Appropriate itemization that allows almost every champion to be viable.
This is not a thread saying that DotA is superior to League of Legends or that Riot is doing a bad job. What I am trying to get at is that in DotA items are available for all sorts of roles, whereas in League new items are more aimed toward strengthening that which is already good.
Is this bad?
No, but it's not good either. Adding new items to strengthen characters that are already strong pushes them ahead of the weaker characters. This makes it more difficult to bring the weaker heroes up to par with the strong. Sure kit balance has a large impact on this, but something noticed across the board as a whole is that while some heroes may have weaker kits than others in DotA, it is made up for through appropriate itemization.
People often times think that the solution to making characters better would be buffing their kits directly, but that is not so. Adding an item that gives them something they need can go a long way into balancing them overall.
Also I know that DotA does not exactly represent the epitome of how to make a character because I know that a lot of them are pretty ridiculous (looking at you Faceless Void), but the concept of providing enough unique itemization to the point where each champion can get the things they need remains the same.
I know that the S3 patch just arrived and that Riot is hard at work balancing the patch. Riot, you're doing a good job so keep it up! However, hopefully, once everything in this patch is more balanced, maybe you can take a look into this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MathMage
Lord Housewife, your OP would be vastly improved if you gave some examples to support your thesis, rather than just stating your thesis and assuming its truth, so that you can spend 3/4 of the post saying...well, nothing interesting.
Let's take Riot's S3 itemization changes as an example. How, in your opinion, did they make changes that strengthened that which was already good, as opposed to strengthening champs that were not good before the patch?
Because I look at Black Cleaver and see a rejuvenation of overlooked champs like Talon, Pantheon, Urgot, and MF (to be fair, this comes along with champs like Riven, Renekton, and Lee Sin who were strong before the change). I look at Runaan's Hurricane and see love for previously maligned ranged champs with heavy onhit aspects, like Varus and Twitch. I also see changes to Wit's End, Phage, Trinity Force, and Ionic Spark (to Statikk Shiv, basically) as penalizing previously strong champs like Jax, Irelia, Ezreal, and Shen.
So does Riot really make item changes to strengthen that which is already strong? Does your thesis hold in the face of recent evidence?
Alright, I'll start with something that almost everyone knows.
Sheepstick is a very strong item in DotA, providing a unique disable that, contrary to its name, turns your target into a chicken with 100 movement speed for 3.5 seconds.
This renders them unable to do anything except for move. Although this item provides intelligence, a mage stat, it is actually beneficial on more than just mages as it provides you with a bit of strength and agility as well as the amazing effect.
Moving on, Lothar's Edge (now known as Shadow Blade) is an item that provides you with stealth for 12 seconds as well as extra movement speed, attack damage, and attack speed. If you attack to break the stealth, you deal an additional 150 damage on that hit.
This item serves many purposes across many different roles. Assassination, escape, catching up to fleeing enemies, and protection during channeled abilities are some of the things this item helps in carrying out. One of the most notable examples is Crystal Maiden activating this item after activating her ultimate. This ensures that she is be able to deal as much damage as possible with her ult provided that the enemy team does not have Dust, Gem, Vision Wards, or a level 3 Necronomicon. Although Crystal Maiden is a caster and this item provides stats you would expect to find on a carry, the active alone makes this item an interesting and fairly good choice for her.
Now for the infamous BKB (Black King Bar). This item places you in what is called the Avatar state (not joking) which renders you completely immune to all magical abilities. Whether it is a heal from your allied Chen or the Finger of Death from Lion, neither will affect you. The duration of the buff and cooldown is lowered every time the item is used.
This item is THE item that makes melee carries effective. By being rendered completely immune to magical abilities, a large amount of CC is stopped from affecting you. This means that during this time you are able to get up close to the enemy without having to worry about their CC (there are abilities that do go through this item though as there is something known as Superior Magical Abilities in DotA which penetrates magical immunity). However, this item does not just serve the purpose of strengthening a carry's ability to fight. It can also be used in a similar fashion as Lothar's Edge, to provide safe channeling on characters like Crystal Maiden and Witch Doctor. However, something else that isn't as widely known is that if Terrorblade ults while this item was active, his health is unaffected. This means that if you are 100% health and your ally is about to die, you can activate this item and ult. Normally your health would be swapped, but with BKB both you and your ally would be at 100%.
Another worth mentioning is Blink Dagger which is basically like flash except longer range and a 14 second CD, but is disabled for 3 seconds after taking damage from an enemy hero or Roshan. It also costs mana to use like most other activated items.
This item is good on many heroes despite not providing any stats whatsoever. This is due to the fact that the effect is powerful and provides great mobility around the map.
Yes, some ultimate effects do bypass BKB, but DotA has historically always been highly dependent on it to act as a panacea against potential balance edge cases. It's also worth noting that the STR/AGI/INT system borrowed from Warcraft 3 often forces suboptimal builds, which adds some flavor, and that all champions benefit from increased AD (not just ADC).
Even so, I'd actually point at Teleport Scrolls and Bottle/Runes as being the two mechanics that keep most champions viable. The former allows quick lane swaps and team mobility, while the latter makes mobility and map control of the river just as important as lane control.
To be fair, Flash is one of the mechanics in this game that keep a lot of champions viable. Furthermore, Flash with Cleanse is the only thing that is keeping a lot of AD carries viable.
I'd also like to mention that gold is a lot harder to acquire in DotA as you do not gain as much gold per second, there are no GP/10 items, and creeps can be denied by the enemy team which also contributes to suboptimal builds as you really have to build what you can rather than what you want in most cases.
It's very difficult to determine relative worth of items in DotA as high-tiered items tend to be very gold-inefficient, but good players in carry roles tend to average 500-600 GPM (which from a raw count, tends to be higher than League's average; however, I generally consider League and DotA to have very similar gold valuations). I'd say that overall, deaths included, the gold economy isn't too different for non-support champs.
And yes, Flash is indeed an equalizing mechanic in LoL.
With the exception of Tide's and Puck's ultimates, ALL ult-CC goes through BKB, no exceptions.
I also disagree on the sub-optimal builds thing, in general, though I'd like to hear more from you on this---specific examples please?
Also, one thing DotA has that LoL doesn't; viable melee carries and lots of them----LoL only has 3 melee carries (GP became a bruiser long ago), and their viability is highly questionable at the moment (especially when compared to ranged)---heck, we even had to wait nearly 2.5 years to get that 3rd one to boot---kinda upsets me (and support players say they're ignored).
Suboptimal builds are a big part of DotA itemization. Ever seen a Heart of Tarrasque on an INT or Satanic on an AGI? A big part of DotA's itemization is, again, the STR/AGI/INT system, which allows bundling of massive stat bonuses without much second thought. Remember that STR gives health and health regeneration, AGI gives attack speed and armor, and INT gives mana and mana regeneration. In addition that, your primary stat also gives AD, so if you were a STR-primary champ for example, you'd get health, health regeneration, and AD when purchasing STR. Because so many items make use of these stats, most players don't tend to wrap their heads fully around an item's full benefits. And even while every character can utilize each stat's secondary benefits to different extents, buying a non-primary stat and missing out on the AD is still a big deal because of how important AD is to every character in the game. A big reason DotA's itemization tends to blend so well with its characters is because of how incredibly generalized all of the items tend to be due to that system. You're always getting a little bit of everything.
League doesn't have bundled stats; everything is separate and explicit. You could imagine how broad the itemization would be if everything was like a little chunk of Trinity Force.
The one thing that DotA has that League doesn't
This is not a thread saying that DotA is superior to League of Legends or that Riot is doing a bad job. What I am trying to get at is that in DotA items are available for all sorts of roles, whereas in League new items are more aimed toward strengthening that which is already good.
Is this bad?
No, but it's not good either. Adding new items to strengthen characters that are already strong pushes them ahead of the weaker characters. This makes it more difficult to bring the weaker heroes up to par with the strong. Sure kit balance has a large impact on this, but something noticed across the board as a whole is that while some heroes may have weaker kits than others in DotA, it is made up for through appropriate itemization.
People often times think that the solution to making characters better would be buffing their kits directly, but that is not so. Adding an item that gives them something they need can go a long way into balancing them overall.
Also I know that DotA does not exactly represent the epitome of how to make a character because I know that a lot of them are pretty ridiculous (looking at you Faceless Void), but the concept of providing enough unique itemization to the point where each champion can get the things they need remains the same.
I know that the S3 patch just arrived and that Riot is hard at work balancing the patch. Riot, you're doing a good job so keep it up! However, hopefully, once everything in this patch is more balanced, maybe you can take a look into this.
Let's take Riot's S3 itemization changes as an example. How, in your opinion, did they make changes that strengthened that which was already good, as opposed to strengthening champs that were not good before the patch?
Because I look at Black Cleaver and see a rejuvenation of overlooked champs like Talon, Pantheon, Urgot, and MF (to be fair, this comes along with champs like Riven, Renekton, and Lee Sin who were strong before the change). I look at Runaan's Hurricane and see love for previously maligned ranged champs with heavy onhit aspects, like Varus and Twitch. I also see changes to Wit's End, Phage, Trinity Force, and Ionic Spark (to Statikk Shiv, basically) as penalizing previously strong champs like Jax, Irelia, Ezreal, and Shen.
So does Riot really make item changes to strengthen that which is already strong? Does your thesis hold in the face of recent evidence?
Sheepstick is a very strong item in DotA, providing a unique disable that, contrary to its name, turns your target into a chicken with 100 movement speed for 3.5 seconds.
This renders them unable to do anything except for move. Although this item provides intelligence, a mage stat, it is actually beneficial on more than just mages as it provides you with a bit of strength and agility as well as the amazing effect.
Moving on, Lothar's Edge (now known as Shadow Blade) is an item that provides you with stealth for 12 seconds as well as extra movement speed, attack damage, and attack speed. If you attack to break the stealth, you deal an additional 150 damage on that hit.
This item serves many purposes across many different roles. Assassination, escape, catching up to fleeing enemies, and protection during channeled abilities are some of the things this item helps in carrying out. One of the most notable examples is Crystal Maiden activating this item after activating her ultimate. This ensures that she is be able to deal as much damage as possible with her ult provided that the enemy team does not have Dust, Gem, Vision Wards, or a level 3 Necronomicon. Although Crystal Maiden is a caster and this item provides stats you would expect to find on a carry, the active alone makes this item an interesting and fairly good choice for her.
Now for the infamous BKB (Black King Bar). This item places you in what is called the Avatar state (not joking) which renders you completely immune to all magical abilities. Whether it is a heal from your allied Chen or the Finger of Death from Lion, neither will affect you. The duration of the buff and cooldown is lowered every time the item is used.
This item is THE item that makes melee carries effective. By being rendered completely immune to magical abilities, a large amount of CC is stopped from affecting you. This means that during this time you are able to get up close to the enemy without having to worry about their CC (there are abilities that do go through this item though as there is something known as Superior Magical Abilities in DotA which penetrates magical immunity). However, this item does not just serve the purpose of strengthening a carry's ability to fight. It can also be used in a similar fashion as Lothar's Edge, to provide safe channeling on characters like Crystal Maiden and Witch Doctor. However, something else that isn't as widely known is that if Terrorblade ults while this item was active, his health is unaffected. This means that if you are 100% health and your ally is about to die, you can activate this item and ult. Normally your health would be swapped, but with BKB both you and your ally would be at 100%.
Another worth mentioning is Blink Dagger which is basically like flash except longer range and a 14 second CD, but is disabled for 3 seconds after taking damage from an enemy hero or Roshan. It also costs mana to use like most other activated items.
This item is good on many heroes despite not providing any stats whatsoever. This is due to the fact that the effect is powerful and provides great mobility around the map.
Even so, I'd actually point at Teleport Scrolls and Bottle/Runes as being the two mechanics that keep most champions viable. The former allows quick lane swaps and team mobility, while the latter makes mobility and map control of the river just as important as lane control.
I'd also like to mention that gold is a lot harder to acquire in DotA as you do not gain as much gold per second, there are no GP/10 items, and creeps can be denied by the enemy team which also contributes to suboptimal builds as you really have to build what you can rather than what you want in most cases.
And yes, Flash is indeed an equalizing mechanic in LoL.
I also disagree on the sub-optimal builds thing, in general, though I'd like to hear more from you on this---specific examples please?
Also, one thing DotA has that LoL doesn't; viable melee carries and lots of them----LoL only has 3 melee carries (GP became a bruiser long ago), and their viability is highly questionable at the moment (especially when compared to ranged)---heck, we even had to wait nearly 2.5 years to get that 3rd one to boot---kinda upsets me (and support players say they're ignored).
League doesn't have bundled stats; everything is separate and explicit. You could imagine how broad the itemization would be if everything was like a little chunk of Trinity Force.