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"
snapfire is a new hero! she came out in the last few years, and while i've liked a lot of the 7.x hero designs (ones implemented after the game officially separated from the warcraft 3 map) she's still my favorite. gun granny with a giant lizard and a unique jack of all trades kit, manifesting in the fact that even at a pro level she gets played periodically in basically every role. she's got a great damaging aoe slow/nuke, a thing that makes allies hop forward a bit that you can use to escape or stun, and a rapid fire that lowers enemy armor (which is the center of her damage strats, but it's really good even as a support). plus the ability to just shell out tons of damage from far away with her ultimate
though, when they made the new "universal" hero type this year (gains damage from all stats, in a lesser amount than single-types), snapfire got changed from an intellect hero (who also gains a bunch of strength) to a universal hero (who gains a bunch of strength and int). this has resulted in her losing a lot of damage early in the game (as most universal heroes did after the first patch where they were almost all considered overpowered), and i don't think we'll see mid snapfire again soon. though batrider is finally returning to nature, so all we need is one of the topson/nine type sickos to get on a pro team again
there's a strong tendency, especially in unranked games, to view the game as an sort of every person for themself thing. people on reddit will tell you to prioritize your game and play so that you can win, because you're the only person you can control. and the fact is, a lot of people take this to heart, even on supports. you see tons of maniacs who play supports mid and rig up builds that are AWESOME at winning 1v1s for the first 30 minutes of a game. and then they lose. the truth is, i tried to build a carry build for one of my snapfire games to see how it would go and i had a hard time getting things going. even once i had most of the items my team had already lost too much ground, and i certainly wasn't a small part of that.
and anyway, playing support in unranked owns because of that. everyone is trying some sicko build, so when you actually just heal/buff people, tank spells, and land a few big stuns or spells you can win games decisively. i lost a game doing that too, but the third one, when i won, i felt divinely blessed. i only died one time! at one point i was sure i was dead but i just kept running and eventually a guy on the other team typed something like "im speechless" and stopped chasing me because i wasn't dying. if i was far from the fight i'd open with the ult, and otherwise it was just open season to get in the middle and cause chaos with the spells without dying.
in the end the ogre magi on my team got mvp. i have to think it's because he got one more kill (i bet i would've gotten more if i was less greedy holding onto a philosopher's stone, an item that gives money in exchange for lowering your attack damage). i'm salty as hell
but not that salty because i had fun with this hero in all three games. i'll have to play her again