Defense of the Ancients: Difference between revisions

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''DotA'' is, in a nutshell, a team game where you choose a [[Hero Unit]] with unique abilities, kill creeps and heroes for gold and buy items with gold to make your hero even more powerful, and attempt to destroy a central building in the opposing team's base (the titular "Ancient" which you are defending), while they do the same to you.

The mod [[Genre Popularizer|popularized a new genre]]: "MOBA", [[Multiplayer Online Battle Arena]]. ''[[League of Legends]]'', ''[[Heroes of Newerth]]'' and ''[[Demigod]]'' are the major attempts to turn the format into a commercial success.

 

 

 

It also has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXKd7uuehlw&feature=fvsr an awesome song about it].

 

 

 

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** [[Memetic Mutation|M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!]]

** '''OWNAGE!'''

* [[Ascended Glitch]]: Pudge's [[Grappling Hook Gun]] can be curved due to a bug in the ancient code. Everyone knows it, and being able to "curve hook" properly is now regarded as essential to playing him well. (There are more, but less known.)

** The entire game floats on ascended glitches. Alternating attack clicks and movement clicks at the right time so you can shoot while moving? That's not a glitch, that's skill. Luring a jungle monster away from its spawn point at the correct moment so another copy of it spawns and you can kill both with area effect abilities? That's skill. Using the invulnerability granted by the extremely brief transformation time of attack style toggling skills to dodge stuns and projectiles? It's possible. In fact, the whole concept of killing your own minions to deny experience and gold started out as a bug. If you play the game as it ''appears'' to be, you're a [[Scrub|noob]].

*** So they're ascended [[Flaw Exploitation|EXPLOITS]]. But as far as this troper knows, there is no trope for those. This seems the best match.

* Attack Reflector: The Spectre and the Centaur Warchief both have some ability to do this with spells. The 'Blademail' item gives an opportunity for the wearer to fully reflect all damage back to all attackers for several seconds.

* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: Divine Rapier. +300 damage (insane), but drops on death and can be used by enemies if they pick it up. If you buy one of these, guess who the entire enemy team is going to target first?

** The really, ''really'' hard all-DPS zero mobility carries like Troll Warlord. Amazing DPS, but nothing's going to let you just walk up to them and bash their brains out.

** All heroes that get killed will eventually get revived automatically, but the process takes time that increases with level and players lose out on gold-making opportunities while dead. Death Isn't Cheap.

*** Especially since you can buy your way out of the revival process... by spending outrageous amounts of gold.

* [[Blood Bath]]: By bathing in blood, Strygwyr the Bloodseeker can heal his wounds, including ones which would otherwise prove fatal.

* [[Boisterous Bruiser]]: Sven the Rogueknight, based on his skill descriptions, such as "Sven is here to pump you up!" or "Sven gets pumped up!"

* [[Body Horror]]: As of 6.72, Naix can infest his own teammates and if you switch while he's inside you he can turn you inside out like alien spawn (for better context he's a zombie).

** Also applies to Broodmother but it's spiders instead (not that that's any better).

* [[Boring but Practical]]: Disabling and support heroes. Like it or not, almost no all-DPS team will be successful, and these fellows are vital to success.

** [[Awesome Yet Practical]]: Aggressive supports, Earthshaker in particular. Come packed with stuns, good damage and excellent team buffs, and are absolutely hilarious to play.

* [[Bonus Boss]]: The fountain. It will [[Foregone Conclusion|shred]] [[Curb Stomp Battle|any team]] that doesn't go in geared for it; fortunately, its destruction is unnecessary.

* [[Boom! Headshot!]]: One of Sniper's passive skills. It doesn't turn foes he kills into [[Chunky Salsa Rule|chunky salsa]] though. A properly-timed Assassinate, on the other hand...

* [[Cannibalism Superpower]]: Lucifer with his Devour.

* [[Carry a Big Stick]]: Tiny with Aghanim's Scepter who picked up a tree to have a War Club.

* [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]: AI versions often have them getting experience and gold faster than their human counterparts if the mode isn't set to disable it. And don't let me start on the move speed...

** Although the experience and gold can be disabled, they're much better at getting last hits (the ones that count for the bonus gold) than most humans. What's really an issue is how they seem to cheat percentages - especially when using Phantom Lancer and Ogre Magi.

* [[Crosshair Aware]]: These appear on the Sniper's unlucky victim whenever he uses ''Assassinate''; it's only visible to the Sniper's allies, though. A variation on this is used to warn targets of Barathrum's ''Charge of Darkness''.

** The target is warned by the fact that they have this little tiny status effect with a gun on it that says something like "You are about to die" (It doesn't really say that but it should!)

* [[Dem Bones]]: King Ostarion, Ethreain, Pugna, and Clinkz belong to the non-Mooks variety.

* [[Desperation Attack]]: Sacred Warrior's ''Berserker's Blood'' and Soul Keeper's ''Sunder''.

** The Orb of Venom is a recipe to form the Eye of Skadi, an ice-based item with Cold Attack and a frozen projectile.

* [[Elite Mooks]]: Mega Creeps.

* [[Entropy and Chaos Magic]]: One of the characters uses a chaos damage spell.

* [[Epic Flail]]: Rigwarl, the Bristleback.

* [[Evil Twin]]: Terrorblade is Magina's twin brother in their background stories.

* [[Excuse Plot]]

* [[Extreme Omnivore]]: The Tango allows the bearer to consume trees.

** Axe's ''Culling Blade'' is especially notable, as it is the ''only'' attack that can break through ''Shallow Grave''. To elaborate, ''Shallow Grave'' prevents the unit or hero it's cast on from dying, no matter how much damage s/he takes. However, ''Culling Blade'' dispels the effect before doing damage.

* [[Fire, Ice, Lightning]]: Quas Wex Exort

* [[Fog of Doom]]: Slark the Nightcrawler turns into this and chases you.

** [[Fog of War]] also counts as [[Fog of Doom]] in a different sense: it doesn't chase you, but it can conceal enemies preparing to disable you, and even if you know they're there, you can't click on them, so your options are limited. Using this to your advantage when escaping death is known as 'juking'.

* [[Glass Cannon]]: Most of the Agility heroes, though some of the higher-tier ones have escape mechanisms to let them get away - if they can use it before getting stunned and nuked. Some of the nuke-heavy intelligence heroes are this as well, such as Lina and Boush.

* [[Gravity Sucks]]: Enigma's Black Hole.

* [[Guns Are Worthless]]: Subverted with the Sniper. He is the only gunslinger, but his problems aren't due to his use of a gun; rather, it's that he can't do anything ''with'' that gun but [[Boom! Headshot!]], which limits his viability in competitive play.

* [[Healing Factor]]: All heroes to a modest degree and depending on items, but primarily Huskar and Alchemist.

* [[Hero Secret Service]]: While initiators and tanks fit the traditional "bullet-taking", gankers go about it more proactively by hunting down and killing enemy heroes before they can threaten the carry/ies.

** Meepo the Geomancer deserves special mention here. A fragile little kobold. His Ultimate creates a permanent, weaker clone of him (that can't use items besides boots), three at maximum level, that are even EASIER to kill than the original. Oh, and if one dies, they all die. The 'Lethal' part is that having a total of four little kobolds equals 4x the hurt, and possibly 4x the experience. Of course, it takes insanely good micro to play him well...

*** Meepo can actually dish out incredible damage if one figures out the secret to Meepo's ultimate. {{spoiler|One Meepo's cooldown is independent of the other Meepo's cooldowns. So if all four kobolds are huddled and all four use ''Poof'', you deal approximately 1120 damage. Combined with a spammable ensnare and an 80% slow, you are, good sir, a terrifyingly lethal joke character. }}

*** His attribute bonuses are still there, just not immediately apparent. Each of his orbs, when leveled up, gives +2 to a stat (Quas = Strength, Wex = Agility, Exort = Intelligence). Each orb can reach a maximum of level 7. He gets a total of 6 stat points less in each stat by level 25.

*** Everything ''in'' sight? Hell, he'll get stuff outside his natural visual range ([[Required Secondary Powers|as long as there's an allied hero, tower, or ward to spot for him)]]!

* [[Leeroy Jenkins]]: Semi-subverted; while this playing style can and often will wreck team strategy, some heroes are played specifically for this purpose; some community lingo calls them [[Rambo]] heroes. Initiator heroes also are meant to charge headfirst into the enemy formation, get off a (preferably disabling) spell and draw fire while the rest follow behind.

* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: Theoretically you can build any hero to be one of these, but Chaos Knight (between his ''Reality Rift'' and having the second highest base movespeed), Lycanthrope (in his Shapeshifted [[Super Mode]]) and Slithereen Guard (with ''Sprint'' active) are the ones who fit conceptually.

** You forgot Balanar, the Night Stalker.

*** Barathrum.

*** Juggernaut.

* [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]]: Inverted with most of the Strength (warriors) and Intelligence (wizards) heroes. The latter usually have spells that do fixed amounts of damage, meaning they do a lot of hurt early on, but later in the game the physical damage Strength heroes dish out is a lot more than that 300 damage early on.

** One of the main criticism made to the game is that it's becoming carry-centered, the best tactic is arguably turtling (choosing two instead of one carry, sometimes even three and defending for almost an hour until the carries are fully equipped and the casters are useless), the main developer realized this and most of the latest updates are focused on balancing the game to discourage people from playing a carries+stunners team.

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: There are currently 108 heroes in Dota, with more on the way.

* [[Loud of War]]: Many of the spells in the game involve screams and roars (either to damage the enemy with soundwaves, scare the crap out of him, or pump up one's teammates).

* [[Mad Bomber]]: Squee (no, not ''that'' [[Squee]]), Spleen, and Spoon - the Goblin Techies.

* [[Rain of Arrows]]: The Windrunner's Focus Fire, and Clinkz's Strafe skills.

* [[Revenge]]: Vengeful Spirit, as her name implies.

* [[Shock and Awe]]: For starters: Razor, Zeus, and Raijin. Also heroes carrying Maelstrom or Mjollnir.

* [[Shockwave Stomp]]: Many characters have spells that deal damage or stun enemies over an area by smashing the ground really hard.

** Don't forget Khimari Ronso from ''[[Final Fantasy X]]''.

** [[Star Wars|Boush]], the Tinker with the impressive [[High Tech]] weaponry should also count.

*** He ''is'' a Hydralisk. (Well, kind of. The H-lisk model was included in ''TFT'' as an [[Easter Egg]], but, as DotA proves, there's no reason they can't be employed in gameplay.)

** [[Edgar Allan Poe|Nevermore]] the Shadow Fiend.

** Also Rikimaru, the [[Tenchu|Stealth Assassin]].

** [[My Friends and Zoidberg|And]] [[Futurama|Zoidberg]]

*** No, really. He has a courier named after him.

* [[Skill Gate Characters]]: Gondar the Bounty Hunter and Rikimaru the Stealth Assassin both rely completely on their invisibility to be effective. Gondar's Wind Walk grants him no bonus movement speed, and if he's detected, it can't save him unlike other windwalks, while Rikimaru's is the reason he's more than just a decent semicarry with a silence. In lower level play efficient invisibility detection is completely unheard of. Moving just slightly up in general skill level renders these heroes both nearly useless.

* [[Spam Attack]]: The Ursa Warrior's ''Overpower'' skill. The Windrunner's ''Focus Fire'' skill.

* [[Squishy Wizard]]: The INT heroes, of course. Plus, their nukes become less effective (with the exception of a few skills) as the game goes on.

* [[Steampunk]]: Gyrocopter, Tinker, and Clockwerk.

** Centaur's ''Double Edge'' dishes out huge damage every 10 seconds if he is ignored. So averted, somewhat.

* [[Stop Poking Me]]: Several heroes in DotA 2 seem to lose their patience if you keep telling them to do something they can't do or aren't ready for.

* [[Super Mode]]: Several ultimate spells, such as the Dragon Knight's ''Elder Dragon Form'', the Lycanthrope's ''Shapeshift'', Keeper of the Light's ''Spirit Form'', or the Alchemist's ''Chemical Rage''.

* [[Suspiciously Small Army]]

* [[Teleport Spam]]: The Juggernaut's rendition of ''Omnislash'' acts this way.

** Tinker after he gots Boot of Travel

* [[Time Stands Still]]: Faceless Void's ultimate, ''Chronosphere''. Within the area of effect anyway.

** And for everyone but himself and whatever minions he may have picked up.

* [[Unstable Equilibrium]]: If you aren't good at killing creeps and staying alive in the beginning of the game your hero will be very weak later on. Especially brutal with the agility heroes, who need to farm expensive items to be effective.

* [[Useless Useful Spell]]: Averted. Stuns, slows and silences are critical to most kills, and poisons often remain effective through mid-game.

* [[Violation of Common Sense]]: Denying. Seriously, even most [[The Neidermeyer|Neidermeyers]] and [[General Ripper|General Rippers]] who gladly invoke [[We Have Reserves]] and throw masses of troops into a meat grinder won't outright kill their own troops themselves, but that's what you're expected to do in order to disadvantage the enemy.

** (For those not in the know, "denying" a creep is [[Team Killing]] an allied [[Mook]] whom the ''enemy'' is about to kill. Players get a gold bonus every time they kill anything; denying is solely for the purpose of preventing this and halving the [[Experience Points|XP]] the opponent gains.)

* [[Weak Turret Gun]]: Double subverted with towers, which are a real threat early on but lose their effectiveness as creeps and heroes grow stronger while they don't.

* [[When Trees Attack]]: Rooftrellen (a hero with one of the best strength ratings in the game).

** Additionally, Tinker is voiced by [[Actor Allusion|Harry Robins, the who is the voice of Dr. Isaac Kleiner]]. Subsequently, not only do Tinker's lines contain multiple references to Half-Life, many are paraphrases or direct quotations of Dr. Kleiner himself.

* [[Wings Do Nothing]]: Terrorblade, Balanar, Lucifer, and Akasha

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