this isnt p2w and doesnt kill the game in any way

You could already see that by clicking "Show Details" or whatever on the death screen.

Showing disable timings is new, but again, you can literally see that above your character's head while you're dying.

I will admit that the screen you posted above is more pretty.

It's not the same. It's some extra info almost all of which will be useless to anyone over 3k or something. It won't affect anything. It doesn't actually help you play the game.

I'm a big fan of dota plus and purchased the 12 month plan. How does plus effect TI? Guessing they will have an additional battle pass or additions to the dota plus.

My son is 14yo, he has been playing DOTA 2 for around 2 years.

He is Divine 5 with ~ 6.4k MMR, I think he's top 200 on the leaderboard.

He wants to be a pro Dota player, do you guys think he has a chance?

See you at TI9. Make sure to put a good word in for legalized online poker in the US when they do the family interviews.

Small. Probably going to have to be over 9k within a few years and get a lot of luck to be noticed.

He could just be very good and trying his best all the time, playing with utmost concentration and picking strong/meta heroes. Could be getting a lot out of his relatively limited talent already, with little room for improvement.

Seeing as he's 14 though, can't rule out that he's actually got the potential to make it as a pro. Has he told you anything that would support his chances of becoming a pro, other than having a very high MMR? Any tournament/lan experiences? Feedback from other good players or something?

And why are you asking? Is he trying to justify bad results at school by becoming a dota pro anyway?

It's like he's his county tennis u14 champion and wants to know if he can be pro. Well...maybe. But almost certainly not probability wise.

I'm not as mad about plus today as yesterday but I still feel that it is mindboggling that any of the ingame assistant features cost $. It seems diametrically opposed to the business model for the last five years, 'hats not ingame features' to quote one redditer.

Like the death stat one is the only one that provides significantly more info than the regular death summary. That said, if there were 5-6 features like this it would be impossible to say that it wasn't an advantage imo. For example if you pickup like 2-4 pieces of info that you wouldn't normally recognize with the time available, then it would be hard to argue that there wasn't a tangible advantage.

As far as value goes, hat is all that it will really provide at the end of the day. If/when they stop dota plus your chatboxes are sure to go so its basically pay for cool chat commands. I really just don't see why they wrapped in game assistant at all. It best helps the newest players and there was no reason to put it in plus.

Is this comparison accurate? For starters, a county U14 tennis champ doesn't play with the pros, can't even compete with good U18 players, while a top 200 (all ages included) Dota leaderboard play with some pros on a semi-regular basis.

top 200 at 14 years old is super impressive.

A lot of the game is about knowledge and experience so if he's this good already, his mechanics and reactions, etc, are probably very very good.

With like 6.4k MMR he shouldnt even be Top 2000 in his Region. Divine 5 will get replaced with an actual Rank as soon he hits Top 2xxx afaik.

Nonetheless he seems to be talented.

You should send your son to a training camp(http://www.dota2trainingcamp.com for example) with actual pro players or buy him the best available coaches and get their feedback on how good your son really is.

Hi David,

Awesome to see your name pop up here! I actually just discussed you briefly last month with a friend of mine! I'm glad your son has chosen such a great game to fall in love with.

Sadly, that comparison probably isn't too far off. Dota is a game where the difference in skill levels among even the top players can be surprisingly large. Your son is obviously very skilled, and probably better than almost anyone here, so it may be hard for us to give great advice. So with that, I echo what others have said, get him some coaching from high level players and see what they have to say about his potential. I would also highly encourage him to get set up in FPL and play as much of that as possible (if he's not already in it), as serious games are quite different than pub games (think tiny home game vs 2/5 nl at the local casino). This will also help him some with networking and might get him noticed by pros more than just dominating pub games would.

I will say that while the game compares in many ways to poker, making it as a pro is quite a bit harder. A much smaller percentage of even the very best are able to make a living, and it can require an interest in other areas of gaming such as streaming, broadcasting, or performing other functions in the industry to make a living. I'm sure you are aware that the very best can make an absurd amount of money though, and the industry is rapidly growing and should continue to do so, so this could change in the coming years.

In any case, please keep us updated with his progress, he has a long ways to go, but it's certainly possible he could make it.

link his dotabuff here

This is a post he made on Reddit 3 months ago about his journey to 6.5k, his dotabuff link is there

My how-to guide to 6.5k mmr as a kid trying to make it

Hi Jordan,

Hope you're doing great. Yes, I'm aware of most things you said. I'm just trying not to be biased about his chances since obviously we as parents always think our kids are the best thing in the world. I have a pretty good idea about what does it take to be a top poker player or a top Math Olympiad student but have no idea about the Dota 2 world, that is what I want to get some perspective and asked this question.

He's a pretty intelligent kid, works pretty hard and has a passion for Dota. I know it is not enough, and as you say it is pretty, pretty hard to make it.
I just want to support him as much as I can with DOTA or whatever else he decides to do in the future.

As you can see in his Dotabuff, he plays all kind of heroes, he tells me, he play whatever the team needs.

Probably his experience playing good tournaments is limited, he told me he played the EPI Center Open Qualifier one month ago and his team got top 8, despite he being the only top 500 player on the team.

School is not a problem, he's being unschooled.

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/137276883

found it. nice article ty. also for those interested here is his stream too:

https://www.twitch.tv/dnm9_

In poker terms he's probably like a 200NL winning reg and he wants to be winning in the nosebleeds HUNL or something right? Lol poker analogies.

It's cool seeing a dad actually encouraging the son and wondering if he can make it when you hear all the stories of these kids being disowned by their parents for playing video games. At least until the first cheque arrives. A recent example was ropz who was basically wrecking Major champions in FPL but his parents just didn't get the pro thing and wouldn't let him attend LANs and stuff for ages until he started making thousands. I think mousesports manager had to talk them into signing his contract.

i watched a full video of one of his matches on his twitch and i get the feeling even though he's 6.2k right now that hes better than the competition in that current bracket. we'll see what happens over the next months/spring to see if he focuses on pubs or tries out qualifiers and such and see from there. he's pretty fast mechanically and i think he can make noise in NA for sure. I checked the results of his epicenter open qualifer, and out of the 4 open qualifiers available he only entered into #3 with 4 ppl ive never heard of and indeed did get top 8 in a round of 64 bracket. the teams who did better than him are all pretty notable NA talent so thats cool

https://clips.twitch.tv/ZealousAuspiciousClamBlargNaut

feelsgoodman

waht a stomp

13-0 minor

two stomps in the finals against a super legit team like vgj

Yup, EG has been quietly really good post roster change, bleed blue!

VGJ Storm just 2-0'd EG. I'm really happy an NA team is finally doing this: choosing a team house location where they have great ping to EU, they're in NY and get 100 ping to EU. Apparently they only play EU pubs and scrim against EU teams, I think that's a huge advantage for an NA team to have.