i think i decided on my goal for dota 2. i want to finish the all hero challenge one time. raising mmr is a lame goal and one that just makes you mad at everything. the all hero challenge is an incentive to sincerely try and learn a bit about everything while utilizing your fundamentals in the game. you get assigned heroes in order. when you finish one the game tells you your next one. i'm probably going to write a bit about each one (or most of them) since it'll be a fun way to talk about the game and the heroes. gonna make each post a reply to this one and also tag it with "d2ahc" and "[hero name] (dota)" in case anyone wants to find these later for some reason. technically i started this years ago and forgot about a couple of the early ones...

i'll probably also try and get in some games with my favs from time to time in the middle still. especially bc i've still gotta figure out how you can win with morphling. i think he's the #1 hardest hero in the game to play...

i've always liked playing everything, in fighting games too. being so close to competitive scenes kinda beats that out of you unless you really play only one game and are really smart, which does not describe how i feel about myself in fighting games. but maybe this'll teach me something about that. i'd like if it did. but the first one i got...is "wisp"

storm spirit is the game's iconic midlane hero. he wants to get a huge lead early and becomes untouchable if he gets far enough ahead, just picking off enemy heroes over and over relentlessly with the help of teammates. if you fail at that he usually becomes a garbage bag who gets slam dunked into a dumpster for 30 minutes by the other midlaner. this is one of the heroes to learn for people who want to feel cooler and smarter than everyone else in the game. i played a practice game because i'm pretty sure i've never played this hero before and it was way more interesting than the real one, where an axe player got like 30 kills on the rest of the enemy team. it really does feel sometimes like you lose the game in one play as a mid player, and i actually don't think this hero is the worst for that; he actually farms incredibly fast as soon as you get an item like witch blade or kaya, and is not that easy to kill. but you lose the ability to do what you were supposed to do. you can gain it back, and in the practice game i actually did have a rough mid stretch before finally pulling off the banger fight that people play this hero for.

there are four "spirit" heroes in dota, and they all share various characteristics, with each one representing one of the attack attributes, having a "remnant" skill which puts an inert copy of them down for some kind of followup, and having strong linear mobility skills which deal damage (either along or at the end of their path). storm is the oldest, so it's nice i got him first. he's the intelligence spirit, and his "remnant" puts an electric copy of him on the field that explodes when something is nearby. he also has "electric vortex", which pulls one enemy towards him, and all heroes in an area if you buy scepter. his ultimate, "ball lightning", costs a percentage of his mana to start up, but then travels a variable distance, spending additional mana for the amount traveled. this allows him to enter fights from far away (dealing high damage at the endpoint) and even leads to some people not buying boots on him at all (which usually pretty much anyone builds to move faster)...finally, he has a passive called "overload" which gives him an extra powered attack every time he casts a spell. much like death prophet, the actual limitation on what you can do in a fight is not cooldowns but only how long you can keep spending mana before you run out. ball lightning's starting cost is based on your total mana pool, so you actually can't stack pure mana increases to spam it...he really needs a lot of regen. he's also a popular choice for carrying the "aegis" item dropped by roshan and used to allow a hero to instantly return to a fight.

there's a reason this hero is a hallmark of specialists; he feels really exciting and dynamic when you get going, and you have lots of choices all game every game about how to approach the game and each fight. it really never feels like you're following some rote path. but for this challenge, this makes him really stressful at the same time, and i hate having to feel like a superstar for a whole game...fortunately, i got carried and didn't have to suffer through embarrassing myself too hard a bunch of times. i had an ok game for a while, especially since i picked him early and got counterpicked, but in the end nothing mattered anyway and i bought parasma for the memes instead of something sensible like black king bar.

next up is another hero with "spirit" in its name but who is not a spirit...spirit breaker. this hero has been pretty strong for the past several months but i keep beating him. i think he's still strong but people have gotten used to playing like total idiots. i guess i'll find out.