Dota vs League of Legends Competitive Strategy
Today, a popular player from dota and one from league of legends talked about the mechanical differences of the two games. Doublelift has a video on his thoughts of league vs dota, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=59&v=zW2gpIX8wFM&feature=emb_logo. N0tail has a tweet on his thoughts of league, https://twitter.com/OG_BDN0tail/status/1209464718810853377.
Which one is right. The two games are at the top of their genres, but they are very different in how a team achieves the end goal of killing the enemies nexus/base.
Laning Phase Assignments
In league, the roles are always the same. There will almost always be two players in the bot lane, one player mid, one player top, and a jungler who is free to do as they please. The jungler looks to assist each lane the team deems as crucial to winning like a Jayce lane wanting to grow a early lead to eat plates or getting vision mid to assist a roaming mid laner like Qiyana to get kills to snowball both herself and another lane.
Compared to dota they have a couple of options. There is the basic 2–1–2 with a hard support, dedicated towards grabbing most of the wards and sacrificing build for the main carry, and the roaming support, who can actually build out his character while gaining gold through skirmishes. Then there is the tri lane where both supports invest their time protecting one sole carry. A much different approach than league where the closest we been to a tri lane was when laneswaps were a thing. Finally, certain picks can become junglers early on, taking away one of the main support roles.
Laning Phase Wave Play
Wave manipulation is a big deal in both games. Drawing creep aggro by attacking your opponent can help pull make killing them easier while also possibly baiting your opponent forward. Forcing a freeze can make it impossible for your opponent to effectively gain gold, leaving them helpless till they get help. Building a wave to dive with can deny massive gold/xp. These principle holds true in both games, but with some differences that make them unique to each other.
In dota, it’s possible to pull a camp to fight your own incoming wave. This can effectively deny creeps while also making it easy to eat whatever wave is coming into your tower. It also so happens to let you gain a jungle camp worth of gold (current patch means there is a % chance to gain an item as well, though can’t remember if it starts at a certain time frame).
Since dota’s side lanes commonly have two players in each (not guaranteed of course) it allows one player to take the time to do these camp pulls. On top of this, they can look to block incoming minions to slow them down. Minion gold is much bigger in dota compared to league. A ranged minion’s worth is weighted so much in the initial waves that support players look to use spells to secure it. For non-dota players, spells usually cost a lot more mana in dota while also having a greater cooldown. Nothing crazy like Syndra being able to do a small AOE attack every 4 seconds for 70 damage at level 1 (shut up Zeus).
Continuing here, the ability to deny minions means there is an even greater effort in wave manipulation. For league players, zoning your opponent out of minion range can be difficult to keep up. Typically it leads to the other player getting experience still. In dota, denying minions leads towards a 50% reduction in xp. Technically, a wave doesn’t even need to be frozen to gain an xp lead over their opponent. In league, usually the wave needs to be in some frozen state or kill their opponent to have a similar effect.
Basically, the ability to create a lead through pure mechanics / wave play shows league having less options compared to dota. However, there is a big difference in terms of how items are gained that will be discussed next and how it affects these situations.
Dota’s Ease of Item Access vs Recalls
The carrier, a personal envoy who can deliver any purchased items to the owner. Dota players don’t have to worry about basing as often as league players. They can effectively sit on the map / lane if they don’t die once. Allies also can give consumable items to another player to help them regain resources (health/mana). The ways for a league champion to regain resources is either by a red/blue buff, ocean dragon, honey fruit, an item/rune that gives lifesteal/spell vamp, a consumable, or from a healing spell by another champion. It seems like a lot of options, but there aren’t a lot of champions that can heal others and the ones that can are usually a support (so stuck in bot lane). There are consumable items, but they run out quickly. Honey fruit is not a common spawn. Ocean dragon is not guaranteed. Not all champions will run a rune that gives lifesteal/spell vamp and the items that do aren’t typically rushed.
If a league champion ever takes a bad trade they either need cover by their teammates to push out or hold on long enough to recall. They cannot effectively stay on the map like in dota. Going along with this, dota champions will have their stats increased by their items (increasing their HP / mana as a way to replenish it in a way). Don’t forget the teleport scroll, which can be bought by all dota champions. In bad cases where a death occurs, they can teleport back to not miss too many minions dying. League players have to select the teleport summoner and it has a 6 minute cooldown. If they die after using teleport then they can effectively get hard punished. Yes, dota teleport scroll has a cooldown as well, but it’s only 80 seconds.
What does this all mean when looking at the importance of wave play and item requirement? League players have less ways to effectively deny their opponents experience/gold. They also have less ways to regain health from poor trades, resulting in a high importance to every little action in lane. Dota players have more tools to gain leads through better laning, but also are not as punished for mistakes. The cost is gold on consumables/starting items for experience. Levels are well worth the cost of some gold.
Now this is all surface level information on the laning phase and what N0tail questions is if there are any objectives for league players to aim for. There are. This is the next topic.
Map Objectives
In league we can stack up to four major dragons to gain a dragon soul that greatly boosts the power of the team. There is also the herald and baron on the top side of map. These are the major objectives and the dragon is the big one teams will start fighting for since it spawns at the 5 minute mark.
In dota, their major objectives are outposts, bounty runes, and rosh. Bounty runes give global gold similar to league’s old dragon and the outposts give free team wide experience (huge advantage). Rosh is basically their baron that enables pushing down a lane.
From the looks of it, it seems like league has more early objectives to play for in dragon and herald, but this could be further from the truth. Bounty runes spawn every 5 minutes. While often teams trade these runes, it still leaves open a chance to fight. Outposts come on later like herald which again, open up chances to fight. These objectives are equally as important on both sides of the map leading to less imbalance to league where typically the team with the stronger bot lane can grab dragon.
Further more, remember dota players have access to TP scrolls. Players can quickly get involved in defending dives, playing for these objectives, or joining a fight. League players need to push out waves and then setup to make a play as a team. If they don’t, they bleed gold. What happens then in league is teams accepting the loss of an objective like dragon in order to gain gold on the map. Dota players don’t need to worry about this part as much thanks to that global TP. Fights are more encouraged.
Going even further into this point, Dota players can buy back if they die. That big wave the team has to deal with may not be so bad if the player dies and buys back to eat it after. Again, league players do not have this option. If they die in a fight while waves are pushing against them, they lose those waves. It’s a huge loss that teams need to calculate the risk vs reward.
Does this mean dota is a higher mechanically tensed game? No. What it does mean though, is that dota has more comeback options for players in order to allow them to take more fights in the game. Dying twice in lane does not mean the game is over. Dying twice in lane in league does mean that player will have a very hard time and require assistance to their lane. Losing big waves and a team fight results in a devastating loss.
League teams must be very careful on their recalls and when they choose to fight. Due to such limited comeback tools, we have high level games where a team makes a mistake and the other effectively wins off that one play. The games don’t extend for too long like in dota.
If I were either of these players, I would simply accept that each has greatly different takes on unforced error cushioning and the mindset of how the game should be played will most likely always be different between a dota and league player.
