Frostnova Dota 2

[Mack Mosely]

Inthe comment section for the previous Blog Post the community expressed interest in the old days of Dota, before it became an international phenomenon it is now. The game was quite different at the time but to be perfectly honest a lot of it had to do with how we, as a community, perceived it, rather than how it was balanced. Today I will go through the various quirks and trends which are mostly gone at this point. It is not going to be a history of competitive Dota kind of blog post, instead focusing on the pub gameplay.

Warcraft 3 was a masterpiece for many reasons - it had an amazing core strategic gameplay, interesting campaign, multiplayer, suitabile for professional play and, most importantly, it had modding support. If it wasn't for this game, Dota would never even come to life.

If you have never played Dota 1 you might be very interested as to what "legacy" layout in the Dota 2 client means and why is it even there - after all, the QWER layout is logical and easy to use. We, on the other hand, have spent almost 7 years playing Dota with our left hand becoming stiff in the weirdest positions imaginable - just imagine playing Invoker with each of his 10 spells having a separate button on top of Quas/Wex/Exort and Invoke taking the QWER slots (incidentally, he was also the first hero, who got this really neat layout for his primary abilities) or Naga Siren with buttons on R/E/G/D and your pinky on A/S for denying/last hitting.

The inventory was also far from being easy to use - it was bound to Num 7/8 4/5 1/2 by default and it could not be changed. What it meant is that you either had to constantly jump with your left hand from one side of the keyboard to the other (returning it to the previous weird position in the heat of a battle) or use your mouse clicks to use items. At the time a very small amount of people had mice with side buttons and even smaller amount could rebind them to the Num keys.

The shopping experience was also quite different - you did not have a dedicated "Shop" tab for all your items. Instead, you had a multitude of NPCs standing at your fountain and secret/side shop which sold recipes and components:

Compared to the learning curve one is facing today starting Dota 2 for the first time we had it rough. Over the course of the development the Shops were changed several times, with different reasoning behind their grouping. To understand how annoying it was remember the first time you were trying to purchase the Ultimate Orb at base in 6.84 and multiply the frustration by 10.

Finally, the main problem I personally have with the WC3 Dota after playing Dota 2 was how much less responsive it feels - after playing Dota 2 for several years now I can't go back any more since there is an extra input lag on your commands on top of the usual ping - something that makes the games quite different even within the same patch. And I think the engine level reduction in this input lag as well as layout/gameplay convenience is what made a lot of heroes receive a nerf as soon as they got ported to the Dota 2 client.

There were a lot of broken beyond repair heroes in Dota history. Gambler and the original Invoker are the first to come to mind. And while their impact on the game was huge, they never got past the initial introduction stage.

Some heroes, on the other hand, were very different when they were introduced, but have retained most of their qualities and are now a stable part of the Dota2 hero roster, after careful and calculated changes. And these are the heroes I would like to talk about.

There were a lot of small changes to the hero abilities - for example, Tidehunter's Anchor Smash used to be a passive which did not reduce the damage output from the enemies. Getting Attack Speed on the hero seemed like a viable idea and he was often played as a carry (to be honest, almost every hero was played as a carry at the time).

The rather "new" Aghanims upgrade on Treant Protector is actually one of his oldest abilities, which got removed for being OP. And it did not even extend the radius of Overgrowth to the area it revealed - it was just available come level 1, albeit on a 300 seconds cooldown. If I recall correctly, it also provided true sight.

Lifestealer used to be a broken beyond repair kind of hero with level 3 ultimate providing him with 20 seconds of Magic Immunity. That is unless you were laning against Silencer, since Lifestealer had no active skills except for his ultimate.

Shallow Grave from Dazzle used to be an ultimate, which lasted 6 minutes and prevented an ally hero from losing gold on death as well as making him respawn 60% faster. It also dealt some negligible damage to the enemy hero who got the last hit on your ally. I don't remember there being a limit on the amount of buffs you could place at the same time, apart from the obvious cooldown restrictions, making it possible for at least 2 heroes on your team to have the buff at the same time.

I hope no one will ever have to experience this - a Faceless Void, Troll Warlord or Slardar with 2 bashers was the go to strat in a lot of local matches. Not only did the effects stack, they also did not have a cooldown or any kind of restriction. They simply bashed.

Provided the hero had enough Attack Speed it usually resulted in one or even two targets in a fight being completely useless - if you've played the early versions of Team Fortress 2 where Medic could Uber two targets switching between them fast enough, you can grasp roughly one third of the frustration the players experienced.

-SC stands for Super Creeps, where every now and then each ancient produced a supercreep - Murloc, Golem or Hydra for one of the lanes. In most cases the supercreep required attention from most of the team to be dealt with. They also varied in their strength, making the game incredibly unfair but quite fun.

-ID is on a whole different level of unfairness - Item Drop meant that once you die, one of your slots will drop an item - it can be an empty slot, or it can be a slot with your core item. Allies could pick these items up and give them back to you, so there was an extra layer of forced coordination, but to this day I think this mod is unplayable.

-so - Switch ON. This mode meant that host can never lose the game - he either gets an enemy carry switched to his team or leaves the game resulting in a disconnect. If you see host adding -so in the end of the mod and you are not on his team you might as well just leave the game.

Standing in the fountain and quickly tapping F1 (hero select) will speed up the regeneration process - probably the biggest myth of the game. What it did, is increased the frequency with which the HP numbers refreshed, but it had no effect on the actual regeneration.

The whole "Reborn" thing coupled with the community asking for Old Days of Dota Blog Post have forced me to install and replay the original WC3 Dota, hence the delay between the posts. Despite all my claims about how uncomfortable the game felt, it was a really nice experience with a lot of nostalgia. Interestingly, there are still a lot of Dota 1 games going on and it wasn't hard to find a lobby - I really wish all these people would switch to Dota 2, but it might take a while.

On my trips to the old days, I also found inspiration for a couple more Blog Posts. First of all, there are still 2 heroes to be ported into Dota 2 - Pit Lord and Zet and one of my next Blog Posts will be focused on them to keep the readers prepared. I will also speculate on the probable nerfs the heroes will face.

Secondly, there is a massive persistent community which plays custom WC3 maps. With Reborn in open beta, I think it will be interesting to have a look at the most popular mods which are supported and/or played to this day - it could also serve as a guideline for the new generation of modders. Personally, I can't wait for the remake of Elemental Tower Defence on Source 2.

Finally, eggs is working on the second pair of TI5 Wildcard Teams Blog Post, so stay tuned. This type of articles can certainly help with getting grasp on who is who after the post-TI4 grand reshuffle.

With switch, when my team is winning, the enemy team will always go "switch pls, make it fair". Then when they get the most farmed carry from our team and start winning, it's fair. If they're losing, it's not fair. When they're winning, it's totally fair.

I remember PA was a decent pick back in the original Dota because she was practically invisible with her blur and the only thing that gave her away was the slightly bigger red numbers that appeared above her when she got a critical hit off. Blur literally made her hard to see, but now she's a flashy firework and when she gets that crit off, EVERYONES gonna know about it.

I always played HLW hoping my favorite hero was in that server i joined. And yes the delay is so frustrating in dota, you have to predict everything. I tought it was just my old pc that was doing that.

You forgot to mention, that the one who bought a courier had to give a control over his units for his team in order to make it work. And there was a button that randomized a courier into one of the animal creeps - we are paying for this stuff also atm.

Super tanky Visage with an army of birds which got turned into a weird kind of tank/carry Visage still with an army but who would heal and gain damage for every unit that died around him, which got switched again for the current Visage.

Nyx with the permanent weaker Blade mail for melees meant that you either picked a range hero or you were fucked, because a blade mail back then worked the same as his passive and they totally stacked.

And there were tons of heroes which shared a spell. Viper and Razor both had a MoM's madness without the lifesteal as a skill, I think there were like 3 heroes with Chain Lightning, Lich and CM both had Frost Nova, etc.

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