Dota 2

Just because no one posted it here yet :P

Which hero with which facet is stronger than people think? What item build is deceptively strong? Which strategy wins you games?

Everyone has their own part of the patch notes! Post a screenshot of the encounter unlocked by the candlemakers' shop!

This is what you can see when you put a few together (need more still)

BLAST, renowned for top-tier CS:GO events, expands into Dota 2!
First major event in Nov 2024, with 4 more planned for 2025.
Can they bring fresh excitement to the scene? @dota2 #dota2 #esports https://www.gamingfoodle.tech/2024/05/blast-dota2-esports-tournament.html

Normally I think someone in my game is "grefing" when they do obviously stupid plays etc.

But watching overwatch cases of an IO teleporting teammates to the enemy fountain, now THATS grefing, and then maybe my teammates isn't really grefing as much as I think haha

It's just a joke, I don't actually think league players are any better or worse than dota ones.

I've occassionally played some Dota2 before but I'll be mainly switching to Dota2 after League releases their kernel level anticheat. I mostly play on arch linux (the league of linux community is the best), and I love that Dota2 supports linux natively while I have to literally hack my system and, in the past, patched some binaries to ensure that league barely works on my system. I'd often have the game crash on me right before the game starts because League's spaghetti code can't handle my system.

Overall, I feel like Dota2 is the better game holistically. The UI is better polished, the gameplay is more well balanced, and it doesn't feel like a shithole like League feels like now. I have long been contemplating making the switch, and I feel stupid at this point sticking to League up until they literally kick me out of their game because they want to require a kernel-level anticheat (aka spyware) that will block me from playing on my linux system.

I grew up playing League and I'll miss it, but I love MOBAs and Dotas is the de-facto best there is. My relationship with League can best be described as Stockholm Syndrome at this point, and I'm happy they're releasing me.

Dreamleague S22 was the last T1 tournament: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/DreamLeague/Season_22

It was played with a format of 2 large group stages and a small finals bracket with the top 4 teams.

Team Falcons continued their domination from the previous tournament (BB Dacha). It seems like the pro scene is a bit shaken up after the last TI and its season, with teams like Gaimin Gladiators and Team Liquid not really at the top anymore. Apart from Team Falcons, the whole scene looks a bit more even right now. The Eastern European teams, namely BB Team and Team Spirit, also look strong right now, together with some of the Chinese teams, mainly Xtreme Gaming.

As for meta, a selection of the top heroes right now:

For the support role(s), Chen, Batrider, Lion, Mirana, Shadow Demon, Tiny, Enigma, Techies

Popular offlaners include, Mars, Timbersaw, Centaur, Magnus, Dragon Knight.

Mids are Puck, Pango, Dragon Knight, Storm Spirit, Timber, Templar Assassin.

Carries include Naga, Sven, Morphling, Terrorblade, Faceless Void.

Playstyle-wise, there was a lot of focus on individual outplays, particularly from the offlane role. Successful teams had lots of the "meta" heroes in their repertoire and were able to use them to snowball from the laning stage into the midgame, simply securing more farm by pushing the enemy off the map and into defensive positions through outplays in how the map was played, which heroes could be where and how fights went. As such there was a higher focus on teamfight heroes with big ultimates, like Mars, Enigma, Faceless Void, Pheonix, Undying, but also saves against that, like Shadow Demon, also Undying, Vengeful Spirit.