DOTA2 or LoL?

[Archer666]

Get Dota 2 if you want more complex and challenging gameplay. I play a ton of LoL but compared to Dota 2 it just feels like a watered down version of the latter. That and the way they sexualize 90% of their female roster. If you're gonna go down that road, then please give me sexualized male skins too. Where's my Sexy Fireman Graves, Beach Bunny Ezreal? Hell, I'm surprised that we didn't get a Naked Upper Body Draven...It'd fit his character too.


Also, LoL devs sometimes say silly stuff..

 

[Saviordd1]

I prefer DOTA2 to LoL but part of that is the community.

Plus if you ask around it's not that hard to get into DOTA for free.

 

[White_Lama]

Actually, if I were to count the times I've played 5v5 in LoL, in the hundreds of games I've played, maybe 10ish % has had a jungler

So it's not set in stone, it's all about what kind of team you get.

How about all games above 1400 elo?

Don't even know what 1400 elo means.

 

[Larcenist]

Your "skill rating" in LoL (and many other games as well, chess for example). When you hit level 20 queues there will not likely ever be a game without jungler anymore, and if it is it is simply because everyone instalocks top or mid lane.

The only thing that ever changes with the current LoL meta is where the dual lane goes; most common is bot for dragon control, sometimes top lane to shut down heavy snowballers such as Jax that need farm to scale well (this is usually done with a top laner that doesn't really need items to do well since he will play 1v2 as well, Olaf for example), and in rare cases mid lane for roaming pressure. Some troll setups adapt a dual jungle setup, often with a Nunu for his excellent counter jungle capabilities and a very agressive jungler such as Lee Sin. Other than this the only real variation in the meta is whether you go AD bruiser, AP assassin or Vladimir in top lane pretty much.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Don't even know what 1400 elo means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

It's just a way of ranking players relative to one another. Chess uses it. Starcraft uses it. I'm assuming since it's cropped up in this conversation either the LoL or DOTA matchmaker uses it as well.

 

[WoW Killer]

LoL devs sometimes say silly stuff

You can do a dramatic zoom on pretty much any post to make it look silly. Why are healers a good addition? In a lot of PvP games they tend to dominate the meta-game; if they're not OP it's usually because there's some specific anti-healing mechanism in there (e.g. Mortal Strike). There's only two Supports in SMITE right now, and they're both considered overpowered as Hel (see what I did there?). And they're only really semi-supports; there's been purposely no full blown healer character in there. Maybe it'd be great having healers, but it would undoubtedly change the meta in a big way.

Don't even know what 1400 elo means.

ELO = Electric Light Orchestra [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjPqsDU0j2I].

Or something like that...

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Get Dota 2 if you want more complex and challenging gameplay. I play a ton of LoL but compared to Dota 2 it just feels like a watered down version of the latter. That and the way they sexualize 90% of their female roster. If you're gonna go down that road, then please give me sexualized male skins too. Where's my Sexy Fireman Graves, Beach Bunny Ezreal? Hell, I'm surprised that we didn't get a Naked Upper Body Draven...It'd fit his character too.


Also, LoL devs sometimes say silly stuff..

Sexualizing LoL's female cast is half of the appeal of League, there is a lot more art on Pixiv of LoL than Dota.

 

[Atmos Duality]

LoL has a much easier learning curve than DotA2 at its most basic level.
It's a good introduction to MOBAs.

DotA2 is a much "deeper" mechanical game. There are fewer "faceroll" heroes and roles are less rigid.
Which isn't to say DotA2 is better "balanced" overtly*, ridiculous concepts and obvious skill imbalances still do poke through on occasion.

I like and dislike both of them for various reasons but I'm stuck with DotA2 since I cannot play LoL at all on my home connection. (due to my ISP interfering with some function of their client, causing it to take me 5-10 minutes to connect to a game. Once I do connect, it works perfectly fine, but I cannot feasibly play from that far behind.)

[sub]*(I personally find it to be better balanced but not overtly so on account of the average level of skill, or lack thereof of the playerbase...it's complicated but the simplest answer is that I've seen more instances of DotA2 rewarding odd underhanded tactics, whereas LoL seems to go out of its way to remove those)[/sub]

 

[WoW Killer]

It's not so hard to balance heros with healing powers. It gives players more to experiment with but healing abilities aren't always OP. Theres a lot of healing heros in DOTA 2, for example, (Enchantress, Omniknight, Chen, Huskar, Juggernaut, Necrolyte, Dazzle, Witch Doctor, and more), but heros that have them aren't OP. Mek is pretty much the only heal you are going to see 100% in a pro match. Out of those aforementioned heros only Enchantress, Chen and maybe Dazzle are popular picks.

And I guess Naix if you count his Open Wounds as a heal for teammates, he almost never gets through pick/ban untouched these days.

Has it become standard to take a healer amongst pro teams? Not that that would be game-breaking even then, I mean the same is true of tanks in SMITE (and I presume other MOBAs?). You can run without a tank, but you can be fairly sure in a high ranked game the team without a tank is going to lose. It's hard to say for the supports in SMITE, as there's only the two; Hel is on perma-ban right now, which only leaves Ra (a very common pick; he'd probably be banned more if there weren't problematic tanks like Sobek and Herc).

Not such a direct comparison, but looking back to WoW. At one point healers were the main force in Arenas. To balance it out, Bliz gave a few more classes some kind of Mortal Strike type ability. The meta then shifts to "how are you going to handle the healer". That's what I mean about them dominating the meta-game; it's not that they're always going to be OP, but that their existence starts to play a major role in deciding team compositions. Anti-healers can become a character type in and of themselves. It's a theme I've picked up on in a few MMOs; there's usually hard-coded ways to deal with healers, and the whole meta starts to get a bit rock-paper-scissors-ey.

Again, tanks play an important role in the meta-game too, so it's not that it can't all be balanced correctly. But I can understand if a dev wouldn't want to include them; if the meta seems to be working fine as it is, then you risk changing everything by putting them in.

 

[linkmastr001]

Personally I like LoL more. Dota2 just has a lot of frustrating mechanics in it and the much smaller amount of champions makes it get a lot more repetitive for me

LoL: 109 Champions and counting.
Dota 2: 96 Heroes with 15 still in development, 2 about to be released, which totals at 111.

More or less even, really.

If you're going to count champs in development, you should count them for LoL too, who has 8-10 champs in development at a given time, one of whom will be released soon, making their total at least 117.

OT: I prefer LoL personally, after having played both, but I would suggest you try them each out yourself. Currently, DOTA 2 costs money to get into, but I have several free copies if anyone wants one (just PM me). Here's Why:

With LoL, overall I like how most of the champs and the map are balanced, one of my issues with DoTA being that both sides aren't mirrored, so I feel one side is always at a distinct advantage, while with LoL you could draw a line across the map and find it's symmetric. Are they both perfect? no, but LoL's is closer. Also, LoL has a Mastery and Rune system which allows further customization of your character to better match their role, fix any issues you have with a champion, or to help you have a champion go outside of their normal role. There are also two special spells (called Summoner Spells) you can have access to and can be potent additions to your arsenal.

DoTA 2 is still in beta, so it is hard to make true judgements on it until it is released. For example, right now all champs are available at the get go, but I feel that is only until they release it, since they need people to test the champs. However, there are mechanics they have that I don't like, for example, the multiple shops. There are two shops that they have, a "secret shop", which has some exclusive items, and a side shop and standard shop at your base, which has it's own exclusive items. I find it annoying to have to manage the two myself. On a more positive, related note, I do like the Courier and how you can purchase items in lane and have them shipped to you. I don't like how you have to run back to base if you need to recover. My biggest issue with DoTA currently though, is the gold loss on death. I currently feel DoTA games are determined way too often in the first 5 minutes of the game due to that simple mechanic, whereas in LoL, you can turn around a game you're losing in the mid or late game.

TL;DR I prefer LoL, but suggest you try both and pick the one you prefer more.

EDIT: Oh, another thing I don't like about DoTA is the mana pool, the resource available to most champs to use their abilities. It's just waaay too small. In both games, you can only use a few abilities in the early game before it's depleted, but in DoTA this is always the case, while in LoL, every champ will be able to use their abilities many times at the higher levels without needing extra mana or mana regeneration. Another thing I don't like about DoTA are the stats, there are only three: Strength, Agility, and Intellect. There are also three types of champs, one for each stat. Each of those champs should, for the most part, only build their respective stat since it gives them everything they could ever want.

 

[Uszi]

@SmashLovesTitanQuest @WoWKiller

Smite and LoL have a scaling system where spells become more powerful with item purchases as the game goes on. LoL has AP and Smite has, what, magic power, or something.

Anyway, DotA does not have this. By definition, all characters that rely on abilities taper off towards the end of the game because there is no scaling, and this is also true of heals. When you hit the end of a long game, Dazzle's 140 HP heal [http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Dazzle] in and of itself is not going to save someone who's eating 1200 damage criticals from a fed Phantom Assassin [http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Phantom_assassin].

By design, just about any intelligence hero becomes a support late game to set up kills for characters that scale better into the end. Doesn't matter how good you play as Lina or Lion or Witch Doctor, if the game goes on long enough you cannot carry your team.

A lot of the Heals in LoL got nerfed due to AP scaling, if I remember. In my time playing I know Nidalee and Kayle took really hard hits to their heals, and that's because with AP scaling these skills become broken. I also love AP Gangplank [http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Gangplank] specifically because his heal, Remove Scurvey, hasn't been nerfed because AP Gangplank is a stupid build. But it's not hard to heal for 8000 HP for 65 mana every 11 seconds if you get fed as AP Gangplank.

 

[Vigormortis]

Spoiler: Shrunk using convenient space-saving forum technique...

- Fortunately it's not a subjective subject where you can agree or disagree. We have win rates for both games, and LoL has a lower cealing and a higher baseline for win percentage having also more heroes. That is more balanced is a math fact, what you are arguing I think are the reasons, which i didn't delved into.

Wait, maybe it's how you typed that, but I'm not getting what you're saying. Are you implying LoL is more "balanced"
because it has more heroes? Because, if you are, that's ludicrous.

Besides, it's irrelevant anyway as both Riot AND Valve tend to spend mostly equal amounts of effort in balancing.

- Yeah, but only at it's most basic level. I would assume anyone who thinks himself decent at dota knows all the heroes, skills, posible roles, has map awarness and the optimal builds and niche builds for his core heroes. LoL i can't comment, because i just play it once in a while with friends, know it well enough but aren't good enough to be insightful.

From my experience, and from that of people I know who regularly play both Dota 2 and LoL, victory in LoL is often independent of the tactics and teamplay of those playing in any given match and more on the awareness of the rigid meta-game "rules".

This makes the game far more "forgiving", in principle, to new players. And, given that, it would be the game I recommend first to any curious new players.

However, the limited options presented to a new player are quite off-putting. I particularly hate to have to tell new LoL players that they can't pick every hero they want but rather have to buy or "unlock" most of them. (which is really lame)

- Note that i said shit about "players", I said teams. The best DotA players lose on a regular basis when playing pub matches, so? This is all about the team, take the WCG for example, Tong Fu won convincingly over iG and LGD on WCIII DotA because Tong Fu were more focused and up to date in the WCIII DotA mechanics and metagame, but AFAIK they have NEVER win against LGD and iG in DotA2, certanly not a whole torunament over the other two.

Granted, but your example is on teams facing off in Dota and Dota 2, not Dota 2/Dota versus LoL; which was what your previous example was about.

What I was referencing was tournament wherein a handful of top-tier Dota teams were to face off against a handful of top-tier LoL teams in each respective game. The caveat being each team had only played one of the games before. I.E. the Dota teams had never played LoL and the LoL teams had never played Dota.

Each team was given maybe a week at most to "practice" each game in preparation.

By the end of the tournament, the Dota teams collectively racked up more wins in both games than the LoL teams had. (by a small margin, though) That's all I was saying.

- In pubs every carry is op (even if it's ture that Drow and Sven are particulary good at snowballing and stupidly easy to play), the lower you go the worse because they will be left alone to freefarm and the support players are not good enough to shut them down early either. You could also have said for example "Necrolyte, Luna and PL are OP". In the tournament scene Sven is certanly not OP, nor I would think Centaur but he aint in CM so who knows, Drow... might be nerfed not because he can get fat (every carry can) but because her global aura for ranged heroes; I am very doubtful they will be nerfed soon. In the pro scene I would say Wisp, Batrider, Nerubian Assassin and PL are too strong, but after the recent patch PL might drop a little probably replaced by Magnataur.

No, a carry only becomes "op" if it's over-fed. And, this only happens if you have the combination of a decent player (as the carry) and a bad opposing team that fails to understand the principle of slowing an opposing carry.

Sven most certainly is OP in the tourney scene. He's a very strong pick, namely because of the buff Valve gave to his ultimate. (going from 200% to 300% at level 3) I've regularly seen Sven decimate opposing teams off of cleave damage alone, even while he's at an equivalent or lower level.

And last I looked, in some tourneys, Drow is out-right banned as it's almost impossible to push against her in any given lane. Namely due to the combination of her global aura and her ultimate; the latter of which grants an insane amount of bonus agility.

Again, I've had Drows in my matches hit 200+ agility before they pass level 16. That's ridiculous.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I prefer LoL a lot more than Dota 2 so far but I haven't put a lot of time into Dota 2 to be certain but certain design decisions about it bug the fuck out of me. To me the excuse that is was in Dota so it must be in Dota 2 doesn't fly with me. I would love if all the crap killstreak and death stuff was taken out of it. Now not the gold loss that is fine just the X pwned Y and all the obnoxious killstreak titles as I hated it in every other game that has it so I will not like it here and it makes the game seem much less mature. You would think it would have a certain level of maturity if it is supposed to be a big E sport title and I personally don't want it being an e sport title with that crap. That is just my opinion on it and I accept that I am not fully right it just annoys me a lot.

The mini map is placed in an awful spot. Hopefully there is an option to change this put in eventually as no one should have to adapt to obtuse or badly laid out interfaces. From clicking on the minimap on the Radiant team I've had to change my settings to give me a grace period of a few seconds to delay movement from accidental map clicks and while it is great having the option to do this I shouldn't have to.

I have liked the things like the couriers and while annoying to get the hang of the denying is another nice aspect. So as others have said I'd try both for awhile and then see which one you like and as I said I am still trying out Dota 2 but these are my first impressions of the game.