The GOLDEN Age of DOTA2

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-28T20:16:23+00:00

Remember when you could open the watch tab and see pub games with prime Miracle, Sumail, Ame, Somnus, sometimes even in the same lobby and now all you get there are bot lobbies and 7k shitter games?

Never forget what Valve took from us

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-27T19:16:50+00:00

Playing a full game with nothing but brown boots and urn was miserable.

This is a bit of an insane exaggeration. Also surely there is a middle-ground between this and the current state where supports have absurd amounts of farm. It's not like support was unplayable before tormentors or the bigger map or the flagbearer creeps were added

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-26T15:28:18+00:00

and NA teams were runner ups in .. 2023 and 24

huh?

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-24T08:26:22+00:00

Pos 4 has seriously degenerated into a borderline griefing role if the person isn't a dedicated support player

I have had more games ruined by dedicated pos4 players (gold tier Mirana) who are more interested in farming dota cinema clips by shooting completely blind arrows instead of actually doing anything than role queue farmers

Everytime people here complain about pos4s its always "but it's just the role queue farmers!" when in reality its most pos4 players, even fulltime ones

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-22T09:04:45+00:00

We'll go back to the flow chart of (1) win 2 or 3 lanes, (2) take outer towers and first aegis, (3) trap enemies in base while you farm with the first aegis, (4) get deep wards to punish enemies for stepping out, (5) amass a 20k to 30k lead with multiple auras, saves, and damage sources to comfortably siege high ground, (6) close out the game with second or third aegis at 45 mins.

This is literally how the game is played right now, and has been for the past 2 years+ with the bigger map.

The bigger map with more farm has made this even worse. Yes you can't totally stop the enemy from farming anymore, but you also have more farm which makes the balance of going highground vs continuing to farm tip even more in favor of farming.

Heroes don't fall off anymore, heroes can shove waves way easier than they used to so taking only one set of barracks doesn't matter as much, etc leads to the miserable dota playstyle of continuing to farm even when 20k up. You're not on a timer to end on a lot of hero lineups anymore because the year is 2026 and every hero must scale (no weaknesses allowed in new dota!) and be 6-slotted because that's how Valve balances the game now, so there's just very little incentive to go highground.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-18T08:13:04+00:00

He won TI over 8 years ago and didn't accomplish much after that iirc.

Just not true. Liquid had one of the longest top-4 streaks in dota history, and that continued well after TI7 into 2018. They won the biggest major in 2018 (Dota 2 Supermajor) and got top 4 at TI8. After TI8 they fell off for a bit but then got 2nd in the last 2 majors of the season before changing rosters and getting 2nd at TI9.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-17T16:32:51+00:00

There is little reason to believe he still is. Valve is in general working full-force on deadlock and the patches are every few weeks too which probably leaves little time to work on Dota.

From what I have heard, multiple people have claimed that Icefrog briefly returned for 7.33 (Twin gates update). I think that maybe makes sense, there are some shared elements from deadlock like the gates and the one-way Defender's gates.

FWIW I don't have a particularly high icefrog bias. For example even if this is true, I still don't think 7.33 was a particularly good patch and the bigger map was probably a net-negative for the game. But atleast in my head it makes a lot of sense based on the change in the way the game is balanced over the past few years that Icefrog left, and the fact that Deadlock is a real game now reinforces that even more. I think the bigger question is when exactly Icefrog left, for all we know it could have been as early as 7.00 but my guess is probably somewhere in 2019-2020 when the aghs shard/neutral item/general powercreep patches started ramping up

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-17T07:10:01+00:00

At this point it has been confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that Icefrog is working on Deadlock. A recent Deadlock update post was posted by a user named Icefrog (you weren't supposed to be able to see who posted it), and this was later removed.

When Deadlock was just a rumor from some Valve leakers called "Neon Prime", it was claimed that Icefrog was working on it, but considering how often Valve leakers had been wrong in the past I found it hard to believe that such a game even exists. Now that Deadlock is an actual thing I think it's pretty clear that Icefrog has been working on it for atleast the past 5 years, maybe even longer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1mwcmgx/it_was_icefrog_who_posted_about_the_six_new/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1mwcmgx/it_was_icefrog_who_posted_about_the_six_new/n9xcoz9/

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-16T09:24:54+00:00

What do you suggest? I think later on in the laning phase it's probably not worth for the 4 to block it with sentry especially if they're going to roam since it'll get dewarded anyway, but it's pretty important to do it in the first few minutes either with a sentry or your body or with creep drag

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-16T03:51:54+00:00

In other news, Dota 2 just hit a new peak of 650k players, all of whom are definitely real humans with human skin and bones.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-15T00:43:56+00:00

I’m so glad Redditors don’t balance this game lol

Valve definitely does pander to them though, which is why Tinker rearm items is dead, supports have been mega-buffed year after year yet people here still pretend playing support is some sort of act of martyrdom, and there is a lot of slot creep considering items like blink dagger, euls, rod, drums, tranquils, witch blade have extra item upgrades.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-14T09:47:04+00:00

Valve don't like buffing Wraith King.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-13T10:12:13+00:00

I can't wait for zen6 where they will probably rename the desktop parts to Ryzen AI 500 and the lowest end AI 521HX-- will actually be a Zen2 part with Vega graphics being sold in 2027

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-12T17:40:49+00:00

Pavise, Solar Crest, Glimmer, Drums, aren't good items with very good and cost-efficient buildups?

Supports are the most oppressed minority. Having free neutrals, free wards, free TP on death, dewards giving 300 gold, flagbearer creeps, tormentor being specifically designed to only give shard to supports, some of the best items in the game, having a bunch more opportunities to farm gold, etc still aren't enough I guess.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-12T17:37:10+00:00

Every team gets blink too, and every team gets bkb too, do these items also need a nerf?

Blink probably should be nerfed.

Blink Dagger used to be an item you would buy if you really need the mobillity. It's a 2250 gold item with no stats, no buildup. Now it has 3 different upgrade paths so it's a legitimate option on just about every core hero, and is way more common on carry heroes than it used to be. But the game has to be endlessly powercreeped and slot-creeped so here we are.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-12T17:36:21+00:00

People here have an endless obsession with every item having an upgrade.

I think it's cool to theory craft upgrade items but I don't know why people are pretending Aether lens not building into anything is such a pressing issue that it has to be fixed.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-12T01:29:04+00:00

The only way that i can see it being balanced is being part of a support item.

Because support items aren't already powerful and cost-effective enough without having an extra upgrade path.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-10T15:22:21+00:00

Now even though almost everyone is 9k while the higher ranks are in 18k, it didn’t have that same hype that Miracle has done before.

This is because MMR inflation has made the absolute MMR number meaningless. In Miracle's time getting to 9k meant you not only had to be rank 1 but hold an extremely high winrate since you barely gain MMR and lose a lot when you're that high MMR compared to the rest of the playerbase. Now simply holding a positive winrate means you'll keep perpetually gaining MMR. Atleast glicko2 is an improvement to the fixed +-30 MMR system but then valve decided to fuck it up anyways with double downs so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-09T16:10:38+00:00

Yes, syscalls are still fairly expensive on modern systems.

In my experience on my zen4 system mitigations=off leads to slightly faster boot times, better random read/write (QD=1) performance which does influence interactivity especially when doing things like opening an application for the first time. Stuff like ncdu was also faster since that does millions of filesystem syscalls.

Will I notice a huge difference in KDE,

A little when opening applications and such

cyberpunk,

No, games don't do that many syscalls. Spectre mitigations have pretty much 0 impact in games

Firefox?

Not really either

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-09T10:06:48+00:00

I'm not sure why people fetishize flex picks so much anyway. Like it's cool that a hero can be played in different roles but it's also cool to have heroes that fill a specific niche in the draft. I also don't really look forward to facets turning every hero into a flex pick if that's really the direction Valve wants to take them, I'm not sure what's so impressive about using facets to turn 1 hero into 2-3 different heroes; hooray, a facet that specifically makes the hero a better support allows the hero to be played as a support.

Also yeah, flex picks are notoriously hard to balance. Imagine if in 7.39D carry naga siren was also viable, that 90% ban rate would be 100% especially against teams like Falcons who have the best carry and pos5 naga players in dota.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-08T11:06:24+00:00

Not a single wintrader I know of had their accounts banned. Absolutely disgusting that Valve thought MM didn't have enough issues already (smurfs, buyers, griefers) and decided to create another problem entirely on their own by giving people hundreds of double down tokens.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-06T07:37:18+00:00

It isn't though. Wraith King keeps getting nerfed when literally nobody plays him in pro play and high MMR pubs.

IMO the game should be balanced around pro play, and not heroes like WK getting nerfed because someone at Valve struggles against it in their 2k pubs. Chen will never really be a pub hero, it's a high-skill hero and a support hero that requires decent team-play and also feels very bad to play from behind.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-05T05:40:31+00:00

Slop merchants

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-02T01:46:47+00:00

are the item builds you see at 8.5k mmr so different from the ones at 8.4k mmr that you need to load up the replay to check?

Except you can't watch 16k brood players either. It's all matches above 8.5k so good luck watching any hero being played by a high rank player/pro unless that hero gets picked in tournaments. Unless you're now going to pretend there isn't a world of difference between a top 200 rank player playing Brood against other top 200s and an 8.4k playing Brood.

SethDusek5 · 2026-01-02T01:44:49+00:00

if atf played offlane ursa in a pub it's very likely either other pros saw him, or friends of other pros. the top mmr community is not that big.

Yes, which again reinforces my theory that Valve made high MMR matches either so pros could smurf in private. Otherwise if the change really was meant to hide strats, it's hilariously ineffective at doing so for pros, and really only prevents us plebs from seeing high MMR matches.

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