Avoid Game

A thorough explanation on why you should avoid this game.

Basic Overview

This game is a very complex game. There are many mechanics one must master to truly master the game. Not knowing just one mechanic might be the difference between winning a game and losing a game. The only good thing is you don't need to be too precise with a mouse like you do in a shooter but your judgement must always be correct.

Here is an incomplete list of some of the mechanics at play in this game:

hero damage is random; the sword indicating your attack damage might say 50 and a creep might have 45 health but it's possible you'll hit that creep for only 44 damage and miss the last hit. This is really only important at the beginning but it's a huge mechanic because it'll make you lose a lot of gold at the beginning if you aren't careful and that alone could be the difference between winning and losing since your item timings were off.

There are attributes that define how much HP, magic resistance, movement speed, armour, attack, base damage, and spell amplification you get. Strength affects the first two, agility affects the next two, base damage is based on your hero's primary attribute. Strength heroes gain damage from strength items, agility heroes gain damage from agility items, and intelligence heroes gain damage from intelligence. The final two are based on intelligence. Not only does your primary attribute determine which stat gives you damage, it also gives you a 25% boost to that stat. Strength normally gives only 19 hitpoints but strength heroes get 25. This means a massive amount of strength adds an even more massive amount of hp. It also boosts your magic resistance by an extra 25% so a strength hero with a lot of strength is going to have a lot of magic resistance and hp. Agility heroes get even more movement speed, attack speed, and armour from agility. Intelligence heroes get a huge amount of mana from intelligence as well as more spell amplification meaning a hero like Pugna, the hero with the most natural intelligence, is going to really hurt by the time he reaches level 25 because every single one of his spells has its damage amplified to do even more damage.

There are spells that pierce spell immunity and there are spells that don't pierce spell immunity and there are spells that have at least one of their componenets that pierce spell immunity. People will tell you to buy a Black King Bar so you get 10 seconds of spell immunity but that might be all for naught if you get caught out by a Bane and he disables you for 12 seconds with his Fiend's Grip. You will however be safe from the majority of disables so it still a good items but there are heroes that can still get you even when you're spell immune.

You can purge debuffs. However, some debuffs require a strong dispel to be purged or cannot be purged at all. Eul's Sceptre of Divinity, Manta Style, and Lotus Orb all provide a basic dispel. This means most slows and silences are purged which can be the difference between life and death. However they will not purge stuns. A strong dispel can purge most stuns which means a Beast Master that just used primal roar against someone might be annoyed to find a Legion Commander or an Abaddon just applied a strong dispel against their ally that should have been stunned for almost four seconds but wasn't because they acted quickly and immediately purged the stun. Some spells like Doom and Rupture can only be purged by death. You must either die or wait out the duration.

There are many more mechanics but basically you can already see why your first game will definitely not go out as well you had hoped it would.

The Game at its Core

The basic idea of Dota 2 is to destroy the enemy's Ancient. This really can't be argued to be anything more than a simple idea. In order to make the game a lot more interesting, many mechanics were added to ensure a game would last around 40 minutes so more planning was needed than just "destroy the enemy's ancient". I've already revealed some of the mechanics of this game but of course there are many many more. I am not going to reveal them all because why would you care if I am telling you to avoid this game? Those few I listed only serve to display the sheer complexity of this game.

Climbing the Ranks

Dota 2 is a game which can only be played with others. You can play with bots but who honestly plays bots for any lengthy amount of time unless they are new? That being said, be prepared to play with some serious morons. The players at the top of the skill bracket you tell you that if you are good, you will have over a 50% winrate therefore you should climb the skill brackets as long you keep playing the game. Even with a 51% winrate you could make it to the Immortal Skill bracket but you would have to put in an unimaginable amount of games.

This is the primary flaw of Dota 2: to make it to the top, you have to dedicate your whole life to the game. It takes more time and effort to become the best Dota 2 player than it does to become a doctor. It also probably takes more money because everyone knows someone working a typical 40 hour job, let alone one with overtime, will never rise to any significant rank. Even if that individual plays Dota for another 8 hours after work and uses the rest of his day for sleep, errands, preparing for the next day, and driving to work and then plays nonstop on the weekends, he still won't make it. This means you need to leech off someone while you grind your games or you have to already have money exactly like the kids learning to become doctors.

What this shows to serve is the game demands everything from you. The people that made it to the top made it to the top years ago when it was easy to gain mmr. At the time even people in higher skill brackets still misunderstood or downright didn't know about certain mechanics or even heroes. At lower brackets, things as simple as buying dust to reveal invisible heroes wasn't done. These days, even in the 1k bracket people reveal you with dust and implement strats they saw a pro player use. No longer can one easily make it to the 4k or 5k bracket early on because anything below truly was trash and then grind from there and take his time to become one who can proudly claim he is 6k or 7k.

Anyone with several thousand hours in the game is wasting his life on a game that will get him nothing.

You Think you Know the Game

As Donald Trump would say "WRONG!"

While no one can predict the exact timing of a new patch, new patches are guaranteed to come. These patches change everything about the game and never in a good way.

There was once a time when strength heroes didn't have so much natural magic resistance and they had far fewer health points.

There was once a time when Techies could place mines together and they'd go off instantly killing anyone who ran across them (assuming enough had been placed together)

There was once a time when Tiny actually had some natural agility and gained a whopping 60 movement speed and 150 damage from Grow. He also once stunned anyone who hit him and was too close.

There was once a time when Magnus could buy an Aghanim's Sceptre and anyone around him was given Empower. Even ranged heroes got Splash damage from Empower.

There was once a time when Legion Commander's Aghanim's Sceptre upgrade didn't give her Magic Resistance so while you couldn't harm her or her opponent you definitely could disable her to prevent a successful duel.

There was once a time when the Doom Bringer didn't have the highest base attack time in the game of 2.0 so his attack animation wasn't painfully long. He also once had a single target spell which did a lot of damage and more importantly popped Linkin's Sphere so he could Doom that idiot weaver who bought a Divine Rapier.

There was once a time when the HUD wasn't so painfully disgusting and caused permentent eye damage.

There was once a time when winning a ranked game told you how much you had gone up in the skill brackets.

There was once a time when only two runes spawned instead of 1 every two minutes and 4 every 5 minutes.

There was once a time when a Diffusal Blade actually purged and had an upgrade for more charges and a sweet extra 10 agility.

There was once a time when morphling couldn't swap stats without mana.

Yeah, you get the idea. Go visit the Wiki if you want all the details on all the changes that have taken place since this game was made.

Summary

The game takes an unimaginable amount of time to learn.
The game takes an even more unimaginable amount of time to get to the top.
The game is always changing.

tl;dr, it's a waste of time.

Oh and if you spend any amount of time in this game you probably spend money on it too. They do a great job making cosmetic items look good even though they quickly lose their appeal when say you are losing a game even though you just bought the Arcana Set for your hero.

It's far better for your health, time, and money to play other games. A linear game is better than this because you'll only put in a few hours into it before you get bored and then you'll go on to the next game and do the same thing and learn very fast all games are the same. Then you'll actually pursue something in life, get a lot of money, and not want to commit suicide every day you live.