How come Dota2's champion diversity pool is so high in competitive matches

you lovemee·8/26/2015, 6:01:56 AM·9 votes·4,512 views
The International 2015 - Picks and Bans - DOTABUFF - Dota 2 Stats

Every single champion is picked at least once (not including bans) at TI5 while the most contested champion has a P+B of 94% with win rate at 49% and second most contested is at 89% with win rate at 52%. I hope this year's World Championship we will see something close to this every single champion picked at least once and no more than 4 champions has a P+B rate higher than 80%

31 Comments

CrazedPorcupine8/26/2015, 7:08:31 AM9 votes

Also, Dota 2's ban phase allows more strategic bans. They do 3 phases of banning for a total of 5 bans for each team. This means that often, lower popularity heroes are picked, because they fill a strategic niche that more popular heroes taht got banned also fill.

Rebonack8/26/2015, 6:16:13 AM8 votes

It's because IceFrog isn't afraid of making wildly unique heroes with abilities that would cause the forums here to have a meltdown if that kind of stuff made it into League. For the most part, DotA heroes all have a thing which they are best at that no other hero can really fill in for. The same can't be said of many League champions, unfortunately.

Ferrous Oxide8/26/2015, 6:58:39 AM6 votes

Mostly this is because of WHY league has a meta in the first place, A lot of people know what leagues meta is, but not why it is VVVVV

As everyone knows League of Legends has Baron and Dragon, Baron at the top of the map and Dragon at the bottom.

Middle Lane is the shortest lane this means that champions that go to middle lane will level faster than either of the side lanes due to minions reaching them sooner, champions that are strong in the mid game are best in the mid lane so they can get that power spike and try to influence the game from there such as your assassins, it is also the safest lane due to no close in bushes, and it is the shortest lane, this means your immobile, strong in the mid game mages are good in the mid lane.

Top lane is far away from any early game objectives (Dragon) and it is a long lane so relatively unsafe for squishy champions that would be vulnerable to being ganked, so tanky champions generally go top lane, these are also the champions that have high impact in a team fight with CC and thus Teleport became Meta. Champs that are good top lane are ones that are strong with farm because it is so isolated that they can just farm and farm and farm, if the jungler comes up to gank that leaves Dragon open.

Bottom Lane has two champions because it gives increased protection around the early game Dragon objective, however in order to take advantage of all of Leagues resources effectively one of those champions needs to be someone that is good throughout the game without needing gold, (supports) and one of them needs to be able to have a late game influence, ADCs do extremely well with large amounts of gold, and are vulnerable in the early game, so they go bot with someone to protect them.

DOTA doesnt have the same style of objective control and gold resource management needs VVVVVV

As for DOTA on the other hand you have the two sets of ancients in the jungle, (basically like old dragon) situated so they arent in the river and instead are each slightly towards either end of the map, which means that you dont need a particular set of champions in certain areas in order to guard them from enemies. The jungle is not mirrored in DOTA either, they are shaped different for blue and red side, while red side has a better path for farming, blue side is better situated for ganking. However thats assuming you even have a jungler in the first place, the jungle is not a friendly place in DOTA, killing even the easiest of camps is impossible for most champs in DOTA at level one, and even the champions that are considered Junglers sometimes dont even start jungling until they've been in lane for 1-2 levels.

There are very few champions that actually have abilities that scale with items, and instead almost all abilities are base damage only. In dota there are three stats, and even if a champions main stat is intelligence, building intelligence items increases the damage of their auto attacks (as well as increasing their mana, agility increases attack speed and strength increases hp) This means that champion picks are not often influenced by items because you dont have to worry about any scaling, and choosing what item you want becomes purely about what sort of utility you want.

Abilities in DOTA cost a huge amount of mana compared to league, to the point where even the mages will only be able to cast all of their abilities 3 times before running out, so team comps are made around quick wombo combos instead of being able to plan for extended fights making nearly any champion viable in a certain team comp.

EDIT: Though take what I say about DOTA with a grain of salt, I dont like the game, it's way too luck based with almost every item giving your character some sort of luck stat so I stopped playing it a long time ago.

TraakSC8/26/2015, 6:03:10 AM5 votes

Not sure but Dota2 sucks.

Meep Man8/26/2015, 4:20:29 PM4 votes

It's because Dota 2 has so many extremes with each hero that it is almost impossible for one hero to be better than another and entirely not worth picking.

Also, guys this is a serious thing here. How can you say Dota 2 sucks when their competitive hero pool numbers double ours? Can we not accept both LoL and Dota 2 are good in their own ways?

LaughingStapler8/26/2015, 6:56:51 AM4 votes

Dota 2 has a lot more strategic depth and thus more of its roster has a place to shine.

MLDzXnRRR8/26/2015, 7:33:09 AM3 votes

I like that the mana resource bar means something - people even buy items that convert hp to mana - if you buy mana in LOL, you will probably feed, because the other laner is getting dmg or tank stats (no bs like Riven or the other spammy casters)

lightdragoon888/26/2015, 6:05:59 AM2 votes

Cause every DOTA champ have 10 second stuns or can one shot.

But really it is because there is no set "meta" Unlike League where we have the 1 top, 1 jungle, 1 mid (usually a mage or assassin) and an ADC/Support bot lane, Dota 2 champs can go pretty much anywhere.

MLDzXnRRR8/26/2015, 6:15:09 AM2 votes

Heroes in DOTA can go to any lane and few can survive the jungle, so you often see trilanes that protect the freefarming carry (who is often melee, not marksman like in LOL).

Earl Eulrich8/26/2015, 4:45:05 PM1 votes

It´s absolutly not. maybe rewatch TI 5..the pick&ban phase had been incredible similar in about every game (firstpick leshrac if not banned, otherwise gyrocopter. If Gyro is taken take Lina...) the only reason why Dota diversity appears better is because they have a much better pick&ban-phase + with the qualifier tournament and the double-elimination they have a much broader variety of teams, leading to more niche-picks. Higher up in the tournament though the (viable) Champion-pool is slimmer than LoLs. So the balancing in Dota is by no means better than in LoL, but pick&ban-phase and tournament-mode are sth. LoL really could learn from.

JustBoneBrook8/26/2015, 4:12:22 PM1 votes

DOTA 2 is just bling bling mecanique and hard gameplay to make the game not fun to play (good in his way but bad for the most ppl that way league of legend got so much more player)

Xonra8/26/2015, 4:38:09 PM1 votes

How come this is LoL and not the same game?

  • Different devs
  • Different items
  • Different heroes/champs, whatever you want to call them.
  • Different balance philosophies
  • Less need for weekly/bi-weekly balance in Dota compared to LoL (Dota doesn't have a weekly League in the same fashion as League, so balance is very different for different reasons).

You are comparing two games that are barely the same on the surface, and completely different the further you look at them realistically.