Which MOBA is Right for You? DOTA 2!

Welcome back! After looking at League of Legends I felt it was only fair to look at its number one competitor, DOTA 2.

DOTA 2 is touted as the "true sequel" to the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients that League of Legends is also based on. And to keep that identity it has kept a key mechanic that League of Legends decided to do away with. In DOTA 2 you have the option of executing your own minions to keep opposing players from obtaining gold. This concept of "denying" is but one of the many features that helps DOTA 2 carve out its own identity when compared to the ever popular LoL. That's not to say that DOTA 2 isn't popular though. The International Championship was just shown on ESPN recently and it had one of the largest prize pools in the history of competitive gaming.

Just like League of Legends DOTA 2 can have games that can average roughly 40 minutes. But unlike League of Legends you cannot surrender and must play every game through until the end, unless another player leaves the game due to connection issues or frustration. At that point you may leave the game without penalty. Some take issue with this while others argue that no game of DOTA 2 is every truly over until a player sees 'Victory' on their screen. What side of the fence you fall on can only be determined after playing a few (hundred) games.

So you might be asking: Why should (or shouldn't you) play DOTA 2?

You Should Play DOTA 2 If:

You are a MOBA veteran!

I'll spell it out plain and simple here: DOTA 2 can be a really hard game to pick up. This may be why many people choose to avoid it. Every character is available from the start, there's tons of items that only truly become valuable when you activate them in the midst of combat and you will lose the Gold that you use to acquire these items if a player kills you. Death has a real weight in DOTA 2 and some players even feel punished for dying. Because of these factors I would not recommend DOTA 2 to a new MOBA player. However, there's a lot for veteran players to love. The heavy reliance on activated items really sets apart the truly skilled players from the others. Those that know how their items work and when to use them will win fights more often than not. The deny system also rewards players for paying attention to their minions and towers and for knowing when a particular thing is beyond hope. There's also no way to teleport back to base without buying an item like in other titles. Instead you need to have a Courier (that can be killed) bring you items. So veterans that know how to sustain themselves well throughout the game will be rewarded while those that rush in foolishly will most likely be punished,

You want a large cast of varied and unique characters!

One complaint I hear a lot about League of Legends is that characters aren't varied enough. While I can't attest to whether or not that's true I can tell you that is definitely not the case with DOTA 2. The whole cast is rich and varied, not only in design but in abilities as well. Would you like to play as Juggernaut and slash your way through large groups of enemies while being invincible? Would you like to be Necrophos and have your very presence hurt your enemies before you execute them? There's tons of possibilities! And there's tons of ways to play them too. Every character has guides written by other players and you can filter them in-game to know the best items to buy and the best order to get your skills in. It's great!

You want a friendlier* community!

*Now the community in DOTA 2 isn't great by any means. But out of every MOBA I'll be listing it is the one that had the most enjoyable community. There will be plenty of occasions where you're insulted and where you'll meet players that will intentionally die. No worries there. But DOTA 2's addition of in-game voice chat has opened up a ton of opportunities. The second I speak into a mic other players will speak up and a sort of camaraderie is formed. We coordinate better, we laugh, we even give advice that is constructive and not hateful. I can easily say that the games where I have spoken up have all been far more enjoyable than those where I haven't. So if you hop into a game of DOTA 2 then speak up. Chances are you'll find a new friend.

You Shouldn't Play DOTA 2 If:

You know when it's over and actually want to do something about it.

The lack of a surrender button is a cause for concern. There have been plenty of games I've played where we were losing terribly either because our team was playing poorly or someone on our team was intentionally trying to make us lose. Sometimes the enemy team simply won't want to end the game. And there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to wait. Some people are fine with this but there is a concern when fun stops being a factor and you just want the game to end so you can hopefully have fun next game.

You want players to actually finish the game.

DOTA 2 is also the game where that I saw had the highest volume of players to leave games. Players would usually leave if our team was doing poorly. Now you can safely leave the game without penalty if someone else has left. But that takes 5 minutes of them being out of the game or them actually hitting the button that disconnects them from the match entirely. Now most leavers will just leave and after five minutes you can leave as well with no penalty. But if they have a bad connection and keep dropping in and out then you can't leave until a full 5 minutes of them actually being disconnected elapses. This can be rough and has annoyed me on more than a few occasions. I wish I could think of a better system for them to implement but I honestly can't.

You don't like some overly complicated characters.

DOTA 2 has some characters that seem needlessly complicated for a MOBA. The most common one that is complained about is Invoker, a character that requires you to combine elements via specific button combinations in-game in order to cast his spells. DOTA 2 also has a lot of characters that only seem suitable for facing certain teams. Anti-Mage and Silencer are great if your enemy team has mages but they don't really perform as well if the enemy team doesn't meet that requirement. DOTA 2 definitely has more characters that are designed to fill certain niches. That isn't to say all of its characters are like this. But if a player accidentally picks one of these heroes when the conditions for them to perform well aren't met then it's likely that that player will not do well or enjoy themselves.

And That's a Wrap!

Well guys that's my look at DOTA 2. I apologize that I haven't gotten every article out within a week but this has taken far longer than I expected. I hope you'll keep coming back to find out which MOBA is right for you!

Which MOBA is Right for You? League of Legends!

We couldn't really start this series without starting with the most popular MOBA out there. Odds are that if you have friends that play video games then at least one of them play League of Legends.

League of Legends is one of the MOBAs that follows the standard format set by the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. There are three lanes constantly spawning enemies (or creeps) and a jungle full of enemies. Both teams of five players try to push up the lanes and destroy the enemy turrets and, ultimately, their base. Whichever team destroys the enemy base first wins.

Each player picks one character and boy are there a lot to choose from! League of Legends is sitting around 120 characters now with plenty more on the way. This would normally seem daunting to new players but when you just start out your character selection is restricted somewhat. There is a small portion of the roster available for "Free" each week. The rest of the roster is locked unless you buy them with in-game money, which you get by playing matches, or by paying actual money for a different in-game currency. If you like a character you played during their free week but don't have the in-game money to buy them by the end you'll either have to pay real money to keep playing as them or wait until you can get enough in-game currency. Some people see it as a way to force people to spend money. Others see it as Riot limiting selections so that people don't get overwhelmed by the sheer number of champions. It's really your call on what you see it as.


Games can be pretty lengthy, averaging 40 minutes. So it's definitely not the kind of game where you can expect to get a quick one in before you go to work. But honestly the game length doesn't impact the fun factor that can be had from this game. But now let's get into the meat of the discussion: Why should you (or shouldn't you) play League of Legends?

You Should Play League of Legends If:

You are new to MOBAs! 

League of Legends is by far the easiest MOBA to pick up out of all the ones I'll be covering. A pretty well done tutorial is presented to the player at the start of the game. Players also have the option to play matches against the computer to perfect their skills, but every other MOBA I will be looking at offers that as well. Probably one of the biggest boons for LoL is that it has the largest number of characters that are easy to pick up and play. Most characters don't deviate from the standard four abilities and one passive layout. On top of that it's very easy to transition between characters. A good Ashe player should be able to pick up one of her other damage dealing counterparts, Caitlyn. This holds true for a lot of League's characters so the player should be able to build a good stock of champions to play very quickly. This isn't to say that there aren't some complicated characters, but a new player is more likely to play a less complicated character if they simply pick based on looks or at random.

You want to find matches quickly!

League is afforded many advantages by being the most popular MOBA out there. ANd one of those advantages is a very short queue time. Waiting more than a minute to find matches is a very rare occurrence. So if you're looking to get into games quickly and don't want to wait then LoL is going to give you the quickest transitions from menu to play that you could hope for.

You Should Not Play League of Legends If:

You want to make new friends!

Out of all of the MOBAs I've played on this list LoL easily takes the cake as the one with the most hostile community. It unfortunately doesn't help even if you are a low level player considering a lot of veteran players will make second accounts to artificially increase their win percentage. But even moreso it seems as though your average LoL random is hostile right out of the gate. Players will berate you for not doing well, berate you for doing well if they consider the kills you got "theirs" and sometimes simply berate you to make themselves feel better. It's a tough community to get along with and there have been many newer players I've tried to get in the game that have left simply because of the community. But if you have a thick skin when it comes to people on the internet and/or a lot of friends that already play you can potentially just ignore the toxic players and keep on going. other times they'll go out of their way to ruin your game for you. It varies.

You don't want to "pay" for stat boosts!

This is actually the one area I take issue with the most in LoL and that's the Rune system. There are two ways to customize your characters. You can use masteries, which are trees of different ability buffs. Points are rewarded to you as you level up and once your account hits level 30 you can invest all of the points you wish to customize your hero. 

The other way is runes. Runes can only be acquired by spending IP, the currency that is given to you after simply playing games. You can spend IP to purchase runes and further add boosts to your character. For some people this is great. But to me it seems pretty flawed. See, you can also buy Boosts which will give you more IP after finishing matches. These you can only get with real money. Say you really want to buy a character. Great. But you won't be able to maximize that character's full potential unless you buy runes with that same IP. So you either need to invest more time into the game to get runes or simply pay money to spend less time getting runes. This presents the problem that players who have runes, regardless of the way they got them, have an inherent advantage over other players. Add to that the fact that some runes are rather expensive (some costing as much as a single character) and that there are lots of "junk runes," runes that are useless, and you find a bit of a problem. New players won't know which runes are junk and which aren't, so they can end up spending IP on something that is pretty bad. Throw on top of that the fact that players only get a limited number of rune pages and the only way you can buy them is with a ton of IP (more than any single character) or money and there's a recipe for a system that masquerades as something free but encourages the player to invest money into it to maximize their gains faster. I feel it imbalances the game on not only a monetary level but on a mechanical level as well and the fact that a lot of other MOBAs forgo any systems similar to this entirely is a big tell for me.

And that's a wrap!

Well guys that's my look at League of Legends! Stay tuned to take a peek at some other great MOBAs in the coming days. Hopefully I can help you all find which MOBA is right for you.