League VS Dota

Note: I will mostly try to take an unbiased approach and lay out the facts, and then I will give my own personal opinion, this is in no way saying which game is better. Both games are great, and are targeting different audiences. Heroes = dota, Champion = LoL.

Intro:

This is something I have personally been wanting to do for awhile, and thought that it would be neat to share with the general public my thoughts. I will compare these two games by champion/hero roles, and how I believe they are different/similar, and then talk about some of the specific game mechanics.

Support:

Support is my favorite role to play in LoL. I feel that a great support can be what wins key team fights at the end of the game. I originally started playing support because I saw people doing it so poorly that I began to play it myself. It also helped that I often queued with multiple people. I think map vision is a huge part on who wins a game. It is nearly impossible to get ganked if you have know where the enemy jungler is. In this regard, support is the same in both games.

Wards are good

The player is suppose to get little to no farm, they buy the wards/courier in Dota, and they usually have skills that do not require them to be item dependent. I do feel that Dota support is not nearly as much fun as LoL support. In LoL, you still have ways to get gold. With the Gp10 items, and the introduction to pickpocket. LoL also recently added an item that refreshed wards when you went back to the fountain. With these additions, it allows support players to simply build more items. Being support and having a full build might be the best thing in LoL. You not only have your 4 abilities to use, but you usually get 2 or 3 more with your items. In Dota, the only source of gold is hero kills and minion kills. Since you don't get farm, your goal to get gold is to make your carry get kills, so you can get an assist. In higher rank games, this doesn't happen very often.

Overall: Roles pretty much the same, although Dota doesn't cater to the role as much as LoL does.

Jungle:

Jungle was the second role I picked up in LoL, for similar reasons. I felt that if a jungler could get off a couple good ganks, it would put your team so far ahead that you could not lose. In both games the jungler gains levels and gold by killing the neutral creeps. The big difference I see is that in LoL, it is expected that the jungler gank atleast once between levels 2-4. In Dota, the jungler is mostly just expected to survive. This is a much bigger deal in Dota then it is in LoL, because gold and experience is “weighed” heavier in Dota then it is in LoL. I'll go into details about that later. In general, the jungle in LoL is more open to who can do it, then it is in Dota, there are very few champions who can actually survive the jungle, and even fewer who can do it well. 

Overall: Role do the same thing, but one is for LoL, creates ganking power, dota is for bigger farm.

Carry:

This role is no different, you get farm, you get items, you kill everyone. You get focused in team fights, and your team tries to keep you alive.

Caster:

This is the one role I feel is really different. The main reason is that in LoL you have a mechanic call AP, or ability power. Players can get items that increase this, and thus will increase the effectiveness of your spells. Dota only allows players to build Intelligence, there are a handful of heroes whose skills will increase off intelligence, but for the most part, the reason you get intelligence is for mana/mana regen, and it increases the damage of your auto attack. In Dota your auto attack is almost considered a spell, and to be a part of your damage. Big problem I see with this is that in Dota, these champions fall off late game.

Overall: LoL – cast spells, get items to make spells better. Dota – cast spells, get items to allow you to cast them more often, and auto attack.

Tank/Bruiser:

Yay health!

This role can be coupled with other roles, but I just want to mention that both games have champions whose goal is to become a giant health giant, and not die, and to distract the team away from your carry. In that regard, the role is no different between games.

General game mechanics:

I mentioned before how gold and experience is “heavier” in dota, and what I mean is that when you have 3000 gold in LoL, you are doing well, but when you get 3000 gold in Dota, you are doing very well. The biggest difference that I see between the two games is this. In Dota, you lose gold if you die. This mechanic leans itself to having teams snowball harder then an AP champion with a Soulstealer. I feel that games can be won and lost in the first 10 minutes of a Dota game if one team gets a couple kills, and the other does not. In both games you can argue that your goal is to get and advantage, and to do everything you can to hang onto it. This is true, but in Dota, you can become so far ahead that heroes will walk into your fountain and kill you. The worst part is, there is no surrender option. I find this strange because LoL prides itself on almost always being able to make a come back. In LoL you can become worth so little gold to the enemy team, that they would be better off getting CS then killing you. In Dota, you will always get 200+(Dying Hero Level)*9 gold.

Another major difference is that Dota has all heroes unlocked at the start, where in LoL you have to gain levels on your account, and get IP from playing games to buy heroes that you want to play on a consistent bases. What I mean by that is in LoL there are always 10 free champions, and these change week to week. One thing that this does for you is that it forces you to learn the champions as you are leveling up.

There is also an opinion on color, LoL is much more colorful then Dota is.

Conclusion:

I know that there is a lot more that I can talk about, but I honestly feel like I have already said too much, so here is my final 2 cents.

Dota leans itself to a more hardcore player base. By having it so that you not only gain an advantage when you get a kill, but you also take away from the opposing side. They lose gold, and experience. In Dota, after you hit 18, and have all your skills, you get 7 more levels of stats. When you have the ability to gain such and advantage, and the skill to hold it, you will win 9 times out of 10.

League tends to be more casual. In every game you have a chance to make a comeback. When you start losing, and keep losing, the opposing team does not keep gaining a larger and larger advantage. They instead gain a smaller and smaller advantage, and when you make your comeback, you shrink that advantage immediately.

Lastly, the Dota community is generally better then LoL. If someone disconnects, they almost immediately pause the game, and someone either says “hang on he's coming back” or on the opposing side someone will ask if they someone knows if they will be back. Not saying there are no trolls in Dota, there are just fewer of them.

Thanks for reading my wall of text, and I welcome an intelligent discussion on the matter.