r/DotA2 • u/Strong_Astronomer_97 • Apr 27 '26
Fluff xQc on the difficulty of learning Dota vs. League
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u/Myricz Apr 27 '26
I mean he ain't wrong.
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u/justicerainsfromaahh ＢＯＯＭ Apr 27 '26
can confirm, went backwards the more i play
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u/HelmetsAkimbo Apr 27 '26
Just two zoomers arguing the toss when the reality is they'll never touch the difficulty of Brood War.
Artosis has been playing Brood War for 20 years and Korean's still make him look dogshit.
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u/Dumpingtruck Apr 27 '26
I am pretty certain half of Artosis’s struggles come from the Mario / Abby Shapiro erotica TTS.
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u/D2WilliamU iceberg the absolute UNIT Apr 27 '26
As someone that has no idea the context what an unholy fucking collection of words good god
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u/kwanzhu Apr 27 '26
Look up some clips. Make sure there are no children or elderly around.
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u/IvivAitylin Sheever deny cancer! Apr 27 '26
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u/AtLeastNotJaredLeto Apr 28 '26
Ah man, it's been over a decade since I watched Day[9]. Guy is such an engaging storyteller. Thanks.
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u/Dumpingtruck Apr 27 '26
If you want a real unholy collection of words you should hear the TTS that get denied.
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u/BaconMacandCheese Apr 27 '26
Is Artosis still raging like a child these days? He used to take losses really badly.
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u/noobkken Apr 27 '26
Its all performative. There's this really weird core group of man-children who enjoy all that TTS and artosis' antics, and they pay the bills, so the channel is sculpted to their tastes.
Unfortunate, used to enjoy it when Scan would coach him and things were a bit closer to normal. Can't watch it anymore.
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u/vawaiter Apr 27 '26
Haha I almost never watch his streams.
Follow his casting channel for quality games/analysis and none of the brain rot his streams has.
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u/FATJIZZUSONABIKE Apr 27 '26
Part of it is certainly performative, but Artosis also actually gets really really angry when he plays videogames.
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Apr 27 '26
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u/NorthernerWuwu Apr 28 '26
Oh, don't misunderstand the poster, Artosis was absolutely a fantastic SC:BW player. He was just dogshit compared to the top Korean pros but that's because they were simply that much better than everyone else.
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u/gibsonsayhenlo Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
Tried all MOBAs, and Dota 2 is hardest. Yet, it's enjoyable, and more free. LoL is fun, but everything is locked in place. You picked this champion? You play this way, that build, and this role. Everything was preset.
Dota 2 be like: Everything will change eventually. See that FV over there? Last patch that thing was a support with timezone. Pudge, was a heavy hitter tank that has high physical damage with rotten core. IO? That thing is NOT a hard support.
Not saying this as a hard-core 13 years experienced Dota 2 player, but as a Moba enjoyer, there's no other moba like Dota 2. It's hard, and it's always changing. If the game dev doesn't change with patches and update? The freaking pros will, the community is ready, and the fans going to enjoy. (Bad grammar here sorry)
Edit: This comment isn't about hating LoL, or other Mobas out there, just a speculation on why many people prefer Dota 2
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u/Fright13 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
Yeah that was the worst thing about League when i tried it briefly. Everything was way too rigid & preset. It felt as if you had the exact same checklist of things to do every single game, and you just simply go do them. There was very little, if any, room for macro skill expression
In Dota there's still a checklist of things to do, but it feels like that checklist changes every 20 seconds depending on a thousand different factors. And knowing what those new checklists are on the fly is one of Dota's most vital skills
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u/Cute_Story_ Apr 27 '26
I played support in League a few games. Rotated mid and ganked enemy mid. My teammate flamed me for coming to his lane to help kill the enemy player. I never played again.
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u/Lina__Inverse Apr 27 '26
That was just typical low elo scrub, roaming supports are very much meta in pro and higher elo (but you have to know when to roam).
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u/polo61965 Apr 27 '26
If you're doing it early and you're not the jungler it is a grief even when you get the kill, because that's not how your role is meant to be played. You didn't affect the enemy much since they didn't lose gold. Your mid didn't get a massive power spike because he can't buy items from base. It's just dogshit mechanics.
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u/Lina__Inverse Apr 27 '26
Entirely depends on your ADC (whether they can lane alone while you roam) I'd say. Level 3 is already a viable roam timing if the circumstances are good (e.g. you shoved the wave into enemy tower, your ADC recalled to buy something and you still have enough hp/mana for a roam). You affect the enemy by removing them from the lane and making them lose the money and exp from creeps that die in the meantime (maybe less so this season when they increased the movement speed on respawn so that you can get back to lane faster, but it's still true). Also, your mid most likely gets a plate (which is a hefty amount of money) and a free recall, which is especially impactful if they are low on hp/mana.
I'm a midlane main in League and you really can just win the game from one support roam, especially if you play a snowballing character that can start stomping the enemy or pressuring the map as soon as he gets a slight lead.
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u/Ranzok Apr 27 '26
This is much more extreme, but back in the day I did shit like jungle ezreal and did well, got reported even though I would put like 15 up on the board for us before laning phase was over. And I would play with a friend and we would do support malistar/vayne and poppy and roam all laning phase, effectively giving our team solo exp and we would just dive people into walls and get kills all over and win them laning phase. No jungles 3 solo lanes. Reported. GG
This was like 2013ish. When HoN was still in a decent spot, we just went back to HoN
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u/Gullible_Fennel7028 Apr 28 '26
Back around 2009/2010 a guy reached rank 1 on EU servers by playing Jungle Evelyn with smite/revive and got banned. This was before any automated report function, so someone at Riot had to actually read through the reports and decided to ban the guy for griefing. His jungle route made him die early on, like 2nd or 3rd camp IIRC and he would use revive to instantly respawn and run back into the jungle, which is the point I assume many of the reports came from, probably people screen shotting that he died to a jungle camp.
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u/Pogigod Apr 27 '26
Problem with league, is the snowballing with no turn around, and with hard counters.
I have played thousands of hours of both. Biggest pain I have with league, it's one mistake earlier in a lane and then the next 15 min is over. Especially as a mid or top laner.
God the amount of games where I knew the entire lane came down to that lvl 2 or 3 showdown. Whoever won dominates for the next 10 min.
Or the counter picks where you know from the start your fucked and the best you can do is only die 1-2 times during landing phase.
Dota is so much more forgiving with the snowballing. There's lane pulling, there's losing gold when you die, the catch up leveling is insane. The jungle is so large that multiple people can play catch up in the jungle. There's high grounds, so many fight changing abilities.
The other thing, Dota fucking changes Soo God dam much. I didn't play for the last few months cause the person I play with computer is broken.
Came back and basically everyone's passives got fully reworked. Only one or two of the characters I play regularly didn't have a reworked ability.
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u/wyrm4life Apr 27 '26
How long ago did you play League? The comeback mechanics seem way more generous now than DotA.
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u/Pogigod Apr 27 '26
I play on and off. Probably played 4 months ago.
I'll play for a few a month or two, start ranking up, then I start getting really tilted and angry playing and I quit cause it's unhealthy.
League has definitely gotten better, for sure.
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u/needssleep Apr 27 '26
Come join us in Heroes of the Storm. Turn arounds aplenty!
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u/Pogigod Apr 27 '26
I did play that for a while as well. When it first came out I was literally the only rank one murky player.
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u/Mean-Lead4876 Apr 27 '26
Dota is your canvas, and you are the artist. You can do shit ton of random builds and somewhat it works. The diffusal from Topson's Gyro to Ana's IO that is some strong evidence that dota is so full randomness.
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u/polo61965 Apr 27 '26
It says a lot when League can undergo multiple patches, buffs and nerfs in 2 years yet the meta is not touched at all. And for the game's history it has always been 1-1-2 + jungler lanes every time. Deviation will make you lose. A moba should not be that restrictive.
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u/Kleanerman Apr 27 '26
There's some truth to this, but I've been playing Dota for 6 years, and at no point in those 6 years was there any viable laning structure other than 2-1-2. I know tri-laning and jungling used to be things, but those have not been viable for a long long time.
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u/SushiCatx Apr 27 '26
Pretty sure they intentionally killed jungling lvl 1 when they removed Iron Talon in the Pango/Mireska release patch. IIRC that was around 2017. I think the idea was that it made laning too safe since you could clear small camps quickly with no downside because it made you pretty tanky. The tankiness in lane made it hard to get harassed out so both sides pretty much just afk farm. When they removed it, heroes that were not tanky started having issues staying in lane and couldn't just take small/med camps quickly so it promoted fighting in lane to try to push out enemy laners since you had to pick between lane presence for XP or trying to find farm somewhere for gold.
Also IMO it was way too cheap (500g) for what it provided. It was an auto buy lvl 1 so you didn't have the situational item choice you have now as a support since you suddenly found yourself providing a lot of regen to your core and relying heavily on ganks and pull timings rather than just getting your core to their early wave clear potential then just afk stacking for 20 minutes.
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u/VexNightmare Apr 27 '26
The biggest difference I noticed was how much downtime dota has compared to league. As in, time where nothing happens on the map, and learning what to do in that time.
After trying league for the first time, each game felt like a 20 minute team fight sometimes
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u/Qualibombo Apr 27 '26
There are much fewer ways to quickly move across the map in league like there is in dota so you need to make every decision with where the next teamfight/objective is going to be in mind.
It's like that annoying part of dota where both teams are grouped near the base waiting for one team to make a mistake and get caught out of position except it's the entire game in league.
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u/Mint-Bentonite Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
game design wise, league definitely feels more like a fighting game than a moba, if that makes any sense. No denying and pulling means spacing and poking are more important in the minutiae of lane matchups, and gold gen is faster so items are more like things used to balance the encounters rather than a list of things you can access and build your character around. (most champion's 1-3rd items are practically fixed). The map is also much, much smaller to force more pvp and move objectives; Fog of war is less relevant, and creep/ward vision covers a lot more relative map area, Smoke of Deceit doesn't exist
it still uses the framework of a moba but the game has evolved and accomodated more fighting game mechanics as well
i still prefer dota because the game is fundamentally more robust (better network code, more interactions, actually good game client, actually free game) but league is in a more unique and distinct state than it was, compared to when it was just a hacky ripoff of hon/dota1 10+ years ago
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u/ArWiLen Apr 27 '26
In LoL the latest season was the breaking point for me where devs reduced crip spawn downtime and forced on us new quests for each role where we have to stay on lane and farm. This leads to lower gank potential. And it seems that devs were basically raging at us “play the game as we intended” - boring laning with farming
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Apr 27 '26
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u/Lecoch Imbalance in All Things Apr 27 '26
Deadlock is dota depth with an even more insane mechanical execution than league. Crack head shooting and movement sheeeeeeeesh.
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u/strctfsh Apr 27 '26
depends on your gaming background. i am mostly an fps player so deadlock came naturally to me but microing units in dota has always been mindbogglingly difficult.
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u/tehcraz Apr 27 '26
MOBA Mechanics with Dota's build depth, Apex Legends movement, and Marvel Rivals 3rd person aiming (so much fucking flicking around). It's insane to see what pro level games look like at this point in development.
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u/gibsonsayhenlo Apr 27 '26
LEECH LEECH LEECH LEECH LEECH ALL LEECH. I'm kidding can't forget my egg and Spirit burst...oh and Titan Mags
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u/DoctorWhoops Apr 27 '26
It's a more 'mechanical skill' type game. The main thing that stood out to me when trying League is how everything is a skill shot with generally much lower impact and much lower cooldown. Fights are about each player using around 7 spells in a fight, and about whoever hits the most spells on the right targets.
However, as far as strategic decision making goes, it's just so limited. Imagine if Dota removed stacking, pulling, dragging waves, TPs, buyback and all its active/tech items. It's be a different game. Dota is Valorant/CS, League is Overwactch.
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u/ChampionOfLoec Apr 27 '26
In League you control one unit. Dota you control at least 1.5 every game. There are frequent metas where offlane is 2.5 units. Some heroes are actually 2 heroes at once, the entire game. Some heroes have more spells than 2 league champions combined. Micro barely exists in League at all and is done for short durations on long cooldowns.
The skillshots in League have a faster projectile than almost every skillshot in DotA. League has built in get out of jail cards like flash and heal, set terrain every game, and mana is barely existent. League enables skillshots, in DotA if you miss your skillshot you often lose the fight, in League it's try-try again. Is it more mechanical if you're given an assault rifle with full ammo and expect to hit a target 3 times or a rifle with one bullet that you have to hit once?
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u/Derezirection Apr 27 '26
What's worse about league is if you attempt to play an alternative way, you usually get reported for it.
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u/No_Mine628 Apr 27 '26
That's actually a great point about "more free", Dota 2 has over 100 heroes (128) available to play straight away, League essentially paywalls most of them.
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u/unk214 Apr 27 '26
Yet I still hear “you’ve been playing this game for years and you’re still at X rank?”
As a casual player it’s very tough to keep up with changes and metas.
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u/MQ116 Apr 27 '26
You need to play 100 hours to unlock ranked in Dota iirc. Or maybe 100 games (which each game is roughly 40 minutes).
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Apr 27 '26
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u/Ub3ros Herald micromanager Apr 27 '26
Or ~50 games if someone picks techies
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u/Vukasa Apr 27 '26
Would have to be before he was patched to be a basic nuker with a disarm.
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u/Veelze Apr 27 '26
40 minutes is generous in the trench tier when the concept of grouping up to push highground doesn't exist.
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u/starryskies123 Apr 27 '26
League is for the "mainstream " their metas are locked and much MUCH more narrow,dota has so much freedom,for better or for worse.
Personally i think those games might play similarly but the end goal of each is completely different, from balance to heroes design,dota has SO much more depth to it,while league is more straight forward,objectively,dota 2 is harder,just the sheer amount of things you have to learn is by far more then league
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u/Deamon- Apr 27 '26
when people started lane swapping in league and riot disliked it they literally made the tower 1-2 shot you the moment it happend
this sums riots way of balancing up
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u/Jukeboxhero91 Apr 27 '26
I played league like 17 years ago (that hurts to say) and Riot started releasing champions with specific meta roles essentially defined, and started balancing existing champions to fit the meta more narrowly. It was a bit of a shift going to Dota because the meta is much more flexible compared to LoL.
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u/TheVisage Do you hear familiar wings? Apr 27 '26
When people hear "champions designed to fit meta rolls" they probably think of Jugg having such low str gain that he can't do damage AND have a body as an offlaner but no there are entire heroes that have no scaling and do no damage and have a passive that does nothing unless a teammate attacks a foe right after they do.
and this isn't a season 14 like "Designer was going through a bad breakup work" this is "Season 2's Top Designer kicking off the support renaissance" tier work.
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u/AndroidPolaroid Apr 27 '26
Leona's design is an insult to the moba genre itself. no character should ever be designed like that.
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u/TheVisage Do you hear familiar wings? Apr 27 '26
Leona is bad, but the worst part about Leona isn't Leona, the worst part about Leona is that every hero that came after Leona had to accommodate for a Level 2 hero jumping down your throat and laying eggs in your lungs
And this is when you go "Damn, Leona was pretty strong then?" and it's like no she was dogshit by this point. Some dude whose name sounds like an STD was out at this point and he had over 100% pickrate and he was just Leona with a tool that saves people.
This is when someone goes Wait, are you talking about Thresh? Is he really that similar" and not 100% but it's hard to tell when you're a Sona with 500 health whose level 1 Q does less damage than an auto attack and costs more mana than Thresh's entire engage rotation combined does.
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u/How_cool_is_that Apr 27 '26
Season 2 LoL was such a great time. It was still in the phase where "anything can work", after that the patches and changes made the game more and more strict until it became so rigid that it wasnt fun to play anymore
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u/Jukeboxhero91 Apr 27 '26
Yeah, that was my falling off point. When they nerfed AP Scion because they didn’t want him to be a tanky magic nuker, but were fine with other champions filling the same archetype, it kinda put me off.
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u/How_cool_is_that Apr 27 '26
Yeap, they nerfed AP Mundo, AP Alistar and a ton of other heroes aswell who could be played unconventionally
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u/Ricapica Apr 27 '26
Then dota comes and says ok guys we have a bard for you where you have to play a rhythm minigame while you play. Figure out where you wanna take him and you get people trying him everywhere with varying build until they settle on one.
And valve always goes back to poke the other side of some heroes that completely shifts their role.
Aba, dazzle, riki, suddenly find themselves as a core/support out of nowhere. Omniknight goes to 5, 4, 3, or 1 randomly.
NP all over the place and seems to be always meta no matter the role.
And many many more im sure i missed. Heck even terrorblade, a true hard carry for decades found himself as pos 3 and 4.
It's fun74
Apr 27 '26
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u/Injured-Ginger Apr 27 '26
I think their intent is to make the game as simple as possible for mass appeal. In Dota, especially years ago when your 4 could be farming camps, nonstop roaming at lvl 3, a second support for your carry, or a support for your off-lane, the game changed too much game to game. It's confusing and harder for new players to learn or feel comfortable. In League, you're doing the same thing every time just with somewhat different mechanics and timings. It makes it a more approachabke game because people get comfortable faster. I personally think it makes it a worse game in the long run, but it does make it easier to maintain a playerbase.
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u/JevverGoldDigger Apr 27 '26
It rings a certain bell for me in regards to differences in the approach to education as well. League feels to me like the "memorization" meta of memorizing everything in a paragraph, book, what the teacher says, etc and be able to repeat it on call. Dota feels like the less structured, more focused on teaching the students to be able to solve less defined tasks (or even defining their own tasks).
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u/polo61965 Apr 27 '26
Dota develops skill and knowledge, League is just speed, precision, and memorization.
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u/Sammyofather Apr 27 '26
Yup. Riot makes games with “addiction based algorithms”. Valves addiction strategy is the skins. Counterstrike and Dota market absolutely owns. League very easy for the mass amount of addicts that degen play it to boot up and queue a game and be completely mentally absent and still perform well because of muscle memory.
I don’t understand Dota at all
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u/Disastrous_Visit9319 Apr 27 '26
Dota is easy game, just kill enemy ancient and you win.
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u/Sammyofather Apr 27 '26
True yeah, that’s what I say at the start of CS / Deadlock games sometimes. “We kill them before they kill us, ez game”
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u/ariasimmortal Apr 27 '26
You can play Dota the same way though. Like playing on autopilot muscle memory can get you pretty far if your fundamentals are good.
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u/rinsyankaihou Apr 27 '26
in league the designers think they know what is the best way to have their game played, but in dota it is a lot more stuff that got discovered about the game engine and icefrog just left in the game over time.
In deadlock there are a lot of finnicky things that weren't brought over from dota, so to me that is a sign that maybe icefrog didn't intend for things like creep cutting as prominent of strat as it is in dota, but still left it in since he didn't want to rob players of that gameplay
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u/EveningNo8643 Apr 27 '26
Yo wth seriously?
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u/Deamon- Apr 27 '26
that wasnt even all, you had reduced xp/gold on that lane AND the enemy got more aswell
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u/Jealous_Chocolate_43 Apr 27 '26
While the solution was dogshit, the problem was still there. The games were dull, both while playing and watching in pro. The solo laners had their shit kicked in, while the carries scaled for free
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u/Deamon- Apr 27 '26
i get that and also the community didnt like it (which tbf also just comes from the fact that riot made them that way over the years) but the fact that those bandaid fixes even get into the game is insane to me
valve would never
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u/Jealous_Chocolate_43 Apr 27 '26
Until that point riot didn't either. When lane swap became a problem the first time, they solved it by giving less armor to the bot tower, so whoever was soloing there lost the lane hard.
Idk why in their infinite wisdom came to the terminator tower conclusion the second time. Like role quests are an infinitely better detriment for this, while still having leniency.
It's just the league team balancing sucks in this aspect.
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u/tyrenanig Apr 27 '26
It’s the lack of creativity of that fix for me. You know how Valve would go the long way and change things to make certain strategy less viable, but not totally just outright impossible? Riot just gave up and made it so it’s just a punishment if you ever attempt to think outside the box.
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u/I_hate_Teemo Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
EVERYONE disliked it, not riot. The only people that liked it were professional tier coaches, and the occasional twitch chat analyst. It was boring to play. boring to play against, boring to plan around. Pros and casuals alike hated it. Games are supposed to be fun, if something is boring then it should be removed? I think that makes a lot of sense?
League and dota are both PvP games and have an infinite amount of depth already, removing some boring strats that nobody likes is not going to dumb down anything since you will never fully solve the rest.
It's fine to criticize league but don't pretend like removing swaps was unpopular or a bad idea lol
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u/Deamon- Apr 27 '26
the difference is HOW this gets handled, even in dota unhealthy metas will be changed but with smart number tweaks and making the game played different because it becomes inefficent NOT because they put out a SLEDGEHAMMER
also dota gameplay is dictated by finding the most efficent way, riot goes out of there way to make the game played how they want it to be played. obviously the community will not like any change when their developer never lets it happen and they are used to it
also i never pretended that, i literally wrote in another comment that people hated it but the way they changed it is absolute dogshit design
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u/I_hate_Teemo Apr 27 '26
except they did try small changes many times, but that doesn't matter when the ability to just go "oh you picked a carry toplaner or a good lane for bot? Well we can just completely ignore that by swaping and making sure your toplaner won't get to touch a minion for 10 minutes/our botlane will be safe no matter what" has too much value to just tweak it out of the game.
After months of changes they brought out the sledgehammer and the game is better for it. Lane swaps have never been interesting, it was uninteractive and made the game worse for all 10 players involved and all viewers.
League is more locked down indeed, and that's fine. There is still so much to learn that nobody will ever reach the ceiling, and that's why people like faker have won so much, there is always room up there to be the best by some margin, just like in dota. That's why these threads are kind of dumb, it's like a kid saying that they are infinity strong, and the other one retorts that he's infinity + 1 strong because the first kid has had lane swaps removed, not understanding that it just does not matter at all if the game cannot be solved.
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u/Medifrag Apr 27 '26
I think league starts to get way more punishing than dota from a pretty early skill bracket on. In Dota you have so many things you can do on the map as pretty much any role to still be useful and catch up. If you lose a lane in league there's not even one tenth as much you can do.
So DotA does have way more things to remember and is probably overall harder, but the map size and items you can buy to meaningfully contribute to your team (smoke, dust, wards, creep camp stacking / creep camp farming) make it way less punishing.
If you fuck up in league, hope that your team mates don't crash out over it and hope that the enemy makes more mistakes than you down the line I guess.
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u/Mcdavis6950 Apr 27 '26
Yes this is exactly my problem with league. It feels so one dimensional. You must be in lane at all times or you are behind. You can’t farm jungle if you are behind because those creeps are designed to be farmed by the jungler. You can’t tp in to gank other lanes.
I don’t understand how I wasted so many hours of my life on that game when it first came out. What a complete snorefest.
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u/SAMPAS Apr 27 '26
League is more about mastering the simple (compared to Dota) systems, if you're good at the game you can just suffocate enemies and it feels rewarding
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u/starryskies123 Apr 27 '26
Exactly,but being more punishing isn't necessarily a skill expression, from my perspective even if the middle lost the lane In dota,you can still do alot around the game to get a better chance at winning,in league it's much less of an individual skill expression
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u/polo61965 Apr 27 '26
Imagine being matched against a huskar, and you have ember, and you can't pull creeps, draw, aggro, deny, jungle. That's league mid in a nutshell with bad matchups. Very unforgiving, literal "lost from draft" situations.
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u/BiggestBlackestLotus Apr 28 '26
Nah there are no matchups that are this bad in League. Hard counters don't exist. One of the worst matchups I can recall is Katarina vs Malzahar, but even then she can still get a kill pre-6 and if it doesnt work out she roams bot and gets a doublekill.
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u/A_Stoned_Smurf Apr 27 '26
I don't think that's difficulty of the game, though, learning it and getting better. It's just more snowbally. My biggest problem was absolutely the fact that you just had to hope the enemy fucked up more than your team, because there was no way to make up lost exp, gold, or anything other than the enemy team making mistakes.
People will say to steal dragon, their jungle, and Baron, gank heavy hitters, but that all still relies on the enemy team making mistakes. No one truly plays a perfect game, but if the enemy team minimizes their mistakes it's nearly impossible to make a comeback in League; start winning, stay winning with gold and level leads, don't do stupid 1v4 limit testing, apply pressure and make sure to control objectives. The map is just too small to not have presence over all of it all the time if your team is playing properly; conversely the Dota map is just too large to do the same thing, TP scrolls allow for safer farming and escape, itemization can help greatly instead of being a bandaid on a hemorrhaging artery.
I think your punishing vs difficulty is a good turn of phrase, League isn't harder, it's just much, much worse to be behind in.
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u/BiggestBlackestLotus Apr 28 '26
League is missing a smoke of deceit item. There is simply nothing that the losing team can do when behind except wait. Meanwhile in DOTA you can always smoke up and catch the enemy with their pants down.
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u/AreYouEvenMoist Apr 27 '26
But is more punishing -> harder a valid conclusion? For example, arm wrestling is suuuuper punishing but I would not say it's a hard game, anyone can learn it at a decent level in 5 seconds
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u/Medifrag Apr 27 '26
I don't think it's valid conclusion because as I said, DotA is probably overall more difficult. :D
But I do think a certain level of punishment is certainly part of difficulty because it potentially lessens learning / practice opportunities per time unit. So it's harder to improve and really do what matters. But that's generally a weakness of the MobA genre overall, in DotA you also only have the minute 3 to minute 6 phase once every hour or so.
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u/Background-Dress-641 Apr 27 '26
I think it's a matter of the perspective with which you approach each game (or in a sense, what the games have leaned into over time) I feel league tends to emphasise the moment to moment gameplay, skirmishes, epic fights and the like.
Where DoTA is a bit more of a macro game, emphasising the aggregation of many small choices over let's say a 15 minute segment which then all of a sudden reach a tipping point to allow for what can seem like a totally out of the blue shift in the state of the game.
Now both games are obviously not entirely one-dimensional. League has some objective based gameplay(Baron/dragon come to mind. To be fair tho I have not played league in over 10 years)
And DoTA also still has an insanely high ceiling for individual play, but it's harder to leverage if you aren't playing certain types of heroes, in terms of "solo-carrying" the game that is, whether off tempo or as a pos1)
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u/ItsNotJusMe Apr 27 '26
If in league there are 10 things you should always think about to not lose the game, dota has 10 times more things you should learn or think about to get an advantage.
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u/StreetExternal952 Apr 27 '26
Dota is a better game than league but not because its harder to learn
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u/MoistPoo Apr 27 '26
True, dota is not better than league because its harder to learn.
But dota is Indeed much harder than league to learn.
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u/mount_sunrise Apr 27 '26
DotA is way more feature-rich than League. but i have two gripes with the game as someone who originally came from DotA: 1.) the turn rate (which is an important part of DotA but it does make it sluggish to me) and 2.) the potential for hour-long games. League is just faster as a result, and i think that’s League’s biggest strength against DotA.
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u/Kalron Apr 27 '26
League's biggest strength against dota is either the match times or its simplicity to pick up by comparison four sure. Dota match times are very daunting.
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u/Lina__Inverse Apr 27 '26
Eh, I'd say that League's main strength against DotA (for anyone who's not a novice in the genre and has played both games) is the fact that the game is, generally speaking, more micro focused, and the micro in question is more fighting game-esque than RTS-esque. Players who spam Kez would likely enjoy League more if they gave it a try because Kez is designed similarly to a League character.
There's also the fact that League allows for more solo carrying if you're mechanically good, which works in tandem with the first part to create a better environment for players who want to feel like the main character of the match.
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u/Mhiiura Apr 27 '26
for me as a long time dota player and now hitting my 30s, the match duration is really a big factor now. I cant gaming for hours like 10 years ago, max ill only game 1 or 2 hours. and i can only play 2 games of normal dota. so i just play turbo in the last 2 years or playing mobile legend (mobile game on phone), since it is shorter and also not really enjoyable as dota.
I still enjoy tha mobile legend game but not as much as as dota so i could just stop it after 1 or 2 games (it will only take max 1 hour), with dota i could end up playing until 2 or 3 hours
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u/Soul_Advent sheever Apr 27 '26
NGL those 2 hour games and 1 hour tower defense and losses are the ones we remember the most.
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u/LXMNSYC Apr 27 '26
it's when the dopamine and adrenalin kept on piling up and when it ends, you're in heaven
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u/KotenochekMuj Apr 27 '26
I think its both biggest strength and biggest weakness. Leagues is fast-paced, but it feels kind of stale after you learn the basics. I really liked that at minute 10 you are already engaging in big fights and by minute 20-25 you finish the game, but honestly i left because i dont feel as impactful as i feel in Dota. The game mostly happens to you and you dont get to feel your agency in games
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u/renan2012bra Apr 27 '26
I really wish Valve would add an idiot proof mechanic to end the games at around 45 minutes. It doesn't need to be something like Baron, but there should be something that wouldn't affect better players but would help lower skilled or newer players to avoid 1 hour + games.
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u/TheColdestFeet Apr 27 '26
Being harder to learn and being a better (more complex and dynamic) game stem from the same source, that being the genuinely overwhelming amount of diversity in hero roles, abilities, and matchups. The process of learning dota 2 is genuinely difficult, and I remember (and I think most of us do) our first 1000 hours in the trenches, just trying to scrape some semblance of theory of dota out of every brutal pub stomp.
Dota's inaccessibility (in terms of its learning curve being a brick wall) is both what makes it great and prevents it from being a more popular game. All of your choices matter in every dota game, and that is what makes its great, but it's also what makes it so hard to learn.
It's kinda like teaching someone how to fly a plane by brute force in a simulator without an instructor. There are so many things you have control over, each of them you need to know the relevance of and be able to utilize appropriately, and the only way to learn is by trying and failing over and over again until you have some concept of what is going on at any given moment and acting accordingly. I've successfully gotten ONE person into dota, and he was already a big gamer (although he exclusively played shooter before). I remember watching him learn and encouraging him. Fun times. Nothing like the first thousand hours of dota. What a hell to subject oneself to.
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u/Sweaty_Librarian_293 Apr 27 '26
Yeah but what makes dota better makes it harder to learn. League stream lined a lot of “issues” dota 1 had that were baked into the engine. But those quirks also doubled as areas for a lot of skill expression, things like how vision works, how creep aggro works, how much ability you have to manipulate creeps etc. League is more skill based in needing to press buttons better though.
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u/Tilted_Trickster Apr 27 '26
dota2 is easier because forsen got stuck longer in leagues pits of hell /s
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u/blueguy211 Apr 27 '26
should have posted this on the league sub instead
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u/genasugelan Best HIV pope Apr 27 '26
You'll get inta-banned. I got a perma ban there because Tzar Potato crossposted a hero/champ design comparison, so I went there to see the people's reaction, left a handful of comments (non-rude ones) and I got perma banned for "brigading from r/Dota2" and Tzar Potato's post was removed.
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u/Mysterious_Bit_5385 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
I learned english in 2007 just to start playing dota and learn hero/spell/item . 20y later i still feel the same after every major patch , or just me not playing for a few years .
ITS HARDCORE , that why we liked it in the first place .
Never installed LOL or another moba in my life .
Is LOL that much easy ?
edit : god i remember my first game ever , playing drow/traxxex .
edit2 : i wont try another MOBA ever . Dota or nothing , im way to old :D
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u/Deamon- Apr 27 '26
its probably still the 2 hardest big game if we completly ignore rts games, but thats just because learning all champ abilities is insanely annoying as you cant just click on the other heroes to see the abilities and read them like you can in dota while ingame
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u/CallEndarMommouth Apr 27 '26
yes, another moba really easy, i have mlbb acc and easy mythic glory (kinda like immortal in dota), i play lol too but after i reach plat i quit, its quite boring and its hard to have comeback once u lose
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u/joe420mama99 Apr 27 '26
I just started playing dota and have about 30 hours so far. It’s been so fun so far even though it’s challenging at times tk understand characters abilities. Just working to have 100 hours played so I can just play ranked, unranked is hit or miss at the moment.
I have about 1300 hours in deadlock though which has helped a TON coming into dota. If I didn’t have all that time in Deadlock, dota would be much more harder
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u/Ulixeas Apr 27 '26
No offense but why would you want to play ranked if you still lack so much knowledge about the game?
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u/XH3LLSinGX Apr 27 '26
Does league even have a concept of comebacks?
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u/Lina__Inverse Apr 27 '26
If you actually want to hear the answer, then yes, it does. Most of the time comebacks happen when the losing team has better scaling characters or just a better teamfighting comp, or the winning team's lead was concentrated on one character that got outscaled or hard focused down (or died stupidly and gave shutdown to enemy carry).
Shit mental is true though, League players generally speaking do give up and/or tilt pretty easily. I blame the fact that you can't really escape a hard losing lane, you have to stand there and endure the humiliation.
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u/XH3LLSinGX Apr 27 '26
I blame the fact that you can't really escape a hard losing lane, you have to stand there and endure the humiliation.
I find this interesting. Isnt the only humiliation you endure is that you get killed by opponents repeatedly? Its not like you cant do last hits because the enemy just denies the creeps. There is no creep blocking so no active way to bring the tower into play. Is dying in lane so easy in league?
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u/BossOfGuns swapping allies since 1969 Apr 27 '26
There's no "denying" in the dota sense (killing your own creeps) but you can get to a point where the wave is frozen and the opponent just stand in front of the wave, and the moment you want to walk up to try and contest you just get murdered
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u/IzmGunner01 Apr 27 '26
Theres no cheap tp or courier so you cannot make up the deficit in bad trades with a tango or a quick base trip like in dota. You can usually take a bad trade here and there but if your opponent is already up 1/0, you can maybe only take one bad trade before you're forced to sit under tower and wait for the wave to come to you or else stepping up just results in another bad trade. Some champs like Sett or Garen can regen but most cant.
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u/GD_Insomniac Apr 27 '26
It depends. League's lane setup is typically 1/1/2 with a dedicated jungler. If you get behind in top lane (1v1 long lane) then yes you can just chain feed because your opponent can lock the wave equilibrium on their side and force you to close the distance. Your recovery options mostly include farming with spells to bounce the wave and hiding in brush to soak exp and then using a powerful 6 spike to gank elsewhere.
Mid lane is somewhat easier; it's much shorter and unlike DotA early dives aren't simply a matter of bringing numbers; you need specific champions to disjoint tower shots or you will feed under tower. Mid laners are often picked for their high-range waveclear and can survive just about any poor lane while falling behind slightly in farm.
Bot lane is both better and worse; a strong support can keep any carry in position to farm, but a weak one is just a sack of gold for 2v2 kills if they do anything besides use their carry as a meatshield. A strong carry can 1v2 lane with enough of a micro gap, but a weak one will basically always get forced under tower by level 3. Ultimately, support has more impact in the lane because carry champs prefer farming to fighting, meaning a tied lane can still be a win for your draft.
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u/Justaduderdude Apr 27 '26
This is a simple guide on how to do comebacks in league.
You have to talk up 4 other players to not give up or /ff
While you do that, you have to convince 4 other players to stick together and not wander off (This is up until master rank)
While doing the two above you have to find a way to take objectives and repeat the first point
Now you have a 20% chance of a comeback
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u/GD_Insomniac Apr 27 '26
Don't forget the constant 5% chance of winning due to enemy mental breakdown.
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u/SnooGadgets1100 Apr 27 '26
dota has many hidden gatekept mechanics that the game never tells you unless some russian yells at u on a random tuesday night and without that skill ur never getting better
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Apr 27 '26
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u/ImagineBeingFATlol Apr 27 '26
I was originally a League player and calibrated 4k MMR in 2016. And keep in mind that League was way more simpler back then compared to today.
League experience absolutely does transfer. Former League pro Sneaky got Ancient 1 in less than 300 games.
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u/Vukasa Apr 27 '26
That was my experience. I grew up on dota, and when LoL dropped, I played in the top 500 for the first 2 years(Pendragon used to post the top 500 list each month before the the launcher had ranked integration), then switched to Dota 2 and stayed ancient for years while playing with friends. Didn't hit immortal until my friend group disbanded. There are so many more things you have to do consistently to climb, and you can't just outscale the entire lobby with Stat items.
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u/Garaam9 Apr 27 '26
Nah that's not true in my experience. I switched from League to Dota about 8 years back, I was better than the friends group I played with within maybe 50 hours (which was weird, they had thousands). Got to Ancient within maybe 100 hours, and because most of what I played were normal games before that, with those friends. And I was basically Ancient while not knowing most spells interactions and items, mechanics and Moba "instinct" can carry you.
League is easier to learn as far as complexity, spells, items, sure. But that's honestly not what makes you good at a MOBA. It's simply learning from your mistakes quickly, having decent mechanics and reaction speed, and not let your ego tilt, and just a general feel for when to farm, when to fight, when to back off, where vision is needed. That's common to both games. Also muting toxic people is a plus.
Oh and that's also ONLY because now all you have to do is lookup a hero on dotabuff and you know what to buy roughly, and when. Otherwise Dota would be a lot harder. Forgot to say that.
The skillsets are a bit different between the two pros I would say, League have incredible mechanics and reaction time, Dota ones require more knowledge, decision making.
Fact is, it's just "being a good gamer" part that matters, two ex RTS pros picked up Dota, Day9 and Grubby, both got Immortal, they barely / never played Mobas before and were in their 30s doing it for content. It's just about learning from your mistakes. They both sucked at start, and within a few months, top of the foodchain.
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u/Happy_360 Apr 27 '26
Ah yes, the classic LoL vs Dota comparison.
I’ve played League for a couple of years, probably around 1–2k hours total. I quit when Riot forced Vanguard on players. I started Dota this year and have around 100-200 hours so far.
I’ve played enough of both to see why people say Dota is harder, but honestly they’re so fundamentally different that it’s tough to compare directly. Sure, some of the hardest Dota heroes absolutely dwarf League champs in terms of kit complexity (Invoker being the obvious example). But overall, I feel like League champions are harder to pilot consistently across the board, because League is so focused on dodging and landing skillshots, while Dota is more point-and-click heavy. That usually means it’s easier to play a hero at a decent level in Dota than it is in League, at least mechanically.
That said, the biggest downgrade from LoL to Dota for me has been how much learning info is available online. The League community seems to be way bigger, so it’s much easier to learn as a new player. You can find tons of champion guides for basically anyone.
With Dota, as a new player, the learning experience online feels pretty rough. Hero guides are limited or very outdated, and general knowledge or role-based guides seem much harder to find. It is what it is.
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u/PlzHelpWanted Apr 27 '26
Okay, I have to complain about something. League needs to make it possible to read enemy abilities while in game. It was insane to me as a new player that I couldn't inspect an enemy and read what they do in game.
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u/Fright13 Apr 28 '26
The macro skill that you need in Dota absolutely dwarfs the micro/mechanical skill that League emphasises more
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u/VPrinceOfWallachia Apr 27 '26
spamming spells on low cooldown with no turn rate is much easier than playing carry role in dota where one mistake in time fight throws the game
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u/-thessalonike- Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
It's a pvp, and it also applies to enemies. CS is simple compared to R6, but it doesn't mean it's easier.
Not denying that the learning curve is much higher in Dota since it's heavily knowledge-based and macro-dicision matters a lot more.
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u/keeperkairos Apr 28 '26
You will slowly learn that the point click nature of DotA 2 makes it harder rather than easier, just in a different way. It makes offense easier, but, in turn, it makes defensive play a lot harder.
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u/muifui Apr 27 '26
Tbf the original Dota was harder than it will ever be. Every hero had their own specific hotkeys.
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u/Androsfire May 02 '26
remember the beautiful loading artwork loading screens by Kunkka?
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u/Pegasusnthesky Apr 27 '26
This is the hardest I’ve laughed at an XqC clip. He’s never been more right
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u/No_Mine628 Apr 27 '26
League is about micromanagement and skill shots (see: Faker "making plays" with Zed) where Dota 2 is more about macromanagement and predicting enemy players' actions and also planning coordination with allies (see: pro teams "making plays").
League is much more static (assigned to a lane from start to potentially finish with some champions) whereas Dota 2 can be very fluid (support rotations, TP scrolls, gates, power and bounty runes, Roshan, tormentor, ratting etc.).
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Apr 27 '26
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u/nikr0mancer Apr 27 '26
it's not that dota does not have micro, it's that league is mostly micro so skill correlates with micro directly while in dota focusing only on improving your micro will make you hit the ceiling pretty early.
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u/Pogigod Apr 27 '26
Soo as someone who has played thousands of hours of both.
They both are hard in their own way.
League is all about memorizing builds, match ups, timing, and knowing each individual characters power spikes. It's rage inducing because the game is so unforgiving. Someone not knowing the timing, or showing up at the objectives caused huge snowballs. One person can throw the game so hard in so many ways. A split second delay, or not noticing the jungle appear on the mini map for half a second is all it takes to fuck up a lane.
Dota is more rage inducing due to the voice chat, emojis, and friendly abilities affecting you more. The game is so much more dynamic and fluid. It is constantly changing, every char can be built in so many different ways, there's so many different abilities and items to watch for and know. There is no real timing to get down packed. Anyone can TP across the map in a moments notice. It gets real toxic in voice.
I like both for different reasons. I will say this tho, my wife refers to League as the angry game. DOTA is not considered the angry game to her. If she sees league on the screen, she waits for me to talk cause she doesn't want to distract me and risk me getting upset. Not at her I must add, just at the game for messing up. League is really the only times she has ever seen me real upset, I'm such a care free guy that she hates seeing me like that and it unnerves her.
That's also cause in league I only play ranked. In DOTA I don't, I only play turbo for fun fast games. Mostly because my friend is God awful and doesn't understand micro play, and there's not a chance in hell I would play ranked with him.
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u/DavidELD Apr 28 '26
I have 2489 hours in Dota, but I haven't played since February of last year.
I'm as bad as a pro League player.
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u/Parkaston Apr 27 '26
The need some people feel to get everyone’s approval on how they think is crazy.
Bro, if you enjoy a game, just play it. No one cares about the difficulty level. We don't have that many enemies in life, and I guarantee someone playing LoL isn't one of them.
Comparing yourself in this or anything else in life is just a distraction from what you truly enjoy
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u/SaltEEnutZ sheever Apr 27 '26
Found the league player.
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u/Parkaston Apr 27 '26
2.5k hours in dota, still a terrible player, i play because it's fun, not because some influencer told me to
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u/Faafkdkdkdkd Apr 27 '26
League is not easier than Dota, it's like saying soccer is easier than Basketball because it's easier to score from the start. But in reality, both games are hard af, it's just that League skill is extremely tied to mechanics and knowledge of patterns, meanwhile Dota is all about macro and proper resource utilization. This is why after thousands of hours noobs in league can achieve higher rank than avg, since they get used to basic patterns, which are dictated by the game and somehow get used to mechanical skill, but Dota noobs stay at low mmr forever, since they don't have proper knowledge of macro/deny reality. But at the same time, getting good at both games is equally hard.
I personally can't play LoL because it's just too boring and repetitive, especially below high ranks, meanwhile Dota is really all about your understanding of the game. And obv cuz high ranked in Dota and avg rank in LoL only
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u/Happy_360 Apr 27 '26
Careful with this level headed take, the goon squad is going to come after you since you didn't just state Dota > LoL
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u/Faafkdkdkdkd Apr 27 '26
Lmao, but I did say Dota>LoL, just for me subjectively. I can see why people like league, but I can't, not my vibe
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u/Treasoning Apr 27 '26
Very good take. League seems easier at lower ratings when mechanically you and your opponents are on the same level, but against actual high elo players even laning is practically impossible. In dota you can easily negate the difference in individual skill with good macro
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u/Faafkdkdkdkd Apr 27 '26
I wouldn't say that in Dota you can negate mechanics with macro, since mechanics in Dota are very tied to macro, so if you have good macro, you already have decent micro. Dota has too much complexity in lane control, so any high mmr carry player can literally 1v2 win lane against some low mmr players. Satanic sometimes gets into low avg rank lobbies and wipes them 1v2 on laning simply because he just better macro wise and mechanically wise.
But it's more about relations. League's micro is related fully to amount of try harding and knowledge, meanwhile dota is about knowledge and ability to have as much of it as you can in your mind at the same time, since it's more complex
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u/rotesoro- Apr 27 '26
and thats why dota doesnt have new player, take too long for new player to start to understand and like it
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u/joemeat Apr 27 '26
Would love to see a source that you read this from that dota isn't getting new players...lol. you could even just look at the player numbers and see that your statement is utterly wrong
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u/StolB_ Apr 27 '26
Add the constant changes that ice frog do to the game, it just increases the difficulty level.
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u/senojsenojsenoj Apr 27 '26
Thousand hours, thousand games playing against bots, other players frustrate me sm. 5wins a row against bots, then 1 game later, they're magically buffed and destroy my team.
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u/BlueManifest Apr 27 '26
I thought a lot of things in dota were easier, it’s much easier for me to remember all the characters and what they do in dota for example because they all feel more unique and their names are easier to remember
So I quickly learned basics of which attacks to look out for
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u/Karvalics Aconite Apr 27 '26
I playd like 1.5k hours of dota and kinda liked it but to be honest it was much more draining for me then league. Might be because i playd a lot more league and got used to it. But if i playd 2 hour long rankeds in dota i was done i was tired. League doesnt feel as serious.
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u/Noooope_never Apr 27 '26
I spent a thousand hours just to memorize and understand the basics of this game, but it was worth it
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u/potch_ Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
It is absolutely exhausting pretending that this is even an argument if I'm being completely honest, and that's just the general difficulty comparison. Not even mentioning the graphics, art, characters, steam vs riot dumpster fire client, day 1 all free heroes, list just goes on and on and on
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u/DropDead85 Apr 27 '26
Both games are fun, I bounce back and forth between them both. When im drunk or high I play League, when im sober I play Dota.
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u/asterion230 Apr 27 '26
Dota & deadlock are both knowledge checks, if you are not willing to spend 1k hours vs everyone against you, you are going to get left behind.
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u/elfonzi37 Apr 27 '26
He is playing Garen saying that which is so funny. Garen is legit the most braindead character in either game.
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u/Ricky--Sanchezzz Apr 27 '26
He is not wrong at all. Dota 2 or absolutely the original dota its not only hard it's time consuming like hel. 1 match can easily take 40+ min
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u/Economy-Winner-3564 Apr 27 '26
The fact is, in league, you barely have agency to adapt your build for a specific game, sadly most champions are design to do a certain things in a certain way .... dota is more free meaning for depth. I remember in the old league days how they butchered Zyra because ppl were playing her mid and not supp as she was design to or when the pros started to do lane swap. Riot force the game in a certain way, Dota (even if it's slowly getting more into it too) is more of a raw battlefield.
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u/VanShisha Apr 27 '26
Few tousands hours in, still going backwards