Let’s say you’ve dabbled in League of Legends, but have always been afraid to give Dota 2 a shot. Sure, all the characters are free in Dota, you might say, and it supports rad mods, and it has a super sexy new client, but…isn’t it supposed to be really fucking hard? Boy, have I got the thing for you.
The instructional Dota 2 site Dotabuff just put out a slick new interactive service designed to help people who play League of Legends — the game’s very close sibling that’s very similar in some ways, but completely different in others. Given how slick Dotabuff’s new look is, I hope it’s the first of many such features.
It’s literally this simple: First, you go over to the “learn/lol” page and select six or more League of Legends characters that you’ve enjoyed playing:
I’ve mostly played a type of auto-attack heavy ranged character known as “ADC” in League, so for simplicity’s sake I selected my top six of those: Caitlyn, Graves, Sivir, Kog’Maw, Jinx, and — who could forget — Urgot, the gloriously fat undead crab king.
And voilà! Dotabuff gives me six characters to get my feet on the ground in Dota 2:
Hey! That dude gyrocopter even looks like a League of Legends character named Corki:
See? These games really aren’t that different…right?
Well, they sort of are. While League and Heroes of the Storm share mechanical similarities with Dota 2 that can help noobs (such as myself) get started in Valve’s MOBA, the differences come in all the little details. And learning about all the seemingly granular but hugely important details is a huge part of actually having fun when playing any MOBA.
After you’ve been set up with that, Dotabuff syncs up with your Steam profile to give you a detailed match history and player statistics:
I hope they consider adding a similar type of infrastructure for Heroes of the Storm players soon too, since that game is even more simplified than League of Legends is compared to Dota 2.
Comments
4 responses to “A Great Tool For Making The Leap To Dota 2”
This is kind of neat. I’m looking at finally trying out DotA after a long absence from lol. This will give me an idea of where to start.
Good luck, have fun! Remember: always carry a tele scroll.
As discussed on /r/Dota2, it seems that the hero suggestions go off heroes with similar abilities, not so much playstyles. As such, many heroes may seem like that play the same at first, but are actually completely different.
Having played both (mostly DOTA) this is actually a pretty good idea to help people branch out or try something new =)