? This guy does damage. And he can give himself mana. Yeah, you have that sustained damage in lane. Why leave? Right. The downside, though, is he's, like most supports, he's kind of just a glass. I wouldn't even say cannon. Yeah, he's kind of just glass. He's a soft boy. He's fast glass because he's on a horse. That's the game. To run away at least twice as fast. Humans have two legs and horses have four.
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, or if you're a horse human like Centaur War Runner, another hero in the game, strength hero. Each hero kind of has one of these three elements and usually support characters or more about like mana pool intelligence.
00:24:29
Speaker
Usually more of a caster type. Exactly, yeah. Because supports are defined by having strong abilities in the early game. And they don't need that much money. Agility characters are usually currently carries. The people who go to the late game do tons of damage, right? And the last one is strength. And I think you probably play more strength heroes than I do. Oh, I definitely do. I like being a meaty fella. Yeah, who's in your strength repertoire?
00:24:59
Speaker
The first one I have to go to to rep is tree and protector.
Treant Protector and Memorable Matches
00:25:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah yet another support character But again, you can play him in a bit more of an aggressive role one of his abilities allows him to stay invisible while next to a tree and
00:25:14
Speaker
And then if you hit somebody, it will stun them temporarily. And he doesn't hit like taps, right? No, he's, I think has the highest base damage of any character in a game. Which can be really devastating early on, because you'll sneak up on somebody and just start hitting them in the face. Yeah. And then if you combine that with another one of his abilities, Leech Seed,
00:25:34
Speaker
It applies a slow and a bit of a damage over time where you will sap some health from them so you can keep them in the fight. Yeah. And then his ult allows you to root people in an area, which is immobilizing them and keep them in the fight longer. But this is all to set up for somebody else who's meant to deal damage to just murder that person. Right. Supports have a lot of enabling abilities. He also has living armor, right? Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. That's pretty good.
00:26:05
Speaker
It essentially applies a heal over time and will give the person stacks or tower. Yeah, but it will negate some instances of damage up to a point. I think it blocks up to 80 damage per
00:26:19
Speaker
Instance. Yeah, it's like a shield sort of yeah block some damage So it can really help somebody live and I can also cast it globally to anywhere on the map So if I'm like bot lane hanging out supporting somebody but somebody's like top lane. I'm fucked I will I can either click on their portrait or click on them in-game and it will send the healing love of their way Oh, yeah, I forget about the portrait clicks Me too a lot of times actually
00:26:46
Speaker
I'm just like, ah, I click on the map, and I'm like, heal a tower or something like that. Yeah, sometimes you need to heal towers, too. Yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
And I also want to mention, you can get an item in the game called Aganum Scepter, which will... The box of Pandora is opened, yes. I just want to say it enhances some abilities of characters, but it also gives him the ability Eyes in the Forest, where I can essentially cast it on a tree in the game, and it will provide vision in an area around it.
00:27:16
Speaker
And it will last until that tree is destroyed. It's like a super ward. Yeah. So I start to use that as a vision game to get more control of the map. And then when I ult for every tree that has that effect, my ult will also be cast from there as well. And just roots everywhere. Yeah. So I really like to use him if I have enough time to provide vision and I guess disengagement for the team. Yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
I think we probably both play a bit more of the position five, which is like the I basically don't have any money to spend for myself type character, right? Yeah, you're a very selfless character at that point. You're buying everything for the team or position for which is like
00:28:02
Speaker
You'll buy at least a couple support items early on, and then when the P5 is not looking, you start trying to get all that farm for yourself and buy important items which are only helpful for you. You start playing a lot more selfishly. You just keep the poorest character out of depression, and then you focus on yourself. Keep him from leaving the game, and then you go in and have your fun.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah I think those are probably most of my games I played like support. Sometimes when we were playing as a group because it's a great game to play with friends if you can tolerate each other and your moments of weakness. It is definitely a test of friendship. Yeah for sure. It's like it's it is like you said it's a test absolutely sometimes it's a
00:28:50
Speaker
It's one of those games that's a little bit, it can bring more out of people. It brings emotional reactions out of people. If you feel like you're really far ahead and then the opposing team just gets like abnormally coordinated and comes back and destroys you, that's not the best experience.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, it can be disheartening for sure. But conversely, if you are that team that kind of pulls together and you start focusing in and you win the game, it feels really good. Yeah. I remember an iconic match. You were in there. One of our friends was in there playing techies at the time. And techies just puts mines all over the place. Techies doesn't play Dota. Techies places mines. Yes, he plays Vietnam.
00:29:35
Speaker
And we were basically getting destroyed for like 45 minutes. But because we had all these mines in our base they could never push in. I kept like dying because I was playing hard carry. I was playing anti-mage who just doesn't do much in the other game but comes back and has a bunch of items and it's really hard to catch. And we just keep this game going and you guys just kept covering all of my mistakes. And this game went on for an hour and a half.
00:30:04
Speaker
before they finally made some mistakes and then we won and I assume they just quit at that point uninstalled at the point you just have to get tired yeah gotta ask what you're doing right and sometimes there's some games like that they can go a little bit long
00:30:22
Speaker
But conversely, I've had some insanely short games. There was a time I think we were playing together against a group of surprisingly coordinated individuals who they picked their team based around, hey, let's play the early game together. Let's all five go in one lane and just push down the gut and see how far we can get. These are Grosjean first, right?
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah. So they picked up an item in the game, which essentially gives you another life, which is uncommon in this game. And then they grouped people together and they had enough range, burst, sustain to keep doing it. And they just punished. Our team wasn't meant to be, hey, let's go five on five right now, especially not this early. We expected a game of Dota. Yeah, a standard game in meta.
00:31:11
Speaker
But they challenged that, and anybody who came to the lane just kind of got killed. So we're like, okay, let's bide our time. Let's try and get some experience elsewhere in the lanes they're not, and then try and come back and fight them later. But it was already too late. And they had gotten some kills, and they were just playing really well. And I think that game was over in like 12 to 15 minutes. 12 to 15, yeah. And I was...
00:31:35
Speaker
Obviously mortally depressed, but also really impressed that they pulled off that strat because I did not see that come as way out of left field Yeah, I remember us just kind of sitting after that game and just talking about and be like, holy crap They just actually pulled that off. Did you realize the thing? I didn't know that was a thing
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, just the level of coordination is insane. And I think that's at its best when you're a well-oiled machine. That's where Dota really excels. We were talking about supports that set up situations for characters that do a lot of damage to come in and just clean house and everybody has their role and when they play to it, it can completely swing the game.
00:32:16
Speaker
I don't want to go over all of the abilities off of all of the heroes because we've already covered a lot. But there's huge abilities that usually have really long cooldowns. One of them is Black Hole, where it'll just pull in all of these enemies who's a hero that I really like to play Enigma. And they're all just held kind of stationary in this. And they're taking damage, but not a whole lot. But while they're right there, your team can just open up on them.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, because they're, while they're being pulled in, they can't do any other actions. They're essentially stunned. Yeah. And just taking damage over time. But because of how strong that ability is, I think it's like a two to three minute cooldown. Yeah. It's 180 seconds, I think. Yeah. So if it was just used in a fight, you know, you should be good for the next fight.
00:33:03
Speaker
Because that really strong ability is not on the board anymore. They have to wait for that ability to come off of cooldown to use it again. Yeah. So you make a mistake. I mean, not that. I personally ever whiff a black hole, but... Have you ever just done it at your feet and then just canceled immediately? Hope no one saw you. That's why I always buy an item that refreshes all of my abilities. So I get one more chance. Don't know what we're talking about, guys.
00:33:31
Speaker
But yeah, it feels really good when everything kind of comes together and you push towards that end. And that's been some of the design decisions by Valve as far as supporting Dota. A lot of other games in the MOBA sphere, I would say, have some early like tap out mechanics where you're just like, I'm done. We're all getting decimated. Yeah, if it seems like it's going to shit, you might try and surrender. I know League of Legends has that as an option.
00:34:00
Speaker
yeah like after 20 minutes or what have you after first blood people were like let's gg yeah mid sucks i mean yeah that's definitely the case kind of i think regardless of your mova that's true it's just like all right we're down at all it is now hopeful
00:34:17
Speaker
But sometimes you get a good group and people come back and that's one of the things that Valve kind of strove for with Dota is the number of comeback stories that just wouldn't
Comebacks and Community Challenges
00:34:28
Speaker
have happened if people could concede early is crazy. There's examples of people who've been completely smashed into the ground with essentially their chance of success is almost nothing. And they come back and they win it.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, the graphs are showing. Oh, the enemy team is up like 30,000 gold and that shows like the win percentage ratio of how likely it is. Yeah. And you're like, Oh, they're fucked. But if you remember one of the games, I think it was at TI where Alliance came back.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah. So Alliance was at a point where their base was megad. And that term means they've lost essentially all structures in their base and the enemy is spawning insanely strong creeps. Just full force, right? Yeah. They have a bunch of health, deal a bunch of damage. And at this point, it's really hard to push out of your base because you have these really strong waves coming in.
00:35:22
Speaker
But they managed to wipe the team, push out an entire lane with the character Jake mentioned before, Alchemist, who was just clean in-house. And they pushed and won the game, all while the other team was dead. So they waited and they found that opportunity and struck while the iron was hot. And if people just quit all the time,
00:35:44
Speaker
that would never be an option. But it makes for an amazing comeback story and it's insanely exciting to watch that happen or to be able to live it yourself in-game.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of the mechanics in the game enable these moments, right? Like Dota has a buyback mechanic where if you have enough gold, you can kind of instantly respawn exactly once, then that'll cool down and you can do it again if you have enough gold. But the respawn timers are pretty long. Like in the late game, they can get really long. Yeah, the more gold you have accrued in experience at the time, and the longer the game has gone on as well, all contributes towards your
00:36:22
Speaker
being dead time right so if you're if you're dead for like a minute and a half it doesn't matter how much money your team has if the other team just managed to outplay you this one time and none of you had money for buyback or they outplay you and then you're still overconfident so you buy back and they manage to outplay you one more time you've lost in the late game
00:36:44
Speaker
And that chance of coming back, I think, is what drives a lot of people to take Dota so seriously compared to other mobas where matches are shorter, respawn times are faster, and your investment's a little bit less. Kind of like with basketball, if the clock's still running, you still have play time. Yeah. Get into good play. Fix your situation if it's bad.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, look, I made a sports reference. And I mean, that's not to go too hard in the positivity of that. There's definitely some games where you've lost and it takes a while to lose, which is the price you pay for that. Right. The price you pay for the ability to have comebacks is sometimes most of the time they're not going to happen. Right. But it's probably worth it to keep the game in your control.
00:37:40
Speaker
I would say. Definitely is. It's an opinion thing.
00:37:45
Speaker
But that's why I like to play with a nice group of people who I know. Shout out to my Dota boys. I'm not going to name you all individually. But I like playing with them because we'll usually have certain roles that we feel comfortable with, we communicate, and we make things happen. Now that being said, a lot of times it can go to shit. Maybe that seems more coordinated. Maybe we're not on our game. Maybe we'll make some mistakes. Exactly.
00:38:11
Speaker
I think half our group usually does not play sober, which I appreciate. Right. Because we like to play for fun. Right. Like I'll have my try hard moments so will other people. But at the end of the day, you're there to play with people. And it's a great team game if you're having fun doing it. Yeah. Whereas if you're not, like we're saying before, I can really test friendships and
00:38:32
Speaker
put strain on it because you're like, oh, why did why'd you fuck up there? You dumb ass person. I can definitely say I'm guilty of that. I had to take a break from the game because it was just starting to make me too toxic.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I just couldn't stop taking it seriously enough like I was taking it seriously So even when I was playing with friends, I was like, oh my gosh mistake mistake and started to like build up and I mean people have written papers on toxic. Oh, yeah
00:39:04
Speaker
I'm just on my back. Jake is so toxic. They just put the paper down and they do a little sketch thing. It's not that great. It's not that flat. Lord, I was just saying skulliness, is it? Toxicity is definitely something you have to deal with on the receiving end and learn how to deal with it in yourself if you're playing these types of games.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, thankfully I'm self-loathing so I have enough practice. Yay me. Oh man. But that's just, we've kind of just talked about the standard kind of just jumping into the game mode for Dota. Dota has tons of game modes. There's just so much shit that we honestly don't have time to get into today, but there are different game modes like ability draft where you can
00:39:52
Speaker
kind of draft which abilities you have. Right. As opposed to standard ones. You just get like a random hero, right? For that one. Yeah. There's bot games you can do if you want to practice against AI. That was a, that was a finger snap. There's a turbo mode. If you want to go through an easier version of the game where, um, experience and gold is kind of fed to you. Yeah. And there are a lot quicker games because you excel, celebrate to that end point much quicker.
00:40:21
Speaker
items are flown out to you like by super fast supersonic carriers basically yeah those take like 15 minutes as opposed to standard mattress might be like 30 40 ish and you also have um arcade modes where people will make custom games similar to how dota 2 was born out of a warcraft 3 mod right people make their own fun variations of
00:40:47
Speaker
Dota games utilizing the same heroes that you're familiar with but in a different context. Maybe you'll have an arena mode and you'll try and get as many kills as like a team and all meet in the middle of a fight. Yeah. Maybe you'll have a tower defense mode.
00:41:03
Speaker
which are classic throughout all custom games of all time. Yeah, those have been around. They have like co-op modes to kind of like adventure things, which I know I've heard about at least existed in Warcraft 3. You can just play through with a party and it's almost like it's a small RPG game, right?
00:41:21
Speaker
I really like those because you get to have a surprising amount of investment of something that seems, oh, what did somebody make some dumb little RPG? You're like, yeah, but I'm actually, I've been playing it for four hours trying to eat it and it's really interesting. Yeah. And it's not all great, but the stuff that is good tends to rise to the top.
00:41:41
Speaker
And you can find that by community reviews, things like that. Cream of the crop. The cream. Macho and Randy Savage. But yeah, the community has ways to show their support kind of for that and give games positive reviews, custom modes positive reviews so that they're easier to find in the future.
00:42:03
Speaker
And it's really cool. That's kind of the design space that Valve lives in for Dota is let the community make almost all of the content, right? It's not all of it. They do their own things for sure. But they definitely ride that wave. Yeah, if the community wasn't as involved as it was, I don't think Dota would be as successful as it is. Right. Whereas certain other communities like League of Legends, I know there's a lot of
Valve's Model and Dota's Complexity
00:42:33
Speaker
fan art that people make, which maybe certain things will actually become part of like the cosmetic design of a character. Right. Maybe on the subreddit, people will discuss, hey, this one character is really way too overpowered. Irelia, please nerfer.
00:42:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely not to the extent of something like Dota though. Like for Dota, I've read posts on Reddit from artists who as a career work creating sets for Dota. And they get their cut of whatever sales are at the end of the day.
00:43:10
Speaker
And it's kind of the model that valves built though to off of is like, Hey, you know, uh, recently they've come up with some, some other things. Like they have a, uh, relatively cheap subscription. What was it like $4 or something? $5? I think it's four months for Moda plus. Yeah. For Dota plus, which is, it gives you more information kind of in the, in the match. Um, and a lot of people pick that up and then may have dropped it, but I'm not sure. I mean, that could be its own discussion. I don't really want to go too far into that, but they know how to make money. Yeah.
00:43:40
Speaker
And another way that they will entice people in, which I like investing myself in, is you can have different cosmetics for characters. You can also have different voiceover packs for in-game. You can have different skins for wards, different skins for couriers. You can have different map skins. And all of that really helps make you... I don't want to phrase this.
00:44:06
Speaker
lock in your own style of gameplay. Maybe you like having a darker theme and you like having a specific ward or a courier set if you're supporting. People are like, oh, that's fucking dope. Yeah. I wonder how many people support just because they have like faceless wrecks or some other really cool looking courier.
00:44:22
Speaker
I think that's actually, that's an interesting point. You were talking about some of the cosmetics. Prior to the latest iteration of the UI, they had interface mods that were more impactful because there was more interface. They kind of cut it all down and it's pretty minimalist now and I like that more. But things that do remain, like you mentioned, the maps. And sometimes they're really cool. They had one for the international where it was completely underwater.
00:44:50
Speaker
and it looks really interesting when usually there's a river that divides the map in half and that's kind of like this is the dire territory this is the rain territory and now the river doesn't really exist it's the low ground but you're underwater so you're gonna have a river
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think they made it some type of metal grading instead. Yeah, yeah. The thing I think was my favorite there was the weather effects, actually. Oh, yeah. So they released for some internationals. Did you get like the rain or did you get like the falling ash? I got rain and snow.
00:45:27
Speaker
Were the two that I really really liked and it's just something I like rain in general, but there's something Satisfying about playing through this match which usually like induces all this stress and stuff You can kind of just sit back and just like watch the rainfall on the map and you're like, this is okay
00:45:44
Speaker
I mean, that's fine if you want to do that, if you're playing Crystal Maiden. You can just sit in base, provide a mana aura for the team. Or tree and protector. Every seven seconds or whatever heals somebody.
00:46:00
Speaker
So how do you feel about go-to-to compared to some other mobas? I know League of Legends is one we've also played a decent amount of together. Yeah, I probably haven't played all that much of League. Probably under 20 matches with people and probably fewer than that. I would like to rescind my statement. I've played a shit ton. Jake doesn't play.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, I am around friends that play a lot. I know about, you know, the heroes and about the mode of the game. And I think Dota kind of stands apart from some of these other mobas you can compare it to. I mean, Han's pretty old now, and it took a lot from pretty much everybody. I think it's, you could call it probably the most derivative.
00:46:47
Speaker
I mean, where it's still content from everything. Yes. Yeah. And it has just a terribly toxic community. Yeah. It's the best. That's not like much of a consideration for something I'd play now, but among like the remaining big ones, like League has some stuff that, you know, I, I think it's fine. It's a little, I feel like it's a little more arcadey than the art style is definitely more.
00:47:15
Speaker
Cartoony in a way. If you consider something like World of Warcraft versus Final Fantasy 14. Right. World of Warcraft is going to be your, I don't want to say more casual go-to, but it's more simplistic aesthetically.
00:47:30
Speaker
Which is fine, it's just, it's a difference for sure. Yeah. And it's also like, it's more fast paced than Dota for sure. Like the map in Dota is bigger. In League of Legends, you'll have a lot of like skill shots and things like that that you're trying to land, you know, several times. And Dota, there's characters who they can cast two spells and they're in completely out of mana. Yeah, it's much less forgiving.
00:47:53
Speaker
If you fuck up, you're usually going to get punished for it in a bad way. Yeah. Another thing with League is you starting out in the game. All mobas I've played so far have been free to play, but they will limit the selection of heroes you get to like a cycle, let's say like 10 per week, and each one is different, which gives you a chance to try out new characters that you don't have access to everything from the get go. And I think Dota is one of, if not the only, MOBA that will say, hey,
00:48:22
Speaker
Here's everything. Go wild. Yeah. I think for new characters, if you were to make an account right now and just jump in, it has like a suggested smaller hero pool, but you can actually just like disable that in the console or play a couple of games and it goes away. You're not unlocking anything. It's just trying to keep you from being overwhelmed. Yeah. Certain ones are definitely more mechanically difficult to play.
00:48:46
Speaker
My first character was Invoker. Oh yeah, that'll do it. I lost. And I still shied away from some of the more mechanically advanced people like Earth Spirit. Then I played one game and I got like two kills early and I was like holy shit. Meepo, right? Yeah, there's another one. All these other people that just have mechanics that make them really tough to play.
00:49:08
Speaker
But maybe that's your niche. I don't know. There's people who enjoy that just for ya. Like pro players that are known for playing one particularly difficult hero. Like no tail is famous for his meepo play.
00:49:19
Speaker
But if you are really good at Meepo, it's an insanely strong character. Yeah, because you get five heroes instead of one guy. Yeah, that's its own beast. But if you're good at it, you can crush people because it's very hard to play against five characters. Yeah. If you guys are coming from Smash, it's like playing ice climbers with additional climbers. Spins with be a hurricane starts.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say that most games, or I actually don't know of another mobile, like you said, that actually provides the whole hero roster up front. Not even here's what Storm does. Yeah. And Blizzard's done a lot of things, I think, that are successful with that game and have helped solidify its identity. In a lot of ways, it's the opposite of something like Dota, where Dota's like, here's all of these choices. Here's all the stuff you have to track.
00:50:14
Speaker
Hots is like smaller maps, no items, and rather than focusing so much on this kind of like farm, you know, looking for gold, let's not have gold, right?
Dota 2 vs. Heroes of the Storm
00:50:27
Speaker
And then you focus on like other objectives and things.
00:50:29
Speaker
It's kind of like a Mario Party. I wouldn't make it sound that basic. You play the minigames. You'll have like an objective quest per map, which will come up every couple of minutes, where you have to get people to a point and do a thing. But I would, in a nicer way, say it's very rounded edges. Right.
00:50:52
Speaker
Like it's easy for anybody to kind of like jump up and go into a game and say, Hey, this is your character. These are your abilities. As you gain levels, you can upgrade your abilities to do a little bit of different things, your play style.
00:51:06
Speaker
but it's typically like 20, 25 minute matches. Yeah. They're really short. They're like turbo matches basically in Dota. Yeah. It's something that you can just jump in and play and don't worry about whether it's going to like eat up the rest of your night, which can be a risk with a certain Dota matches. Yeah.
00:51:24
Speaker
But I'd say at least for me personally, I don't get the thrill from other mobas as much as I do Dota 2. Dota 2 has my level of investment and tryhardiness that I want to win because it is challenging. Whereas with League, it started to feel rote for me. I would pick the same character, go in the same place, do the exact same things.
00:51:43
Speaker
And I was good enough at it and it wasn't challenging. Yeah. And part of that's probably because of the way that the company, Riot actually approaches the meta as opposed to what Valve does, right? From what I've heard, Riot tries to ensure that certain things are played like they intended. Whereas right now on Valve side with Dota 2, they'll release patches like every two weeks and change the whole thing up, right?
00:52:12
Speaker
Not all of them are such sweeping changes, but the meta is constantly actively changing. And they could be sweeping changes. Like they'll completely change the viability of one hero from one patch to the next. And I mean, they've read on the entire map. Unlike, uh, I think League has different maps, right? Like for some of the different modes.
00:52:35
Speaker
Um, I think there's one main one called summoner's rift, which would be your five V five. There's another map, which is a three V three. There's a circular map, which kind of like a point capture. There's a, a Ram, right? Which is just a single lane.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah. Valve pretty much just sticks with the standard map, but probably three times, I'd say, throughout the course of development, they've like redone the map in very major ways, moved where things are, and completely shook up how it all plays out. So consistency is not guaranteed when you log in after a couple months. Your character may not play the same way or be
00:53:18
Speaker
It's facing the same matchups at all that you faced in the past. Yeah. I would not describe Dota 2 as stagnant. No. Yeah. It's more like a jar full of bees and Valve will occasionally like shake it up and give it to you. Yeah. And you're like, these were bumblebees, but they looked very aggressive. Right. It's kind of like Valve just hands you a jar once every, every period of time when you come back to the game and you don't know
Closing and Listener Engagement
00:53:43
Speaker
what's in the jar. And sometimes it's hunting and other times it is live being.
00:53:47
Speaker
Maybe bees are in the honey.
00:53:51
Speaker
Once again, I'd like to thank everybody for making it to the end of yet another episode of Soapstone. Or skipping to the end if you're smart. Yeah, see, that's the advanced strategy. Get that completion bar on your podcast, listening platform of choice. But thank you for listening. If you have any thoughts, comments about games that we may have played recently, or ideas for a new episode that you'd like to hear about. Or just really cool memes. Yeah, pick us up. Especially really cool memes. Those are the only things we read, so.
00:54:19
Speaker
Send them to us at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com and we'll be happy to hear them and receive them. But until next time, I would like to thank my co-host Dave. You're welcome. For putting up with me even when I don't fulfill my support duties. And I'll stand by you like a tree in support who does nothing in lane but stand by trees.
00:54:46
Speaker
But yeah, as always, we really do appreciate you guys and girls listening, even though there's only three of you. I think about you guys at night and it really means so much to me that people listen to this at all and have a semi vested interest and link it on discords. You guys are truly the best and we appreciate doing this for you. Yeah, Jake, Jake, you got to cut this. I keep talking.
00:55:15
Speaker
DOTA 2 DOTA 2 DOTA 2 DOTA 2 2