Clefairy

That's the way it's always been. I think Blad said it best. Dota is a long-lived and well-loved game, with a fanbase as loyal as any other. A great number of those people are migrating into this game now, expecting more of the same. Straying too far from the source invites a shitstorm of controversy, which I think behooves S2 to play it safe until open beta at the very, very earliest.

Doesn't matter. Dota's been around for a good while now; the culture's had a long time to settle into its ways. Unless there's a big shift in their way of thinking, I can't see the game getting any less cutthroat; if anything, it'll probably continue in that direction.

This is why I have you on ignore, sweetie. On-topic, sadface at lack of interest in turning the constant bitchfest around here into some actual discourse.

There's any number of ways around that. Wait until he's alone(shouldn't take long, as he's a dominant laner), then send two of your boys to gank him. Either finish the battle before he can pop it, or retreat and regroup once he does. You ate a decent chunk of damage, sure, but now your team has a significant window of time where they can initiate and don't have to worry about getting pinballed to death. If all else fails, everybody should get a headdress. Magic Armor is at a premium to begin with, and one person can upgrade to barrier idol if the projectile can't be negated. Negated... Hmm, I would think Nullstone would work on it. A moment while I look into that. EDIT: Bust on the Nullstone, but the Idol does its job quite well. If they have Plague Rider, you want this item on your tank. In fact, I'm going to just come out and say that unless the enemy team has 3 or more melee-focused heroes, you want this item on your tank, and headdresses on everyone else. Period.

And now we're starting to get into the metagame. Stuns/nukes gettin' you down? Shrunken Head. Port Key setting up easy ganks on your team? Get a Port Key right back. Punks shrouding right up into your grill? Bound Eye. The tactical permutations are endless; the only limitation is how much gold you can farm. Granted, that's subject to a bunch of its own limitations, like towers per side and how fed each individual person is. I guess I wouldn't be opposed to a cap on bounces per unit, but I really don't think it's necessary. The projectile is slow enough that the attack is quite telegraphed; if you see it heading your way, it is arguably your duty to get as far away from your teammates as possible. If there are no units in range on impact, the projectile dies and you made him waste it.

As we've not gotten word back about your condition, the one-week timer hasn't started yet. Relax. Speaking of which, dear server admins: Support? Yea? Nay?

I was hoping you'd bring this up, since it gives me time to present my argument better than before. New tactics added into an already established game ALWAYS appear overpowered, just because players don't know how to deal with them for the first little while. Look at TF2; every single class update has been met with a wave of complaints about such-and-such an item being "broken" or requiring "no skill". But, people adapted, and even if they don't like the new items, they know how to deal with players who use them. I'm working under the assumption that you didn't have any experience with Plague Rider going into that game; feel free to correct me if that's not the case. You could not have known his ultimate could be so damaging in a scenario where your whole team is clumped up, such as during a tower push; now you do. Thus, in any future game where Plague Rider is picked (and so long as the random button exists, you can't totally avoid him), you will know that being able to split off from the group at a moment's notice will be important. Inform your teammates of such as well. EDIT: Tangentially, I thought this was pretty rad: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=21687

I'm afraid I must politely decline to play in any game with Donut going forward. It's not a slight against him; he worked hard to get where he is, and I can respect that. Playing against him just makes the game about twice as nerve-wracking, and three times as frustrating. Playing on his team is little better, as he merely does the same to other people. Knowing this, I think it better all around to simply bow out. -- That glossary is filling out pretty nicely; let's hit some more of the gaps. Armor is a secondary statistic that reduces incoming physical damage. Magic Armor serves the same function for spell damage, in most cases. Armor is increased by adding Agility. Burn, short for 'mana burn', is a property that decreases the enemy's mana pool on attack. At present, this property exists only on the Nullfire Blade, and Magebane's Mana Combustion ability. Defend is an order a teammate will give to stop an enemy from destroying one of your buildings, most commonly a tower. Harassing refers to attacking the enemy hero in your lane; the idea is not to kill them, merely force them back to allow you more control of the creeps. To juke is to escape being killed by running in an unexpected direction, breaking your opponent's line of sight. The convoluted forest paths on all 3 maps are designed with this tactic in mind. Kongor is an optional 'boss' creep that can be found on 2 of the 3 official maps, at the giant red circle on the minimap. He is quite powerful, though a well-equipped, high-level hero can kill him without difficulty. He drops a Token of Life, which allows the hero who carries it to resurrect instantly. Jungling refers to going into the forests in-between the lanes, and killing the neutral creeps inside from level one onward. Certain heroes are better suited to this than others. Kill Stealing refers to running up and getting the last hit (and thus the gold) on an enemy hero, when you did not contribute to the battle beforehand. Most players consider it quite rude. Nerfing refers to the developers making something in the game weaker, eg. "X needs a nerf" or "X was nerfed hard last patch." The term originates from the Nerf brand of toy guns. Owning is an announcement the game makes to indicate that one team has scored several hero kills in succession, conferring them a large advantage. Shuffle is a game mode that forcibly randomises the teams upon game start. Warding refers to buying Wards of Sight and/or Revelation, invisible items that can be placed around the map. Wards remove the fog of war in an area around their location, providing information about enemy hero movement. In competitive play, support heroes are expected to take on this critical role.

I don't see anything in the patch notes that would constitute a substantial nerf; I think that guy was just stupidly good at slither. Speaking of which, who is he? Name's Palerider, who invited him in?

So it seems. Oh well; as incidents of stupidity go, this is pretty minor. In an effort to keep things on-topic, let's leave more tidbits for dshu, shall we? Forests of Calvadar is the default map, closely based on the original from DotA. It features three lanes, with the midlane running diagonally across the map. Strength is one of three hero attributes, it improves maximum hp and hp regeneration. Intelligence is one of three hero attributes, it improves maximum mana and mana regeneration. The Stash is a second inventory, accessible from the base shop or fountain. Items you purchase while away from the base generally end up here. The Throne is a Dota term referring to each faction's primary building. Its destruction ends the game. Scepter refers to Aganihm's Scepter, known as Staff of the Master in HoN. It is a powerful recipe item that increases the effectiveness of many heroes' ultimates. Silence is a status effect inflicted by several spells and items on enemy heroes. It prevents them from using any spells for the duration. A Passive is any skill which is 'always on', and does not require mana. Tower Diving refers to running past an enemy tower to finish off a wounded hero who would otherwise escape. An Ultimate is generally a hero's most powerful skill. It is first available to upgrade at level 6, then 11, then 16. If the ultimate is not passive, it can be cast with R by default.

Sure. Edit: Redacted. Factchecking fail.

I see you haven't gotten to that one yet, so I'll answer. Dusting refers to using Dust of Revelation(Dust of Appearance in dota), which reveals invisible enemy heroes around you for a short duration. Bash refers to an ability or item that confers a chance to stun on attack. Examples would be Gore on Pestilence or the Brutalizer weapon. Items/abilities with bash share a cooldown of 2 seconds.

Okay. Here's the thing about that. The new people in that match were completely new. This was their first experience with the gametype, period. They were busy learning the UI, what an item was, how to equip it, how to get gold/exp, and so on. They weren't ready to 'learn the game', as you put it, because they were still figuring out how the game worked. It really isn't necessary to throw new players to the goddamn wolves and just let them deal with it for their first dozen games, or however long it takes for them to come out of that phase.

Six. It's a catch-22, really. They need to stay sharp for scrims, but that inevitably entails them completely rolling over everybody else. Especially when the server gets low. And sending them somewhere else just dumps the problem in a new person's lap.

Don't get so wound up, Tensei. I'm just throwing ideas out there. In other news, I'm beginning to have a decent grasp of how everything works. I have a playstyle, and certain heroes support it more than others. Doesn't help much when I'm forced into a bad situation(words cannot describe how much I hate playing Maliken), but it's a start. Personally, I'm not a fan of zircon's metagaming. I can't speak for anyone else, but the quest to squeeze every last drop of functionality out of your picks in the hope of attaining victory is bad form in my opinion. Somewhere along the way, the mindset became one of winning and losing over simply having fun. I'm aware the two of them aren't quite mutually exclusive, but still. Mixing the hardcore and casual crowds in any game tends to cause breakdown; why break what isn't broken to begin with?

Street Fighter 2 Turbo, despite being quite an old game, still sees tournament play. Over here, Akuma is banned from said tournaments on the grounds that he is just too good. As I understand it, however, in Japan Akuma is "soft-banned"; most players silently acknowledge he breaks the game, but sometimes a newb will pick him anyway and get destroyed. I propose a similar idea for in-house games. If she's picked deliberately(ie, not via random), it becomes assumed that she is the priority target.

Getting mad at things you read on the Internet just seems to be something you do. Personally I find it perplexing and unnecessary, but hey, whatever floats your boat man.

So you admit it is not his only function. We're getting somewhere, I'm very pleased. If I might cross-compare a bit. Does every Warrior in WoW spec Protection, so as to be the big strong meatshield for the squishies who go pewpew? No. Not by a long shot. Every class can do more than their primary function; if players choose to emphasize these qualities at the expense of the primary function, that is entirely their choice. There's nothing you can do about that, short of Baha giving you admin. Last I checked there was about a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. I'm sure you'll jump all over my example and call me a wowfag, but I really don't care. You're a bully, nothing more, and I conquered all my bullies a long time ago.

Except, neither of those things are healing. Thus, by your logic, he shouldn't ever be doing them.

I'm simply taking your argument to its logical extreme. Medics only heal, Demos only trap, Spies only stab, etc. Incidentally, that TF2? It will die. People will get tired of it and move on. This TF2 may also die. But I would give it much better odds.

His argument has no merit because it was obviously facetious. To be frank, I'm a little concerned you weren't able to detect that. If we're going to restrict the classes to performing their roles and ONLY performing their roles, the game becomes a bit ridiculous. The spy's job is to eliminate key targets; why give him a revolver, then? Clearly the knife is more efficient. Why give the medic anything but the medigun? Clearly he can just rely on his teammates for protection. It makes me sad that both of you are trying to cram this wonderful, vastly entertaining game into a box that fits your perceptions of what it "should" be. Winning can be fun, sure. But so are other things. I rather like being able to explore them in this community.

yawn Try again. To anyone that wants to know, that was on our server. Badwater, about 2 months ago. I remember it vividly.

Required? Excuse me? I would amend this to UNDER ANY PRETENSE. But that's just me. That is NOT what you said. I can go back and block-quote the post if you like. You know what, I've had just about enough of your kvetching. Sir Alexander, I challenge you. The challenge is as follows; record a demo of two entire rounds of dbheights, one on attack and one on defense. Critique the map in full, using whatever supplements you deem appropriate. Youtube annotations, voiceover, I don't care. The server you play on must be near or at full capacity for the duration. I will make allowances for ragequits/computer problems if necessary. You have one week. If you do not deliver in time, or your response is not to my satisfaction, I am automatically declared the victor. In this case, I will have conclusively proved for everyone who reads this thread to see that your arguments hold precisely as much weight as "Bleck does not like customs. THE ****ING END." Should you succeed, I will trade you my medal, or my stainless pot, for any of your useless dupes. Pending Valve's implementation of the trading system, of course.

That's an arbitrary distinction if ever I saw one. You want to permit people to play how they want, you do it all the way. Also, to the people rejecting db_heights out of hand: it's not a straight port. The author has made significant changes to the map layout to support the new gametype; Stage 3-1 in particular bears almost no resemblance to the original.

So wait a minute. A couple of pages ago, it was "If you want to play 4th sniper, that's cool." And now, it's "omfg heal me!! battle medic r bad men"? -- We haven't played Great Heights in a while. I nominate that.