I reached Gold on League and the season is almost over. I have almost no motivation to play during the off-season, but I'm gonna be active again during S4. Til then, I think I'm going to start playing Dota 2 starting this weekend.

If anyone has played League and then transitioned, what are the main differences? Ranked in League is just stressful and the community's personalities are generally awful. Just looking to play this to have fun.

dota has a steeper learning curve but it's more rewarding imo.

Itemization and learning the metagame, especially learning a new set of 100+ heroes. Mechanics also feel much different than League's.

meta is a bit of a loose term on dota. there is no single optimum strat and a lot of the heroes can be played very differently. i know you're referring to real metagame and not "1337 comp strats" but just thought i'd throw this in here. :D

http://puu.sh/4yhGN.jpg

Don't bother "Crono", he's not even good at LoL man, can't expect him to know about dota 2's scene.

I see you didn't read the rest of the thread, did you?

All of your posts are about me, it makes me feel really popular, bro-guy.

You do realize Crono is in the "very high" matchmaking bracket and regularly shows up on the first couple pages of the live games list, right? That's like the rough equivalent of diamond in LoL, plat at the very least.

crono play wc3 dota with me, cant run dota2 on my toaster

ill learn lina really hard champ

its ok, he wasnt trying to be a smartass or smth. wasn't rly wrong either.

he was talking to talon. he said "crono" because he's my irl bro and normally calls me by my real name.

vs newbies it's kind of easy to land the stun. good hero to learn though, teaches you a lot of basic mechanics (farming mid with wave, landing an aoe spell with a long cast time, utilizing ulti, etc). just don't play her as support ;)

I played through 56% (or something) of the tutorial mode last night and my observations as a first-time player coming from LoL are:

• Hero abilities seem much more simple on Dota. AD/AP "scaling" on League is hard to understand and not defined (unless you look at the wiki) so Dota is easier to understand in that way.
• There are a whole lot of very similar champions. I played Sniper in my first game, which is basically Caitlyn. His E works like Tristana's passive. His ult is practically the exact same thing as Cait's, too. I played the frost archer chick too, basically the same concept as Ashe with that Q ability. That makes it easy.
• There is a whole lot more CC in this game. Against bots on League, I can run into 4 of them and go full ****** and get a quadra. In this, you will get pinned down and die without even putting out much damage it seems.
• The "secret shop" is a unique concept that LoL doesn't incorporate.
• Couriers are very interesting, another thing LoL doesn't have.
• On League, I mainly play AD and often alternate between unlocked and locked camera during a teamfight to keep track of myself and to kite better. You can't do that in Dota.

It'll take me a while to get used to it. It seems like there are a lot more keys you need to make use of compared to what I use in League. The biggest differences to me so far are just the keys, the UI layout, and the fact that you have to actually actively purchase items while involved in stuff on the map.

I'd disagree about spells being more simple. Maybe it's because I haven't played LoL long enough to know the heros.
ex: Visage's Ult/Meepo's Ult, Chen/Enchantress's jungle, io/furion global prescence.

As someone who's played both LoL and Dota I'd say LoL's spells are more simple. Riot tries to avoid making any complicated abilities that are hard to understand and "anti fun", and pretty much the only innovation they do nowadays is a new type of skillshot.

Dota, on the other hand, has all sorts of crazy stuff.

I'm probably wrong but out of the 6 or 7 heroes I've played so far, that's all I know. I've mostly played ranged heroes like Sniper and Viper and they seem insanely straightforward and simple as far as their skills go. Does LoL have more skill shots than what Dota has? Haven't seen any thus far.

lol those heroes are extremely passive.

dota has micro-intensive heroes (visage, enchantress, chen, enigma spawns if you plan on using the hero correctly, etc) that requires a high amount of skill. more so than skillshots.

as for skillshots mirana's arrow, pudge hook, clockwerk ulti, and etc are pretty much the origin of skillshots as they predate the existence of the dota clones (hon, lol, etc).

if you really want to fist yourself try playing chen. probably one of the highest skillcaps in the game. visage is pretty tricky but you can generally whiff the birds but still win due to your strong skillset.

LoL has more skillshots.

But Dota has way harder heroes- try learning invoker or meepo lol.