Quote (Pascal3000 @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 12:51am)
1. i would disagree
2. even if you dont take that into account, meepos "lategame" is going to come alot earlier than lions. Meepo focuses on farming and leveling, hes one of the best heros at that, while a good lion should mainly be supporting and warding the map, which means he has next to no farming. If you play him differently, your team will suffer. But as you only play pubs, that obviously doesnt matter to you...
3. The game isnt a 1on1 of two heros. You completly ignore things like map control, the other 4 teammates, different roles in the team, different strenghts early / mid / lategame etc. While meepo is mainly a secondary carry to your team and has awesome midgame dominance, lion is a supporter and wardwhore with strong earlygame. They are completely different in their playstyle and farming behaviour, and lategame is gonna show that.
If youre thinking about "IMA RUSH DAGON5 and MEEPO IS DEAD!!!!!!11111" then you a) obviously havent played a competitive lion yet or seen one play and b.) helped meepo achieve what he wants. By doing that, you will be forced to farm with a hero that isnt meant to farm, which equals less farming opportunity, less ganks, less support for the actual carry etc. Even though you will be able to kill meeepo lategame with those items, he will be able to more or less evade you, and just HAVING THOSE ITEMS will have hurt your team a whole lot. I know these concepts dont FULLY apply to pubs, but even there, farming straight to dagon 5 just to kill a meepo is beyond retarded.
Lion is often a direct counter to meepo. Counter ward quickly, and move into their jungle, by level 6 you will cripple meepos farm, as Lion+ basically anything can insta geib one of meepos clones. I agree that lion will never out-carry meepo, but in reality, he is one of the stronger counters.
Quote (Pascal3000 @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 12:51am)
Seriously guys. Stop playing -apem, play some clanwars, get your ass kicked, rethink your view of whats strong. Then do this untill youve got an actual knowledge of what dota and its balance is like and THEN post here and present your opinion as an expert...
Rando clanwars hardly makes a player good or an expert, just wanted to point that out; I'm sure some kind of fallacy has been committed, but I'm can't remember which and I am to lazy to pick up a book atm
.
EM is vastly different from standard Dota, but it is still a mode offered for a reason. People enjoy it, and despite the bad reputation it gets, it is still part of the game. The game isn't balanced around EM, but the state of the game sure does effect the EM games.
Also, I wouldn't push clanwars down the casual gamers throat. Dota pugs can be fun, and for some people that's all they want. If they want to get better just playing pubs, then they have the right to do so, and they should be encouraged in doing so. It is their time and their fun.
Personally I find non-em games much more compelling, but it is quite obvious many don't share my opinion. It's kind of like trying new foods, you tend to stick to what you like and don't often give new things a try. Many players are sucked into Em from the get-go, and they often stay there. There isn't anything essentially wrong with that, but you could make an argument for which is better, but to be honest you sound more than a bit hostile and condescending, to me at least. There are actually a number of good articles on the subject in the dota-allstar forums.
Quote (Pascal3000 @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 12:51am)
Riki isnt really good for new players, as he gives them the illusion of skill. They will possibly get an early success in pubs, but by playing riki they wont actually learn the basics of dota, so while playing riki and thinking they are good with their megakill sprees and cursing opponents, they will be wasting valuable time which they could spend playing league heros and learning the game...
Not to long ago he was a high tier hero. I would hardly call him a mega noob friendly hero, as he is a weak agility melee hero for a good chunk of the game, and wards/dust+ any half decent player will rock noob SA's world. If players can learn to rice by playing him, then they are indeed learning something, albeit a bit differently than normal, but many heroes play similarly for the first portion of the game.
Quote (Pascal3000 @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 12:51am)
Also pudge / storm / lion?
Pudge is a low - tier / bad hero and only good for pubstomping. Overall pretty terrible
Storm is a decent mid-tier / average hero, but too farm dependant for an int carry and not potent enough compared to the alternatives (DP, Necro...), also not strong enough in ganking before being farmed, so hes rarely seen.
This is pretty close minded, as pudge is seeing more and more competitive play all the time. Storm is pretty item dependent, but he has a skillset that can back it up, and in anything but top league play you could probably use him with fairly good results.
I think pudge is truly limited by the players who play him, similar to meepo, god good meepos are scary. Even top league players are usually absolutely terrible with him, but he is often just a farmed up tank in league play. I think his true potential lies within some godly pudge players who could hook blindfolded.
Quote (Pascal3000 @ Wed, Jun 17 2009, 12:51am)
And there really is no "best" hero. There is a collection of "top tier" heros who are best at their respective role, or versatile.
Top tier is redefined all the time. A few months ago, if you said you wanted to use rhasta, people would have laugh at you and said he is worthless. CM/SK/Axe were similarly viewed for a long time, and not just because shifts in the meta. The reason units are "top picks" is because it takes time to find and make use of all the variables in a game such as this, and at a competitive level, veering to far off the beaten path can net you some loses. Just because certain heroes aren't use or look bad, doesn't necessarily mean they're worthless for beyond pubs.
There is also the wildcard option, which is quite underrated, imo. You occasionally see Pudge or agility carries, etc, thrown into the mix as wildcards, which has proven useful many a time in top league play (It's also ended up disastrous sometimes, but it does work sometimes
).
With all the recent buffs I wonder if seeker will see any more play. Also, Dark Seer seems quite interesting.
This post was edited by deathbypepsi on Jun 19 2009 02:51pm