Dota 2 First Impressions

I have been playing the Dota 2 beta for the past three days. I can without a doubt, say that Dota is the most fun but challenging game I've played in a while. I've played a lot of League of Legends, and a small amount of Heroes of Neworth, but nothing had really prepared me for it.

The first thing I noticed about Dota was that I was really bad at it. The learning curve from getting from terrible, to slightly not terrible is insane. There was no tutorial stage or anything to help me out, but luckily there's people writing guides and wikis for Dota 2.

While I was installing Dota, I looked around for a few guides online. The most useful resource was an introductory guide titled 'The Task You Are Undertaking.". I found the link to it, along with a lot of other helpful guides, in a Dota 2 general thread on 4chan. I'm really glad I decided to read up on the mechanics of the game before I started playing. The guide gave me a good idea of the gameplay fundamentals like farming, building towards the hero's attributes, and damage types.

However, all the preparation in the world wouldn't have stopped me for feeding like I did. Things like simply selecting my character were frustrating. In my first few games I kept accidentally left clicking on ally heroes and minions leaving my character standing around under the enemy tower. It was moments like that made my allies hate me to their core.

The most daunting obstacle for me is going to be learning all the characters and items. There are an insane amount of heroes each with their own active and passive abilities. Each hero has four unique abilities (and sometimes more) that they can upgrade is a fairly unrestricted order. As of right now, if I happen to run into an enemy hero in the jungle, I am completely clueless as to how fast they can stomp my face into the ground. By the time I usually figure out that they're the enemy team's fed carry, it's usually too late. 

The other mechanic that blind sided me was the shop system. I remember my first game in Heroes of Neworth; I could not navigate the shop system at all. I managed to figure out how to build items through trial and error. I'm still too scared to stray from the recommended items.

I only played a few different characters, specifically Spirit Breaker, Sven, Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor. The  guide warned me about the difficult heroes and listed the easiest heroes for beginners. My favourite here so far as Spirit Breaker and Drow Ranger.

I love Spirit Breaker because I only have to push two buttons to play him. His first ability, Charge of Darkness, allows him to charge on any visible enemy. Once he's targeted the enemy, he bolts across the map moving through any terrain and enemy until he collides and stuns the target. His Ultimate, Nether Strike, slips him into another realm appearing next to an enemy hero. His other two abilities are a passive and an aura. Compared to the other heroes I played, he was both the easiest and the most fun. I would definitely recommend him for a beginner because he's incredibly mobile and still a hard hitter.

Here is a list of Dota 2 guides and the Dota 2 wiki.