Tensei

And suddenly you're behind their creep waves and in tower range. Yup. I have actually played both games, and the HoN playing style where the solo mid is expected to control the game through ganks simply doesn't work in LoL. Solo mid in LoL is considered a lane for AP carries where they can farm up quickly through CS.

Ok sure you go walking around trying to get kills on people who flash away all day and I'll just go farm and we'll see who does better. The only champion archetype this doesn't apply to are Junglers and Supports. If you're playing any other Champion, well, hope you like PvE!

What? It's simple math. Minions give about ~25 gold. There's 6 minions in a wave (leaving siege minions out of the equation), which amounts to a potential 150 gold per wave. Waves spawn once every thirty seconds. Given the extremely generous assumption that walking over to another lane, waiting for the right time, and succesfully ganking an enemy hero takes 1 minute, that still amounts to only about 200~ gold per minute (minus gold ticks), vs. a potential 300~ gold per minute from staying in lane. Note that I'm making huge assumptions on how the gank will be quick and succesful, and you will get the last hit instead of an assist, so feel free to adjust that generous 200 GPM from ganking downwards if you want to be more realistic. Contrast to HoN where you can get 250 gold per creep wave, but enemies can deny creeps, hero kills yield about 300 gold, and the deficit enemy heroes get from gold loss by dying makes laning and ganking more or less equally attractive. Not to mention that HoN doesn't have a free panic escape button built-in on every hero and CC lasts about twice as long, which all contributes to making ganking a lot more powerful and reliable. E: in DotA 2 related news, good to see that Chen (Ophelia) is ridiculous in this game as well.

Typing as I'm watching: - Really cool hero select/ban UI. When you pick a hero, a big moving CG video appears with that heroes face. - Absolutely awesome hero designs. It's a very stylized look without being all ~anime~. Valve pulls it off beautifully. Both Mirana and Anti-Mage are now kinda human looking (rather than Night Elves), but they look really awesome. More importantly, Mirana still has her tiger mount. The only hero redesign I dislike more than the original or HoN equivalent has to be Earthshaker who looks like some kind of muppet gorilla. - Game pacing is much closer to HoN than LoL, especially with how smooth the animations are, but stylistically the graphics feels closer to LoL. It's quite easy to tell what's going on at all times. - Lots of awesome little touches. Tinys (Pebbles) model actually changes as he levels up his ult, rather than just getting scaled up, Heroes respond to picking up runes in their own voices rather than the announcer doing it, the courier is a flying donkey, Clockwerks rockets actually come out of the hero and fly in an arc, etc. - The servers are crazy laggy, to the point that the stream cut out at several points, but that will hopefully be fixed during open beta. - They arguably picked the two worst teams to show off in the first game. Both teams are favorites for winning the whole thing, so they were playing incredibly carefully and the result was a 90 minute Weaver vs Spectre farmfest. - Lich Ult and Beastmaster axes feel MUCH faster than their HoN counterparts. - Hero selection is very limited (I estimate there's about 50 heroes) so I'm seeing what would be pretty unusual picks in HoN like Void/Antimage/Spectre. Oddly enough Ancient Apparition (one of the more recent DotA heroes) is in as well, and gets picked in almost every game. Hoping to see some Tinker and Pudge action later on. E: I didn't hear it myself, but people say that when Pugna killed Lich, he said something like "Ahahaha...defrosted." This is awesome.

Kills lead to tower push opportunities so it's not like it's completely irrelevant. Of course when you get a few kills and run off to farm neutrals, then yeah, you're doing it wrong.

I think this (the highlighted stuff) is pretty much flat-out wrong. Gold for a kill on a champion, especially if you're ganking a different lane, is always inferior to staying in your own lane and farming in LoL. And then I'm even leaving the high chance at failure (due to Flash/lack of CC) out of the equation. No gold loss on death is tangentially related, but it also means that if you do land a kill, the difference won't be as noticeable. Similarly, something like a TP countergank barely exists in LoL, because teleport isn't a staple summoner spell, will often be on cooldown, and due to the range on most skills, enemies will probably be way out of reach by the time you TP in. These two mechanics very much DO promote passive play, and basically isolate lanes to a 2v2 or 1v1 situation that's mostly focused on PvE for getting farm. On the other hand, S2 has made a conscious and succesful effort to move away from a carry-centric game with tweaks like increasing the amount of gold for assists, and generally nerfing hard carries all over the place. LoL would MASSIVELY benefit from some old DotA mechanics like river runes and TP scrolls.

You're reading way too much into what I'm saying. I'm explaining why according to me, in the context of HoN, a five second AoE disable isn't imbalanced or overpowered. I like theorycrafting. I apologize if you read what I said as condescending in any way but it wasn't intended. I wrote it as such because, yes, on paper, 5 seconds is a lot. If you look at one skill in a vacuum, it might seem over or underpowered, but it's the combination with a number of other factors that ultimately decides how it plays out. You keep going on about how taking control away from the player is irrevocably bad design, but you haven't offered an alternative to it either, and completely taking away the entire concept of CC would basically remove all depth from the game. Also, @zircon: LoL is also incredibly passive, with an endless laning phase, and far fewer chances to set up kills. I much prefer an intense game that I end up losing than an endless farmfest with Teemo where I can't ever get ganked anyway because of my infinite amount of free wards and my instant escape button. If through some miracle of divine intervention I end up dying after all, it's not much more than a slap on the wrist because I get to keep all my gold anyway. HoN: Oh no, I got ganked by three people and they CCd me down in a few seconds. I couldn't even do anything. Guess I shouldn't be pushing out that far without wards up. LoL: Oh, I'm getting ganked. 1 second stuns? Get out of here, I'll just flash over this wall here and continue farming. LoL has a lot of good ideas, but its current metagame is just so insanely boring (farming always yields more gold than ganking), and a lot of their hero designs just feel very bland and samey. I'm curious about the actual amount of LoL champions that have a "Makes your next auto-attack do stuff, like extra damage!"-skill because I estimate it has to be at least a dozen of them.

It isn't a stun, that's why I was confused. The only 5 second stun in the game is Valkyries arrow. Wanna know why Chronos isn't the most overpowered hero in the game despite having an on-demand 5 second mass disable? First, because he's a squishy, low damage hero for the first 20-30 minutes of the game. Second, because ganking actually works in this game on account of almost every hero having at least 3 seconds worth of disables, not to mention that dying means gold loss, so it's very possible to completely shut down a carry by ganking him repeatedly. If you want to win in HoN soloqueue you don't play a carry, but you play a ganker that's powerful throughout all stages of the game, and can keep the enemy carries from getting fed. If you try to gank early on in LoL, you're basically an idiot for leaving your lane.

5 seconds is incredibly long, but like I said, the ability . Not to mention that mana costs and mana management on a whole is balanced entirely differently in HoN/DotA. In LoL you can get a meki pendant, mana regen runes, and you'll be able to spam your abilities pretty liberally in lane right away. In HoN, any ability that counts as a significant nuke/CC will cost you a third of your mana pool, if not more. Earthshaker/Behemoth has a skill that can best be described as an Anivia wall on steroids that also stuns and damages, and covers an entire screen length. He can cast it exactly once at level one before he's out of mana. On the whole, using abilities in DotA/HoN is much higher risk/reward than LoL, so everything is appropriately powerful. E: You can now sign up for the open beta here

Those technically don't stun, but cause silenced/perplexed/immobilized/disarmed status, all at the same time. Which is pretty much the same effect as a stun, but yeah. Stuns are when a swirly thing appears above someones head.

But an absence of CC means that the outcome of a fight will depend purely on which side has the bigger damage output. It adds a whole extra dimension to the game which allows weaker, caster-type heroes to stand up to farmed DPS heroes. It's also not nearly as arbitrary as you're making it out to be, as 9 out of 10 times getting CC'd down and dying will be at least partially your own fault for pushing out too far, getting caught out of position or generally just misjudging the situation. What I'm saying is that while you lose control when you're stunned, you do have the ability to avoid even getting into that situation, and in the other cases it's up to your team to help you out. The 5 second Valkyrie stun you're talking about is attached to a skillshot that travels slower than an Ashe arrow, gets blocked by creeps, and has to travel at least one screen length to actually get the 5 seconds worth. I think the strongest stun that's simply point and click would be Sven/Hammerstorm's Storm Bolt, which lasts for 2 seconds.

Really sorry about leaving that game yesterday. My connection suddenly started acting up and it was basically impossible for me to reconnect for longer than a few minutes. The game we played before that everything was perfectly fine so I don't know what was going on there.

It's ironic that Bleck described Valkyries/POTMs five second stun potential as a dealbreaker because I always felt like Valkyrie was one of the most well-balanced heroes in the game, since she's in that position where she never gets banned, but is almost always a good pick. I really don't get the hate for powerful CC because powerful CC = higher chance at succesful ganks = less emphasis on farming and more on ganking, all of which makes for a more fun and fast-paced game to me. Also, given recent developments, I'd be pretty surprised if this game wasn't free to play.

Denying is in. Five second stuns are in. Goodbye Bleck. I'll take either of those over Flash on every single hero.

http://www.dota2.com/trailer There's a trailer! Dota 2: Meat the Pudge

http://i.imgur.com/pDSSw.jpg (big image) Finally a leak! It looks pretty amazing, definitely 'Source-like', but very clean nonetheless. I like how they took up LoLs segmented health bars. The map looks pretty much exactly the same as DotA/HoN, though I'm going to miss that little secondary legion ramp near the bot river. It also looks like they put in some effort to make the terrain look more subdued compared to the heroes themselves, which would be beneficial in confusing teamfights with shit flying everywhere. Auto-attack damage is now static. Overall it seems like they took the best elements of LoL and applied it to DotA. E: Here's a nice screenshot comparison.

I'm mostly thinking about later on in the game when both first-tier towers are gone already. If you AoE down the creeps at that point, the point where the creeps clash will move further away from your own tower and it will get more dangerous to farm. Early on, especially when there's no jungler around, you can just push as much as you like because it doesn't matter as long as all the enemy champions are accounted for.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/dota-2010/1187567p1.html Looks like denying is in. Which is good, because fuck having next to no lane control in LoL.

Twitch I think.

The Chinese champion icons amuse me. E: Garen in the bushes is an especially nice touch.

Beware of djpretzel he bites

We had a good amount of people on yesterday. I'm pretty okay with playing this and some League of Legends on the side. LoL gets really repetitive after some time unfortunately. E: is up, and it's faaaabulous. Good to see that after porting Katarina (Silhouette), Blitzcrank (Flux), Karthus (Martyr), Gragas (Drunken Master) and Wukong (Monkey King), they've finally decided to put in Sona.

Haven't seen it in action, but if the duration is anything like Rampage in HoN (the unicorn guy in this vid) then you can use it to drag people into towers or into your fountain.

http://m.examiner.com/examiner/pm_60841/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=eP46IbPs Sona is coming to HoN apparently!

I can almost guarantee that Skarner would be more fun than Leona. She might be strong now, especially after the buffs, but she just feels so vanilla.