A greenhorn to DotA but a proficient player in Dota 2? Never heard of DotA's (in)famous OMG and LoD (Legends of DotA) map? Help is here, as GosuGamer's Frederick 'Winterequinox007' Benjamin helps to tackle the new mode, with some tips for your upcoming Random Ability Draft game.
A word of advice, this is not a mode for the faint hearted and those new to the original DotA maps and Dota 2. You are required to be familiar with Dota 2's mechanics, hero skills, and gameplay, in order to choose the best skills for your respective (random) hero. Essentially, you are required to choose four skills that you are most comfortable with in order to play your hero well. Do note that it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for your hero's skills to be interconnected to each other in some way, Eg. Choosing four stuns, or playing full carry, or even a mix of both.
Foreword by Valve:
Trade the organized chaos of Dota 2 for a taste of pure bedlam! Unlocked at level 11, in this mode each player is randomly assigned a hero, and each hero's abilities are placed into a pool. Players then take turns choosing which abilities their hero will bring into battle. Behold the majesty of a Pouncing Pudge, witness Axe fumbling with Psi Blades, and experience the terror of Illusory Orb Magnus.
The objective of the game is simple: Overpowering your opponents through superior skills and execution, to destroy their ancient. Basically the same objectives as Dota 2, but with a wildcard element, an element that willl pull the rug from under your opponent's feet.
How to begin:
Below are a few steps that will help you on the way for your first game, or for you to stop enemy domination in the game! Bear with me as I begin with the simplest steps and gradually progress on the the more important ones.
Step 1: The first step is really obvious. Under the section entitled 'Game Modes' which is located under the Find Match option, check(tick) the box that says 'Ability Draft'. If you want to play this mode only, do remember to uncheck all other boxes, then click on the 'Save Settings' button towards the button.
Game mode description: Create a unique Hero by drafting from a pool of abilities
What happens afterward is simple. After all players have loaded, you will be brought to an interface where you will be able to select skills to go along with your randomised hero.
Step 2: Skills Selection - Select your skills in an interface that looks exactly like the one below. In the beginning, all players are given some time to scan and think of the skills that they'd like to select. Afterwards, you will be placed in a queue based on your player colour, where you will be able to choose your skills.
This skills selection process takes a while, and once a Radiant player has selected a skill, it will alternate and allow a Dire player to select his skills, followed by a Radiant player once again, vice versa. Making the best use of what you have is not easy, as the good skills are taken up extremely early in the game.
As the pick phase begins, you are able to see every single skill and ultimate that your opponents pick. From there, players are able to strategise about what best counters another hero's skillset. However, this is a double edged blade, even as you are able to view your opponent's skillsets and counterpick them, they are able to view your counterpicks and are able to counterpick your counterpicks. Like a oddly mangled version of virtual chess, the drafting stage will determine the game's tempo, in addition to allowing you to view the skills of your opponents and allies by their skill drafts.
There, based on your attack type be it ranged or melee, and your primary attribute, Strength, Agility, or Intelligence, you can decide on the route and skills that are best for your hero.
Strength heroes work best as tankers or semi-carries, as Strength gives damage and hit points, allowing you to hit harder and last longer in fights.
Agility heroes are best suited as either carry or play hybrid roles, with their attack damage and attack speed increasing ever more as you level.
Intelligence heroes are good at dealing high amounts of spell damage, as all high damage spells have high mana costs, of which Strength and Agility heros lack. In addition, Intelligence heroes can spam skills easily owing to their large mana pool, hitting more and harder in the spell division.
This is what the game interface looks like after the skill drafting process. You can see your hero and his/her icon, which is highligted in a green marker. At the end of the ability picking stage after all players have chosen their skills, the timer will continue to run for a while longer, before the battle begins.
For legacy players, this game mode might be slightly problematic as certain skills might have stacking hotkeys. My advice would then be for you to either pick other skills whose hotkeys do not stack, play with QWER hotkeys, or to switch hotkeys to something that you're better with. Finding out that since two spells use the same key in the middle of a teamfight is definitely not the way to go, especially since it leaves one skill slot blank whilst the other is actually castable.
In this game, I have opted to play as an offlane nuker Clinkz, with my skills consisting of the following:
- Impale (Nyx Assassin)
- Brain Sap (Bane)
- Nightmare (Bane)
- Life Drain (Pugna)
Below is a sample gameplay of Dota 2's Ability Draft mode by DotaCinema's Sunfan. It shows the drafting phase, as well as the gameplay and how it is different from your usual gamemodes.
Roles:
There are roles in Dota 2 and all it's maps and modes. The KEY idea in picking skills in your different role is for them to go well together. Disables and Stuns > Nukes and Slows in the spell hierarchy, Attack Damage and Mobility > Bash and Attack Speed in the carry hierarchy.
Do note that the heroes/spells given are random, and such selection of spells vary from game to game, and there is by no means a 'perfect' combination of skills for any hero in any situation.
1. Tankers (To take the brunt of the damage, so that your squishies teamates don't)
Dispersion + Counter Helix + Bristleback + Reincarnation
Berserker's Call + Dispersion + Rot + Borrowed Time
Morph Strength + Dispersion + Return + Chemical Rage
The key to picking good tanking skills is to have a mixture of offence and defence, defence first and foremost. You will need a skill purely to increase your survivability and tankiness (eg. Dispersion and Bristleback) before being able to think of possible offensive skill combinations. A good offensive skill that works well with survivability would be Counter Helix, or Return.
Basically what I have done here is to pick skills that synergise well with such that they compliment each other, a mixture of defence and offense. This helps to create the most out of what you have gotten, and to maximise your potential. If you play your hero right, sometimes nukers will be unable to kill you, and will even run out of mana and stop trying.
2. Nukers (Objective: Creating an insane damage output with spells, stuns, and disables)
Waveform + War Stomp + Purification + Ravage
Quill Spray + Astral Aura + Aftershock + Rearm
Fissure + Stormbolt + Waveform + Multicast
The main role is to get early levels, and control the game with their insanely high amount of magic damage, stuns and disables. Roaming around, it is critical that to gank the carry and shut him down early game with such nukes. Should the enemy carry be allowed to farm up a BKB, it will turn the tides heavily in the enemies' favour, owing to the fact that you can be shut down easily from that point on. Synergising skills here is extremely important, as well as leveling each respective skill.
You should choose a primary (high damage output) spell to and build around that, maxing this skill first. Secondary skills should be leveled according to their damage, with higher damage output spells being level first, over the stuns which can be leveled later.
Nukers can also play as supports, as they do not require much farm to be effective. It is important to contribute as much as possible to your team, allowing your carry to snowball hard into the mid-late game.
3. Carries
Enchant Totem + Morph Stats + Tidebringer + Walrus Punch (1 Hit Rampage)
Essence Shift + Phantom Strike + Time Lock + Chemical Rage (Attack Speed, Bashes and Stats Steal)
Overpower + Psi Blades + Take Aim + Impetus (Death From afar)
What the first two combinations have in common is their underlying 'Go big or go home' gamble. As a carry, your objective is to firstly take down the enemy carry, then the rest of the other team.
As with other roles, you need to choose your primary DPS skill and build your following skills around it. In the case of Impetus + Overpower, Impetus is the skill with the damage output, and the supporting skills of Take Aim and Psi Blades help to increase your range and damage. In addition, the attack range additions are able to give you the element of surprise as well, as you are able to literally snipe off heroes from one screen away.
4. Hybrid roles.
Berserker's Rage + Feast + Slithereen Crush + Vendetta
Phantom Strike + Fury Swipes + Storm Bolt + Primal Roar
Fiery Soul + Quill Spray + Sticky Napalm + Warpath
Not as common as compared to it's predecessors, hybrid roles typically feature heroes with both DPS and stuns/disables. This is with the reasoning that an extra spell would stun the enemy sufficiently, ensuring a kill. When synergised with your DPS skills, a stun is extremely formidable in stopping an escape, allowing you a few seconds of precious time to kill your opponent.
In this case, your stuns or disables should be built around your DPS skill in such a way that in a 1v1 situation against a full hard carry without a BKB, you would emerge the victor. The reasoning for such a skill build is time and flexibility. Giving you the upper hand right from the start with extra damage and the potential for surprise backstabs against enemies, you are able to transition to either a ganker or a carry with ease in the mid game, depending on whatever your team requires.
The key to picking skills is to know which would suit different situations, countering the enemy's chosen skills and hero suitability, in short. Experience is key in this mode, as that would allow you to forsee and predict the enemy's skills, whilst being able to make the most of the very limited skills in the ability pool.
* Note: Abilities written in bold are recommended to be leveled first.
Step 3: Which brings up to the middle of the battle itself, which will look very chaotic, something like the below picture. Like ordinary Dota games, these matches can go either way for both teams.
My game of Ability Draft has so far went well, although there were leavers on both sides of the game. As with an informal mode, this game tends to draw much less serious players about it. Games can turn out for better or worse for either team with back and forth skirmishes, but mainly tend to fall in the category of a single team dominating the other throughout. This is mainly due to one player who picks and plays better than the other players, and is it through his ganks and kills that the game slides heavily in the team's favour.
Step 4: Game Concludes
An excellent way to improve is by reviewing the games and ability picks after the game as concluded, regardless of win or loss. This will help you as you think, "How could this picking phase been better", and "What should I have picked instead of that". In hindsight. this will improve your decision making and flexibility, giving you a better experience base to make the most of the skills alloted to you.
There are a total of 437 skills that are able to be picked in this mode from 107 heroes. Putting them together, there are a total of 635,062,120 possible total permutations of skills in this mode. To list them all down would be impossible, with each drafting phase being different from another.
By building the skill on Ability Draft mastery, you can think on your feet and choose the skills that are best for your hero on the fly. There is an offchance that my calculations are wrong, though, so please take this figure with a pinch of salt.
