I shouldn't have said Ursa isn't a fast hero. He actually has fairly high move speed now that I think about it, but I meant that he won't realistically be able to "catch" anyone without teammates who will disable for him or as Insoo said you get a blink dagger you are pretty much useless.

Ah I see about Ursa. Just thought with some good teamwork he would be valuable with his ridic dmg output and ability to kill Rosh early.

Nothing major but here are some leaked hero portraits and skill images of invoker and gondar.

http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Invoker
http://www.dota2wiki.com/wiki/Gondar

Some people think it's for a before Christmas update but no official reports yet.

I can only begin to imagine how much people are going to bitch about nado + emp with the voice chat.

http://www.quickmeme.com/Clueless-Do...ar/1/?upcoming

pretty lols

There seriously needs to be an incentive for people to finish games quickly. Just played a game where other team had 3x more kills than us because we had 3 noobs on our team. They had no noobs. Such a pain, UGH, should've been won in 25 minutes, instead it takes 40.

That would be a brilliant idea, actually.

Work game length into the formula that they use to award whatever currency will be used for cosmetic items.

Am I just really unlucky or is everyone here buying their key?

I got an invite during the second wave of public invites.

Yea I agree that it would be a good idea to have some sort of incentive to finish the game faster, but cosmetics are cosmetics. Personally I don't care about them but I guess some people do since they are willing to spend money on them. In tourneys sometimes if the final team scores are tied the amount of time spent in the game will determine the win, but that is not applicable in pubs.

My friend and I got a key from the massive invite phase. He got it one day then invited me then I got invited maybe a week later on my own. There are a lot of beta key give aways every day. You have forums, commentators, and contests all dedicated to dispersing keys.

I know that playdota has a thing where if you are an old member you post in a thread. They randomly select 180 people every day to receive a key so if some how you made an old playdota account post in that thread.

On a side note pubs are so damn annoying. I hope when dota2 is officially released they have 2 separate queue systems. People who want a more laid back game and one for people who actually want to play the game competitively. It is so damn annoying when you have a group of 3 or 4 and the pub or two just decide to do their own thing.

Would be neat if they implemented a sc2 league system.

i would still be forever a plat.

A larger player pool and matchmaking will solve most of the issues for people who want better games.

The cream will naturally rise to the top.

It's very rare that you find a team that knows what its doing.

The overall player pool right now is less than 1% of what I expect to see on your average evening.

Everyone watching BenQ right now. Go n9!!!

link?

I am not positive if a larger pool without an adequate match making system will solve the problem. I feel that a really complex algorithm with multiple variables would be needed. In my experience with t2 in thr and cash the highest ranked people all play the carry role typically. The problem with this is when you play these games everyone wants to play the carry and no one picks support.

Good supports will never be able to out carry a high skilled carry player. Basically I am trying to say is that when the high ranked players start to rise to higher tiers, there will be a huge plethora of players who only play the carry role(which I believe around 60% might be accurate). A good team should obviously not be composed of 3 carries.

I am sort of an example of one of these players. I hate playing support for a pub game because I have no idea if the carry is a decent - good player. On the other hand, if I know my team is skilled I am definitely willing to play support. A lot of people just insist on carrying themselves or soloing mid. During which egos clash and they dual lane mid trying to mess with each other's cs.

^ Completely agreed. All the highest ELO people were carries (dotacash). And it was extremely frustrating to not play carry and then get rolled because your carry sucks :X

Just played the most frustrating game of dota2 for sure and maybe all of dota ever. I played as pudge with teammates walking into my hooks. An ES on my team who doesn't want to stun. This guy decides to farm creeps instead of stunning an SA who is right next to him on a killing spree in a 5v1 situation.

Most annoying part was this furion who decides to jungle with starting item of Boots of speed + tango. That build is already beyond useless, but now he is jungling with that crap. Obviously you need boots of speed level 1 to increase your jungling capability. He buys a sobi mask instead of letting me get my bottle using the chick which stays a chick for the entire game. He then decides to buy a mithril hammer into a lothar's edge (not a component of lothar's edge in case anyone is unaware), into an aghs, into a deso (finally using the mithril hammer). Best build order ever.

AM carry on my team who is busy ulting full mana huskar like a pro the entire game. Instead of a storm who has a mana pool > than his total life.

To make matters worse I had to chick as the solo mid pudge.

Have you guys seen this dude Lumin casting DotA 2 games? It's pretty hilarious IMO, he's a casual player and not very good but he loves playing and he is amusing. I like to watch when I'm bored. This is his latest one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48OjUavQLAI

loooool. Let it out. That sounds awful. The boots of speed for jungling was extra lol.

I've seen him mainly cast dota games. Personally I think he is the best insightful caster. Tobiwan is a good caster for entertainment, but for strategic purposes I believe Luminous is hands down the best. He hasn't done that many dota2 games yet but he said he will since dota is going to eventually move on soon.

Boots for jungling and tangos makes no damn sense. First off I am just going to ignore the boots because of how ridiculous that is for level 1 speed efficiency. Now the tangos, why not just buy 2 claritys instead of tangos for treants that TANK more and will increase damage output.

edit: Different caster than I thought. Thought it was luminous but i'll check that video out later on.

Boots of speed let him run back to the jungle faster after he ports back to the fountain for mana/health, ldo.

Yea one of my friends gave me that same witty response. I don't even think that the guy leveled teleport early on since he was using a chick (not crow!). Dude for sure never ganked with teleport.

Luminous is the most strategic of the English casters. Hes still not as insightful as say either Haitao or 2009 but those are all in Mandarin so whatever.

Most epic game ever last night.