Name's JBrown! in dota, but I just prefer people call me Jeff. Alverez got me into DOTA a couple weeks ago after playing some LoL games with him. Having fun meeting everyone so far, generally people have been great to play with. I'll be in the mumble and IRC on and off, so say hi if you see me.

Welcome aboard Jeff! How many LoL games did you play? If it wasn't very many it would be interesting to hear your first impressions of both games. What kinds of games do you enjoy beyond MOBA?

I have a couple hundred games in LoL. In general I find LoL to be a more balanced game, but definitely significantly easier. In Dota, if a hard carry gets a few levels up on the other team, the game is over, while in LoL there's always a chance to come back and win.

I can't believe how much more CC Dota has than LoL. It makes a blink dagger a necessity on many heroes, which I dislike immensely. In the course of a normal game you make around 10-12k or so in my experience. That means you're spending close to 20% of your total income on an item with no stats purely because of how hard it is to run away. I like LoL's system of giving you that ability in your summoner spells.

That said, Dota definitely has a much steeper learning curve and more room for you to improve. I can see just about all of us being infinitely better players in a year. In LoL, really the only way to be a better player once you master the basics is to find a good team to play with and learn how to counterpick.

I think Dota is going to really blow up as a competitive game. It's the first game ever with a great system already in place for broadcasting, spectating, demoing, and commentating at release. If it's free to play like most people expect, I think surpassing LoL's 32 million players will be quite easy.

I've played maybe 15 dota games at this point, and I can already tell that I'll end up liking it more than LoL, but it will also take a much larger time investment to really learn the game and its intricacies.

Outside of MOBAs I generally stick to RPGs and FPS. Favorite games of all time are Fallout 1/2, Half Life 1/2, Dragon Age 1, Day of Defeat, and all the old adventure games like the Kings Quest series and Full Throttle.

Welcome to the Forums Jbrown!

Cool I'm in about the same boat as you, with lots of LoL experience and less than 30 games under my belt in Dota2. I feel like DotA is really more balanced than LoL, I hate the fact that it's so easy to make a big comeback in league because it feels like its not rewarding good early game play.

In DotA experience/farm/early laning phase make a huge impact on your game, and if you struggle significantly there you are going to have a hard time later on. Anyways, I agree that Valve seems to have everything PERFECT. This game has more features then most I've played and it's still in BETA! lol. It's gonna blow up.

It's not that LOL is more balanced but that Dota punishes mistakes more heavily in LOL. The "death tax" you receive every time you die - very much pushes back your build. I've seen a number of "comebacks" since I started beta - but they are much much more rare then the ones in LOL.

And you're right about the laning phase. Losing a lane makes much more of a difference than in LOL. It's one of the things that drives me nuts about League - people in Low, and even Mid elo will just give up free towers because they don't think the extra 150 is much of a difference.

And to an extent - they're right because of how forgiving LOL is.

On the balance front - Dota is very well balanced. There are very few heroes that are either entirely worthless or are bullshit OP (*cough* HUSKAR *cough*). I like how each hero has it's own role - and you feel like you could make an impact to a teamfight with the proper amount of farm. That doesn't exist in LOL - some heroes are farm independent and I think it's a huge design flaw with that game.

Perfect you're totally right. When your playing Dota, you really get a huge sense of worth and accomplishment when you know you're doing things right. It's not just "Oh, I'm the carry and I got a triple kill", but as you play you can really feel like you're making a difference to the game and helping your team to win.

Every time you pull off a good SS ult or your ward gets the carry that double-damage rune that wins the next team fight, it just feels way more rewarding to me.

a couple of hundred isnt just lols anymore its lyfer lols player. Well hope to see u in house some day

Haha I had 765 normal wins (with im sure about as many losses) plus 100+ ranked games, and yesterday I posted my LoL account for sale.

It just takes one new addiction to get rid of the old!