League of Legends vs. Defense of The Ancients 2; Which lane do I go to?

A bit of history and nostalgia

League of Legends created by the original creators(Guinsoo, Pendragon) of DotA in Warcraft 3 is an amazing mini-online-battle-arena game (MOBA). While Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) is ran by the successor(Icefrog) who took care of DotA in Warcraft 3 when the original went to create League of Legends and then Valve then there offered Icefrog a position to design and run the direction of DotA 2 to which has then been the success of another amazing game.

-----------------

Today with both in playable formats and has been on the market for a fairly long while; some players may be asking which lane do I go to? League of Legends or Defense of The Ancients 2?

(Edited: August 09, 2012)While DotA 2 now may operates on sign-up for invite, with a cash-shop open for in game items. invites only at the time being, League of Legends has its doors open to anyone with a similar model. Though that doesn't mean the decision is unanimous on which "lane" to go.

Below will be points for both DotA and League of Legends sectioned off so you can decide if you haven't already or if you're simply not interested maybe this will help you know what's going on and why so many people have competitions over it.

League of Legends - LoL

League of Legends boasts at least 100 champions to select from with Jayce being the 100th and their latest champion with Zyra following right after being the 101 champion and with Diana coming up soon(stated: August 6, 2012) . Riot Games hasn't failed to provide at least a champion every month if not 2 champions per month for the entirety of their game life. Their characters and design with every new entrance of a hero doesn't cause lop-sided game imbalances either.

With every patch they provide many adjustments and even old champions are revisited and revised to accommodate the growing roster of opponents each face. A game with much dedication to quality and balance from the developers.

With League of Legends having a daunting 3.8 million player base at least... (Obtained from facebook group page- 3.8Million Likes), League of Legends features a distinctive order of growth during gameplay.

What do you mean by order of growth?

I mean that whoever you play you are able to grow throughout the game as a champion for that instance. Whichever champion you select you aren't subject to being useless late game or early game. (Though some or many would disagree, but I am not referring to feeders/or unskilled players, I'm talking about when you get used to the game as any other player). Mages/Nukers aren't stuck with set values for the abilities there are items that enhance the magic damage that you can even be a nuker-carry. Where your DPS(Damage Per Second) is your overall ability spamming.

Why would I go lane in League of Legends? (The positives.)

The game is friendly, it's forgiving, it doesn't have a hard learning curve, and the community is generally fairly nice. But due to the way a report system works for players of bad conduct, it tends to discourage communication as well down to just pings. Pinging can be interpretive it could mean get away from that target/area or move towards it and which in turn causes problems. The problems being mentioned that eventually your team could just ragequit or label you for throwing the game and calling you a newb to uninstall not to mention the ganging up of reporting someone for slight mishaps.

However the main attraction is the massive amount of champion selection available. With so many heroes to try and so many team combinations the fun is always there. Playing with friends is equally the same. And no single champion is greater than another by a mile.

The 3 second rule in gaming applies here. What is the 3 second rule?

"If I am playing a game and I can't do anything for 3 seconds or more I am practically just watching my monitor being bored waiting for a timer to end, or rather within 3 seconds nothing is happening around me."

Now I know there's the penalty of death and a death timer but what I mean to focus this type of message in the midst of game play. There's many things to worry about when playing in League of Legends.

Such as...

Jungler's for one come and gank lanes and possibly destroy enemy champions in order to help their team gain advantage in obtaining gold for stronger items.

Lane control is another while playing League of Legends, if you are playing a character geared more towards requiring some farm for some good items before being great use lane control is important. If you have Alistar(Minotaur cow champion, support/tank/nuker/initiator) at bot constantly bullying the enemy champ while Graves(Ranged carry champ) at bot is also farming then Graves will have a huge advantage later on if Alistar isn't taken care of so the team can stop Graves from farming out.

Death is a sit out penalty- There isn't any disadvantages to dying other than that your team is down a whole member so 20% of your team is dead. You don't lose anything other than a walk back to wherever you need to go thus making the game quite forgiving. The death timer doesn't exceed 70 seconds and is very short in the early game (5-10 seconds, as you level it approaches 30-40 in the 10-11's).

Stuns and disables last at most 2 seconds with a few rare ones that go above that (e.g. Ashe's Enchanted Crystal Arrow), and can be reduced with the statistic of Tenacity in League of Legends. This enforces players to use their stuns and disables wisely rather than wasting it and trying to stop a player from doing anything while the other guy is sitting there just waiting for the disable to wear off.

Map awareness is something to be considered at all times, if an enemy leaves their lane to go to another from an unknown direction one side on your team could be in danger of getting destroyed and losing some time in gaining power for your champions.

How long is each game session?

Your average game session per round in LoL turns out to be around 20-40 minutes long. Where 60 minutes is labeled as a very long game. So the game time per session is rather short and won't eat up most of your day.

Matchmaking

League of Legends has a very balanced Matchmaking system when queuing for a game. Some may say "it's feeraking unbalanced you twit stop saying its balanced". Well I have to implore you to hear me out. I've played at least 2000 games with about 1025 wins, So that's about a 50/50 win,loss. Even when playing with friends it's just about there too. Some things that are transparent given by the developers were if you queue with 5 friends it'll look for another team of 5 to match you up, you won't get a partial 5 vs 2+3 team. The same applies with 4 and 3 and so on, it'll just match you up in that sense.

Why might I go lane in Defense of the Ancients 2 instead? (The negatives.)

Although League of Legends has a massive roster, not every champion is available to play upon joining the League. You have to unlock them with points based on how many games you've played, wins grant you more, losses grant you half a win. Or you could pay real money for Riot Points to spend on aesthetic skin upgrades for your champ or unlock new heroes. And with a massive roster it could take a while before one comes to you that you really like and want to stick to. Every 2 weeks they rotate which champions are available for those who spend their points on other things(i.e. runes or saving up for something else).

At level 30 the max level your account can acquire games become rather static.

What do you mean?

At level 30 your game ALMOST always consists of a ranged AD, a support/nuker with the ranged AD at bottom lane, a solo top bruiser/fighter/melee/tank, and mid lane is nuker, and one other guy to be the jungler.

This meta-game structure almost diminishes any kind of funny team composition or build and games become rather static and just end up being as simple as checkers. It's whichever team accomplishes the aforementioned aspects of the game above better than the other team; jungler, lane control, map awareness, deaths/kills.

After a while it all feels too familiar and is so structured you feel like you're just part of a cycle rather than something unique. The problem therein also lies that you can't pick what ever you want to play without someone trashing you about breaking away from that setup and blaming you for ruining their game when all you wanted to to was play champnamehere cause you really like it.

Most of the items you build in LoL are also upgrades to your character, they don't grant special abilities or have any active ability for most of them. The ones that do have active abilities generally fall in line with shields, nukes, and disable removal.

End League of Legends points.

Defense of the Ancients 2 - DotA 2

DotA 2 itself isn't a game to be trifled with, it handles itself with 90 champions to select from currently(August 06, 2012).

DotA 2's game is more of an RPG, a really darned heavy military drill-driven role-playing game. I don't mean this in the bad way haha, it's more that whoever you pick you better be suited to that role and take all the responsibility for it. While it only appears to have about 492k player base(based on the likes in Facebook), the game is highly well known among all competitive gamers and I can say that without assumption.

Roles:

Initiator - You're the one to start fights, if you don't your team suffers due to your unreliability or poor instigation of war.

Carry - You're the one to bring the team to victory, essentially "carrying" them to victory, if you can't then no one can.

Lane Support - You're there to make sure your carry can farm easily and can see enemies coming to gank him/her/it and warn them ahead of time, anything to do with helping whoever you're laned with and not amassing gold most of the time.

Disabler - You're generally there to make sure the carry stops wrecking your team late game, or to help with ganks and kills early on. Otherwise if none apply you're there to make sure their disablers don't disable your team.

Pusher - The one who destroys lanes fast and makes it to towers and kills towers to grant gold for everyone on your team.

Ganker - You're generally situated in middle lane so you have access to both top and bottom lanes quickly, meant to mostly roam around certain times to ambush enemy champions to increase the lead and the gap of power between both teams.

Roamer - Shouldn't ever be in any given lane for more than 3 minutes if you constantly roam and succeed in harassing other lanes widening the power gap between the two teams.

Jungler - Not to be confused with LoL's jungler, you are generally a champion that is able to survive the jungle of DotA; a much harsher environment than that of LoL's.

Sub-roles

Escape - You're a hard person to kill.

Semi-carry - You can sort of carry but not really, works best with the team together.

Support - You won't be killing much you'll be helping with it though.

Why would I go lane in DotA 2? (The positives.)

All champions are available to you when you begin playing, ALL of them. Unlike League of Legends every champion in DotA 2 is unlocked for you upon starting your game at your very first match.

Item builds are interesting in DotA 2, they make the game go wild. Not like girls gone wild but more like making crazy things happen. Force staff for example shoves a unit about 1000 units in the direction they're facing. What good does that do one might ask? Positioning.

Positioning is highly important in DotA 2, much like Chess. If your pieces or heroes are out of place you could end up losing everything or winning everything. And I do mean that in the sense that sometimes being OUT OF PLACE you really will win the battle.

Example: Enigma's ult grouping together = certain death for the other team, the black hole ultimate serves as a stun and damage to anyone caught in it enabling the team to wreck anyone in it without having their self effected. Or on the other hand staying together in a group means you won't get screwed from heroes who pick off people separated like bounty hunter, nyx assassin, stealth assassin, lina, lion.

Most items in DotA have an active ability, if not a passive ability that works like an active ability(i.e. Aghanim's Scepter, upgrades your ultimate to give it a bonus or a special effect or another spell in some cases).

One thing DotA 2 has is a lot of active items, some that restore mana, some that speed you up and let you walk through units to avoid being blocked/surrounded, some cripple the enemy, banish them to an ethereal realm, fry them with a bolt of destructive energy, turn them into a chicken, blink a distance away(quick teleport), teleport across the map to any unit, heal your team, grant armor buff, send out a freezing shockwave that causes damage too, refresh your abilities back to their cooldown(instant reuse of all your abilities), magic immunity, manual stuns, targetted disable removal and so on, there's so many.

Strange team compositions ; although most of the time you want a carry and some supports/disablers + a tank sometimes even strange team compositions win the game, vs. a structured team. You'll either win with laughs to go around and stories to tell for ages and a replay to brag about or you get abhorrently destroyed and learn not to do it again unless you all find a way to make it extremely frustrating for the enemy team to win.

Competition is high in DotA 2, the game can be unbalanced depending on who you pick but that's up to your team to compose a balanced team to fight the imbalances to have a fair match. The battles in DotA 2 can become real rough in a fairly balanced game, and highly strategical in placement, target hero, item build, spent abilities, waiting for cooldowns, overall team score.

Strange item builds are generally discouraged but may inflict a difference in approach to unsuspecting enemies who are too structured to the norm of game play in DotA 2, thus granting you an advantage should it go well. (e.g. I do the joke build of Juggernaught going hexwand + refresher orb and aghanim's if early game goes really well but then it's not so funny when you're losing and you make that.).

How long is each game session?

DotA 2's game session averages about 30-60 minutes a game with 70+ minutes being a long game. Expect about at least 40-50 minutes on average per round. Not to mention queue and load times you add an additional 5-6 minutes more.

Why might I go lane in League of Legends? (The negatives.)

DotA 2 is very unforgiving and unfriendly to a new player, the game and community itself could be flaming at you as if someone was going to really hate your life and guts if you didn't do well and tell you to quit and uninstall etc.(But that's in pretty much every competitive game including LoL) But what's worse is the game can be discouraging. How?

Hero deaths cause you to lose gold. Without gold you can't get anything and you won't get anywhere other than levelling up and having a longer death timer upon death. A vicious cycle if you are poor at playing safe and like to be aggressive but get killed in the process.

Lane control in DotA 2 is not as friendly as League of Legends, you can kill your own creeps to deny the enemy of obtaining experience to level up or getting gold, which in turn increases competition but also increases the learning curve. Sometimes you get denied so hard in lane you might as well sit there and just watch and do nothing or go to a different lane and disrupt your team mate's strategy ruining everything altogether. Because if you try to do something when your lane is very bad you just end up getting killed and losing more gold, exp, and you have to sit there and watch a death timer and then slowly walk back, or waste more gold teleporting back. Tower defense are fairly weak when compared to League of Legends towers, league of legends towers will decimate you and are great points of interests to start a team fight. Hanging around a tower in DotA 2 is a question of whether you'll get smoked or not without certainty that the enemy will die after if they tower dive.

Disables and stuns are very long in DotA 2, they may go up to 5 seconds. 5 Seconds is an extremely long time to be sitting there and doing nothing and as the player behind the monitor there's nothing you can do to change or remove that when it strikes you. Unlike League of Legends where you have disable removal at any given time if you have the spell with you and cooled down, DotA 2 you must simply suffer the effect of the stun/disable and they are not reduced in any way like League of Legends. There are rare times where it can be removed with certain heroes but only a said few can do that.

Stuns can overlap each other if timed properly with such a wide window of opportunity, if you get stunned for 2 seconds another 2 could come along, making it easy to disable an enemy player repeatedly, especially with heroes who have long stun durations like Mirana's arrow; up to 5 seconds or shadow shaman's shackle about 4 seconds.

Queue times for matchmaking can get fairly long, with League of Legends I can find a match within 5-30 seconds DotA 2 it takes me at least 3-4 minutes each time, and about 1-2 minutes if I'm lucky. After about 4 games you've already lost almost a quarter of an hour just in queue time, with the added champion select time and load time that's a definite half hour loss, which is a whole game equivalent in League of Legends.

Nukers and supports don't grow as strong as they do in League of Legends. At a certain point in time in the DotA 2 through out a match nukers eventually become weak and useless when fighting carries. In League of Legends they absolutely and will still destroy late game compared to DotA 2. Late game nukers in DotA 2 turn into supports more or less or target enemy disablers, but leaving carries alive and dangerous even if focus fired with nukes. A champion like the Anti-Mage wouldn't even flinch from nukes late game.

End of Defense of the Ancients 2 points.

Overall both games are very good and should be given a try even if you dislike the other. I like both League of Legends and DotA 2 so I haven't sided with any of them, they both have their pros and cons and they both have their own competitive style.

I typed a lot more after this above sentence but erased it all because it felt really pointless to try and name some things from both. It's a hard decision to come down to between both games. Just because one is friendlier/easier than the other or the other has more interesting builds/strategies doesn't nullify either to be less than or greater than the other. Both have an enormous selection to all things mentioned for both. League of Legends has a lot of interesting items as well but their champions are more equal. DotA 2 has interesting items as well but their champions have an inverse growth(nukers strong early, carries weak early, nukers weak late, carries strong late).

Some questions that might've popped up in your head if you reached here.

Why is there no mention of Heroes of Newerth(HoN)?

I felt that Heroes of Newerth differed from the norm of these 2. Though it started off as a pretty good DotA spin-off the direction they headed in went off balance. I played HoN after DotA in the WarCraft 3 days before trying League of Legends, what made me quit HoN was that they placed a price tag on the DotA MOBA type franchise and my friends did exactly the same thing; quit HoN. Why? Both League of Legends and DotA 2 are free to play and followed their trend from DotA being a free mod on Warcraft 3 as well. Since HoN placed a price tag numerous amounts of the player base migrated to LoL and others awaited DotA2. I went back after and played it when they went free to play and was immediately discouraged to continue due to a few reasons.

1. The community is very negative and probably are the reason why the player population decreased immensely. I remember people swearing on VOIP just on lack of skill considering I was a low-rated player to begin with. (Why hate on a newb when they are a newb and already know it? That's just mean and uncalled for)

2. The game is highly imbalanced with every new hero they introduce and are overpowered with every new one causing every game to rush the new hero to be selected so you have an automatic advantage over the other.

3. The items they introduced were a mix of League of Legends and DotA 2 active type items so it was inconsistent based on how the DotA system worked which is what HoN resembled closely to.

4. I have a rating associated with my ingame name and is publicly seen, meaning I have a stamp saying how much I suck regardless of how well I might be able to play and yes I'm pretty sure it'll never be viewed as "how much I own" by others even if it was a very great and high rating. You know yourself that fact is too true.

TL;DR

Both are great games, with both strengths and weaknesses.

League of Legends is more forgiving as a game but has a structured competitive play composition

DotA 2 is more unforgiving as a game but has a dynamic competitive play composition

Both games' communities are all right but in a competitive game you'll always run into people either criticizing negatively and spouting nonsense and rarely find the ones who don't care too much and just want to have fun.

Lasting Effect: Each game is new no two games are ever the same since every player is always doing something different with a type of strategy in mind, whether it be troll compositions to win by confusion or picking all the most annoying heroes to deal with and so on. Replay value is high if you aren't discouraged by other players early on.

So which lane will you go into?