DOTA - An introduction

The loading screen before heroes and cowards are born.

You know what this summer's been all about? DotA. That's right, defence of the ancients. Your favourite group of chinamen has fallen into the murky realms of high addiction of a pro gosu style. What can I say? Does it even need explaining? I suppose we best summarise what the hell DotA is, and maybe why it's so addictive like crack..

DOTA stands for Defense of the Ancients, and it is a custom map for the game Warcraft III. It's popularity on battle.net, the multiplayer matchup service for WC3, is of domineering levels. The closest analogy I can make is that DotA is to WC3 as CS is to HL. This custom map has been played all the way up to the professional levels, and is part of any Chinese pro's arsenal of awesome geekiness.

It is therefore suffice to say that we, as pro's, have been playing and following tournaments religiously. We have been training strenuously to reach pro standards, and formed a clan ourselves, the [BOSS] clan. It is difficult to attain where our clan name has been attained from, but some might say a certain genre of film has influenced our decision.

I'll end this post with a few heroes out of the ridiculous echelons of heroes that exist in dota. These have really captured my heart. They are true noble heroes indeed.

Pugna, the Oblivion
Just an awesome hero to be honest. His movespeed is hilariously fast, his attack animation must be one of the easiest. Plus, nether blast spammed is just fun fun fun. Easy farming fo sho. Really good at defending, throwing those wards down like nobody's business. The only thing is whenever I decrepify, my fellow chinamen scream at the lameness of the enemy being ethereal. DEAL WITH IT GUYS.

Lion, the Demon Witch
Maybe I'm just particularly biased when it comes to spellcasters, I don't know, but this one is one that I particularly enjoy using. I think of her as a less fragile Rhasta, but with the same kill potential. Sure, well placed wards will totally kill, and Shackles might be longer than Impale, but I definitely prefer Impale just for the small AoE it has, whereas Shackles just leaves you completely screwed when you come against two. Maybe I'm just not pro with Rhasta yet.


Bradwarren, the Centaur Warchief
So, to finish off, we have BRAD. Yeah, awesome Brad. This guy is just such a tank, totally tanks out. Sure he's a bit boring to play cos he has two active abilities, just a Stomp and a kind of nuke, but it's pretty cool.I reckon he'd be pimpin' with a few items. That's the thing, he's not overreliant on items, which can be a pain in the arse for some heroes (intelligence heroes, I'm looking at you. N'aix and Axe, I'm looking at you too.)

What else is there left to say? Oh yeah, the sheer variety of and endless combinations in DotA is the reason why it's entertaining for hours and hours. We've been playing a lot of all random, easy mode, death match, which is completely different from all pick, easy mode. The former is where you get a random hero every time you die. The latter is the same hero throughout. The strategies, as you can imagine, are different, and the frustrations are different etc. It's all just pretty awesome. What can I say, long live DotA! Nah, we'll probably be sick of it by the end of the summer. But anyways, that's a short summary of what DotA's been like, I'll leave you to the other chinamen to share their experiences of DotA.

Oh and how can we forget our five man band names. Go Giles, Xander, Oz and Buffy!