@war4ha: I can tell you that he won't have a problem, first game of LoL I played after 2 years of DOTA2 I had a flawless score of 17 kill with no death. Last hitting is so easy in LoL and you have so much way to escape your fuckups that he will do just fine.

@jakob187: I wonder if anyone's actually paid for the game considering how many Dota 2 access keys are floating around.

I have about 20 keys or more, so let me know if you want to give the game a try.

@war4ha: I've played both and the duder who did the massive post with the bold sub-section exactly knows what's up in terms of mechanics.

Oh and I LOOOOOOVE fun.

@drakoji: "I have around 2500 games of League of Legends played" probably has something to do with that.

And you have to remember, this is Brad we're talking about. He relearns every game he plays ever, as a brand new, exciting experience, for he is a goldfish.

Yeah, I've heard this same sort of story time and time again. DotA transfers to LoL very well because LoL is just DotA ez mode

I know this is directed at someone else, but I thought I would reply as well.

Have you played every champion in DOTA? Do you like every champion in DOTA? Having the full roster accessible is entirely irrelevant, when you only play about 10-20 champions in it anyway. You buy the champions you like in league, and most people specialise in a role, so having every champion wouldn't benefit you in any way.

I've played every hero in Dota 2. (see here) League of Legends locked roster, when I played it, bored the shit out of me. It doesn't help that the characters in League are typically less complex as well. (My most played Dota heroes, Invoker, Rubick and Visage are all wonderfully complex heroes worthwhile of playing a lot of games with.)

Specializing in a role is something I never personally understood. Obviously in League it sort of forces you that way -- with runes and all that you sort of need to specialize so that you aren't weak. Really though I've played everything from the 1 to 5 position in Dota (my favorites being 2, 3 and 4) and there is no way I could stay sane playing the same role over and over.

For some reason DOTA players seem to think there is no control of the lane in LoL. There is, it works fine, it just isn't as fucking pointlessly overcomplicated the way DOTA's lane control is.

Also, there is denying in league. It's called zoning. Sound familiar?

I don't think anyone said there is no way to control the lane in League, it just doesn't give you the same ability to do so as in Dota.

Dota has both zoning and denying, and both are vital to controlling your lane. I've used this example before, but lets talk a typical mid match up and what I am doing.

• I am trying to last hit and deny over my opponent. This takes a vast amount of mechanical skill as you are last hitting against an actual person, and not a creep. You need to take into account attack animations, your damage, and their damage.

• Controlling the lane. "Zoning" in dota exists, and it is very prevalent in the mid lane due to both sides being up on a hill. Different heroes may "zone" someone out in different ways. A hero such as Zeus might just harass the hell out of them, a hero such as Tinker might use his march to cover a large portion of mid, and a hero such as Batrider may use napalm stacks (increses the damage he does to an enemy and slows them) to cause the enemy to disengage for a moment.

• In the same vein as the last one, controlling one's creep position in the lane is super vital. Most of the time you want the creep wave right on top of your hill, forcing the enemy to go uphill in order to get last hits (which allows you to zone them out). However, for rune control you want to push the wave out quickly before a rune spawns, in order to force your enemy to decide between XP/Gold or a rune. It's a very complicated dance.

In other lanes the same thing happens. One spot of interest is typically the "off lane" for each side, which typically ends up being a 1v3 (where the 3 is the enemy tri-lane). There it becomes a game of the 1 player trying to edge in XP however they can, and over the years players have come up with some really neat tricks. One of the current 'tricks' is to use a hero such as Lone Druid (who has a controllable bear summon) grab the creep wave behind the enemy tower and bring it towards him.

Of course there is a lot of 'zoning' going on as well there.

I'm not sure how Dota's lane control is 'over-complicated'. Is it complicated? Yes. And rightfully-fuckin'-so. But it's a difficult game, and of course there are going to be a lot of complex options available to you for lane control.

I played over 2000 games of LoL and got gold rating in ranked before switching from LoL so I can say with utmost confidence that Dota2 has more depth in the hero select alone than League of Legends has throughout the entire game.

I felt like gouging my eyes out when my friend invited me to come back to LoL to try a game just because of how shallow and boring the game is compared to Dota.

@drakoji: You went 17/0 against 5 people who were likely playing a moba for the first time

@onimonkii said:

Here, I'll add HoN to the comparison, of which I have played well over 2000 games:

It has the exact same mechanics as Dota (even as far as ~50 characters being direct ports) except that everything moves much faster, it's more focused on ganking than farming, and it's less competitively balanced.

I still jump back in every few months just to dick around with some of my favorite S2-created heroes, but there's not really any reason for anyone new to choose HoN over Dota 2.

Indeed, it's much faster. But things like conceding is a dumb feature (in my opinion). Because whenever you're about to get the big W the other team just cries and quits, so you're always screwed out of the feeling of victory. I know some people aren't but to me it feels like the game did not finish. Now some people really like that feature because if you're losing you don't have to waste 15 more minutes until it happens, but that also leaves no room for those huge comebacks. Which is funny, because the people I played with agreed that the comebacks were the sweetest, yet they'd still concede given the option instead of fighting (at which point the other team yells at you for not conceding).

@f00: I had a level 30 account. My friend gave me his account to try the game.

@xymox: Something dawned one me.

Valve will never put a surrender button, it would kinda break the item dropping nature of the game, unless they do that you have 0% chance or a massive minus to drop chance.

Seems like comparing Quake to Team Fortress.

People mentioned HoN in here. It's pretty much just a faster version of Dota with imbalanced heroes and the worst community ever conceived. I started with HoN so I probably need to have some slight or respect for it or S2, but I really don't. So many ass-backwards design decisions that came from that game it is a wonder the devs were even thinking straight.

I mean, for fucks sake they organized you by skill on your team, so the top guy would be highest MMR, and the low guy (brown) would be the lowest MMR. Absolutely the dumbest idea anyone could have come up with. Not too surprising from a man like Maliken though, who was routinely known to go into games and flame others (just google "Maliken flame" or "Maliken trash talk" or something.

Also concede is dumb. All you get are people petitioning to concede in chat the second it hits 15 minutes. 4/5 concede is the absolute worst though.

LoL was hand made to be easier to get into. Dota is a WC3 mod where it was an unwritten rule to kick people who had to DL the map because noobs weren't allowed. Dota takes an enormous time investment to learn and get into where as LoL is fun from your first few games. I'm convinced its rare for someone to enjoy Dota who started on LoL, just with how slow and plodding Dota can feel and how you have to climb K2 just to get past the learning curve. I don't understand how people can enjoy LoL, but it works both ways. If you don't like it there's no point to forcing on yourself.

I'm to going nth the people who've said "Dota is actually free" or something to that affect (effect? Whatever.). I got into a League some a while and the grind was what eventually turned me off it, the out of match progression system added nothing to the experience besides some extra fiddle work to annoy people like me who didn't plan on dropping hundreds of dollars on the damn thing.

Just try it. I did, hated it, and moved on. Nothing of value was lost to either me or the DotA2 team and community. You're allowed to like LoL. You're allowed to like DotA2. You're allowed to like both. You're allowed to like neither. You're allowed to know people who like the other without trying to assert your favoured game's superiority over theirs.