Introduction to MOBAs
- Thread starter SteveWinwood
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Not my point. To clarify, after talking with my friends, they felt like it was more cases of Riot nerfing supports going into other roles while mid champions going support were left untouched (this was with the introduction to Annie support to the west mind you).
Malphite was played support for a while before they discovered how good he was top/mid. Soraka mid is nothing new, saw it since 2012 and Kayle is pretty much played everywhere tbh.
I haven't followed the meta for some time so my only info on the matter comes from my friends playing and following the comp scene. So I might be wrong on the whole "Riot nerf's supports going into other roles, but not the reverse" thing.
There's a difference here though, because spells/abilities rarely scale in Dota, so right-clickers are considered the hardest carries and spellcasters are not generally played 1 (although everything is situational so it has been the case a few times).
While everything scales in lol, even much so now with Season 4 (supports scale better now right?) so technically almost every champion in lol could be played as a carry in dota since they scale and it would just be a matter of deciding how hard of a carry each one of them is in perspective of the other champions and heroes.
I personally like Tower defense because I feel its accurate to the core mechanics of these games.
SteveWinwood
Member
Yeah I don't like MOBA but it's the most prevalent term so that's what we get.
Lords Management is pretty awesome.
Tyran_lord
Member
There are some guides at http://moba-champion.com. But the guide features just got re released because of all the big changes that happened.
There are also some quick guides on http://theshapersguild.com/shaper-quick-guides/. These are some basic guides to get you started.
I was really hoping Valve was going to do that when the information about internal region labeling was revealed, but in the end it was just for the solo ranked leader boards. I think it could be a really cool idea to do next year though, but it sort of get complicated when teams start shuffling around. Unless they want to do something like tie a certain percentage of a teams points to the actual players. Like do 25% for the Organization, and 15% for each player.
Is that because it was Riot that coined it or do you really not like it?
At least MOBA sounds like a word. ARTS is also fine. Lords Management is pretty awesome sounding too.
Sure, it's pretty much established at this point, wasn't ragging on your thread Steve
What's to like about a genre term that encompasses almost every online multiplayer videogame ever made?
PsychoSoldier
Banned
I feel like MOBA was just Riot's first stab at trying to get away from the moniker DOTA-like or DOTA-clone and thanks to it being the pre-eminent game in the genre it has stuck.
Par the course. RPG is awful. Every game is a game where you play a role. RTS is awful. Every game is real time and involves strategy. Action-Adventure is awful. Almost every game has action and you're on an adventure of some kind.
MOBA rolls off the tongue and is something easy to say when you're introducing a game. But if we're being honest, I would like Lords Management more. Sounds posh.
Turin Turambar
Member
Nice OP, but I still don't know what it's all about.
Too lazy to google, too. What does MOBA stand for? What's a jungle exactly? What's a river, apparently no real river? Due to that gif on the 1p I at least know that the towers are some sort of defense. I also didn't immediately see what's deep about it or why it even needs to be deep.
I'm more of a single player guy so that's probably why the OP still didn't intrigue me too much, but I hope I could give some suggestions to flesh it more out if you want.
Basically, it's a online pvp game, where two teams of five players fight each other following a "tug of war" mode, as they play in a more or less linear map and in each extreme there is a team's base. The goal is to push the enemy back, get to their base and destroy it.
On the way, there are intermediate objectives, towers of your team, that fire upon enemies and have to be destroyed before reaching the base.
While you play, you win levels as a rpg and gold, you level up your abilities and buy equipment to be more powerful. There are also creeps or lesser enemies that spawn in each base and attack the opposite team, they don't do a lot of damage but can help you destroy the towers and the base, and they spice up the game.
Schweinehund
Member
Thanks, just need to readup on a good jungling pattern now.
So I decided to bite the bullet and try out a MOBA, 2 to be exact. I downloaded Dawngate and LoL.
Played Dawngate, no tutorial was confused as fuck. Played 2 matches, no idea what to do but could see the appeal of the genre.
Played LoL, tutorial thank god! Tutorial and the Bot Tutorial Practice Match helped me understand the basics better, but still doesn't explain everything. Had to find out on my own about the Rune Book? A whole system, the game doesn't even bother mentioning it to you, weird. Played 1 team bot match afterwards, still felt like a child using a computer for the first time, but could still see there's fun to be had here if I play more and/or with good people.
Anywho, what type of Champion/Hero/Shaper is the easiest for a newbie to pick up and what should I practice doing first. Jungling maybe?
Played Dawngate, no tutorial was confused as fuck. Played 2 matches, no idea what to do but could see the appeal of the genre.
Played LoL, tutorial thank god! Tutorial and the Bot Tutorial Practice Match helped me understand the basics better, but still doesn't explain everything. Had to find out on my own about the Rune Book? A whole system, the game doesn't even bother mentioning it to you, weird. Played 1 team bot match afterwards, still felt like a child using a computer for the first time, but could still see there's fun to be had here if I play more and/or with good people.
Anywho, what type of Champion/Hero/Shaper is the easiest for a newbie to pick up and what should I practice doing first. Jungling maybe?
Role-play as in actually role-playing, taking the identity of a person and acting as if it is your own like dnd. And it usually has a variation of mechanics present in dnd.
Turn-based games aren't real-time.
How do you differentiate between an action film and a thriller?
jungling in lol is pretty hard without runes, so you might want to stick to laning.
try annie or ashe if you like damage dealers, they're cheap and fun and easy to do alright with.
might want to play like garen if you want to tank shit up
For League, I recommend top lane. Top lane is traditionally tanky characters, meaning little mistakes won't lead to your death. That said, I have NO idea how closely the meta is followed in low level play.
Do not jungle. You do not have the runes/masteries yet to jungle effectively. Just duo lane with someone top.
Garen is newbie friendly. He has a speed up to escape from enemies, is very tanky, and spins. HE SPINS. For a mage, try Ryze. He does not have a skill shot, builds tanky, and has a root so you can escape. Another mage is Annie. Point-and-click, teaches you how to effectively use passives, and is very strong. For a marksman, try Ashe or Tristana (she's free if you like them on Facebook or Twitter, w/e). Both have soft crowd control or escapes. For a support, Sona. Sona has a heal and will teach you about ranges. Her abilities effect champions around you, so you'll learn positioning without necessarily needing to be near enemies.
Schweinehund
Member
Yeah no tutorial in dawngate makes it a bit unfriendly at this point. I do love the role system though, and I guess you can have two junglers. I can forgive this because game is still in beta.
League however, should have a more comprehensive tutorial system by now, similar to Dota 2.
I can't say I agree with your friends.
Let's use Lulu as an example. She got introduced to mid lane and wins 80% of all matchups and the other 20% are neutral, she had no real losing lane. Regardless of whether this was a new champ or a support going mid, this is a problem since it is completely imbalanced. Now Lulu is reasonably nerfed, is still picked mid lane in pro play and is completely viable but she is not ridiculously strong. I do not see a problem with this.
These differences make the terminology all the more important though. Most of the champions have the potential to scale, but some are better than others at it, and thus many champions are thus not played as carries. However, not playing them as carries does not mean that we call them supports, as support in League terminology is the champion that typically helps the ad carry on his/her lane. Since Malphite is typically played tanky (not scaling his damage), he would be called a tank in League terms. Thus, moving him from top to mid and building him AP for damage is not a big deal in League, and would not be called "a support going mid". I dunno, I feel like I'm repeating myself, but I think we understand what we mean.
I just think it's important to note that the terminology between Dota and League differs a lot, which sometimes means that people misunderstand each other.
PsychoSoldier
Banned
At least in LoL, jungling is probably the hardest of the roles to learn as it's very very context dependent and map knowledge dependent. Support is probably mechanically the easiest but knowing where to ward and such can be more difficult.
AD/Marksman is hard at a high level but generally easier to pick up because you're long range and mostly auto attack to do damage and have pretty clear item paths in general.
In a general sense, of the champs that are now on free rotation I'd say either Darius, Blitzcrank or Karthus would be the easiest to learn?
I always liked Taric in LoL. He has a heal that will always heals your self in addition to the target, a very reliable single target stun, you have an Armor aura that also acts as a nuke, and his ult is a nuke that also buff your team. The biggest drawback to him is he is Melee. Surprised he still costs 1350, I thought they lowered him to 450.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I think Smite is the only MOBA I can stomach playing these days. The faster paced gameplay probably has something to do with it.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I guess I thought jungling would be easy cause it seems like less chance to go up against other Champions where I imagine I'd get wrecked. Will stay away from that idea now though.
So stick with laning, probably top lane? See I didn't even know the top/middle/bottom lanes had their own different strategies, so thanks! What exactly makes the lanes play differently? Is it just a matter of the middle lane being able to help out the neighbor lanes so that calls for a different strategy?
I see a wide range of characters recommended, any archetypes more friendly than others? I saw some mages recommended, but would they be too squishy as I learn the ropes? Or is it better with them because I'm more ranged oriented?
Again, great tips. Appreciate it!
So stick with laning, probably top lane? See I didn't even know the top/middle/bottom lanes had their own different strategies, so thanks! What exactly makes the lanes play differently? Is it just a matter of the middle lane being able to help out the neighbor lanes so that calls for a different strategy?
I see a wide range of characters recommended, any archetypes more friendly than others? I saw some mages recommended, but would they be too squishy as I learn the ropes? Or is it better with them because I'm more ranged oriented?
Again, great tips. Appreciate it!
Touché. My problem with MOBA is that it's entirely non-descriptive and doesn't include any elements that define the genre. 'Multiplayer online' is a given and 'battle arena' isn't what differentiates from FPS, RTS or Fighting Games. ARTS at least emphasizes the genre's RTS roots, but apart from that it's not very descriptive either and doesn't include games like Awesomenauts, Smite, MNC and whatever takes we'll see in the coming years.
LPG on the other hand is based on one of the genre's core systems, the same goes for the fancier Lords Management.
New genres are so rare in games that it would have been nice to have an actually decent term this time. It's pretty easy to come up with a better one than MOBA, one that doesn't actively confuse people with no knowledge of the genre. But it is what it is.
And yeah, Action-Adventure is actually an incredibly broad term that requires either further explanation or more meaningful subgenres to have any real merit.
It's just sort of an emergent property of the lanes, a lot of little things that come together to give each lane it's identity. Mid is gank oriented because it has access to top and bottom. Bottom is farm oriented because of its proximity to the Dragon, which you want to control. Jungling is more or less mandatory. That leaves 1v1 Top. With the threat of Mid and Jungle ganks, the ones suited to it tend to be beefy and hard to gank, but also able to benefit from safe farming, aka Bruisers.
As you play you'll find many variations on this but this is the foundation of lanes in League.
Schweinehund
Member
Prepare to Cry edition?
The Lamonster
Member
Last time I played a MOBA was DOTA in Warcraft III. I tried HoN but while I loved the engine and graphics the gameplay and playerbase was just too hardcore for me.
Cannot wait for Heroes of the Storm though
Cannot wait for Heroes of the Storm though
Very broad strokes here, but in general:
Top Lane: 1v1, tanky champions. They are generally left alone by everyone but the jungler. At low summoner (your level outside of the game) levels this will be 2v2 and the meta is completely fucked, but that's exciting.
Jungle: Gankers. Don't worry about it until much later. Even at level 30, at low ELO some games won't have junglers.
Middle Lane: 1v1, bursty mages. They can roam top or bottom, but more generally roam bottom because Dragon is highly prized in the early game, and if they go top, that's leaving Dragon open for the other team.
Bottom Lane: 2v2, one marksman and one support. They protect their lane and Dragon. The marksman is the one that gets all the minion kills, and the support helps their marksman by warding, healing, protecting, etc.
Dragon is very important at low levels (still important later, but later there's also Baron to worry about). Dragon is located just above the bottom lane in the river. Killing him gives your whole team gold and local experience. Bottom lane has a lot of action.
Mages are generally squishy, but there are some that are easier to play because they have escapes or are inherently tanky. If you want to play a mage, play a mage! Marksmen are just as squishy as you.
Neither do I, was mostly curious of how accurate they were. Alot of them are support mains so I was curious as to why they were so peeved, of course they're pretty happy with Lulu's presence in the mid lane, but they still act as if its only a matter of time before shes nerfed out of it. Thanks for the clarifications.
I agree, just want to add that supports in dota are defined based on team comps and applying the 1-5 system to it. The 1-5 system grades members of a team in terms of farm priority and scaling.
so 5 is usually the hero who does not need level or items to perform well and items won't give them as much of a power spike as 1 heroes who require the most farm possible.
But in a team of 5 supports, only the 4 and 5 would be called supports while the 1 and 2 would the carry and semi-carry and 3 would typically be the offlaner (the dota equivalent of the top laner).
Hope I understood you there. Heroes are classed support/carry based on team comp and games while jungler, ganker, tank, etc are more like subclasses then their own cateogories.
You should try awesomenauts then. Its also pretty fast paced and relaxed.
Top is probably one of the most popular lanes in lol, so don't expect to get it much in ranked if you aren't first or second pick. Also learn matchups in top lane and you'll be ahead of most players. Trading (exchanging damage, you attack each other for a few seconds) is pretty dangerous top lane since you mostly don't have the ability to farm from afar like other lanes so things can snowball out of your favor pretty quickly. You need to know when to play safe and when to push your luck.
Example: Riven vs Nasus.
The first is a lane bully, so they can deal lots of damage early and snowball their lane. She's really good vs Nasus because his form of sustain (what keeps him in lane, anything that helps your hp regenerate) is lifesteal (your auto-attacks heal you based on a percentage of damage dealt) and he heals himself by farming, so any small harass won't do much vs him. BUT, riven does burst damage (lots of damage in a short time frame) so she can easily squish him early. So in this scenario you'd want to wait for her to use her abilities to go up and take a few last hits and stay away from her until you can challenge her if you play as Nasus. On the other end if you play Riven, you want to press your early advantage and harass him as much as possible.
I've won so many lanes because my opponent didn't know how well he'd fair against me and either: rushed into a bad fight or played passive when he was at an advantage.
PsychoSoldier
Banned
Usually top lane is generally tanks or semi-tanks that can do good damage (Renekton, Shyvana, Mundo, Jax, Irelia, etc)
Midlane is usually support mages like Lulu or Orianna or burst mages like LeBlanc or Ahri.
Bottom is usually AD/Marksman (Caitlyn, Jinx, Miss Fortune, Lucian, Varus etc.) and support (Thresh, Leona, Sona, Morgana, Zyra, etc.). Support can be either to protect the Marksman so they can level up or have aggressive skills to help them kill better. That depends on the Marksman they have with them, of course.
In terms of strategy by lane, it's very very team dependent.
all of these games have a "meta" that rules how how heroes are distributed and the general game strategy. league has a top lane tank (good at engaging), mid lane mage/assassin (good at pushing lanes, teamfighting and killing carries), bottom lane carry+support (adc is good at taking down turrets, killing dragon/baron and murdering everyone lategame, support wards the map to know where the enemies are, initiates fights and helps peel for their carries) with an assassin/offtank jungler (strong at ganking and getting his lanes going).
there's a lot of reasons for this meta being the dominant one right now but that's what it is, number crunchers did the math and that's what works. in your first games you'll prolly run at two players at top lane cos no one can really jungle at low summoner levels but that's ok, you won't understand shit about the game for your like first million matches
so yea play like garen top, annie mid, ashe/sona bot
The hour of melee supports is upon us. Easy hp regen and lots of gold means loads of tanky stats.
Leauge's Meta to me seems to mostly be about champ and item choices, where Dota's Meta also has additional element of lanning set up, which makes more of the characters viable and more variation from game to game, in both public play and pro games (Though pubs tend to play it safe and the most adventurous thing they will do is Tri-lane)
I don't think you can even call the lanning in LoL part of the Metagame anymore, its an intentional design choice from Riot.
I don't think you can even call the lanning in LoL part of the Metagame anymore, its an intentional design choice from Riot.
SteveWinwood
Member
Picking fun and goofy lanes is my favorite part in dota though ;_;
Tri mid has like a 100% winrate so far.
Tri-mid is still a trilane, you unadventurous man!
All right, thanks for the more in depth explanation of the Dota system.
Yeah, the laning setup started as an emerging new meta in Season 1, but is indeed standard now. We will essentially always see the relatively standard lanes + jungler, but despite this there are differences in the laning phase in the actual games. In pro play right now fast-pushing is popular, where one team will swap their bot lane to top and perform 4-man pushes from the beginning, which essentially removes the standard laning phase.
Tyran_lord
Member
I'm not really a jungle main, but a decent jungle path is to start one of the outer buffs, then go to the middle of your jungle and do all the mushroom camps, this includes the second buff. after that go to your third buff. Gank, go back to your jungle or farm the money pigs. This depends all on how the game is progressing of course. If you have high health i recommend the money pigs or a gank, because the reward is higher.
Some top tier junglers right now are Salous, Petrus and Voluc.
EDIT: Dawngate doesn't have a tutorial because a lot of the game can still change. Waystone has said they are working on one though.
Beardz
Member
My first taste of MOBAs was with a free game called "Battle from Graxia" last yeah, then I started playing Dota 2 and now, 1,300 hours later I'm still learning new things every game. I love everything about the game, from the sound of the coins when you last hit a creep, to the deep of the game.
Cyka!
Cyka!
The other night my team ran a duo jungle in our own jungle with Ursa and Lifestealer. That open wounds is so great for Ursa until he gets vlads.