Deus Ex Alpha

I would like an invite if anyone has got one, thanks.

But Dex how dare you go against Italian Alex's wannarbie insult towards you the other day, how dare you play games I don't play.

James wrote:But Dex how dare you go against Italian Alex's wannarbie insult towards you the other day, how dare you play games I don't play.

He wasn't being serious apparently!

I don't believe him.

http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=47115

Valve finally allowing APIs across some of their games. Cool.

This game interests me the most these days, especially from the balancing standpoint which seems to still mostly be independent from Valve. It's definitely a game to watch if you play it, but I struggle to find it a good esport as I doubt it can grow as a spectator sport for those that don't play it.

This game is definitely worth trying these days, it's a great little 5v5 action-RPG.

Well, I just saw the last game of the Dota 2 finale. That was quite impressive teamplay.

Alex wrote:Well, I just saw the last game of the Dota 2 finale. That was quite impressive teamplay.

The game alone looks good in isolation, but remember this is logically supposed to be the best two teams in the world, give or take a position, and it lasted fifteen minutes.

And as a best of five, it was even worse. Very rigid picks, no flexibility really shown from Vici, the same strat used by both teams for all games but one, I could go on but frankly it is all just reminding me of how easy it was to believe for a second that it really was rigged.

But I know you don't play, I more just wanted to vent for a moment

I didn't understand most of the gameplay honestly yeah. Do people really suspect it was rigged?

Unlikely because the players aren't related to eachother and there wasn't much collusion because otherwise they would have dragged it to the final 5th game. I really think VG played stupidly and did the same mistakes 3 times in a row with the same heroes picked.

After reflecting though, I admit there's a problem with the current balance of the game but I still defend it being better in general to play than it was last year and before that (the hero pool used at TI4 is healthy despite a lot of fad/trend/meme heroes being picked). I really like how Dota is balanced by buffing more instead of nerfing.

Its unfortunate the current gameplay is based on one team completely snowballing - getting base very early in the game. Valve have so much to fix - game crashes, MM search range as well as stopping cosmetics from potentially ruining the game (there seems to be some quite ridiculous ones being posted in reddit which are being upvoted).

Thanks techies to make the game more insufferable. Not lost against, with or with them on my team but what a fucking stupid match extending hero.

I haven't managed to played public MM again yet, but it does look like a complete retard-feast since techies has been released, really pisses me off that some people in the community wanted that shit.

Yeah I've been avoiding matchmaking most of the time, been sticking to alts, CM, inhouse.

It's a shame you know? At his best he's actually a brilliant hero for team fights, mid into bottle boots soul ring blink aghs whatever is fucking brilliant with his 6 second stun.
High damage output that includes extreme damage with aghs or good composite damage that's always useful vs squishy heroes all game round unless they stack shit like Rubick and Pipe, ethereal stops it too but you'll just use your ult to fuck that over.
His only real problem is that you need the blink or force to abuse his mines mid fight so you can pull off a combo including suicide. With bloodstone luxury suicide is either instant or near instant respawn so you can get back into fights so quickly!

But it's irrelevant that he has good team-fight when he makes the game he's in so boring. Even if you're ahead or losing hard as techies, you're gonna make pushing the tier 3 a stupid chore. Heroes who are also good anti-pushers like Ember Spirit, Gyro and arguably Medusa (split shot is pretty good at tier 3 tbh!!! despite her being a bit shit) have a great time under this turtle and can farm up come-back items. Without any effort needed on behalf of the Techies except to play Sim City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kind of a joke that you need to literally wait for Roshan and get hearts almost every game if there's a Techies rather than only being cautious if the enemy team is similarly farmed to you.

Also the team-fight argument is kinda null because everyone is fucking bad at this game and Techies don't know what they're doing and just lay down traps or defend being useless pieces of shit. Or relying on gimmick combos, but mind you RP skewer or Venge swap is legit as fuck.

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On top of that we're dealing with 6.81 with the current Techies in, this includes:

• Heroes who can fit into any team like Enigma because of their poor strength and lack of counters because he has amazing push and team-fight from the ending stages of the laning phase.
• Heroes that do best supporting in greedy duo-lane line-ups with a Jungler like Shaman who got buffed with 10 wards and is press R to take a free tower in most games.
• Heroes who have strong mid/1v1 and huge press R to push potential when moderately farmed like Razor.
• Heroes who have strong off-lane or as a main core, strong all game and only need minimal items to do anything with their R to win hero skill like Void and Doom, the latter who can retreat to the jungle if he's behind and the former only needs Treads and 3 in Timelock to get kills on almost every hero at level 6. Hell Doom can start in the Jungle and even be a support boys.
• Heroes who have most of the above like Death Prophet.
• Heroes like Skywrath Mage whose ability to single handily kill cores is fine but he has bullshit spell range in laning and a 1 point wonder for a slow.
• Heroes that aren't exactly overpowered at all but making the meta stale with their small buffs that make them played a lot like Tidehunter.
• And heroes who are either just lame to deal with like Lycan's global, Brew's Drunken Brawler (ebin) and shift-queue blink after TP being instant without many flaws which Tinker abuses when he wanks off in trees doing safe March of the Machines all day and only a few heroes can reliably counter him when he's pushing like that (i.e. Storm or Earth Spirit with blink who isn't even in CM) .

Almost all of those heroes farm up a 7-9 minute mek every game and abuse their early burst and pushing strengths. Thank you Icefraud. On top of the 6.81 we have to deal with techies. Fuck me.

New patch is pretty good right now, XP change is still too large but it'll do for awhile before the hero meta fleshes out, then gets stale eventually before the next patch.

I haven't bothered with ranked MMR yet because I really want solo ranked back in entirely, plus if I get a rank lower than 4.5k I'd get laughed at by all my (relevant) friends and I cba with all the Zeus MMR farmers going about right now... and fuck grinding up MMR to around 5k+ if those fuckers are plaguing it.

The double rune thing is surprisingly really good but who knows how that'll affect future mid when it fleshes out, needless to say tho as roamers (surprisingly Wisp is strong with it as a natural bottle building support, cumball barrage is legit) or super defense by offlaners, junglers and supports make it really annoying for the mid players and always have a reason to go to their side every 2 minutes in laning phase.

RE: Hero trends. One thing I like but also don't like is that hard carries are mostly playable now, the Medusa empower/bloodlust strat is funny and I hope it isn't a short lived trend. Beesa says that Anti-Mage and Morph are really easy in pubs now so that's good. The problem I have is that something like mid Naga is allegedly even easier than ever, so when people abuse that there's gonna be trouble

p.s. fuck people who dont get armour vs Elder Titan, especially carries who still think a butterfly is gonna suffice if their other heroes can't farm up vlads and ac in time

well after that i post i played 4 games today and played like an absolute spacker so im going to kill myself because i genuinely thought it would be a good idea to get blademail on alc post-blink (complete freefarm............) on top of that i got mael and upped to fucking mjol. why. 92 mins of suffering.

2.9k mmr represent

Indeed it seems publics are about picking hard-carries every game, seems every game is at least 45 mins. The new account zeus spammers are quite disgusting, but then again people buy accounts too so I guess its never actually going to stop (unbalanced games etc).

The solo ranked option was really good, actually got some decent games, but people may still attempt to get in the same team/game as their friends by leaving the loading screen or not accepting the game at all, the game seems to be filled with people trying to find abuses (e.g the veng crashing bug)

Never talked to/played Beesa, but an irl friend recently met him at uni (Warwick).

My friend keeps running Offlane solo Ogre and holy fuck he gets like over 6 HP/s regeneration out of Soulring. Basically just maxes ignite for farm/harass and rushes Tranqs Blink. Strong base damage is pretty sick too.

Ogre is the new abuse, people first picking it every MM game, bastards constantly multicasting, then they get that damn aghs scepter and it never stops.

He is pretty bullshit right now

I would ask you but you're in a game but who is that 6.8k guy can get 4m20s lvl 6 as Bseeker jungle? I've asked around for his name but everyone says he keeps changing it and they can't find him. All I know is that he's spamming Meepo at the minute.

All I need to know is how he manages to get 4m20s lvl 6 as Bseeker jungle.

Oracle is super imbalanced and hilarious with Silencer/OD/Slardar for pure and physical amplification respectively.

NS seems pretty strong this patch, also tried lone druid, the extra damage on battlecry is hilarious.

NS seems rly strong but gets butt blasted in pro-games I seen. I guess it's nature of the hero versus co-ordinated teams versus other mids who have better initiation. That pubstar Slahser has a decent ethic tho with bottle boots of speed midas.

One of the coolest things is that they finally fixed Troll after 2 years and SB got buffed with -200 gold on Shadow Amulet. But that's also a Slark buff aswell. Meepo got nerfed too which is fucking gr8 because Necrolyte ult + Meepo respawn on that guy's team was stupid as fuck to deal with if your cores died. Ez rat.

Yea the meepo respawn timer reduction is dumb as fuck, I don't understand why valve had to fuck with that.

I still think they should simply remove slark from the game, hero is dumb as fuck, or at least make it so then his ulti is still reveled by true sight.

You know you've fucked up with hero design when he's the strongest hero from 1MMR to 7000MMR