Out of that list, the one I like the most is
Dota 2. As for the others
League of Legends - I've played a very short amount of time, was not made to feel welcome, so I quit. It's an OK game, though.
Heroes of the Storm - I've played more of it. I think it's a better game than other DotA clones, since it differentiates a bit and it makes the matches easier and shorter. On the other hand, I stopped playing it because even with the matches being easy it seemed that most players just could not grasp the basics of them.
SMITE - I think it's pretty cool. I've not actually played it, however - a friend of mine did. The multiple modes and third person camera and stuff do seem interesting.
Heroes of Newerth - never played it. Heck, I've never even
seen it. It's just a game I've heard mentioned alongside DotA and LoL when enumerating games from the genre.
The Wykydtron said:
I remember the One True Drow Build (TM.) Shadow Blade directly after Sange & Yasha every game because my positioning is garbage and S&Y gives you some tank stats if I remember correctly then into Butterfly if I somehow get fed enough to get that 3000g item from the secret shop without dying.
I have probably made some DOTA players sad describing this probably terrible Mobafire tier build. I am sorry.
Not sad, but it brings back memories. Yes, the presence of Sange and Yasha does seem like the "one true build", alright. It used to be the single most overused item for quite a while, so it was included in all "true builds".
Here is the thing though - Sange and Yasha is a very, very beginner item to use. On the surface, it's actually good - you get health, damage, attack speed, movement speed. It's pretty useful to any character who attacks more than casting powers. So, more than half of the roster (most Strength or Agility characters). The problem with that is, it's expensive and you don't always need the movement/attack speed. The health might be nice, but glass cannons are not going to get
that much tougher. Glass cannons often rely on other defences instead of just tanking hits. And with that said, Sasha is expensive - it's ~3k for an OK but not that brilliant boost to stats.
What I've always liked is character builds - it goes outside of
Dota and the like but the concept is the same: you have a starting point and and end point for a build. Planning the end point is important but it's equally important to plan how to get there. For example a MOBA item build where you want "all the most expensive damage items" is cool in concept but it's hardly doable in practice. You need to buy some beginning gear, then upgrade, then go for something. There is limited money, item slots and time, so getting all the most expensive items is not that realistic. So you need a path to the endpoint that compliments it. And here is the thing - Sasha is a blocker in most cases. It's a dead end in the path, since when you get it, you still need to go and get other stuff.
So, with that said, a better build would probably be the following:
- Start with boots and wraith band or two. Chasing is really important as you can easily get early kills using frost arrow but you need the movement speed with that.
- you want to get three items early-ish - upgraded boots, Shadow Blade, yasha or crystalys. Depending on how you are with money you will choose between getting items towards either but Shadow Blade is probably top priority. And here is the beauty of builds - the items for these three are complimentary. You get Blade of Alacrity and it fits both the Yasha and the Shadow Blade recipes. You get the second tier agility item (the +6 agility basic item - forgot the name) and it fits both the boots recipe and Yasha. The same item is used for both Crystalys and Shadow Blade. This means that you can start building one item and quickly swap to another, depending on how things go.
- Shadow Blade is probably one of the best, since you can use it offensively and defensively. It gives a nice boost to damage, you can use it to chase people, surprise them by sneaking up behind or cloaking and leaving, if you will be overwhelmed. A lot of early-ish to mid, to even late game kills can be scored by simply doing one simple thing: cloak, go behind somebody, enable autocast of frost arrow - right-click. You can just do this all game, in fact, depending on when the other team realises this can be countered. Still, for lower-tier play, it's basically like using cheats.
- Yasha gives a nice boost to DPS with attack speed and damage, gives some useful movement speed and can later be turned into Manta Style for additional offensive and defensive capability. Now the tactic from before gets altered to "activate Manta Style" before right clicking. If attacked you can also summon the illusions who may also draw some fire. For lower-tier play, consider sending an illusion
first - watch the enemies empty all their cooldowns on it in terror then just stroll in with your other illusion and shoot them to death.
- Yasha could be turned into a Diffusal Blade, too, but most of the time you probably don't want that - frost arrows serve mostly the same function.
- Alternative to early Yasha is getting Crystalys for just raw damage and crits. It will later be upgraded to the next item[footnote]forgot the name of it. Just a bit of trivial: it used to be called "Buriza-Do Kyanon" in DotA: Allstars[/footnote] but it's more of a long-term goal.
- other item that might be useful is Mask of Death for life leech. It will allow you to regain health while still roaming. It could be left as is, or upgraded into either a plain Mask of Madness, for a serious short-temr speed boost or unto Satanic for extra survivability. Depends on how you are with money and what you need, really.
- end-game goal is getting butterfly. It's pretty much the perfect item.
- overall, drow is played as a physical glass cannon - she goes in and starts hitting until you die. The perfect targets are low-HP heroes who are melee or shorter ranged. This is due the best defence being offence - attack them and if they cannot fight back, then you don't really need to defend. Hence why raw damage through Yasha/Crystalys is good. Melee characters can be frost arrow-ed into being too slow to reach you - by the time they do, they'll either die or be close enough to death for you to be able to tank few hits until they die. Often enemies will just try to run away instead of engaging, which is why attacking from behind is so crucial - you want to be between them and their tower, so they need to get closer if they try to run. If they run in the opposite direction, they'll be taking the longer path, and you're good at chasing. In group engagements, you can pick off one or two low HP heroes in the beginning, or at least force their retreat. the most advantageous positions are off to the left/right of the enemy group or behind them (relative to where your team is attacking from), so should be out of reach from most of them but your target(s). Any other enemy hero that goes after you, would need to disengage from the main battle, and they'd be reluctant to.
I've not played
Dota 2 for nearly two years, so there might be some new builds in the meta that are different, however, this one should still work. Considering it has had very few changes for so long now, I don't anticipate this to fail. Also, I hope it illustrates some of the basic building techniques.
