Why Dota Is Better

AKA, a catchy title. But I really do think it's the superior game. Let me explain why.

I have now, over the years, sunk in about equal time in both games. About 2000 matches in League first, and then 1600 Dota 2 games. Having spent all that time in Dota, I tried coming back to play League occasionally and just can't do it. Here's a summary of why.

1. MOBILITY CREEP I've been on about this for a long-ass time. Here's a link to a thread on the old LoL forums where I delved into the math of Mobility Creep.

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3744640&page=1

The basic jist being, when the game first came out, only about 25% of the Champions in the pool had spells that granted mobility. Today, it's over 50%. I think Dota's, by comparison, is probably less than 10%. There are some INSANELY mobile Heroes in Dota, but the key part is, their mobility is core to their character. They cannot function without it. Many of these character have nothing BUT mobility spells, the rest are just passives.

Also, Flash ties into this. More on that later.

2. SUMMONER SPELLS (Flash) Again, I've been on about this for a long time. I think Summoner Spells and Runes/Masteries are more or less something Riot should have abandoned a long time ago, but my main gripe is Flash. It's just too good. It's so good that over 95% of all players use it. The entire point of the Summoner Spell system was to offer choice, but it's not a choice, because Flash offers more utility than anything else ever could. Riot could do SO MUCH to rebalance mobility creep and make early laning riskier by just removing Flash from the game and telling the players "Deal with it."

But they seem to be under the impression that if they remove Flash that the world will explode or something. I can't understand it.

Dota 2 has something similar to Flash. It's called Blink Dagger. Want to know why Dota's is balanced and League isn't?

Because you can't start the game with Blink Dagger. It doesn't give you a get-out-of-fail-free card in lane. It's an item, it's expensive, it takes up a slot while offering you NO STATS, only the ability to Blink. Also, it cannot be used if you've recently taken damage. No Flashing/Blinking over walls for you. It's primary usage is to allow initiators to jump into enemies to start fights, and it fits that role gloriously. It's not abused at all in the way Flash is. Spectate any Dota game and you'll only see maybe 1-2 people with a Blink per team. There are many character for whom a Blink Dagger is just straight up a horrible buy, because they can't really make use of it.

3. MESSING UP

I actually kind of understand this one, I just disagree with it. League of Legends is so much more forgiving of failure than Dota 2 is. If you mess up an ability it's ok, it'll be off cooldown in 10 seconds, and it didn't cost that much mana anyways. Oh you died? Don't worry, it's not a big deal, just come back and continue last hitting when you respawn.

In Dota 2, death has consequences beyond just missing out on experience and gold. You lose gold on death, which although frustrating at times, adds a huge layer of strategy when you realize you can actually use that as a weapon against your opponents. Killing a carry multiple times early isn't about getting yourself gold, it's about taking gold AWAY from the carry. You can literally STOP them from buying an item seconds before they were about to purchase it.

And when it comes to abilities, you can MASSIVELY screw up. Faceless Void's ultimate stuns EVERYTHING inside it, except for himself. He can accidentally stunlock his entire team. I have to admit I found it hilarious when Bard was released and the League community got it's first taste of an Ult that can actually be used incorrectly. You people don't even realize how common those sorts of things are in Dota. Some of the best ultimates in the game have cooldown of nearly 3 minutes and can easily be countered. You have to give HUGE amounts of considering to how and when you use the ability. More on that below.

4. STATS / SCALING

I never could have guessed how amazingly important the Stats mechanic was until I came back to League afterwards and saw what was misisng.

Personally, when I started League I loved their system. Ability Power was way more fun than "Strength" and "Agility", but over time, League started to shift away from it's original design. Ability Power was supposed to scale for all spells, and Attack Damage was only meant for Right Clicks. Then came Pantheon, and the age of the "AD Caster" followed. Soon Riot just scrapped their idea and said "EVERYTHING WILL SCALE WITH WHATEVER YOUR CHARACTER BUILDS". You do physical damage, you build AD, you do MORE physical damage.

The problem is that this creates stagnant gameplay. If an ability does about half of somebody's health early game, it's also going to do about half of their health late-game; because while they build Health and MR to counter you, you build AP and Magic Pen to counter them, and it all events out to mean ... absolutely nothing, except inflated numbers. Compare this to something like Dota, where a caster's high nukes are insanely powerful early game, but mean very little late game when people have bigger health pools or magic immunity. The nukes have their time and place to be useful, and your objective is to abuse that power while you can, not to just keep doing the same thing all game.

And then there's stats. You never realize how amazingly ingenious they are. It's a brilliant way to balance characters and particularly items. In case you aren't familair, here is how they work. Dota 2 has 3 stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence. Strength gives health and hp regen. Agility gives attack speed and armor. Intelligence gives mana and mana regen. Every Hero has a unique stat setup of how much they start with, and how much they gain per level. Also, they have a Primary attribute. Each point in your Primary also grants damage.

So you can have an item like Heart of Torrasque (Warmog's of Dota) and yet it isn't overpowered the way League's Warmog's has been for so long. Why? Because 40 Strength is not equally useful to all Heroes. Everyone gets health from it, but only Strength Heroes get damage, which makes it much more useful on that. (In case you were unaware, Dota 2 has a large roster of melee carries, many of them Strength-based)

The key difference is that stats make an item more useful or less useful, but never USELESSS. 40 Strength is still a good deal of health, even for non-Strength heroes. This is as opposed to League of Legends, where you can buy Ability Power and it will do literally NOTHING for your Champion unless they have abilities that scale with it.

5. MECHANICS / META

I think the cardinal sin of League is the homogenization. All the character just feel so similar now. All the carries play the same. Riot enforces their strict meta with an iron first, shaping champion and item balance to enforce it. If you look at the pick rates in the most recent tournaments (LoL World Champions 2014 and Dota International 2015) you'll find this... Dota 2 has 110 Heroes. Only 37 were NEVER PICKED during the Main Event. If you count the Group Stage, then only 24 were NEVER PICKED. League of Legends had 120 Champs at the time. 63 were NEVER PICKED. Over half.

That's a startling large amount of Champions who are irrelevant.

And the reasoning is understandable. Riot wants the game to be easy for new people to pick up, they want people to spend money unlocking Champions, and they want the game to be competitive, and the end goal is that ANY lineup which fits their strict meta will have what it takes to win the game.

The trouble is, the only way you can achieve that ridiculous dream is to homogenize the Champions into being so similar that they no longer have unique flavor. No carry brings to the table something another carry cannot bring, so the only one you will want to play is whichever one currently has better damage numbers.

I actually had a conversation with a co-worker who plays Dota but has never played League. He was asking what the Champions were like. When I mentioned that most single-target abilities were reworked so that almost everything is skillshots, he became very confused.

"I thought you said League of Legends was simpler? How can it be simpler if you have to aim everything?"

I had to think about that one for awhile, it's a seriously legit question. But I finally came up with an answer.

It's simpler because aiming is the ONLY thing you have to consider. Almost all the abilities in League these days boil down to two little things: it does some damage and maybe some light CC. Compared to Dota 2, players in League have to give almost no consideration to manacost, positioning, timing, or any special mechanics an ability might have. It's just about making sure you hit the skillshot.

Yet again last night, I was trying to play a match with an old friend, and we struggled to put into words what exactly the problem is.

League of Legends isn't simple. There are a lot of complicated things in this game. The trouble is they're just so boring.

I'd like to conclude with a recent article from PC Gamer about why Rubick from Dota represents what's great about the game. (In case you don't know, Rubick is a support character whose Ultimate allows him to steal enemy spells and cast them at his leisure.) http://www.pcgamer.com/why-rubick-represents-the-best-of-dota-2/