What do you think? Do you agree with what he says?
Summary of Drayich’s post (kudos to folechno):
back in .48b blinking was core to any strategy and the metagame was not much fun since only s fraction of all the heroes were consistently picked
do people want a metagame where a team turtles until the carry gets a certain item? (such as BKB)
Magic Stick is a defensive/turtling item because
1 gives 150/225 hp in a team clash at any time, a great survivability tool
2 when laning Magic Stick discourages fighting and makes it harder to kill people who survive and get some counters on their stick
3 Magic stick also makes it harder to gank people early game assuming they have counters on their stick
4 he hasn’t seen Magic Stick used offensively, only defensively
5 everyone gets Magic Stick, it is defining the metagame
6 Magic Stick helps support heroes survive team clashes -> support heroes have more money to spend on ward -> teams know where the enemy is and can avoid ganks easier
Suggestions on how to improve the metagame
1 have cd scale (like Enigma’s BH having less than 200 sec cd in early game to encourage using it)
2 Remove or Rework Magic Stick/Wand
3 Make hero killing more profitable (more gold/exp, giving gold to people who assisted but didn’t get the last hit)
I think Magicstick is fine -_-. But let’s hear everybody’s opinions.
Posted by migrees on February 17th, 2010 | Viewed 4412 times, 5 so far today
Wah haven’t blogged for a while, apologies for the delay
Since 6.65 (and now 6.66) has been released, a new metagame is becoming apparent. That is, a ganker dominated one. The end of DPSgeddon? Probably not. But Icefrog is trying to focus on a whole new dimension here, and if you don’t believe me, look at the changes that have been made.
The first and foremost one is obviously the introduction of Urn of Shadows. For almost all gankers (and strength gankers in particular), this has been a spectacular item. Run around, tower dive, kill somebody, cast urn on yourself and Voila! Back a full HP, a death earned with minimal cost. The ability to use this as a nuke is just an added bonus. Seriously, if you are looking for an item for gankers, this is the one.
Another significant (but slightly older) item change is the upgradeable diffusal. Now it can give a total of 16 charges, which if used correctly means 6 more kills that you could previously get with the whole diffusal.
With the introduction of ganker based heroes like Nightcrawler and Ancient Apparition, as well as changes to Bounty Hunter, Doom Bringer, buffs to Batrider’s ult, etc., it seems like the era of gankers has come back around.
What will actually happen, I don’t know but it does seem like our favorite frozen amphibian has taken his focus off of DPS monsters and eyed the gankers once again.
Sorry for the short-ish and really delayed post. Hopefully a longer and more in depth one will come soon.
Batrider
- Flaming Lasso cooldown decreased from 130/90/50 to 90/70/50
We say: Yes the buff is definitely welcome. We think that 130 sec for a level 1 ultimate that disables only 1 person without any damage is simply too poor a meal for bats.
Posted by drew on January 6th, 2010 | Viewed 2123 times
Check out the new section on the front page called “New Comments”. This section aggregates all the comments coming from the item, hero, item idea, hero idea and strategy databases. That way members can keep track of what’s happening in other parts of the site. For now, it displays the latest 5 comments. If you think this is too low (or too much) let me know.
Watch out for more features on DS. Also, work on LS (lolstrategy.com) will be starting soon.
Posted by drew on January 4th, 2010 | Viewed 2428 times
Let’s start the New Year with a bang! I’d like to invite all members to try out our new Library Guide Builder. It is much like the Strategy Builder but this one has a wider scope and deals with other aspects of the game. You can see some very good samples in the Library Guide section. I really want to get this section active so the one thing that I ask you to do after you finish your guide is to shoot me a PM asap so we could it up immediately. You can find the link to the Library Guide Builder in your My Stuff page.
Thanks and may all of us have an outstanding New Year.
PS - Regular Members who come up with guides that get approved receive a special gift from me!!
Posted by The DS Prince on December 31st, 2009 | Viewed 2185 times
2009 has been a very eventful year everywhere. From politics to environment, it’s all in the news. Change has been the only constant this year. We wonder, is it because of Change We Can Believe In? For us, change has been massive for Dota as far as I’m concerned. Here’s a recap of what happened throughout the year.
First, Dota underwent what we could say the most massive overhauls ever between versions in one year. We started off 2009 being at version 6.59, in which we hailed the likes of Undying and Enigma as powerhouses, before the world eventually recognised the atrocity of the RAL. In 6.60 the Tauren Chieftain and Batrider made their debut into Dota, and was for a while feared as the bombs. However buffs introduced to DPS-like heroes started to initiate the makings of a DPSgeddon phenomenon, though some will still disagree and put forth alternative explanations. And now barely 5 days ago, yet 2 more new heroes were introduced in the version of 6.65.
Between 6.59 and 6.65 - and the space of one year - no one could ever guess that Dota could be so different as to even be used on different WC3 versions. Due to the “collided map” issue maps from 6.62 upwards could only be played in 1.24. The last I heard from the grapevine, hacks for 6.64 existed. The everlasting battle between the do-gooders and the hackers, just like the virus-antivirus war, does not see any end in sight.
We could talk endlessly about the pages upon pages of changelogs courtesty of the frog, but the length will not permit it. Let’s move on to other things.
This year also saw the emergence of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth which concepts were based on Dota itself. The debate between Dota/HON/LOL still goes on, although in a more low-key manner. But one thing’s for sure, Dota will not ever be the same again because comparisons now exist. If Dota used to be the most awesome WC3 custom map ever, now Dota will have to fight to be the most awesome hero RPG ever. We can say for sure - Dota ain’t going anywhere for a long long time!
DS itself also saw massive changes, no doubt because of the massive Dotavolution, but also because improvements were constantly being made to accommodate the increasing number of visitors. This blog itself went from a few hundred visits per blog post, to thousands per blog post, even to thousands per day, attesting to the great SEO popularity of the website. Our last post even went so far as to breach the 10 000-view record - a tribute to the thousands of members who browse here for whatever reason, be it advice, strategy or tips. In addition the blog also saw more writers, so that you do not have to keep listening to the s**t we peddle every time. :p Personally for us, everytime we write a blog post we spend hours of drafting, editing and fine-tuning to ensure that what we wrote could appeal and be relevant to you as much as it did.
We also had various new activities such as the Bard and Godzilla (lol) Challenges, Dotactics (we gave out real prizes!), Guides of the Month (plus the GOTM badge contest), Signature of the Week, etc. Not too long ago we had this new, very awesome layout that made it so much easier to navigate between subforums. WRT timelines, in May 2009 we celebrated 3 years of going strong (and even stronger) and welcomed new staff, VIPs, and our new mod Greater Bash.
In short 2009 was the most happening year ever for DS. So many things happened in so short a time, and we were all kept busy by all these massiveness of change. The journey to perfection is far from over, but at least the DS blog can look forward to 2010 and say yes, change we believed in and happened.
As the clock is now ticking towards 12 am, Jan 1, 2010 in New Zealand time (GMT + 12), we at DS wish you the most ownage, pwning and happening New Year. Keep up the double kills, killing sprees, dominations, the triple kills, mega kills, ultra kills, monster kills, rampages, godlikeness, holy s**ts. Above all thank you to the man behind the name Icefrog for doing a very tough and difficult job of finding the “perfect balance” and may your creation last for a very very long time because we all will need it.
Happy New Year! Bonne Annee! 新年快乐！Prost Neujahr! 新年おめでとうございます！Feliz año nuevo! 새해 복 많이 받으세요! Selamat Tahun Baru! С НОВЫМ ГОДОМ! Manigong bagong taon! สวัสดีปีใหม่! नये साल की हार्दिक शुभकामनायें! Heri za Mwaka Mpya!
Posted by The DS Prince on December 25th, 2009 | Viewed 13789 times, 2 so far today
Was in a holidaying mood yesterday and was quite (pleasantly) surprised to find out about the frog’s Christmas gift. Who wouldn’t find it cool to see chickens, raccoons, penguins, vultures, Pudges, the Techies, the giant Rosh et al wearing Santa hats?
But beyond the Christmas spirit, here are some of our initial thoughts about the new map. Mind you this is initial - it isn’t meant to be conclusive. We can’t say anything definitive until later, most probably after the New Year, when we can make enough sense of all these Christmas goodies. For now:
Posted by Phoenix on December 23rd, 2009 | Viewed 4432 times
The whole DotaStrategy community wishes everyone Merry Christmas!
Yes, It’s Christmas ! Time to enjoy, wait for SantaIcefrog and get loads of giftsheroesmapsupdates surprises! So play dota with all your friends, enemies & unknowns and show them Who’s their Daddy?
For those who don’t know, Icefrog has planned to surprise us with Christmas Dota gifts! The wait is almost over as he gave his statement yesterday,
All set now, thanks for everyone’s input
The gift unwrapping has already begun with the teasers that have started to show up on getdota.com. Everyone presumed there would one new hero in 6.65 but it turns out there are two of them! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by The DS Prince on December 13th, 2009 | Viewed 9882 times
SMM and Asians, in particular, have been a huge waking-up to the Dota community about two weeks ago, and by now I believe you know one of the reasons: Visage the Necro’lic.
The reasons behind Visage’s recent success is not within the purview of this blog post (just refer to the below links if you missed the action), but behind the more obvious proposal by the frog to remake Visage and the discussion threads surrounding the issue, we need to remember that the frog remade Visage in 6.49 before, because he was perceived to be too hard to use by leaguers. Read the rest of this entry »
Batrider
