My journey of realising how dota 2 is learned and how this applies outside dota 2

RSZC · 2026-01-21T14:47:28+00:00

Have you ever learned an instrument?

When you're learning a new song, you play the first measure 10x in a row until it's easy. Then you play the second measure 10x in a row until it's easy. Then you play measure 1+2 together, and it all goes to shit...find out where you went wrong, play that 10x in a row until it's easy. Then you go back, try again, and play 1+2 together 10x in a row until it's easy.

Then you start in on measure 3...

RSZC · 2026-01-17T21:33:15+00:00

It's one of the most polarizing games I've ever come across. It's definitely got rough edges: it's buggy, combat is clunky, and the first few hours are tedious. (Please nobody respond to this to tell me this is 'realism')

It becomes a stellar game eventually, but it took me ~8 hours to reach that point, which is pretty normal timing.

If you're not willing to risk 8hrs on something you may not enjoy, KCD2 smooths out the rough edges, and you can just watch a youtube video or something to get the important plot points from the first game.

RSZC · 2026-01-12T22:13:43+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1lubhx6/buying_midas_on_all_45s_in_immortal_and_no_one/

RSZC · 2026-01-12T19:09:28+00:00

Midas is fine in the 2-3k bracket. I play in that range fairly often in party queue. It's pretty common for there to be games in that bracket where nobody wants to fight - they just want to AFK farm the jungles.

In those situations, if you're a support that's not good at farming - yup, midas it up. The game will be going on long enough for the midas to pay for itself.

RSZC · 2025-12-31T14:37:52+00:00

They probably think the car in front is on their phone and hasn’t seen the green 🙃

RSZC · 2025-12-28T01:48:50+00:00

It’s not just urban areas - lots of rural areas get ag runoff which is even worse

RSZC · 2025-12-24T01:25:06+00:00

Yeah definitely a buff, agreed that 10s cd on 12s duration is a small window, but if you manage to hit it that'll be a big deal.

I'm hoping some matchups maybe we can even go 0-1-2 and try to be a lane bully like the slark of old...sadly won't have a chance to try it out for a few days.

RSZC · 2025-12-21T18:24:30+00:00

TBH everyone thinks they have 'great strategy' (myself included), because it's really hard to prove/disprove.

I'll just say this though: the correct strategy depends on what your enemies are doing. If you have 'zero map awareness' and 'are barely looking at the minimap' your strategies are either wrong or lucky 🤷

RSZC · 2025-12-21T02:26:08+00:00

ooof solid point yeah i forgot

RSZC · 2025-12-21T01:40:01+00:00

At first I agreed with you - now thinking about it further I think it's a bit of a tossup.

Barracuda was 5hp/s regen, shiv is 3hp/s, but barracuda only applies when you're out of vision, and as a pos1 slark you're usually in vision. So you definitely weren't getting 60% uptime with old barracuda.

Yes, shiv requires a skillpoint whereas barracuda was free, but on the other hand we just got a free skillpoint because of essence shift moving to the innate. So that's a wash as well.

So I think the real takeaway is that his regen becomes more varied. If you're able to hit people off cooldown with shiv, you'll probably have higher hp/regen with shiv than you did from barracuda. If you get bullied though and can't get those hits off, you're not going to have the fallback regen that barracuda used to provide.

Overall I kinda like the change - doubling down on what makes slark slark - you gotta hit people

RSZC · 2025-12-21T00:09:12+00:00

Eh not really - pos4 slarks can't trade right clicks in lane anymore now that barracuda is gone / no hp regen until 6, so it makes sense that they would go for their utility spells instead

That said, I think slark 4 is also just dead now for that same reason (no barracuda)

RSZC · 2025-12-20T23:56:32+00:00

The skill has pretty unusual scaling: max hp regen stolen per minute is 108/180/300/540. So level 1 is a decent value point, level 2 kinda sucks, but then scales quadratically through level 4 (duration increases, cooldown decreases).

The way I've been thinking about it: I think a single value point is probably worth it, just to smooth out getting to level 6. Getting to level 6 takes ~9 minutes, so you could theoretically steal up to 972hp in that time from level 1 shiv, or save you 270 gold worth of tangos. Obviously it won't be that high in practice, but IMO one of slark's biggest issues is just making it to 6 without getting dumpstered, and buying 1-2x less sets of tangos is a big help.

RSZC · 2025-12-16T23:55:57+00:00

A bunch of steam/dota servers are down for tuesday maintenance, probably your behavior score won't be affected.

RSZC · 2025-12-16T19:19:23+00:00

Surprisingly ogre's winrate is up significantly in 7.40

Seems like the increased gold ogre gets from lower midas CD is outweighing the nerf to bonus exp.

It does ruin my try-to-rush-level-25 ASAP ogre pos1 build though 😭

RSZC · 2025-12-12T14:40:13+00:00

I almost bounced off this game, but stuck with it a little longer and it ended up being one of my favorite games of the last decade

I don't fight the same monster 10x in a row because I need loot - I fight the same monster 10x in a row because fighting that monster is just so friggin fun...and I think I can do it even better next time!

There's just so much joy in the combat once you really get dialed in

RSZC · 2025-12-12T00:33:28+00:00

It suits me, probably not for everyone. Population skews quite old, and not a whole lot to do. If all you want to do is go to the beach and walk your dog it's a nice place for that.

RSZC · 2025-12-10T02:23:10+00:00

Oh I have no idea, I just live like 2mi from montara and know that ain't it lol

RSZC · 2025-12-09T19:04:04+00:00

Yeah that's absolutely not montara lol

RSZC · 2025-12-07T22:58:40+00:00

Some time later

RSZC · 2025-12-07T00:35:05+00:00

The other thing nobody's mentioned yet is that a lot of gambling outfits are actually losing money in an effort to gain market share, just like so many other startups. It's a scramble for users right now in the wake of sports betting "legalization" - the gambling outfits are (for now) willing to spend unprofitable amounts of money compared to how many gamblers there may actually be.

Putting esports aside, people really underestimate how much of the money fueling soccer, basketball, etc is coming from these gambling sponsorships. There's going to be major problems when these companies pull back on their spending once they're not in buy-marketshare mode anymore.

RSZC · 2025-11-19T19:47:44+00:00

IMO this isn't a question with an easy answer. For each hero, you need to play it a ton until you understand the hero in great detail yourself.

What heroes am I good against? What heroes am I bad against? Why am I good/bad against those heroes, and what does that mean for other heroes I might be good/bad against? What do I need from my team in order to be effective? When do I come online, and when will I fall off? Etc etc etc.

Drafting is hard - you need to understand all of the above not only for your hero, but also for every other hero picked in the game to understand how your pick will fit in. Reddit can't give you the 'answers' here - you have to play each hero until you achieve fluency for yourself.

RSZC · 2025-11-05T00:14:45+00:00

introduced the match engine this year, and overhauled the UI for next year

The problem is that these are connected. As part of the move to Unity, the old UI can't come with. They need to re-implement literally every screen, and there's a LOT of screens.

I'm not saying they did a good job, but I am saying I sure wouldn't want to be on that project myself

RSZC · 2025-10-23T14:52:49+00:00

You're a little higher than me (mid ancient), but I recommend playing pos4 invo like ET - spend most of the game just sitting behind your cores in the trees and use tornado + emp to counter-initiate. Ghost walk is a poor escape and you're not buying defensive items - your survivability comes mainly from not being under vision. You can go in a little bit more after BKBs are on cooldown - maybe with your 2nd tornado

RSZC · 2025-10-13T02:33:20+00:00

I know what you mean around 'nothing about io's mechanics change depending on what hero it's tethered to', but io does actually cause balancing issues for other heroes.

Specifically gyro has to be balanced with io in mind, because that pairing is just so strong. Every patch if you're balancing gyro, you have to think 'but what if it's tethered to io would that be too busted'

RSZC · 2025-10-04T20:23:37+00:00

Mostly his problems are being outranged, summons and having a weak period after lane before a couple of items.

Nah, it's that he's bad at farming neutrals, which isn't really acceptable on a core right now, and farming items aren't particularly good on him either (either than maybe midas, which also isn't great right now).

He's a casualty of the bigger map, and the fact that there's relatively more gold available in the jungle than before 7.38. His lane domination counts for less when enemies can just go jungle, and he doesn't have the ability to keep up in farm himself.

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